WALDEN STANYER BOY AND MAN. WALDEN STANYER EOT AND MAN. BY HUGH KOLSON. LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & COMPANY LIMITED, jet. Sunstan's #?ou in other words, is three ideas in one. To teach these great philosophies Mr. Cuttlestone founded the Orphans' Eefuge, and to the credit of the orphans it must be said, that in return for good food and neat clothes they displayed more than ordinary zeal in the endeavour to comprehend the THE SCHOOL OF COLOUR. 109 idealism of colour. Colour was Cuttlestone's great subject, and by a copious rather than a judicious use of triplets he revealed himself to the unsophisticated orphans. Putting the matter symbolically, one might say Colour and Triplets equal to Cuttlestone. The crest of the orphanage was, " A red Ego on a blue ground inclosed by a yellow circle," and the legend was, " The Violet Volunteer, for ever and ever. Amen." Thus fortified, Cuttlestone saw no obstacles, and gene- rally ignored all enemies. As to his readiness to explain the mystery of his system, there could be no doubt. In this respect Mr. Cuttlestone was in very deed an evangelist. His gift of exposition was not equal to his desire to expound, but that is merely saying that he was a man of like passions with in- numerable preachers. One thing, however, was certain, namely, that wherever the exposition was not under- stood, the failure was, in Mr. Cuttlestone's opinion, entirely due to the stupidity of the listener. " Madam," said Mr. Cuttlestone, as the party walked towards the orphanage, "Walden walking in front, " your son is a young man of ideas, as is shown by his interest in the Paradision, or Temple of the Universe, represented by the radiating compass ; in fact, madam, I have made him one of the Radiationists of the sixteen transepts into which the temple is divided, and I have associated with him a colour, a form, and a number. All this must, I am sure, charm his mother." " Oh, Mr. Cuttlestone," that mother replied, " my IIO WALDEN STANYER. head is all in a swim. Everything is spinning and whirling like mad." " Quite so, madam," Cuttlestone generously answered. " So was my head until the happy moment when I got the key of the triads and saw my way through the inclosing symbols. Then my head began to settle a little; then I cracked the shell of my isolation, and composed a few verses which I shall have the honour of offering for your acceptance." Walden was not so far ahead that he could not hear what was said, nor was he other than impiously amused as he heard his loving mother exclaim " Mercy on us, what would your father think, and poor Mr. Bruce ! " Cuttlestone was not the man to trouble himself with interjections when his mind was fairly under the influence of the triads, or when he saw the sixteen transepts of the Paradision ablaze with colour. " Madam," said he, " your son has been by me appointed to the Violet transept, immediately opposite to Miss Pippleton, whom I have assigned to the transept of Emerald Green. The young people form quite the outline of a picture, which will be completed if I can persuade the rather impracticable Simcox to occupy the transept of the Ultramarine. I may say, madam, that Simcox is too much under the influence of a frivolous mother." " Frivolous ? " THE SCHOOL OF COLOUR. in " Yes, madam. More than frivolous. The mother of Simcox is partially dangerous. The mother of Simcox could be influenced by money. When I told her that our symbol was a Note of Interrogation, she laughed a maniac's laugh." " Dear me ! " " Painfully true, madam. The mother of Simcox is as inaccessible to the influence of colour and form as to the inspiration of number. The mother of Simcox is not a Eeceptionist." At this point Walden turned round and boldly said, " The mother of Simcox is a fool." " Well," said Cuttlestone, whose gentle tongue could never use harsh expressions towards anybody, and least of all towards women, "perhaps we may say without offence, that by some infirmity of nature, the mother of Simcox is unable to look at a statement com- prehensionally, consider it sequentially, and express it scientifically. Simcox himself has a rudimentary notion of the sweep of the associative sequence, but he lacks encouragement at home." Mrs. Stanyer might possibly have gone into the orphanage, had not a gentleman been found on the doorstep who particularly wanted Mr. Cuttlestone to go to the other end of London with him to consult an eminent person who had taken some interest in Eeceptionism, and had even gone so far as to have a diagram painted to represent the complete scale of 112 WALDEN STANYER. colour, form, and number. The waiting gentleman was the ex-president of the Aerial Club, a man with an eagle eye and a flat nose, whose soul burned with a desire to show all the world, even the meanest of mankind, hoV* the patient universe could be triated without moving a muscle. Mr. Cuttlestone followed him with a light heart. The millennial sun warmed his shrinking frame, and the very stones under his feet were beautiful as flowers. To the excited imagination of the long-misunderstood philosopher, the whole sky shone with new glory. His benevolence so expanded that he mentally added two wings and a third story to the orphanage, and even to the mother of Simcox he turned one generous thought. Oh, mother of Simcox, how glad you could have made the great philosopher! Could you but have seen, or even feigned to see, that Citrine meant Sociableness, and Oblong signified Attachment, you might have added years to the useful existence of Cuttlestone. But, mother of Simcox, you are a woman of hard heart ; yours is a rebellious spirit. Every thought of your insignificant mind is a thought of vanity ; but your destiny is the dust, and your l^onour is oblivion ! Selfish are the hearts that do not exclaim, " Away with the mother of Simcox ! " Arrived at Walden's lodgings, Mrs. Stanyer desired to be left alone awhile, and having enjoyed half an hour's respite from the buzz of unknown words, she THE SCHOOL OF COLOUR. 113 was glad to have an opportunity of speaking to Mrs. Doubletoe, and hearing a little common sense. " I quite agree with you, ma'am, it's all fudge and foolery ; and I am sure, if I was to worry about it, I would be in my grave in a week." " Your husband seems to be quite given up to those strange ways ? " " Yes, ma'am, so he is, no doubt." Then, after a pause, " But Mr. Doubletoe is a poor bugatoo that can neither read nor write. Lor, ma'am, he ain't a bad- meaning man, ain't Doubletoe, take him all the year round, wet and dry, as one might say." " Neither read nor write ? " " Neither, ma'am. The perspiration rolls out of his bald head when he writes a slateful of s's, and he comes to show me them when they are done, and is as pleased as a baby if there is not one upside down." " Whatever can he want with so many s's ? " Mrs. Stanyer exclaimed. " That's the point, ma'am the very point. His great desire is to be able to write ' Shiloh,' whatever that may mean ; I hope there is no harm in it." " Now, Mrs. Doubletoe, there is one question I want to ask you." " Twenty, ma'am, so it pleases you." " Very well. Do you think it is safe for my son to lodge in a house where there is so much nonsense talked ? You know how young he is." " Quite safe, ma'am ; they get on well together. Sometimes I say, ' Now, Doubletoe, I believe Mr. I 114 WALDEN STANYER. Stanyer did some of those s's ; ' then he hitches up one shoulder a little way he has when you catch him on the sudden and says, ' He did the big one \i the middle, but I did all the rest.' Oh yes, ma'am, quite safe ; quite safe, I do assure you. Don't worry, dear." That night Mr. Bruce was ill at ease : " A very surprising thing that I should meet both of them, and both of them in one and the same day. Bell and Stanyer are both in London. What a wicked city is London ! What a whirl and buzz I find in London! I cannot free Mrs. Stanyer from blame. I am sure she encourages her son in his vain thoughts. And that extraordinary creature who so rudely addressed me! His appearance was most disreputable. I feel disgraced when such people speak to me. Yet I have no redress. They talk me down they quite overpower me. I feel as if events were becoming too turbulent for my poor strength." CHAPTEE X. FKIENDS IN NEED. Two years have elapsed since these events. Within these years Walden's mother died. It would be most in accord with my own feelings to say nothing more about the sad event, yet it cannot be left in this bald form, because to that loss Walden owed the awakening and the ripening of some of the best qualities of his character. Curiously, those of us who knew Walden best were sorry in a way to see the chastening of his buoyant and reckless spirit. We had grown used to his ways, and had come to consider them part of his very self. It seemed right that there should be one exuberant and non-regulational spirit in our circle, one soul who broke in upon our stale proprieties and made them tremble for their very life. Now all was so different. The religious Yorick was alive, yet dead. It was for others to set the table in a roar, for he neither began the wordy revel nor enjoyed it. Walden was wearied out by the intellectual eccentricities and petty vanities which had been dignified by the name of religion, and the more so that they were utterly useless to him in the thickest and coldest shadows ii6 WALDEN STANYER. of his young life. They had no comfort for him as he stood by his mother's bedside in the^ilent house at Overton, as she lay there passing through daily suffering into richer and tenderer beauty. Her grow- ing beauty was as a consuming fire in his bones, for he knew what it meant; it was Farewell, written in holy cipher ; it was heaven wrapping a radiant mantle around a departing traveller. If he could have said so, he would have been relieved. He was speechless, and therefore his sadness was heavy. He told his mother she was looking better! In the bitterness of grief he made his love tell lies. He said she was coming back to earth, at the very moment she was putting on her resurrection-body. Is not death the initial phase of resurrection ? Is the bird dead because it has escaped the cage, or is it more alive than ever ? All the orthodoxies and vanities and speculations, in which "Walden had taken so much youthful and even riotous interest, allowed him to go alone to his mother's grave, and even the paid vicar seemed to be but in business, and in business hours, when he muttered something about dust to dust, ashes to ashes ; but when even that official voice repeated the words, " I am the Resurrection and the Life," Walden was conscious of such a thrill as gladdens a victim when he hears the trumpet of the approaching deliverer. We can only hear such words aright in one church the church of our crushed and bleeding love. In the hour of his loneliest desolation it was Mary FRIENDS IN NEED. 117 Butler who had come the nearest to being a divinely gifted comforter, and not the less so that her words were few, chosen by an instinctive delicacy, and whispered rather than declaimed. Mary seemed, in- deed, rather to be comforting herself than to be expressly comforting Walden; hence she had all the advantage of that well-regulated indirectness which relieves the listener from the pain of verbal reply, and conveys, under the form of soliloquy, the very balm and blessing of solicitous love. The love of Mary Butler for Walden Stanyer was not brought under the foolish suspicion of any element of personal calculation or pur- pose. It was a great big heart- kin love, such love as an interpreter may feel when he finds in the poet who enchants him a brother long looked for. And Walden, in his turn, kept nothing from Mary. True, she was not his mother ; yet who can say that she was without that love which makes a youth feel that his secret will be safe in her heart? The two years, with all their mixed experience, had added ten to Walden's life. They had taken him along new roads and introduced him to new faces, and withdrawn from him old ambi- tions and gruesome nightmares. But whilst they had taken the rashness out of his courage and severely rebuked his intellectual arrogance, they made a great outlet for that noble aspiration which had once em- boldened him to desire his mother's prayer. Walden's fire will return. Some of his old wilfulness may yet surprise us. Meanwhile we are thankful for a lull in the storm whose wind was shaking, if not ii8 WALDEN STANYER. % shaking down, some things which we desired to spare. What a small world this is ! To his surprise and delight, Walden was led to discover that the clergyman whom he and his mother had heard in St. Paul's that bright morning in May was the vicar of a neighbouring parish ! It is quite true that people from the country have sometimes to go to London to find out who their neighbours are. The Eev. Boston Bell had for years been within a few miles of Overton, and Walden had not so much as heard his name. Nor did Boston Bell care to have it widely known, for his line of thinking was not of that old-world type which rural parishioners can soundly sleep on. So much was this the case that Mr. Bell would for weeks together preach the sermons of Simeon, giving the parishioners the assurance that the sermons of such a man as Simeon might in many cases be more useful than his own. Bell was no thief. A more honest preacher never gave out a text. We have now to bring the two men face to face. The fact that his mother had been so charmed by the noble eloquence of Mr. Bell detracted nothing from Walden's appreciation of that good man's way of looking at things. This fact also brought his mother spiritually nearer, and often seemed, indeed, to make her one of their number as they entered upon high religious dis- course. Mr. Bell was as much pleased with his new acquaintance as was Walden. Mr. Bell always struck FRIENDS IN NEED. 119 me as a man who lived on a mountain-top, and kept his windows open night and day to catch the freshest wind, and admit all the richest odours of summer. He was emphatically a healthy soul, buoyant, fearless, independent ; a man who had fought a spiritual battle faced Apollyon himself and won it, and longed to tell his way of war to any young soul just girding on his untried armour. He always reminded me of Bishop Fraser, as to his make, his stride, his open-air freshness and bloom. His voice was clarion-like. He always seemed to be speaking to mountains and to be ordering floods out of his way, or to be speaking to several countries at once. He was a splendid symbol of a National Church, grand, courageous, big-hearted, and English from head to foot. Boston Bell was never made for a sect. Many a time I have heard him thank God for a National Church, on the ground that, if he belonged to a sect, he would be tried for heterodoxy on the first day of every month, and be a weight on every brother's conscience all the year round. " Conscience ! " said he in my hearing " pshaw ! Many a time a little cluster of spiteful and selfish prejudices has been dignified with the name of conscience." Such a "cluster" is the badge of a mere sect, always dis- tinguishing between the little word " sect " and the big word " church." Boston Bell owned his convictions. That is to say, they belonged to him by right of large, fearless, independent inquiry ; they were not items in an official schedule, they were the decisions and the treasures of his soul. For this reason Boston Bell 120 WALDEN STANYER. kept his theology amongst his riches and never amongst his lumber. Let us hear this theological hill-man talk a while. " I regard what is called ' scientific ' theology as the greatest hindrance to the spread of the gospel of Jesus Christ." This was a new idea to Walden. " Is theology a science ? " " I don't think so," said Mr. Bell ; " yet it has some- times been called ' the queen of the sciences ' a most ridiculous affectation." " Why ? " Walden did not care to recall his own answer to Mr. Bruce. " Because theology, if by. that word is meant the knowledge of God, is too big to be called a science." "Too big?" " Infinitely too big. God can never be known. A good deal may be known about Him, but He Himself is the impenetrable and eternal Mystery. Only God could construct a science of God." "What is God?" " Precisely. You have come upon the point by a straight line. No man knows God or can know Him intellectually, and 'science' is an intellectual term. That is the thing that is forgotten or overlooked. If God was finite He could be shut up in a science." " Like geology or botany ? " " Exactly. But, you see, He is geology, and botany, and chemistry, and biology, and astronomy all put together and multiplied by infinity." FRIENDS IN NEED. 1 21 "Just so." " The very word ' theology ' is a nuisance. It is the most conceited of all words. It is to my mind a kind of verbal sin. We have a dozen 'ologies which can defend themselves well enough, but an 'ology of God is to my feeling a shocking use of words." " I suppose the word ' theology ' is in the Bible ? " Mr. Bell smiled. It seemed to Walden that he had never seen any man smile before. It might have been his mother's smile. "No. It is not in the Bible. If people would speak of Bible things in Bible words, we should soon get rid of endless superstitions, and tests, and standards, and doxies, and turnstiles into the kingdom of God." " That's what I want to hear about," said Walden " the kingdom of God." " Truly. And that no theologian, if he is only a theologian, can enter." " Who can enter it ? " "The poet, the seer, the little child, the broken- heart " " The broken heart ? " "Ay, first and foremost. The wounded, the lost, the suffering " " The suffering ? " "Always. God is the Healer, the Eedeemer, the Saviour, the Father, the Mother, the Nurse " " Can you prove that there is a God, Mr. Bell ? " " Can the teacup prove that there is an Atlantic ? 122 WALDEN STANYER. Can you light a candle with a constellation ? We are limited by our capacity." " Yes," Walden whispered rather than said. "Moreover," Mr. Bell continued, "what is proof? What is sufficient proof? What is universal proof? I begin as the Bible begins. I begin by assuming God, then I go out into life, nature, history, and phenomena generally, and no assumption known to me so fully and rationally comprehends and explains all the facts as the idea of the personality and government of God is set out in the Bible." " Personality ? " " Yes. A word which nobody can define, yet it helps us by suggestion." "How?" " I mean that God is not part of something else. The worker is other than the work. God is not a mere notion or idea, an influence or an energy, but a living, watching, governing, sympathizing, judicial Being." "Some have denied that there is a God, have they not?" " Yes, but what of it ? I deny that the sun shines ; what then ? We cannot begin any constructive work on the bog of a denial. Never be afraid of the negative, and never rest upon it." " The whole thought is too much for me," said Walden; "it is overpowering. It is like talking to thunder. It is like " " I do not wonder at your pausing for a simile," said FRIENDS IN NEED. 123 Mr. Bell. " The fact is, it is like nothing but itself. We must get away from it if we would make practical use of it. Distance is essential to appreciation and enjoy- ment. God has always told men to stand back if they would commune with Him. No man can quench his thirst at Niagara. A mile away he will find the quiet water." This after Mr. Bruce ! This after Mrs. Oldbody ! Yet they all belonged to the same Church. Is that so ? Perhaps not. They all belonged to the same outward and visible Church. But what does that amount to ? The clown and the poet belong to the same universe. Walden was silent, yet glad. All this rich pasture- land after the stony acres of the odd men he had heard in London ! Yet he did not put Mr. Upfield amongst those who had given him stones for bread. That philosopher had an abiding-place in his heart; for, though eccentric, he was sincere, and when his mother died, did not Upfield write to Walden the brief word, " He woundeth the fleet runner ; He will not comfort thee with that which is vain " ? Walden was for the moment less anxious about others than about himself. He recalled the yet not distant days of his recklessness and audacity, and he rebuked himself for his treatment of Mr. Bruce. It is the good old way. The valley of the shadow of death has often terminated in the sanctuary of reverence and the temple of praise. Walden felt himself to be in the hands of a strong O man the stronger because so tender. 124 WALDEN STANYER. " Come back next week," said Mr. Bell ; " and who knows but Jesus Himself may draw near and comfort us with heavenly warmth ? " This was what Walden still needed. He could not find it by spreading his hands towards the summer sun. There is a special fire for the heart ; sometimes it is called sympathy, sometimes love. Mr. Bell called it JESUS. CHAPTER XL THE YOUNG SUFFERER. week " did not seem to be a remote date, yet to Walden it was like an eternity, for he had found the heart he wanted, and therefore he was full of joy. Our best ministers talk to us through our love rather than through our criticism, and talk to us all the more directly when availing themselves of calculated and delicate evasiveness. Mr. Bell knew that most complicated of all instruments, the human heart, and could play upon it what music he preferred. Especially did Mr. Bell love to watch the unfolding of a young heart, and to answer the frank inquiries of a fearless mind. On the other hand, Walden delighted to hear the eloquence of a man whose faith was so powerfully sustained by reason and integrity, and on whose mental horizon new lights were constantly dawning. But to all speculation some counter-weight must be found, if the mind is to be saved from degenerating into the most pitiable kind of selfishness, the selfishness of intellectual vanity and monastic superiority. Little did Walden know how soon he was to be called upon to say how far he could go in the way of 126 WALDEN STANYER. helping and cheering minds that never knew either the delight or the fatigue of mere controversy. In the course of his way home, Walden was startled on receiving an invitation from a woman to look in and say something to her dying little boy. "He will not be long with us, sir," said the poor mother, as they entered the sick-room, "so I want you to speak to the child." " I am very sorry," said Walden, " but " " Thank you, sir," said the mother, incoherently ; " I want you to tell the child what to do and how to do it." " I will send the vicar, if you will allow me," Walden quickly replied. " No, sir ; my child cannot understand the vicar- can you, Eobert ? " " No, mother. I am only seven. I do' not know long words. I am tired." "Yes," said Walden, grateful for the suggestion, " he is too tired to talk now." " I don't mean to say," continued the mother, " that Eobert has done anything much amiss, you know. I am his mother, and I do say that God ought not to be hard upon him : I will say that. I mean to say that if his mother can do with him, God might. I do not know why my child should be taken." " But would you not like him to go to heaven ? " " No, sir, I would not ; I have a mother's feeling. If we could both go I would not mind." THE YOUNG SUFFERER. 127 " But you will follow after," said Walden. " Follow after, sir ? How long after ? He will be a grown man, perhaps, and I will never know him ; and I want to see him grow up under my own eyes, and do things for him with my own hands. And what will the house be without him ? Surely a mother's feelings might stand for something." After a few moments' silence the little sufferer said " Please, sir, pray with me." " No doubt you have a mother yourself, sir," inter- rupted the poor woman, little knowing how she was thrusting the cold iron into Walden's soul. " No," said Walden. " No ? Is she dead and gone ? Is it not lonely for you?" Walden trembled, then the great tears came into his eyes ; then he sank on his knees beside the child, and said, " Our Father," and stopped. " ' Our Father,' indeed," said the mother ; " but what kind of a father is He to take my innocent little Eobert away, and him a Sunday child ? Am I to have no comfort ? His little sister was taken away Christmas twelvemonth, and now he's going, and then I shall be left, and I shall be expected to say ' Our Father.' No, no ; my heart is too full for that. He might let us live together until Eobert is a man." Walden still knelt, and the child laid a thin white hand on his bent head. " Your mother loved you, no doubt, as I love Eobert." " She did she did," sobbed Walden. 128 WALDEN STANYER. " Then why do you call Him ' Our Father ' ? What sort of a father can He be? What had your poor mother ever done that " "Oh, don't," said Walden. "I cannot bear it. I made too much of her." " No," said the poor woman, " you did nothing of the kind. She was your mother, and you could not make too much of her, and she ought not to have been taken away." " I was a naughty boy once," said Eobert. " Nothing of the kind," the mother warmly insisted. " He once pulled a turnip out of Squire Weston's field and the squire would have the child whipped at the parish school for it ; but I hope he will suffer for that when he gets into another world, the old cruel tyrant that's what I call him, and I wish he knew it. What harm was the child doing ? Good God ! are the children of the poor always to be snubbed ? " " I like Miss Butler the best of all," said the child. " Do you know Miss Butler ? " Walden eagerly inquired, glad to have one point in common with his poor friends. "She's rather a poor hand at praying," said the mother, " but just as sweet as new milk, and as kind as many a mother." "She kisses me," said the child, "and whispers to me. And Mr. Pantus can pray, and pray, and pray, and he likes to." " Yes, my dear. He is talking of a poor old Methody THE YOUNG SUFFERER, 129 tailor that lives up Baty's yard, and goes out preaching every Sunday whenever people have time to listen to him ; and a very decent old body he is, and wants to make out that everything is right, and shouts ' Glory, glory, glory ! ' and I don't hold with too much of that ; a little of it I can do with. But I know that everything is not right, or Bobby wouldn't be lying there, and him, I tell you, a Sunday child ; not born on a Friday, like Dolly Stukkins's baby, that squinted with both eyes, as well she might." " Very strange," said Walden. " And very cruel I call it," added the mother ; " and even Miss Butler says she cannot make it out, or reckon it up into anything like sense and fair play. Will you tell me, sir, what the child has done to deserve it ? " " Perhaps he may be suffering for what others have done," said Walden, as he now stood beside the child and held the little hand. " Then why didn't they take their own punishment, and let innocent children alone ? " the mother added, as she put back the hair from the child's forehead, and then moistened his lips with water. " Very strange," Walden mechanically repeated. Walden, where is your old roystering, jibing manner ? Why do you not rally the wounded mother, and laugh her into jollity ? Are you beginning to see the tragedy which underlies all life, and to reali2e the sore travail which makes creation groan ? A plaster of philosophy will do for the head, but who is cruel enough to lay K 130 WALDEN STANYER. it upon the bleeding heart ? Walden left the cottage as a man overloaded, and staggering because of weak- ness. Well for us that there are life-questions which cannot be settled by intellectual retort, and that make us think and almost pray ; great questions which draw us upward, and startle us into a consciousness so vivid as in reality to increase the volume and sensitiveness of manhood ; questions that begin in amazement, pass into sorrow, and emerge in hope; for such questions make life worth living. "Walden was at once softened and hardened by what he had seen ; softened because of the human trouble, and hardened because of the Divine indifference to it. So it seemed to him at that moment. It would have been so easy for God to cure the child, and to fill the cottage home with sunshine, yet apparently He did nothing. Was nothing all He could do ? As he revolved the question in his mind, Walden met Mary Butler. " I have just been talking to a little sick friend of yours," said he. " And I am just on the way to see him," she replied. Walden turned to go with her, and as they walked they talked frankly of serious things. "The mother is a very interesting woman to me," said Miss Butler "abrupt and stern in her manner, but she conceals very deep and intense feeling. There is a kind of unintentional affectation in her severity." " She is very severe on the Almighty," said Waldeii. " Because she is very loving to her little boy." " Is not that a good reason, Mary ? " THE YOUNG SUFFERER. 131 " Yes and no. Both answers are partly true. She cannot see that God must of necessity love the child better than she can ever love it. He was God's before he was hers. She has only a second lien upon the child. God is the one Owner." "Ah, Mary," said Walden, "I should once have argued with you, and taken pleasure in trying to bewilder you ; but I am quite changed, and you know well enough what brought the change about." "Yes, I know it all." " What nonsense and vanity, and even profanity, we used to talk " " You did." " Yes, that's right I did. I did not mean it all. It was mostly mischief. Do you think mother quite understood that ? Did she think I was an infidel ? Had she any fear about me ? " " Not one whit, Walden. I can assure you of that as a fact." " Was there not the faintest shadow on her mind ? " "No." " Is it your heart, Mary, that is talking now, or your head." "Both." " Some people think they shall know one another in heaven. I should like to know my mother if ever I get there." " I have no doubt about your getting there, Walden." " Oh, Mary ! " "Nor had your mother. She told me so. She I 3 2 WALDEN STANYER. said, 'Walden's mind is very wilful, but liis heart is right.' " "Just like her. I don't admit that she was right in her judgment, but I know that she would be very likely to say that." " And as to all these mysteries," Mary continued, " I must take a woman's view of them, and rest content with the belief that all will be right in the end. We simply want more patience. We must feel things at the time. I dread all hard-heartedness, and I believe in crying because of pain and loss and death ; but we must wait. When the sun rises we shall see many things as God meant them to be seen." This kind of talk suited Walden's then mood, and did him good like a medicine. There is something in a woman's voice there can never be in a man's, even when the words are the very same. In Mary Butler's voice there was always a gospel for Walden. He more and more expected that gospel ; he hungered and thirsted for it partly because Mary had known and revered and loved his mother. Mary had not gone many yards from Walden, when she turned and said " I wonder if you can bear what I want to tell you, Walden?" " I know I can," he replied impetuously. " I would not tell you if I thought the effect would be unhappy." "It cannot be;" yet as Walden said this he felt THE YOUNG SUFFERER. 133 uneasy, and straightened himself as if to bear a shock. " Well, then, I give you my word of honour that two nights ago I saw your mother in my bedroom " Walden started. " I am not dreaming or romancing " " But you were dreaming then." "JSTo. That is what I mean. I saw her when I was as much awake as I am at this moment. She came " " Do tell me, Mary." " She came quietly along the side of the room and stood at the foot of the bed. I can never forget the sweetness of her look. I was not in the slightest degree afraid " " You stupefy me." " I said, ' My dear Mrs. Stanyer, what is the meaning of your being here ? ' and she moved away as quietly as she came, without uttering a single word." " It must have been a dream, Mary." " So one would think, but I assure you that I was quite conscious. I was not even in a half-sleepy con- dition. I tested myself. I even got up and looked out of the door, to make absolutely sure that I was awake." " Would God she would come to me like that ! " " She may do so, Walden." " But even your getting up and looking out of the door may have been part of the dream. It could all be done quite vividly, and could be done in a moment. 134 WALDEN STANYER. I am sure you mean to relate an actual fact, but you must have been in a dream." Miss Butler said no more, but hastened to see the little sufferer, and tell him what she could of the better land, the land of sunshine and summer, where there is no winter, " neither shall there be any more pain." ( 135 ) CHAPTEE XII. THE APPOINTED INTERVIEW. WHEN Mr. Bell met Walden on the occasion of an appointed interview, he exclaimed in the friendliest tone " I have not forgotten our subject, Walden ; come away and let us see what we can make of the wonderful old book. Ah," continued Mr. Bell, rather to himself than to Walden, " it is a wonderful old book ; there it is, after centuries of controversy, just about as good as ever ; hardly a sword-wound on it." " Do you think it is inspired, Mr. Bell ? " " No, I don't. I have done with merely thinking. I now know it, my boy." " I wish I did," said Walden. "You may if you like. Everybody may. Where people who don't know get wrong is in not understand- ing the meaning of inspiration. They think of it as something mechanical, something measurable, some- thing final like a finished portrait. We must get rid of that kind of thought if we would get rid of doubt." " How is it, then, Mr. Bell ? Will you undertake to make a believer of me ? " I 3 6 WALDEN STANYER. " Yes, if you want to be a believer. All depends on that." " Oh, I am certain I do." " Very good. We have nothing on earth to do with what people have said about inspiration. If you ask me if I accept other people's conception of inspiration, I say I do not. If you ask me if I believe the Bible is inspired, I tell you I do. I do not want to know what other people think ; I want to see the book itself, and to read it and to form my own opinion about it. Does the Bible ever assert its own inspiration ? " " I don't know." " Does the sun ever say, ' I am the sun, and I am very bright ' ? The sun does nothing of the kind ; the sun simply shines. So with the Bible. It simply says, ' Eead me straight through ; interpret me by experience, by nature, by consciousness, by life altogether.' A book that is inspired need not be anxious to assert its inspiration." " That I admit," said Walden ; " but if I may tell you everything " " Certainly, my boy." "I would say that my thought is that inspiration means authority. One may say that ' Paradise Lost ' is inspired in the sense of being most sublime, but ' Paradise Lost ' is not an authoritative book. Nobody quotes book iv., line fifty, and says that is the truth, and you disbelieve it at your peril." " Exactly so," said Mr. Bell. " Now we are coming to solid ground." THE APPOINTED INTERVIEW. 137 " So you see, Mr. Bell, it is a peculiar kind of inspiration that is claimed for the Bible; it carries the idea of authority. It strikes at private judg- ment " "How?" "In this way: if I say I will not read 'Paradise Lost' I can do so with impunity, but if I say that I won't read the Bible you will say that I imperil my soul. I have no innocent option in the matter. Then, again, if I do read the Bible and differ from it in opinion, I am assured that I am an infidel and that I am going straight down to ruin. In that way the Bible strikes at private judgment." " So it appears to do, my young one." " But does it not do so in reality ? " " Perhaps yes, perhaps no." " Oh, do tell me, Mr. BelL I am in dead earnest. I want peace and trust." "Do you think then, Walden, that you will go straight down to ruin if you do not believe that some of the children of Judah dwelt at Moladah and Beth- phelet and Ziklag and Mekonah ? " " I hope not, Mr. Bell." " But that is in the Bible. Do you think you will go straight down to ruin if you cannot tell whether Bigthan and Teresh really wanted to kill Ahasuerus or only to frighten him ? " " I hope not." " But that is in the Bible. Do you think that you will go straight down to ruin because you cannot quite 138 WALDEN STANYER. understand how the breath of Leviathan kindles coals, and how burning lamps come out of his mouth ? " " Certainly not." " But that is in the Bible, Walden. Do you think you will go straight down to ruin because you cannot believe that the nose of the Prince's daughter was like the tower of Lebanon which looked towards Damascus ? " " Oh no, no." " That also is in the Bible. I quote these instances to show that we have not yet got at the Bible which is authoritative ; we are only as far as geography and metaphor. We must go deeper. Do you think you will be lost because you cannot fix the date of creation?" "No." " Very good. Then that is not the kind of Bible that is inspired and authoritative. We must go farther. Let us take the matter from another point of view. I suppose you admit that there are laws of health health of body, I mean ? " " Of course." " And that those laws must be authoritative ? " "Yes." " One might even say inspired ? " " Possibly." " Very good. Now do you suppose that every man can be a scientific physiologist ? Is it in the power of every man to be a physician ? " " Certainly not." THE APPOINTED INTERVIEW. 139 "Take care how much you admit, for we are in argument." " I stand by what I have said." " Then as every man cannot be a physiologist, yet may attend in a general and substantial way to the care of his health, so though every man cannot be a critic or a theologian, each man may find enough in the Bible to help him in the conduct of life and the building up of fine character. You see that ? " " Certainly." " Then what more do you want in the mean time ? " " I want to know if the Bible is inspired." " Just so. There is a scientific physiology and there is a practical physiology ; so there is a theological Bible and there is a people's Bible. We must begin where we can. May I put a few questions to you, and show you their application to an argument ? " " Most certainly." " What do you scientifically know of the pancreatic juice ? " " Nothing." " And yet you eat and drink, day by day ? " " I do." " How would you describe the epithelium ? " " I never heard of it." " Never heard of it, Walden ? And yet you regularly sit down to dinner ? " "Yes." " And your dinner does you good ? " " Yes." 140 WALDEN STANYER. "How does the chyle travel towards the thoracic duct?" " There you puzzle me." " And yet you go on eating and drinking ? Why not suspend those expensive processes until you can show how the nutritive particles of food pass through the cell-walls of the epithelium and how they get into the lacteals ? " " Then I should never resume them." " I believe you. Yet you see experience is a teacher as certainly as science is. There is an experimental read- ing of the Bible as well as a scientific reading. There are Christians as well as critics. You want to begin at the wrong end. I want you to begin where you can." "You think I may do something without under- standing everything ? " " Precisely. Call the human body the physiological Bible, and you will see my meaning. What is the anconeus ? " " I don't know " " If I said you had not one could you intelligently contradict me ? " "No." " If I said you had one could you prove it ? " "No." " Yet it is simply one of the muscles of the arm ! How dare you exercise the muscles of your arm until you can distinguish between the supinator longus and the ulnaris internus? Are you not a rational and responsible creature ? " THE APPOINTED INTERVIEW. 141 " Go on, sir ; I begin to see your meaning." " At this moment I want you to feel that you often, take things on credit, that you do much without knowing much, that you cannot always be scientific, and that experience has a place in education." " That is clear enough." " So far good. Divide the constituent parts of grain into a hundred, what is the proportion of oxygen ? " "I don't know." "Yet you eat bread and ask for more. How extremely irrational ! How is azotised matter formed ? Can it be formed with nitrogen only ? What propor- tion of sulphur and phosphates is needed ? " " I give it up." " Then you see that there is a chemist's world as well as a layman's world. So there is a theologian's Bible as well as a people's Bible, and you have nothing to do at this stage of your education with the former. Keep to your own line. That is your business, Walden, and you must attend to it." " Still there is a great difficulty which I cannot get over." "Name it." " A man need not know anything about epithelium or nitrogen or phosphates, yet he will not be damned for his ignorance. But it is generally understood that if a man does not believe the Bible he will be lost for ever and ever. That is my difficulty. How am I to meet it ? " " Which Bible do you mean ? " 142 WALDEN STANYER. " I mean the Bible." " No, no. We must be definite. "We have just seen that there are several Bibles the theologian's Bible, the grammarian's Bible, the historian's Bible, and so on ; now you must say precisely which Bible you mean. It is quite true that a man may not have heard of the epithelium and yet may live and prosper, yet I want you to see that no man could live and prosper without eating and drinking." " Of course not." " He would, in short, be physically damned physio- logically lost for ever and ever. ' Damnation ' is not an exclusively theological term. A man might not be able to point out the anconeus muscle, but if he did not use the muscles of his arm, his arm would lose power, and shrink and perish that is the law every- where, and the Bible is no exception to it. Now, the only Bible you are called upon in the first instance to believe is the part which you can understand and which you know to be true. From that point you grow. No man is damned because he cannot read Sanscrit, but every man is damned who does not do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. You must first be faithful to moral inspiration." " Can a man understand the Bible until he can understand the language in which it was written ? " " Certainly." " How can that be ? The Bible was not written in English." "Men are not saved by grammar. When this is THE APPOINTED INTERVIEW. 143 understood the whole question will be much simplified. Here I ought to read an essay or make a long speech, but I will talk as suggestively as I can. From my point of view, it is impossible that God can save the world by grammar. It is not too much to say that grammar is the creator of heresy. If salvation is a question of grammar, then there should have been a universal language and a universal equality in the power of understanding that language. Otherwise see what an instrument is put into the hands of a pro- fessional class, say priests. They tell the common people that learned books can only be interpreted by learned men, and therefore common people must go to the priests to know what is right and what is wrong. Even those who translate the Bible and scatter it broadcast over the face of the whole world need to guard themselves here, lest they become a priestly class without knowing it or intending it. For myself, I feel that language is only the point to begin at, and that God comes through conscience rather than through grammar." "But," said Walden, "suppose a man's conscience is dead ; how then ? " " Be it so. Indeed, we need not deny it. What has that to do with the case ? Take it in social life. Is a man acquitted in a court of law because he pleads no conscience ? When he says he has no moral sensibility, is he pitied and sent home ? Were he to say that his conscience urged him to do wrong, would he be hailed as the founder of a new morality ? The right of private 144 WALDEN STANYER. conscience can only be permitted in moral varieties, not in moral essences in metaphysics, not in conduct ; or if in conduct it must be in a very guarded way. What I mean is, that no man must be allowed to say that his conscience bids him steal, and murder, and lie, and destroy, for there is a universal conscience which the particular conscience must not contravene, other- wise society would be overthrown." " Cannot that be made clear by grammar ? " " Not until it is felt. The revelation does not begin in the grammar ; it begins in the moral nature. Letters mean nothing to the man who cannot read, and maxims mean nothing to the man who cannot understand. Man must awaken man. Life must tackle death. Let life be once awakened, then letters become a medium of revelation, a very treasure-house of wisdom, an inspired and authoritative volume." " But," said Walden, " the Bible is a written book ? " "Certainly. But first written in the heart. God witnesses to Himself in every man's conscience. You must never forget that the beginning is within the man himself : it is not external : so far as it is external it is strong only in proportion as it appeals to some- thing that is within the man. Put it in this way an alphabet is nothing to a bird, but it is everything to a child. How is that ? Because there is nothing in the bird which answers to it, but in the child there is something that recognizes the appeal. In a sheet of music there is nothing for a dog, but how much there may be for a child ! " THE APPOINTED INTERVIEW. 145 " Eemember, however," said Walden, " the alphabet and the music are both written." " Of course they are. But that remark applies both to the dog and the child, and therefore it proves too much and proves nothing. Let us say that the sign A, B, C has a great meaning, and that I have to explain it to a dog and to a child who cannot read. Could I ever succeed with the dog ? " " Never." " True. But I might succeed with the child. Long time might be required, but I could certainly succeed. There is something within the child that can be made to understand all the meaning." "But if the child did not understand it, the child would not be damned." "Yes it would." " I never heard that doctrine laid down before." " I have just laid it down myself, and I thought you had accepted it. So far as reading is concerned, or music, or the meaning of the sign A, B, C, the child will suffer himself in proportion to the importance of the thing or issue that is involved. A child cannot first refuse to read, and then enjoy the pleasures of literature. He dooms himself to ignorance, and must take the consequences. He is not at liberty to reproach Providence. There is a law, and he must obey it, or go into the perdition of ignorance." " But if he never heard of the alphabet ? " " Then he must be judged accordingly." " That is fair." L 146 WALDEN STANYER. "Yes. I never heard of anything unfair in the ministry of Providence. Its sternness is balanced by its graciousness " Mr. Bell was about to proceed when "Walden broke in " Here, then, is a book called the Bible. I must accept it or be lost. I must believe it or be an infidel. I may deny its authority and be an outcast. I may admit its authority and be a most orthodox and respectable man." " Or," said Mr. Bell, " take it in this way. Here is an alphabet ; I must learn it or be a fool ; I must believe it or be doomed to ignorance ; I must submit to its authority or be driven into the outer darkness of intellectual night ; I may admit it, and frame it, and admire it, and praise it, and be a learned man ' " Not exactly," said Walden. " Not unless I learn it and apply it, you mean." "Yes." " Precisely so with the Bible. I don't care what you admit unless you put it into practice, and when you put the Bible into practice it becomes its own interpreter and its own apologist. He who does the will soon knows the doctrine. When the heart and the Bible come into confidential relation, the rest is a matter of time. Think of all this, my boy, and see me again as soon as you like." " May I tell you all my thought ? " " Certainly." That night poor Walden encouraged his soul to be THE APPOINTED INTERVIEW. 147 candid with itself, and to talk out all its mystery of fear and penitence and hope. His written words are before me now, and I quote them in all their rugged- ness, to show the torment yet the progress of his young soul " There is no Supernatural, I am told. But is there really and in very deed anything else ? Have we any right to cut off a section and call it the whole ? By what right do we draw a line and call it Nature, and call all beyond it Supernature ? Are we not thus exercising a very large prerogative without a tittle of authority ? But I am tired of all speculative subjects, because there is so much tragedy round about me that needs to be strongly and wisely handled. Of that tragedy I feel myself to be no small part. My heart is sore. The world is void and cold, the sun is as bright and warm as ever. It is always the one life that makes the world we live in. That one life, in my case, has gone. Yet Mary has seen her Mary, so calm, so keen, so far from the spell of mere fancy. Why did she go to Mary and not come to me ? Have I so much played the fool that she could not come, or would not? I see my folly now. Yet I had by a kind of necessity to go through it all. I really could not help it. When I look back upon my erratic ways, I am ashamed of them; yet God knows my meaning was often better than my actions. I began by seeing all the comedy, and now I feel as if I had to end by feeling all the tragedy. Oh sore, sore heart! Will God forgive me any degree of my folly on the ground 148 WALDEN STANYER. of reaction ? I revolted from Bruce, and even from my own father, because of their cut-and-dried piety, and the revolt carried me farther in words than I ought to have gone. I own it and deplore it. God pity me ! I feel as if one hour with my mother would put every- thing right. Even if I only thought I saw her it would do me good if I could see her very vividly, as vividly as Mary says she saw her. Oh, carry me to my mother ! Angels of God, bring my mother to me ! I am lonely without her. I want to be a man, and she could make me one. Thank God I have Mr. Bell. He knows me and loves me, and is carrying me towards the morning light. And my mother heard him preach ! Perhaps she is speaking through him now ! Sometimes, when the expression of his face suddenly changes, I think I see a flash of her own brightness. Oh, how mysterious is everything ! Spirit of light and love and joy, abide with me ! " ( 149 ) CHAPTER XIII. WALDEN AND JANET. WALDEN was not able to visit Mr. Bell in consequence of an attack of illness which at one point seemed to threaten serious consequences. For three weeks Walden was confined to his room, and for three weeks more he was only able to stroll about the garden, or take easy walks around the meadow which lay behind his father's house. By some of his friends, notably Mrs. Oldbody, Walden's illness was regarded as a judgment, " as plain as plain can be," for his treatment of " dear, good Mr. Bruce," who had, she thought, shown a most forgiving spirit by expressing the hope that if Walden did get better, he would be wise enough not to make a companion of that fanatical person, Mr. Boston Bell. Mrs. Oldbody had talked the whole matter over with the Kennedys, and had been shocked by the way in which Janet Kennedy had taken up Walden's case. " My dear Janet," said Mrs. Oldbody, " it will do good in one way." "What will, Mrs. Oldbody ? " " Walden's illness, dear don't you see ? " 150 WALDEN STANYER. " What good will it do ? " " "Why, people will begin to see that, after all, there is such a thing as Providence. How people can deny it I really cannot understand. .But now we see it, and I only hope Walden himself will see it." " Tut, tut, Mrs. Oldbody ! " said Janet ; " you cannot open your mouth without talking nonsense. I wish people would not make fools of themselves in trying to take care of the Almighty. He can take care of Himself without our meddling and peddling." " But, my dear Janet," said Mrs. Oldbody, " I am sure you believe in Providence ? Now don't say the contrary. Don't go against your religion." " 'Deed, Mrs. Oldbody," said Janet, " it's very little religion I can lay any honest claim to, and I begin to think the less the better." " The less the better, child ? " " Ay, the less the better ; at any rate, the less the better of a certain kind. The most people's religion that I know anything about is all clishmaclaver, for they will swallow any amount of superstition, and help to support any number of priests, provided they can cackle and gossip, and backbite and twaddle, between Sunday and Sunday ; and I may tell you, Mrs. Oldbody, without meaning any disrespect, that I am not able to make you an exception to the number." Mrs. Oldbody might have resented this candid criticism, or have been dissolved in tears, had not Mr. Kennedy come into the room in a state of excitement, saying WALDEN AND JANET. 151 " Not fewer than seventeen crowed simultaneously, Janet." " I am glad to hear it," Janet replied. " And I tell you what, Janet," her brother continued ; " I must have a clock for the bantam-house, for it will enable me to ascertain the precise duration of every crowing, and enable me further to compile a statistical table by which " " Away wi' ye," said Janet, " and just compile to your heart's content." When Mr. Kennedy caught full sight of Mrs. Old- body, he saw tears in that venerable lady's eyes. " You have not lost any one, I hope ? " said he. " I have lost everything," Mrs. Oldbody pathetically observed, " if I have lost my religion " " That's another," said Kennedy, with delight ; " I heard the crow. There it goes again ! " and off he went. The great human family might come and go, with all its sorrow and joy, its pain and need, for anything Kennedy cared, provided only his bantams crowed "simultaneously." Any fool might hear a single bantam crow, but Kennedy despised every number less than twelve. He has even spoken contemptuously of ten, and shown only a languid interest in thirteen. The theatre was large enough for the actor. For bantams the solar system was hurriedly put together ; for them the sun rose and set ; for them the tides ebbed and flowed. " I believe in bantams," was the true end of all theological inquiry. But let us spare 152 WALDEN STANYER. poor Kennedy, for we know it to be true that every man has a bantam-house of his own. Walden called at the Kennedys one warm day during his convalescence, and spent a few minutes in Janet's society. " I'm right glad to see ye, Walden, and from my heart I wish you many years of health and happi- ness." " Thanks. I've quite got round the corner now." " That's good." " I'm not quite sure of that," said Walden ; " I had other hopes." " Other hopes ? What may your meaning be, Walden?" " I can tell you, but I could not tell everybody. Mary Butler once told me that she saw my mother, and I could not credit her; I thought it was all a dream, but I know better now." " Tell me," said Janet, wistfully. "During my illness my mother nursed me, and petted me, and comforted me, as she would have done if she had not died. She spoke to me and I spoke to her, I do assure you, just as certainly and as clearly as we are doing to-day " " Oh, Walden ! " " I do not wonder at your want of credulity, but that does not change the fact. Depend upon it, we do not see everything with the eyes of the body. Perhaps it is as well that we see so little. At the same time, it WALDEN AND JANET. 153 is a great pity that most of us do not see more. Some- times I wonder that God does not show us the other world more distinctly, for some revelation of it might do good. But whatever God does is right." " That's my religion," said Janet, warmly. " Eeligion can have neither beginning nor end," said Walden, in his old manner. " How's that, Walden ? " " Because God can have neither beginning nor end, and religion deals with God. It is the soul's native speech ; it is the soul's union with the Eternal. But that is not what I am talking about. Shall I tell you about my sainted mother ? " " Do." "Oh, what talks we had together in the quiet nights ! I asked her if she could see me, and she said, ' My dear boy, for days together I can see nothing else.' Then I asked her always to tell me what I ought to do, and she told me to be sure to make a friend of Mr. Bell, for he was well spoken of in the other world. ' But, mother,' said I, 'are we all known in the world where you now are ? ' Then she told me that every life was watched, every thought was known, and every word was heard " " Oh, Walden," said Janet, " but that is a very awful thought." " That depends how you take it," replied Walden. " Mother says that we are not judged as lawyers would judge us, but we are judged by our purposes and intentions. She means that if we really want to be 154 WALDEN STANYER. right we are right, although we may say and do things that are not good. As I understand her, it is a judg- ment of motive rather than a judgment of action. Don't you know what it is to want to do a thing and yet to do the very opposite ? " " I know it only too well, Walden." " I am sure," Walden continued, " there is a double action in human life. We say things we do not want to say, we do things we do not want to do; we are always contradicting and opposing ourselves." " That is perfectly true," said Janet, " as I know only too well." " Very well. Mother says it is the upper line that is judged, and not the lower; and she says that if I will read the Bible carefully, I shall see that is so. We look at separate actions, at infirmities and slips and mistakes, and we say, ' This is a good man, and that is a bad man,' when we simply know nothing about it. This gives me a hope I should not otherwise have. I should not like to be judged by my follies." " Oh, Walden, what follies have you had ? " " Plenty. I have said a hundred silly things, just to nettle people. I am sure poor Mr. Bruce feels hurt, and I must see him about it. I can never receive his teaching ; still, I need not crush his feeling. He and I do not take the same view of God, or man, or life, or destiny. We must not talk much to one another; at the same time, I must let him know that I was wrong when I spoke unkindly to him." "Don't trouble about the poor old creature," said Janet. WALDEN AND JANET. 155 " But I must trouble about myself," Walden inter- posed. " I owe it to myself to be just to other men. That is what Mr. Bell has taught me, and what my mother always told me was right. One thing more I should like to tell you a thing I have never mentioned even to Mary Butler " " That I should like to know," Janet eagerly inter- rupted. " One night during my illness, when my mother came to sit beside me, she said she would like me to have her Bible, and that I would find it in a certain drawer in her own little sitting-room. You remember, it is the room that looks over the meadows at the back of the house." " Oh yes." " So I said I should like to have it because it was hers, and she said she wanted me to look at the pencil- marks she had made on the margin ; and if you will look here," Walden continued, drawing the Bible from his pocket, " you will see how much my darling mother read the Bible. I had no idea that she was such a Bible-reader." As Walden produced the Bible, his whole face and his mien constituted a picture. Moses wist not that his face shone when he came down from the mount, nor did Walden know that in his eyes there was a light as of the dawn of a better day. Students of psychical mysteries may believe or doubt as to the night-visions of his mother which had laid so firm a hold on Walden's 156 WALDEN STANYER. imagination, but as to her real influence upon him there can be nothing but grateful certitude. Why this sanctity of the dead ? Why this homage paid to the genius of memory ? Does it not come of the operation of the very law which was revealed to Walden by his mother ? We judge by the upper line the motive and purpose of the life and all surface roughness, sometimes, indeed, vulgarity or violence, falls into the grave to share the fate of the body. The man is always within the man, as the jewel is within the casket. Only God can see us as we really are, and therefore only God can judge us. What picture can compare with the face made radiant by spiritual reverence and joy? At this moment Walden's face makes it possible to believe that man was in very deed made in the image and likeness of God. Walden and Janet sat side by side as they looked at the precious treasure. From marks made by the reader we may infer much as to the reader's character. Mrs. Stanyer might well submit to be judged by this unusual test. They were not common passages that were marked by her discriminating pencil. The first chapters of Genesis were noted with special care, particularly the incidents connected with the temptation in Eden, and at the end of the chapter in which Eden is for- feited there was a pencil line: "Must be a beautiful allegory, and is none the less valuable on that account." Coming to the ages of the patriarchs, Mrs. Stanyer commented thus : " What a weary time they must have had of it ! Things have improved since then." In the WALDEN AND JANET. 157 Book of Job she evidently revelled with delight. At the close of it the note was : " All this is going on to-day ; in my opinion this is the greatest book in the Old Testament. How Walden will be thrilled when he comes to read it thoughtfully ! " In some such way most of the other books were marked ; and to Walden's loving eye every mark was a comment. In the Bible many loose pieces of paper were found on which Mrs. Stanyer had rapidly written her passing impressions. For example : " I am sure Walden means to be right, and I am also sure that in the end my sweet boy will be a noble character. He is very like my mother, much more like her than he is like me. She had a wonderful mind, but her dotard of a husband my own father, forgive me ! gave her no encouragement." Again : " This has been the happiest day in my life. I hardly know how I have lived through it. Walden put his arm around me and asked me to pray with him just as I did when he was a little child. I tried to say some- thing, but a mother's tears would come, do what I might to keep them back; and as for Walden, poor boy, he sobbed as if his heart would break." The search for papers and notes could not go farther at that moment. Janet found it convenient to leave the room for a few moments, so that Walden's feelings might not be desecrated even by her sympathetic observation. Poor boy ! for what more was he even in years ? his fine eyes were full of tears as he looked towards the sky. Surely through such lenses he must have seen his mother bending over him. Who knows? Do we 158 WALDEN STANYER. not often see just what we look for ? When Janet returned, Walden was quite composed, and even rever- ently cheerful. " I tell you what," said he ; " I think that, in memory of my dear mother, we might try to pray a little." " By all means," said Janet ; " she would like it above all things." Janet Kennedy and Walden Stanyer kneeled together, Walden grasping his mother's Bible with an intensity of which he was largely unconscious. But why so silent ? Who is to pray ? Presently Walden began " Our Father which art in heaven." There he stopped for what seemed to Janet a long time. The next two sentences he uttered with great rapidity, as if afraid he would break down before he quite completed them. Then he added, " Thy will be done," and could go no farther. It is a hard prayer. It means so much. It means self-crucifixion and self- annihilation. It gives God all His own way. That is a blessed state of soul to be in, but strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to it. How easy to say this at the wedding altar ! how hard to say it when the dust rattles on the coffin in which the only child is sleeping ! Yet to this it must come if we are to know the deepest joys of religious experience. Do you ask the road to the City of Peace ? There it is yonder yonder where the great cross lifts its head! Walden was in no haste as he walked towards his WALDEN AND JANET. 159 home, indeed he could not make much speed owing to the weakness in which his illness had left him. He would have made an effort, however, had he known who waited for him at the house, but this he did not know, so he sauntered at leisure. Perhaps it was better so, for his absence gave his father and Mr. Bell opportunity to say what they could not have well said in his presence. " I never saw such a change in any one in all my life," said Mr. Stanyer ; " he seems quite to have come back to his senses." " He never lost them," Mr. Stanyer. " No, no, not that ; you know what I mean ; he had got into queer company in London, you know ; that old man Upfield, you know, who once came down here, and Cuttlestone ; and no end of odd people. But now, I do believe that Walden will one day yes, I do once I did not but I feel pretty certain that Walden will put himself right with the parson Mr. Bruce, you know." " If there is anything wrong," said Mr. Bell, " you may be perfectly sure Walden will put it right. One thing I want to tell you, Mr. Stanyer." " What is that, sir ? " " Why, I do not believe you have the faintest idea of Walden's quality." "No?" " No. He is one in fifty thousand ay, one in a million. I know his soul. I know what a mind he has, and what a royal heart." 160 WALDEN STANYER. " Takes a deal after his mother," Mr. Stanyer faintly interrupted. " Possibly. He has a wonderful reverence for his mother's memory ; but whether he takes after her or not, I assure you that Walden ought by-and-by to make his influence felt all over the world." " I want him to take up with the land," said Mr. Stanyer. " You know I have a goodish bit of property, and it will all fall to Walden, and it would be a pity if he did not take his right position in the parish." " Never mind the parish," said Mr. Bell ; "no parish is large enough for Walden. Mr. Bruce and I will take care of parishes " " Oh, I don't mean Walden to be a vicar," said the father. "No, no. You mean him to be a landed pro- prietor " "Yes." "I know; but all that is rubbish. Walden is a thinker, a philosopher, a poet " " Eh, don't go on to tell me he's a play-actor." " I am not going to do so." " I can never forget," Mr. Stanyer broke in " never, never." " Forget what, Mr. Stanyer ? " " Why, what Walden said to the parson Mr. Bruce, you know; poor Mr. Bruce about monkeys, and kittens, and play-acting oh dear, oh dear ! I really thought Mr. Bruce would have gone clean out of his head ; and I was not the only one that thought so, for WALDEN AND JANET. 161 Mrs. Oldbody begged me to look after Walden, for she thought he would be the death " Mr. Bell sprang to his feet and rushed into the meadow, where Walden was standing looking up wistfully at the window of his mother's room. " My boy ! " said Mr. Bell. " This is a delightful surprise," Walden exclaimed, holding out both hands. " First of all," continued Mr. Bell, " tell me you are better." " I am," said Walden ; " now I want to know about you." "Well, I will tell you, Walden, when we sit down in the arbour yonder. How charming ! I feel that it is now really summer once more. Where shall I begin ? " " Begin at the very beginning," said Walden. " It will have to come bit by bit," Mr. Bell replied, " for there is so much to tell. I have been a fortnight in London, and have had some real amusement with four friends of mine fine fellows, but about as blind as moles on all practical matters. They undertook to convert the East End of London, and the way they went about their work would make you die of laughing. I was with them the whole time, and I have written a full and particular account of the whole business, which I will leave with you. I thought it would amuse you and help to make you well again. I wish you could have been there. I wish Upfield and Cuttlestone and Doubletoe could have been there " M 162 WALDEN STANYER. " Did you see any of them ? " Walden interjected. " Saw them all. Talked about you almost the whole time. They are going on just as usual, as foggy and bewildered as ever, but they all want to hear that you are well again." " Did Cuttlestone descend to such trifles ? " " Yes, but in no trifling way, I can tell you. I took down some of his remarks in writing, and he was proud to observe that I did so. He said, ' When I suspend my mind from metaphysical intentionment and give play to that heart-springment which is the very essence of comprehensionism/ and there I lost him, but I am sure his meaning was good. I thanked him warmly for his affectionate interest in your welfare, whereupon he wished me particularly to inform you that in adapt- ing the old triadic religion of comprehensionism to modern betterment he had laid down the basis principle that there is a beginning to a beginning, but no begin- ning to the beginning of the beginning, and I told him that you would be charmed to hear it." " So I am, Mr. Bell, in a certain way," said Walden, " for I believe that Cuttlestone has a downright sound heart, and that his real object is to do good. I always thought he was a guileless madman." " So far, so good. Now, Walden, hear me. I am going to be master. You must take things quietly for another month, and then come over to Buttersfield and discuss the universe bit by bit. Nothing is to be gained by being in a hurry. You want time to gather strength in, and until you are as strong as ever I will rule you WALDEN AND JANET. 163 with a rod of iron. Get yourself into thorough sympathy with nature, my dear boy. Nature wants to heal us all. Nature is motherly. Every green tree says, ' Come under my shadow at noonday, and rest thee awhile, poor tired traveller.' Every flower says it came from heaven with a gospel of healing and hope. Shut all books, dismiss all speculations, let the universe cease to be a puzzle and become a minister of grace ; and when you are well again, then, my boy, look out for no end of miracles." Poor Walden ! in his young enthusiasm he had told Mr. Bell all about his London acquaintances, and indeed about everything else, feeling that they were doubly his when Mr. Bell held them in appreciative confidence. Amongst the rest of his communications he had told Mr. Bell of Bobby's mother, and had particularly invoked Mr. Bell to dwell upon the gracious mystery of that Providence which had arranged for Bobby's appearance in the world on a Sunday in contradistinction from a Friday. Mr. Bell called on the simple-minded rustic and found her disconsolate. "I am sure you would find Mr. Walden Stanyer very kind ? " " Oh yes, sir, kind enough paid for Bobby's coffin, and paid for everything, and told me to hold my tongue about it. But how can I keep quiet about such kind- ness ? It is very touching." " Very. I never heard a word about it before." " But what am I to do without Bobby ? " the mother 164 WALDEN STANYER. continued, in a tone pitifully forlorn. "Everything keeps putting me in mind of Bobby. There's the bonny sampler he was working with the needle in it just where he left off; and there's the humming-top Miss Butler gave him. I want to know what that child did, that he could not be let alone to stop with his mother and be a comfort to her " " But we are in God's hands," Mr. Bell began. " No, we are not," said Bobby's mother. " There is no God; there is only a devil, and he's a cruel one, say what ye may ; and I am just tired of living, and no child coming in. Bless him, if he would only come back I wouldn't care how he had torn his clothes " "Don't give way to hardness of heart," said Mr. Bell ; " no good comes of that." " Hardness of heart ! " was the bitter reply ; " who is hard of heart ? Bobby would never say his poor mother was. If there is a God, He is hard of heart, and I want to tell Him so. I am not going to say what I don't believe. What good does the church do me ? Does it save my child ? Does it make up for my loss ? Here am I, a poor woman who has to work hard soon and late, and can hardly get a coal to my grate, and when Bobby pulled a turnip out of the field he was treated like a thief by them that calls themselves our betters, and thinks we are too well off when we take the back forms at church, and looks on us like dogs if we do not curtsy to them when the rheumatis is that bad we can hardly crook a limb." WALDEN AND JANET. 165 Oh, incoherent poverty, how it rambles and raves and tears up all that syntax counts sacred quite true yet it does not talk without reason, or curse its fate through mere love of profanity ! Nor is it to be denied that life is a development of hardship in countless instances, a real and intolerable pain. Philosophy may in some degree be able to argue itself into acquiescence with the inevitable, but what is ignorance to do say ignorance redeemed from vulgarity by motherhood, and pitilessly cross-examined by poverty and bereave- ment ? Can such ignorance find a balm in antiquated dogmas, or in priestly mummeries? On the other hand, can atheism prevent it, or agnosticism soothe its misery? Does not hail batter on the rich man's roof ? Does no lightning glare through the rich man's window? The Bible does not dig our graves. If all churches were re-dedicated to the idol of agnosticism instead of the Maker of heaven and earth, little children would still die and sharp knives would wound our hearts. The mystery is not all on one side. To be, is to be tried with many a pain ; to be, is to be miserable. Yet the world's misery has never been so gently and healingly touched as by the Son of God. Let us turn, however, to the paper left with Walden by the Eev. Boston Bell. 166 WALDEN STANYER. CHAPTER XIV. CONTESTING THE EAST END. TOMKINS, Jenkins, Hawkins, and Coleman were all remarkable types of modern culture. No doubt they were chaffed a good deal by some of their fellow- students on account of their great attainments; and those attainments, again, were purposely, but in perfect good nature, exaggerated beyond all reason. Tomkins had made a plate of his fourteen gold medals. Jenkins had several D's after his name ; it was indeed waggishly remarked that he knew several volumes of the En- cyclopaedia Britannica by heart; in fact, Jenkins was reported to be so erudite, that he had never been trusted to go out alone since the time he was found wandering along Holborn using his cotton umbrella as a walking-stick, and holding up his walking-stick as an umbrella. It is right to say that this incident has been told in various ways, and with various colour of emphasis, so that it may be prudent to allow some- thing to the fancy and taste of the respective narrators. Hawkins had committed Horace to memory, and had once seriously contemplated writing Syriac notes on the Fourth Gospel. Coleman was supposed to be the CONVERTING THE EAST END. 167 most learned of all, because he seldom gave an opinion upon any subject, though his private desk was loaded with note-books filled with innumerable quotations which nobody but himself could decipher. Coleman was said to be " a vast storehouse " of miscellaneous learning. So he may have been, but the door was locked and the key was lost. The one subject upon which Coleman did allow himself to speak with some measure of freedom was the Fourth Century. On that subject Coleman has been known to approach the point of cheerfulness; in fact, it became a kind of infatuation, for Coleman has been further known to speak of it in omnibuses, and on one occasion, not realizing the exact nature of his environment, he actually named it to a bewildered stranger, of whom and of whose parentage he knew literally nothing. Tomldns, Jenkins, Hawkins, and Coleman undertook to convert Whitechapel to Christianity on the un- sectarian basis of culture. They were sure White- chapel would respond to an appeal to its reason. They would begin with " the intelligent artisan," and work their way as events might indicate, never stoop- ing to the buffoonery and the vulgarity of modern sensa- tionalism, but keeping their united and piercing eye upon the sacred image of imperturbable philosophy. They once thought of addressing "the intelligent artisan " in their university hoods. Jenkins said that colour was silent music a fanciful remark on which Coleman made no comment. Hawkins had an inveterate 168 WALDEN STANYER. prejudice against the tambourine as an ally of culture. " Give the intelligent artisan," said he, " a high ideal, and he will at once shake off the grave-clothes of spiritual torpidity and stand up in the expressive attitude of large moral expectancy." The first meeting at Whitechapel was of a most interesting character, being held in a large and airy hayloft attached to that famous and well-frequented inn bearing the terse and suggestive name of The Bull and Dog. The meeting was composed of about forty persons the same persons who were always on the outlook for whatever was " going on " one-eyed, black- eyed, wooden-legged, shrunken, variously but not ex- pensively attired, not one of whom had ever heard of the Fourth Century. Tomkins was there, Coleman was there, Hawkins was there, but Jenkins did not put in an appearance. About an hour after the commence- ment of the proceedings, Jenkins was conducted into the hayloft by two benevolent policemen, one of whom looked like an inspector, who had found him wandering in the purlieus of Mile End Eoad, pathetically and confusedly inquiring for a public-house called The Hayloft, kept by a person of the name of the Bull and Dog. When I heard this, I could not but feel that the Holborn anecdote had an element of probability in its very grotesqueness. Jenkins was a learned man, and consequently the victim of absorption. The meet- ing was conducted with marked decorum, being occa- sionally broken in upon by well-imitated cock-crowing CONVERTING THE EAST END. 169 and by one wild and sordid creature who appealed to Tomkins in the impious language of his tribe, " I say, teacher, chuck us a copper, do." This base exclamation marked a turning-point in the proceedings, for it brought up a very formidable-looking personage, who, twirling a felt hat in his hand, said in a stentorian voice " I tell ye, mates, if there is any more of these 'ere noises made while this 'ere gen'l'man is a-speaking in this 'ere 'ayloft, I'll make some o' ye sorry ye got up this 'ere morning." This language, though sadly lacking in scholastic culture, seemed to be well understood by the people, and to have a soothing effect upon the boldest of them. Tomkins took heart, Coleman and Hawkins looked hopeful, Jenkins alone seemed unmoved and absorbed. The rough man's speech was accepted as a kind of upside-down benediction, for soon after its utterance the meeting closed with an invitation to any who felt disposed to remain behind for private conversation. The rough man remained, as did two other men, one neatly dressed young woman, and two little children. The latter had a dim impression that something was going to be given away, perhaps pork pies or ham sandwiches. The rough man's name turned out to be Butcher. " Who gave you that name ? " said Jenkins. " Blowed if I know, sir ; I didn't ask for it, and I don't care for it, and I'll part with it for a supper." " Do you take an interest in literature ? " Jenkins continued. 170 WALDEN STANYER. " I do, sir. I like it. Let me see the man as don't." " So do I, sir," one of the other men remarked ; where- upon the two children thought the fun had begun, for they struck a boxing attitude, and dived at each other with their little fists. " Drop it there now, won't yer ? " said Butcher ; " and lis'n to the gen'l'man, and see if yer can't behave yerselves, or I'll make ye." Butcher was rich in alternatives, a point in which men otherwise ingenious often painfully fail. " Well, now," said Tomkins, " we have, as four gentle- men, come to Whitechapel that we may do you good." " Let me see the man as'll deny it," said Butcher. " You say you take an interest in literature ? " " Yes, sir, we do." " Can you bring a few other people with you if we hold meetings here ? " . " Yes, sir. Bill Camps knows a heap of things, and he's allus a-reading, and Bill's as good as a meetin' when he's not drinkin', and I know he'll come." " And Scraggs," said the young woman, elliptically. " Scraggs ! " said Butcher, with a long hissing whistle ; "if Scraggs comes to this 'ere 'ayloft, he'll never go away again. I never knew such a fellor for meetin's he can do three a night, he can, and the furder they're upstairs the better." Butcher nodded at the young woman as if she had made the one bright suggestion of the evening. "Well, now," said Tomkins, "we have made a CONVERTING THE EAST END. 171 beginning, and we are resolved to proceed. "We believe in the ultimate power of the highest culture. We disavow and disallow every form of vulgarity " " Hear, hear," said Butcher. " We are opposed to such so-called simplification of eternal verities as divests them at once of mystery and dignity, and our hope is to show that even Whitechapel despises the worldly accessories, and, I may add, the undignified auxiliaries so ostentatiously utilized by the Salvation Army." After this beautifully simple exposition the meeting broke up, greatly to the disappointment of Coleman, who would have liked just one word upon the Fourth Century. Tomkins, Jenkins, Hawkins, and Coleman had not gone far from the place of meeting when a voice from behind attracted their attention. The young woman had followed them from the hayloft for the purpose of saying " I want to tell you that you must not come here to say one word against the Salvation Army, because if it had not been for the army I should not have had a bed to lie upon to-night." Something in the woman's voice struck all who heard it as singularly characteristic, for there was music in it, and subtle pathos, and something that told of other and brighter times. On seeing such a woman in certain circumstances, one cannot but wonder how she came to be there, and feel that either a mystery 172 WALDEN STANYER. of sin or a mystery of benevolence must account for the obvious misfit. I may say here that so deeply did I become interested in this incident that I privately communicated with the young lady, for by a very common human instinct I soon found that her circum- stances were no index to her quality. I followed her out and thanked her for what she had said, and I could not but expressively shake hands with one whose face was the very bloom of loveliness. A new sensation penetrated my heart, and a new interest in Whitechapel was created. Flowers do grow in unexpected places, as this instance clearly proved. I was either less than myself or more than myself when I returned to my learned friends. When they had reached their own quarters, Jenkins expressed himself as quite satisfied with the first attempt upon the ignorance and brutality of White- chapel, and Tomkins was strong in his conviction that a cultured ministry still had the power to work miracles, whilst Coleinan did not disguise his feelings that Jerome's works as edited by Erasmus were greatly in need of footnotes, which he contemplated supplying if he could cut out sufficient leisure from his greatly over-occupied time. A knock at the door interrupted the conversation, and Coleman's mildly delivered " Come in " brought no less a person than Mr. Butcher upon the scene. " I jes' come along to say that when you have meetin's in that there 'ayloft you'll need a man or two like me, for there'll be a good bit o' chuckin' out to do, CONVERTING THE EAST END. 173 I can see ; and that's wot I'm up to, as is well be-known by a-many as I've unloaded at the door." "We confidently hope we shall not need such assistance," Mr. Tomkins remarked with fine dignity. " I know you will, though," said Butcher, authorita- tively, " if you want to get along comfortable like, ye know. Why, bless yer, fourteen o' them there good-for- nothings down our way went to smash a meetin', and every man of 'em had a dead cat in his pocket, and if it hadn't been for me " Coleman protested. Jenkins thought enough had been said. Tomkins promised that if assistance should be needed, Butcher should be spoken to. " Thank ye kindly, sir," said Butcher ; " I'll be on hand at that there 'ayloft when meetin's are on, and if I can do anything, ye have only to wink at me, and I'll know what to do. Why, bless ye, genTmen " " Good night," all voices unanimously and sharply exclaimed, and Butcher disappeared. " Now," said Tomkins, trying the handle of the door to assure himself of security, " it is clear to me that we must proceed by plan. It occurs to me whether it might not be well in the first instance to attempt to enlist the attention of intelligent artisans, and through them to get at what I may term, I hope inoffensively, the lower strata. We may have begun a seam too low. I own that this is at least a possible error. The one vital element in our plan is unquestionably culture." " Culture," echoed Jenkins. 174 WALDEN STANYER. " Culture," softly murmured Coleman from the recesses of the Fourth Century. " There we start. But if we start there, we must aim a little higher than we have done, so I suggest that we endeavour to enlist the attention of those very interesting persons known under the not unpleasing denomination of intelligent artisans." "Then let us proceed not only by plan, but by programme," said Jenkins. " Good ! " exclaimed Coleman with unusual spirit. " A programme," continued Tomkins, " is itself a kind of literary instrument, involving in its construc- tion paper, print, and authorship " Coleman eyed Tomkins over his spectacles with unctuous interest, as if at last that wise man had spoken with the dignity of inspiration. " In view of our adoption of this alternative course," Tomkins proceeded, " I drew up a brief programme, which I will submit for criticism and revision. We confer as brethren, so I pray to be favoured with your frankest remarks. I thought of a course of lecture" running in some such direction as this " Lecture I. A true account of the Mono- physite and Monothelite controversies. " Lecture II. The Gnostic Doketism, with a historical introduction respecting the Doketce. " Lecture III. Heterousianism, Homoiousian- ism, Homoiism, and Homousianism. " Lecture IV. The progress of thought as indicated by the opinions of Clement of Eome and Clement of Alexandria. CONVERTING THE EAST END. 175 " I feel that if the intelligent artisans of Whitechapel could be made to take an interest in such subjects, that we should soon make an utter rout of the Salvation Army, and every other school of sensationalism." Jenkins and Coleman were in raptures. Jenkins wished to go to press that very night, and would have done so at his own expense had not Coleman suggested that a fifth lecture, dealing with the peculiar character- istics of the Fourth Century, would be most useful in thoroughly clearing the minds of Whitechapel artisans of all prejudice, because he was convinced that some of them hardly understood Jerome's acceptance of the term Hypostasis, and thought he meant to deceive Athanasius by a subtle distinction between Nature and Person. Jenkins admitted the extreme importance of the subject, but advised its postponement until the ice had been fairly broken a suggestion which Coleman re- luctantly adopted, but only on understanding that it would be the first subject on the next programme. i;6 WALDEN STANYER. CHAPTER XV. INTERRUPTIONS. HAWKINS, the Syriac scholar, who rarely condescended to read anything but Syriac and Sanskrit, had kept absolute silence from the very beginning. He was a poor speaker at the best was Hawkins, especially of his mother-tongue, which he secretly despised as a vehicle of human intercourse. Hawkins simply criti- cized other people, but never in a malignant way, seldom, indeed, going beyond the very innocent remark that if they had been familiar with Syriac, they would have spoken with greater reservation. Hawkins never did much in the ministry, owing to the low degree of intelligence which he found in all Christian com- munions knowledge of Syriac not being a feature of the age in which Hawkins had the misfortune to live. On their next appearance at the Bull and Dog, the learned men who had been so elaborately prepared and expensively decorated for the ministry of the Cross, found the hayloft crowded from floor to roof. Jenkins was so overjoyed as thoughtlessly to rub his learned face with the programme, and put his spectacles on INTERRUPTIONS, 177 upside down. Coleman was as nervous as he was erudite, and only forgetful in the fine manner common to men who have ascended the highest paths of the highest literature. The four learned men advanced to the upper end of the hayloft, and began to look around them with grateful interest, when a woman's voice suddenly called upon "Holy Ghost Jack" to begin. The man who bore this name so profanely stood bolt upright in the middle of the loft, and for full ten minutes literally howled the word " Glory ! " When he was tired, he turned to the woman and said, " Now you take a turn." The woman so addressed was at once recognized by the learned men as the person who had adjured them not to say a word against the Salva- tion Army. They would have known her by her voice as she sweetly said "We have read your little papers, at least we have tried to spell them out, and we cannot understand them. If you want to do us good down here, we thank you ; but you will have to go about your work in a very different way. We know nothing of long words. We want to hear about Jesus and His love. We could listen all day if you would talk about the dear Lord who died for us on the cross, and who loves us for our very sins. I have tasted His love. I know how great His heart is. He wants to save us all. The worse we are the more He longs for us. Oh, poor sinners, dear, dear. souls, what a N 178 WALDEN STANYER. Friend we all have in Jesus ! I know what sin is. I have known hunger and thirst, and pain and shame and woe, but Jesus laid His dear kind hand upon me, and brought me home." The effect of this little speech was indescribable. One man thundered out with terrific energy, " Glory be to God ! " Another exclaimed, " Praise the Lord ! " Then uprose six women, and shook their tambourines, and sweetly sang, " Come to Jesus every one come now ; " and finally an aged woman said, "Let us pray," and truly she did pray. She prayed with tears ; she prayed for the learned men, as if they had been the veriest outcasts, and concluded, " Lord, pity me. Lord, pity every one. Christ, have mercy upon us, and may these four poor dear blind souls who want to make us infidels be converted this very night in this very hay- loft." "You quite misunderstood us, my friends," said Jenkins. " Nay, nay," said an old man, " we can neither make head or tail on ye ; and as for your papers, a school- master would be puzzled by them. You may spell the words backwards or forwards, and they all come to the same. There's not a word about Christ in them. Not a word. I do know that word when I see it in print, and I've hunted for it all up and down this 'ere paper, and I cannot find it. Don't come to White- chapel and forget to bring Christ with you " a speech IN TERR UP TIONS. 179 which elicited an enthusiastic response, most of the people rising and shouting, " Amen, Amen ! " for what seemed to be five minutes. " We intended," said Tomkins, " to appeal to intelli- gent artisans " " Who are they ? " interrupted a voice. " They don't live down here," said another. " What be they like ? " asked another in a Midland tone. " The intelligent artisans of London," said Tomkins. " Ain't nowheres round Whitechapel, anyhow," said Butcher. " But, gen'l'men, I'll tell you what is down here. I were a-standin' at that there door a-watching this 'ere crowd, and I see one man pull a dead cat out of his pocket to fling it at the gen'1'm wot wears them there specs, so I takes it from him, kicks him down- stairs, and here's that very cat as he was a-going to throw at that there teacher." Butcher laid the cat on the table in proof of his veracity, and looked round for approval and gratitude. Coleman delicately took hold of the deceased cat with a programme, and deposited it out of sight ; he would, indeed, judging from the disgust depicted on his face, gladly have deposited it far back in the dawn of the Fourth Century. These are, of course, most disagreeable subjects to mention, but it must be borne in mind that if we go to certain parts of Whitechapel at all, we must not expect i8o WALDEN STANYER. much that is charming and fascinating to a cultivated taste or a dainty fancy. Do not turn away in disgust from revolting facts, or you will never understand the real condition and the real need of the people as a whole. "We must further remember that what is dis- agreeable to us may be far from disagreeable to those who have not enjoyed our inherited or our acquired advantages. As a matter of fact, there are men who do avail themselves of bad grammar without one twinge of conscience, to an extent which would make some of us grind our teeth in anguish; and there are others who can talk of dead cats and coves and swags and pals, as fluently as some talk of rhododendra and snow- drops. Always suspect the sincerity of a finical mind, for such a mind is incapable of comprehensive survey, or large and generous sympathy. It is pleased with trifles. It is devoted to the cant of fashion. It has a horror of evil, not because it is offensive to God, but because it is a blunder in aesthetics. The learned men, Tomkins, Jenkins, Hawkins, and Coleman, were now constrained to look at the whole subject from a new point of view. They did me the honour of seeking my advice, and I was enabled to speak my mind with great freedom, yet without rude- ness. Having heard their case, I said " It seems to me, gentlemen, that with all your learning you have not a right idea of culture. To my thinking, the aim of culture is to simplify, not to INTERRUPTIONS. 181 mystify. A little learning is fond of long words, but true learning seeks to explain that which is difficult and make clear that which is dark. There is some- thing infinitely better than culture, and that is life. If you were saving shipwrecked men, you would not talk to them about theories of navigation, the law of tides, and the use of logarithms. If you want to instruct mariners you will take one course, but if you want to save drowning men you will take another. What is the exact purpose you have in view? What do you want to be at? When I look at this programme of yours, I am simply astounded by what looks like a new species of insanity. Do you suppose that con- troversies which raged centuries ago have any interest for the bulk of men to-day ? What do they care for the Doketae, or for the views of Sabellius, Nestorius, and Apollinarius ? All such topics are happily dead and gone, and I thank God for every failure in attempt- ing to revive them." At this point Tomkins interrupted me with the remark that he hoped our educational standards would not be lowered, inasmuch as he " felt the growing need of a cultured ministry." " So do I," was my answer, " provided the term 'culture' be properly defined. But," I warmly con- tinued, "what we want in reality is an inspired ministry. My wonder is that the students in some colleges by no means in all do not rise indignantly, 182 WALDEN STANYER. as if stung by an insult, and decline to be made into stuffed pulpit-cushions. These young men are being wronged. They are made to lead monastic lives, instead of being encouraged to study and handle the sad and weary life that is around them. Their early zeal is being cooled. Their fresh enthusiasm is evaporating. They are, in not a few instances, being transformed into little prigs and pedants ; and as they themselves have been stuffed with lectures, they will in their turn try to stuff their languishing congrega- tions with similar sawdust. No, again, no," I con- tinued, "the whole system must be destroyed, and a more natural because a more living system must take its place, if the Christian pulpit is to direct and stimulate this wonderful age." Mr. Hawkins, the Syriac scholar, hoped that the study of Sanskrit would never be neglected in theological colleges. " Now," said I, " will you allow me to put the whole case personally, and to come into close quarters with you?" " Certainly," said they all. " And are you quite sure you will not be offended ? " " Quite," was the unanimous response, Hawkins returning his answer in Syriac, as he afterwards ex- plained. " Now, Mr. Hawkins," said I, " you were five years at college; have you ever had an invitation to a pulpit ? " " Never." INTERRUPTIONS. 183 " Mr. Jenkins, how long were you a pastor ? " " Seventeen months." " Mr. Tomkins, how long did you sustain the office for which you were so elaborately prepared ? " " I never was in it," said Tomkins. " Then that just brings us to the point I am aiming at," said I. " All your culture has been of no practical avail. The great common people do not want you. From the great living heart of the world you have been separated by your antiquated learning. You know much, and much that is valuable, yet for all practical purposes you know nothing. You do not know human nature. You do not know the human heart. I will go further and say, you do not know the spirit and purpose of the Son of God." After this solemn impeachment there was a natural pause. I could not say less. I was perfectly sure of the good intention of the men, and equally sure that the Lord had never called them into His ministry as teachers of the people. The silence was awkward, but happily there was no resentment in the tone of Jenkins as he broke it " Perhaps, then," said he, " you would advise us not to go to Whitechapel again ? " " That undoubtedly would be my advice." "I must say," continued Jenkins, "that it is an extremely difficult locality to peregrinate in. On the first visit I mistook the name of the inn, and I believe I was mischievously imposed upon by two very 184 WALDEN STANYER. uncultivated urchins of whom I unsuspectingly in- quired my way: they took me through a variety of unsavoury lanes, and at one point quite a little crowd gathered, and I must say the behaviour of that crowd was not a little disquieting ; indeed, but for the timely interposition of the police, it is impossible to say what might have transpired." " Which exactly proves the soundness of my advice," said I. " Now, if some men had been in that fix, they would soon have got out of it. Some men have humour, they have experience ; in short, they have what you will never have namely, an abundance of practical sense." " But," said Tomkins, " is it not our business to lift up the people instead of descending to their level ? Have we to go down to the people, or have the people to come up to us ? " " In Christ's name," said I, warmly, " you must go down to the people in order to raise them. This is what Jesus Christ Himself did. He came down to us that He might raise us to Himself. The teacher always goes down to the pupil. The parent always goes down to the child. The strong must go down to the weak if ever the weak are to be lifted up to strength. ' Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, though He was rich, yet for your sakes became poor.' " Then I beheld, and lo ! a great vision as of descend- ing heaven filled me with wonder and awe. It seemed as if the whole world had come together in an infinite INTERRUPTIONS. 185 assembly, and that One like unto the Son of Man came forth as from Eternity to make known His will in respect of His kingdom. His face was marred more than any man's, yet through all the conquered sorrow there shone a glory as of ineffable joy. A great and holy silence fell upon all men as He spoke to His ministers " Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature; preach it in words which men can understand, preach to the heart, preach to the need of men. I want you every one, the learned man, the simple man, the man whose voice is thunder, the man whose voice is tears ; you belong to one another. One is the Master, and all ye are brethren : serve as stewards, fight as soldiers, endure as heroes, freely ye have received, freely give ; be not afraid of fire or tempest, or violence of men ; never lower your flag in the presence of the enemy ; take no bribe, compromise with no wrong, open your mouth for the dumb, plead the cause of the poor and needy ; preach not to please the rich, but to save them ; where other men dare not go, go ye with strong hearts; where others despair, there kindle ye heaven's lamp of hope : let your difficulties be the beginning of your prayers, let your sufferings be the indorsement of your vocation ; across the ruin of your expectations hasten to the throne of grace, through your encouragement see the dawning and the welcoming of heaven. Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world." 1 86 WALDEN STANYER. The voice then ceased, yet as the Speaker passed out of sight, men heard as it were an echo, saying, " Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you : not as the world giveth, give I unto you ; " then came another voice, vast and grand as the roll of mighty floods : "THE LORD WILL BLESS His PEOPLE WITH PEACE." ( i8 7 ) CHAPTEE XVI. THE GREAT TEMPTATION. BOSTON BELL was under the impression that nobody quite understood him. Possibly he was right, for no one believed that he was such a man as in his moments of dejection he made himself out to be. In many respects his character is perfectly sketched in the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Eomans, for he was constantly in the moral fluctuation so graphically described by the ardent apostle. He truly said that it was his soul which men could not see, and that if they could see it as he did, they would hate and avoid him. The fiend that persecuted his soul unto death came in the form of the temptation that it was possible to gratify all natural impulse without foregoing the favour of Him who made the impulse natural. There lay the lifelong difficulty of a really noble soul. What can it matter, thought he, without words, if a man can tell God honestly that he had never gone beyond the range of impulses and desires which belong to the original constitution of creaturehood ? Had that mixed and turbulent quantity called society any right to put itself in the place of God, and frame a set of rules by winch 1 88 WALDEN STANYER. it gratijfied its vanity rather than justified its virtue ? Besides, might not a man come to know that he had made the mistake of his life when in hopeful youth he stood at the wedding altar and said after the priest what the priest said after some other man ? When he stood at that wedding altar he told no lie, he strained no feeling, he hurt no nerve in all his eager frame ; but the days and the years went by, and subtle change was wrought as if in the silence of a dream, and another face lighted up the sky like a star, and another voice found its way into his heart, and so great displacement was effected, and a horrible emptiness craved attention. Could not the sobered love which belongs to memory coexist with the intoxication of a hope that pleaded its suddenness as a proof of its innocence and inspiration ? Thus the fiend talked to Boston Bell, and told him all the great lies which the devil has ever invented, and which require a devil to put them into words which the heart can understand. Expressed in those poor terms the vulgarity of the lie is palpable, but whispered to the heart in medicated hints, meant for good, fitted to the mystery of nature, perfumed with poetic odours who can tell what havoc they may work ! What a lure, too, there is in life, leading us all along by slippery lines, and tempting us to think that we will not go further than the point we have fixed upon in some nice calculation of experiments ! We will come back un- scathed. We will come back quite soon. The door may be left ajar, for it is but a moment we shall be gone. Thus the fiend plies his victim. Boston Bell THE GREAT TEMPTATION. 189 felt that in his case the temptation itself was a sin. Had he been talking to another man he would have said the contrary, but upon himself he was always severe. To another man he would have said Christ was tempted, yet without sin ; in every temptation recognize the greatness as well as the infirmity of your own nature ; because you are worth destroying you are worth saving. To himself he could not say this ; yet, poor soul, he sometimes needed this very gospel. Out of all this experience came not a little of his wonderful power as a preacher, and yet even in the happiest use of this power there was the bitter sorrow that his influence was the result of an undeclared experience. If Boston Bell had been less pure he would have been less sensitive. He trembled on the brink, but an unseen hand saved him in his uttermost weakness. " "Would it be wrong for me to see her again ? " The fiend derided the suggestion. " She is a wonderful girl. Those opalescent eyes haunt me. That speech in the hayloft was the speech of a fine-hearted apostle. There could be nothing wrong in an interview with such a woman. I want to know her methods of working. I want to know her very mind " " Why not ? " said the fiend. Boston Bell was walking by the side of the night- shadowed church as he said this, and the churchyard trees were swaying in the wind. "Perhaps she might be brought to work in this 190 WALDEN STANYER. parish. We have room for such a worker. The villagers would be struck by her winning manner. The children would adore her " " Why not ? " said the fiend. "My God, was that the deep baying of an angry hound I heard just now ? It makes me tremble. . . . I could easily run up to London for three days and make all necessary inquiries. I might take a friend with me, for safety. Walden might go. Walden ought to see what Christian work really is. ... What was that shadow ? Was some one crossing the churchyard ? Is some one calling me ? I heard what might have been a voice from a far-away shore. Do spirits call to us ? Do dead mothers come to save their sons ? . . . The shake of her young hand sent a thrill through me, and her voice . . . can the dead hear, or see, or feel ? Thank God for these shadows, they are most friendly . . . they make sin possible . . . they almost pardon it ... if I found it convenient to go to London " " Why not ? " said the fiend. " God God why are we so made ? Is it best ? Will all end well ? Will the lion and the lamb, the wolf and the kid, the hawk and the dove within us, be brought to a happy reconciliation? Will Iscariot become as John ? Will he quite rub out the blood- mark ? . . . To-night I am in the power of the enemy. . . . There is a hot streak in this cool night wind . . . it is a heat with judgment in it. ... I am not alone, THE GREAT TEMPTATION. 191 and I know it; the battle within me is being also fought in the air by others. . . . There is a prayer in my throat, but I cannot utter it. ... my mother, come to me and be to me as God." Boston Bell worked out the whole mystery of life from his heart as the centre. Other men work intel- lectually and never go further than logic will carry them. Boston Bell was impatient of formal argument, because it never glowed and throbbed with passion. It was enfeebled by its own vanity. Mere cleverness may run the errands of life, but can never carry its testing cross. By the heart Boston Bell judged every- thing the Bible, the landscape, the star-crowned night, the dogmas of religion, the offers of the gospel ; what- ever touched his heart in its divinest moods bowed him in willing and tender homage. Hence his conflicts, his sorrows, the aberrations which separated him from reasoned and calculated respectability ; and hence, too, the thrill of countless and unutterable joys. A man can easily find companionship for his intellect, because it can live in public and talk aloud; but the com- panions of his heart must enter by the use of pass- words, for strait is the gate and narrow is the way leading to the innermost shrines of trust. By this protected road Walden Stanyer had penetrated into Boston Bell's very soul ; had, indeed, won a woman's victory over a strong man's faith. "If Walden goes with me to London I shall feel 192 WALDEN STANYER. quite safe. What a child he is, yet what a man what a hero ! . . . I would not speak to the young woman but in Walden's hearing. ... I might get her address through one of my four friends . . . but I forget . . . I asked her where she might be found, and she gave me her official address . . . that is best, for I want official information, and in that information Walden would be interested. . . Oh, my head . . . my temples throb . . . the old church walls have softened into shadows . . , the stonework is all gone ... I heard the rustle of garments passing me in the wind ... I am not afraid : I am spell-bound." When he returned to his study an enemy might have pitied him, for his look was that of a man who had lost all his strength. The books had become shadows, too ; the house was but a cloud, and the place he knew so well felt strange and cold. His own voice now startled him, for he thought it was telling secrets even when talking forced commonplaces, and his attempts at easy intercourse seemed to convict him of dishonesty. But the fight was done. When the morning came and reconstructed the church and set up everything in its familiar place, it carried on its blessed work as if it knew that a great victory had been won at great heart- cost. Never did the old church look so hospitable; never did the gravestones carry such a treasure of light ; never did the dew look so little like tears and so much like jewels ; everything lay within the pro- tection of that deep and tender peace : the pasture, the THE GREAT TEMPTATION. 193 browsing cattle, the wheeling birds, the thatched village all seemed to be parts of a lovely whole, and to have some consciousness of the presence of a mystery. Yes, the agony was all over. By the power of God the troubled soul, at once so strong and so weak, had dashed the enemy in pieces like a potter's vessel. 194 WALDEN STANYER. CHAPTEE XVII. THE GREAT PERSONALITY. AT least he thought so, and thought so unaffectedly, for was he not a clergyman and the first orator in the national pulpit ? His was no untrained mind that blundered by confusing things that differ ; he had gone into this case and diagnosed it with expertness. Poor Boston Bell ! his very strength was his weakness. A feminine soul, well faced and sweetly toned, could make a fool even of a clerical Hercules. The young lady was as guiltless as a white lily. Little did it enter into her mind that her soul was a guest in the parish of Butters- field, and that she was ruling her host and laying him in prostrate admiration at her feet. Boston said he did not care for the merely physical charm of the young lady, for that would have been comparatively vulgar. All that sort of petty and transient homage he had long survived. He was in love with her moral excellence, her self-suppression, her heroic consecration to a noble cause. Yet he could not speak of it openly to any of his parishioners. He had momentarily resolved to make her work the subject of a special THE GREAT PERSONALITY. 195 discourse in the parish church of Buttersfield ; but no text seemed exactly to lend itself to the situation. He once thought of " Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these My brethren," but he had become convinced that those words belonged to a section of time which was closed at the destruction of Jerusalem ; and though he need not have told his rustic parishioners this startling news, yet he was bound to keep faith not only with his own conscience, but also with his own self-respect. One thing he could do, he could write to Miss Fairfield, and thus open a correspondence which might lead to a result which would immensely gratify him. That result was one of notable social benevo- lence ; nothing less than to bring the young lady down to Buttersfield to work for a fortnight amongst the labourers and the aged poor. He said the poor people would look upon her as an angel from heaven, and adore her very footprints. This was not Boston's pulpit style, but no man can always be in the pulpit. A little slipshod makes the average more mundane and human. Then, on the other hand, he might possibly preach more in London, as he would have two strings to his bow. And, best of all, her influence would have an uplifting effect upon his whole spirit and action. The two things clear, no doubt, to his own mind might work together satisfactorily. He could send books and pictures to the Home over which she pre- sided. He might also send a few flowers now and then, or run up with them, as a railway ride was like a tonic to him. He even formed the notion that 196 WALDEN STANYER. London and the villages should know one another much more intimately. London would inspire the villages, and the villages would tranquillize London. But the first thing was to get Miss Fairfield down to the parish ; then they could consult together and adopt well-considered decisions, and keep clearly within the lines of prudence and social confidence. Boston thought they might work the arrangement he would never say " run " it under the style and title of " a mission." That was a most elastic and unobjectionable term. It was intensely religious. At once it suggested something about the Church, and something requiring prompti- tude, for it would come and go in no time. How the villagers would gape and stare when they saw those opalescent eyes and heard that thrilling voice ! Here Boston was once more falling immeasurably below even his ordinary pulpit style, and it seemed as if he was cruelly fated to do so. Boston was grand in a succes- sion of bolt-like epigrams, but feeble in the social picturesque. " If I could get her down for a fortnight," he said elliptically, " we might see our way clear perhaps to an annual festival of delight." He even thought that another young lady might come with her ; there would be more of a " mission " air about two, and more of a metropolitan aspect. He meant well, no doubt, but I can only give his bare words, whose meaning seems to me to be obscure and confused. " Perhaps," said Boston, " she might come down on the plea of a holiday; the neighbourhood would be new to her, and I do believe that to one who works in THE GREAT PERSONALITY. 197 London there is something very soothing about butter- cups and thatched cottages." He added, " They may not be very romantic, but the same remark would apply to bread and butter, and therefore may be dis- missed as inopportune " by which I thought he meant "inappropriate." But his acuteness was obviously failing in edge. What he wrote to Miss Fairfield may be gathered from that young lady's reply : "DEAR BROTHER IN THE LORD, "I wish you health and peace from our Father. I do not know how to tell you my answer, though I know well what it must be ; and it is not in my power, nor in yours, to help it. I cannot but see that you were excited when you wrote it, and perhaps your excited kindness led you to choose some words without carefully thinking about all their meaning. If you knew the state of my health, you would not dream of my going any distance from London. I am never free from pain, and, do you know, I have come to think that we need every pain we have ; I mean we need it for our perfection in the better life, for not only have we gone astray, but every day we are tempted to go astray again, and pain is like a bridle by which God guides us to the right road, and even the right side of the road. My pain is hard to bear, yet I have deserved it all, and I need it all. "All your words about the country I can WALDEN STANYER. well understand, for I was born amidst green fields and hedges of wild roses. Eeading your kind letter was like walking through a field of buttercups. But London is my place. The money you have sent for my travelling expenses I return, and the sovereign for special cases I have divided between two girls who leave the Home next week to make a new start in life. I am not without fear about you, though per- haps it is only a woman's fear. There is not one unworthy word in your letter not a word that a man could not speak to his mother yet I feel as if you were holding yourself back for fear you should fall under some spell or fascina- tion. You have not perhaps fallen very far yet, but you are like a man who is holding in his horse very strongly to keep it from running away. You speak so frankly and kindly about me, that I may tell you that I know only too well the deadly power of personal fascination. When I was very young I fell under it, and to-day I am suffering from it. But I cannot say more at this moment, except that we should not allow fascination to get too strong a hold upon us. The work at Whitechapel cannot go on under your friends. They are very clever men, but not clever enough to be so simple and clear that our poor people can understand them. People cannot be saved by long words. Our dear Lord never used words so unlike His own THE GREAT PERSONALITY. 199 gospel of love. We have taken the hayloft, and we hope to do much good in the name of the Lord. "We do not need the help of such coarse men as Butcher. Of course such men do gather round our kind of work, and they some- times bring it into discredit, but the work itself must not be judged by such people. " I may tell you that a lady from your neigh- bourhood has been here, and she likes the Home. She brought a poor penitent whom we hope by God's grace to save. The lady is young and most sweet. She gave me an invitation to visit her, but, as I tell you, that is out of the question. The lady knows you, and she spoke so kindly of you that I have no fear in writing you so long a letter as this. Do you know, she seems to see very far into the mysteries of the kingdom of God. I think she is a wonderful woman. All the time she was talking to me I felt under a very happy influence. " Yours in the Lord's dear service, " SISTER ISBEL." Once more I may say, Poor Boston ! The letter was to him as a pearl of great price. If it was put in a secret place it was through no mean fear. He thought it would be more his if nobody knew of it, and his still more if he read it and studied it in deep night. There was character in every stroke of the pen. It was no common writing ; it was artless art ; in short, 200 WALDEN STANYER, poor Boston ! But what a revelation that some- body from the neighbourhood had seen her, touched her, looked into her eyes, spoken to her, won her admiration ! It ought to be easy to find out such a woman, for she was one who saw far into the mysteries of the kingdom of God. Within that circumscription she ought to be found without difficulty, in such a limited group of parishes. Would it be possible for him to approach Bruce on the subject ? But he had appalled that timid soul. He wished now that he had been more considerate, but he little thought that Bruce could ever be of service to him ; yet he ought to have thought of it, because he had himself preached in Buttersfield Church from the text, " Give a portion to seven, and also to eight; for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth," and one of his strongest points was, that you never knew who might be able to serve you, and that even the unlikeliest might be the most helpful. But who can remember all his own philosophy, and be an Aristotle out of school ? There was one man he had not offended, and that man might have the key of the gate. Walden would not be long in finding any one in the neighbourhood who could "see very far into the mysteries of the kingdom of God." There was a kind of piety for which Walden had a keen instinct. What an ineffable pleasure it would be to meet any one who had seen the opalescent eyes, which could also " see very far into the mysteries of the kingdom of God " ! Boston often said that he could think most clearly in the act of locomotion, so THE GREAT PERSONALITY. 201 he went out for a long walk and took the letter with him. He was not afraid to leave the letter at home ; he only carried it that he might study it more closely, and study it in the daylight which no hobgoblin could invade and disturb. After ten minutes' rapid walking, not to get out of sight of the vicarage, but to get into a comfortable glow, Boston sat on a five-barred gate, and read the letter once more from beginning to end. What did she mean (it was always " she " now) by falling under fascination when she was very young ? These words seemed to point to some kind of girlish romance. And what did she mean by "suffering" from it? Did she mean in health or in repute ? Not in repute, cer- tainly. That face did not represent a guilty soul ; that voice had no lie hiding within the folds of its music. How, then ? He did not know, and she did not en- courage him to inquire. He might, however, express his sympathy, and explain that she was mistaken as to himself. Then he left the gate and walked briskly down a grassy lane, quite secluded, humming to himself a favourite hymn-tune. How could a man be other than religious in that aisle grass- carpeted and roofed with gleaming blue ? No one near ! Yet within a mile there might be a young lady who could " see very far into the mysteries of the kingdom of God." The gate on his right hand will take him out of the grassy lane and bring him into the turnpike, where he will meet the Eev. Harry Eedston, the young curate of Waddon, already well known for activity, and for ecclesiastical rather than evangelical zeal. 202 WALDEN STANYER. " The very man I want," said Boston Bell, in his frankest tone. " Good ! " said Eedston, in a tone quite as hearty. " This is the morning for asking favours and granting them." " Your black bag seems to suggest a journey ? " " Off to London, my dear Bell. Won't you come with me, and talk over your affair in the train ? I must catch the 2.20, or I cannot get to London before midnight." " How long are you going to stay ? " "That's what I am going to find out when I get there." "Oh?" " The fact is, I am wondering whether I should not take a curacy in London. I have to see Sinclair to- morrow, and he will give me all the facts and advise me." " Settle in London ? " " Yes. My dear Bell, I often wonder you don't settle there. Shall I give Sinclair a hint ? Why, you might have London at your feet. You are only vegetating at Buttersfield " " I like the country." " I hate it." " Why ? " " For reasons I cannot give you just now. Most of the people are so stupid " " Not much spiritual insight ? " " Bell, you make me smile." THE GREAT PERSONALITY. 203 " Whether, taken as a whole, are the men or the women superior ? " " Now you make me laugh." "Why?" " Need you ask why ? You are taking a rise out of me. My dear fellow, there is neither man nor woman in the country I mean in the villages who has the ghost of an idea of anything above mangel-wurzel ? " " That's your opinion ? " " That's my candid opinion of our own set. But I'm bound to say there's an impudent dog of a Dissenter, a shoemaker, who has come down here who has ideas enough to fill a museum ; and as for his wife, she bleats from morning to night." "Does she see very far into the mysteries of the kingdom of God ? " " Ho, ho ! you must have your joke." The healthy young curate sprang forward as he saw the incoming train, and was soon on his way to the city, where dwelt and worked a young lady whose eyes were opalescent. 204 WALDEN STANYER. CHAPTEK XVIII. VARIOUS ASPECTS. IT was a hard moment for Boston Bell. That a shrivelled thing like Redston should go laughingly on towards London and leave him far down in the country did not seem to indicate a proper feeling on the part of Providence. But Providence always does seem to take it out of a man at some point, however lavish in its gifts of genius ; for had not Aristotle him- self thin legs and small eyes ? Could he not have had a more appropriate outfit ? "Was it fair, was it self- respectful on the part of Providence, to put such a lamp on the top of such a lamp-post ? Boston's heart was heavy, as he turned away when the train swept so spitefully around the curve which took it out of sight. It was all wrong. Things might have been arranged so differently without Providence being a bit the worse for it. Boston desperately turned back into the grassy lane with his heart in a sad state of dilapidation, wondering why he had been fool enough to leave it for the dusty turnpike. He would walk fast to get into a better mood. His fast walk soon brought him to the five-barred gate where he first halted, and there VARIOUS ASPECTS. 205 he once more read the letter right through ; some of the sentences, indeed, he read twice over. When he was ^t the five-barred gate he was within half an hour's brisk walk to Overton. When he started from the vicarage Overton was his destination, and he had foolishly gone on until he encountered " that miserable Eedston." It must be admitted that this was hard on Eedston ; yet, on the other hand, Eedston was going where Boston wanted to go but could not, and his inability took this form of personal diatribe. Now he would go to Overton, and nothing should stop him. He would see Walden, and find out the sweet young lady who could " see very far into the mysteries of the kingdom of God." To find out such persons was the imperative duty of a faithful clergyman. When Walden and he met within the very shadow of the ivied church of Overton, whose curfew was so dear to the elder Stanyer, Walden said in reply to Boston " I can hardly think it will be Janet Kennedy " "Why?" " Because she is not so very young " " That's nothing ; she may be comparatively young. Let us see her." " Good. Yonder is the house, and Janet is always at home." " You need not mention my business, you know. Let it come on gradually. Begin a mile away from it." "Don't trouble yourself. Janet always begins. That's the programme." 206 WALDEN STANYER. And so she did. But a long way from " the kingdom of God." " We've had a pretty collie-strangle [dispute]," said she, " since I saw you ; for what d'ye think that doiter- ing old body the vicar has been up to ? " " No mortal knows," said Walden. "And not a mortal on the face of the whole earth can ever guess. He spoke of my brother's prize bantams bantams wi' a pedigree as if they were naething better than sae mony how-towdies [barn-door fowls], fed on hummel corn ; but, my certes ! my brother ga' him a wa'gang that made him humple off on his hurdies at a fine rate." " Poor old vicar ! " " Ye may well say that, Walden, for I saw him talkin' in the loanin' wi' Sam Popple, the drunken lout ; and it seems to me the poor auld doiterin' body wad bield a dyke wi' ony dirty stones 't cam first to hand." " That would be poor building, Janet." " I ken that. And it's poor biggin the vicar does. Scotch folks say an auld mason makes a good barrow- man, and it's time the vicar took to the barrow." Mr. Boston Bell so cleared his throat as to give Walden a hint that he wanted to go. The meaning of the cough was that the game did not lie along that road, and that the sooner they found the scent the better. When Boston got fairly away he admitted that he had never heard any speech exactly like that, and VARIOUS ASPECTS. 207 suggested that a lady in London, any lady, would have great difficulty in making it out even a lady with opalescent eyes ; " but," said he, detecting himself in a suspicious allusion, " I don't know that eyes have anything to do with it." " No more do I," said Walden ; " a blind lady would be as much puzzled as a seeing one. 'All cats are grey in the dark.' But we will try Mary Butler next, for I do know that her heart has those divine eyes that can see a long way into anything beautiful. Before we go in, I may say Mary is a jewel." The moment Boston saw Mary he felt he was on the right track. His reflections needed no spurring. So this young lady had seen the opalescent eyes! In a moment there was an odour of sanctity about her. Mr. Bell changed the position of his chair, and the man who was silent at the Kennedys' led the conversation at the house of Mrs. Oldbody, who, happily, was away on one of her parochial gossipings. "A brother clergyman was saying to me only this morning that there is no place like London. What do you think, Miss Butler ? " " A wonderful place, no doubt." " Wonderful for everything, Miss Butler ; but most wonderful, I think speaking as a clergyman for its charities." " I don't know London very well." " But you have been there, I suppose ? " " Oh yes, several times, but not often off the main 208 WALDEN STANYER. streets such as Eegent Street, Piccadilly, Oxford Street, and so on." " Not much in the East End, perhaps ? " " Very little. I have seen it, of course, but to say that I know it would hardly be true. Many people go to the East End just that they may be able to say they have been there." " Very likely." " You know, there is a cant benevolence a benevo- lence that is very fond of the East End at the expense of home duties at the West." " I can quite believe it." " I know it to be a fact, Mr. Bell, for I have seen enough of it down here." " You amaze me, Miss Butler." " Of course in a different way, but it comes to the same thing. Some of our young girls are very fond of running off to early communion, but they always leave their mothers at home to make the beds and get the breakfast ready. I call that a very silly and a very selfish kind of religion." " And I heartily agree with you." " And if I was a parent I would not stand it for a moment," said Walden, as he broadly smiled and turned to the window. " And there are many other things I would not stand" picking up the ten of diamonds and laying it ostentatiously on the middle of the table. " But that raises a very serious question, Miss Butler. Have you known of any of our girls being led away by such customs ? " VARIOUS ASPECTS. 209 " Oh no." " Then you down here, like ourselves at Buttersfield, don't send many young prodigals to the London homes ? " " Oh no." "I don't think we have sent one from Butters- field." " That is a good thing to be able to say. It speaks well for the clergy." " Probably Overton can give as good an account of itself?" "Why, Walden, here's aunt; I did not expect her for an hour." " Then," said Walden, " I must remove this card, or it will annoy her. The ten of diamonds may arouse unworthy suspicions." " I have quite run myself out of breath, Mary ; for I met the vicar a while since, and he said I ought to keep a stricter eye over the house ; and when I asked him what he meant, he told me I had better hasten up and judge for myself." " Silly old man ! " said Mary. " A most genuine and splendid duffer ! " " Oh, Walden, you wicked boy ! " " That was always my opinion of him, Mrs. Oldbody, and is now." " Aunt, how did he know who was here ? " " Is there anything Mr. Bruce does not know, my dear ? " p 2io WALDEN STANYER. " An excellent detective was lost in the vicar." " I hope there was nothing personal in the remark," said Boston Bell. "Don't trouble yourself about him," Mary replied. " A man who can stoop to make such remarks has lost the power to annoy me. You don't know, Walden, how he has offended the Kennedys. He has made it hard work for them to come to church. He has taken to interfering a great deal too much." " And poking his nose into things," said Mrs. Old- body in other words. " "We have heard about it," said the frank Walden. " Janet discoursed upon him in broad Doric, and it all turns upon the bantams. Do you know that on the bantams I rather agree with the vicar ? " " I don't agree with him on anything," said Mary. "And you are perfectly right," said Boston Bell. " I now take a different view of Miss Kennedy's speech. When I heard it, I thought I was to blame for listening to anything that reflected on a brother clergyman ; but now that I hear of this pitiable meanness, I feel as if I could chastise him with my own hands." Mrs. Oldbody sympathized with this view in the abstract, and, in her anxiety to smooth matters down, she hinted with all possible delicacy, carefully watching the effect of her words upon a man who bore the name of Bell (and perhaps this was the very man), that as there were four of them But Walden stopped her for the moment. VARIOUS ASPECTS. 211 " Mr. Bruce is not very fond of the name of Bell eh ? " "What does that amount to?" Mrs. Oldbody retorted. " We once had a bad gardener of the name of Bell ; but, on the other hand, our banking account is kept at the bank of Bell and Sons, so we have to take one thing with another. I have no fault to find with the name." " Nor has the vicar," said Boston. " It all comes of clerical narrow-mindedness. Mr. Bruce and I belong to different schools of thinking, and I suppose he thinks all sorts of bad things about me because we take different views on religious subjects." Mrs. Oldbody was so much taken with the Eev. Boston Bell, that she invited him to remain to a family meal and to a game at whist, apologetically saying " Perhaps you see no harm in a game of which I am very fond ? " "Not at all, Mrs. Oldbody. I play all games, and all badly." Mrs. Oldbody assured herself that she preferred Bell to Bruce both as a name and as a comfort in the family circle. She always thought Bruce had a hard sound, more like the words Janet Kennedy used, whereas Bell had a kind of musical tone ; and even if it was mentioned in connection with funerals, it was also mentioned in connection with weddings. And Mr. Bell played cards in a way she had never seen before; he seemed to know what cards every player 212 WALDEN STANYER. had, and to lead out trumps in a reckless way and not so very reckless, for he won every game. At one time the conversation turned upon the difference between London and provincial beauty ; and Walden said if anybody wanted beauty, he had only to come to Overton and see it just as Heaven painted it. " That shows your narrow-mindedness," Mary replied, as she trumped his queen of hearts with only two of diamonds. "Nothing narrow about me, Mary, or I would not have allowed you to have my queen so cheap." Boston Bell was all ears. There was electricity in the air, and the volume of it immensely increased as Mary said, " The loveliest woman I ever saw was in London." Boston "revoked" in his next reply, and Walden took the three tricks with undisguised satisfaction. " There are some great beauties at the West End," he remarked. " But this beauty was at the East End," said Mary ; " and I was so charmed with her that I invited her to Overton." "Will you give me an introduction to her, Miss Butler?" " That I could not do. I am not sufficiently ac- quainted with her to introduce a gentleman. Beside that, I never either ask for an introduction or give one." VARIOUS ASPECTS. 213 Boston Bell took leave of the ladies with regret, completely captivating Mrs. Oldbody with the assurance that if she and Miss Butler would honour him with a friendly call at Buttersfield, he would be glad to have a return rubber. " My dear," said Mrs. Oldbody later in the evening, " I don't know that I ever met so pleasant a gentleman in my life. Where he conies, Mr. Bruce is nowhere. I call Mr. Bruce a very narrow-minded old party. I think his ways are petty and shabby, and that a good shaking would do him good. He has always been right enough with me personally, as one may say, but I never get any real comfort out of him in the house. He is always in the way, and you don't know how to spend the time. You keep on wondering when he will go." " And that's the man Mr. Bruce warned you against," said Mary, who also had been greatly charmed with Boston Bell. "My dear Mary, you have no idea how Mr. Bruce went on about him this very afternoon. He said, ' Mrs. Oldbody, you had better hasten home, for there is a Unitarian in your house ' that's the very word he said ; and I thought it was awful, and I nearly ran myself out of breath, as you saw." " And what do you think of the Unitarian ? " " Why, Mary, I am delighted with him. What do you suppose a Unitarian really is ? " " Something out of the Zoological Gardens, according to Mr. Bruce." 214 WALDEN STANYER. " "Well, I can only say I am not of Mr. Brace's way of thinking. If Mr. Bell is a Unitarian, I should not be a bit afraid of being one. We shall certainly go over to Buttersfield some afternoon ; the pony will like the run, and Walden can drive. I don't care how soon we go, so I will get two new packs to-morrow." When poor Mrs. Oldbody slept that night, she dreamed that God's universe was several inches bigger than she ever thought it was, and more summer-like on the whole. ( 2I 5 ) CHAPTER XIX. ONLY A FIRST DRAFT. IN their walk towards Buttersfield both Boston Bell and Walden Stanyer were depressed the elder more than the younger, and both for different reasons. " What do you think of her, Mr. Bell ? " " Admirable. A little too reticent for me, but evidently of no common sort. What a singular old lady the aunt is ! " Walden could only go about halfway to Buttersfield, and as he had much to say he jumped from subject to subject without any regard to coherence. " I shall be in London next week," said he ; " so if I can do anything for you, let me know either now or by letter." " Not now ; but we must keep in touch, as I have a notion that I may want you at any moment." "All right. You know the address. The more I can do the better." When Boston took to the road alone, he fell into deep dejection. What looked like a day of harvesting ended in a night of disappointment. So Walden was going 2i6 WALDEN STANYER: to London, was he ? Why not go with him ? He would meet Eedston there, and together they could see Sinclair, and this would explain his going to London if any captious parishioner should ask awkward questions. Of course it would be impertinence on the part of the parishioner, but who can lay a bridle on that restless and unscrupulous tongue ? On the whole, he thought it better not to leave the parish just then. He would be wise, and hasten slowly. One thing he could certainly do, and he would do it at once. He would write a long and careful letter to Sister Isbel, and keep it in his desk until it cooled down to the proper temperature. At first he would let his pen write anything that came to hand ; that would only be a rough draft something to be worked up and polished off and turned out artistically. Evidently Sister Isbel could penetrate within or beyond the letter, so he must take great care in the pick of his words. The first draft would be written to please himself it would just let his feeling run riot ; but of course he must make it very clear to his own mind that it was only a rough draft, with all its imperfections on its head. The alternative was this : write a short essay on Social Beneficence, and let the heart speak out impersonally. Under such a heading a great many nice things might be said, without the sordid suspicion of any belittling and selfish motive. This would come easy to an expert writer of sermons ; a species of com- position whose primary object it is to mean nobody in particular. On the whole, he thought the letter-form was preferable ; first, it was more direct ; second, it ONLY A FIRST DRAFT, 217 was more respectful ; third, it was more likely to receive an answer ; fourth, it admitted of freer literary treat- ment. He would write the first draft to-morrow, having meanwhile slept himself back into complete self-possession. It was, however, soon made painfully clear that bed and sleep did not always go together. That night capricious sleep avoided the bed of Mr. Boston Bell, and redoubled its attention to Walden Stanyer. Walden deeply slumbered in the valley of peace, and in the morning he awoke like a giant re- freshed. Boston, in a fever of restlessness, arose, and putting pen to paper, he drew up a rough draft of a possible letter, outspoken but not final : "DEAR SISTER ISBEL, " Sitting alone in this dreary vicarage of secluded Buttersfield, I take up your precious letter and read it once more with streaming eyes [This was too rhetorical, but would do for a first. draft.] It is deep night, when the owl hoots, and the nightin- gale gurgles its love-song to the listening and delighted moon [Much too fine, but can be pared down.] The very silence hurts me, and, paradoxical as it would sound to any other ears but yours, for want of irritation I am irritated. My heart is in London. My heart quivers at your doorstep. My heart would ring the bell and wake you from those tranquil slumbers which 218 WALDEN STANYER. [Threatens to become too pictorial, and therefore leaves a blank.] You say I am fascinated, and you are right. I own it, and I glory in it. In my turn I ask who fascinates me ? and with pride I answer Isbel. The very name is a charm. The recollection of it stirs me like a trump of jubilee [Obviously nonsensical, but can be put right on revision ; allowance must be made for candle- light,] I love this blessed infatuation. I cherish the tender dream. Though love be unreturned, it yet is love. I may not have the power of fascinating in return. What is it that throws a spell over me ? Formal beauty could not fascinate me ; and as for sculpture, it does not glow, it does not thrill. Isbel, what I want is life ' more life,' I cry to the unresponding heavens. I want sympathy, kinship of heart, and that mysterious touch which blends two souls in one rapture of delirious love [Dangerously approaching his most cathedral style ; but it is only a first draft.] You touch me deeply when you say you are in pain. Can I not bear some of it for you ? Whatever degree of reality there may be in so-called faith-healing, I do believe in the healing power of love. Medicine cannot penetrate like sympathy. You are making yourself a martyr to solitude. Isbel, is it wise ? is it right ? is it just to the human race ? [Boston was a Demosthenes in the rapid rush of shattering interrogatives.] ONLY A FIRST DRAFT. 219 This will come to you by the hand of a dear young friend, who is to me what Jonathan was to David. Isbel, speak freely to him ; tell him all ; load him with messages to me ; it will be eternity until he returns " At this point Boston Bell fell into a deep sleep, and when he awoke, the risen sun was giving quite an ashen look to the first draft. It was poor reading by morning light. The sun and the candle are two different standards. Not for the world would he have shown the first draft even to Walden, yet he could not destroy it. Bad as it was, it came right out of his heart, and the outcoming had relieved the heart of a distressing pressure. He saw now how to act. He would give Walden all necessary particulars ; in fact, he would make a deeper confidant than ever of Walden, and so instruct him that he could be of great service to him on his return from London. To a large extent he could transfer himself to Walden, and so divide his burden. This course he adopted. How it ended time will show. 220 WALDEN STANYER. CHAPTEE XX. WITH MISS FAIEFIELD. ON his return to London Walden determined to keep out of the way of all the eccentric people, with one exception, he ever knew there. He was no longer in a mood to tolerate them. He had been in the valley of the shadow of death. His mental attitude at this point may be described as one of weariness in relation to all mere speculative and controversial inquiry, and a disposition to test every intellectual faith by the way it comes down into the life, and stands the wear and tear of daily friction. With many minds religion is at first a superstition, then a mystery known only to experts, then a salvation dispensed by priestly hands at priestly prices, then possibly a subtle reaction ending in unbelief and bitter hostility. The lessons given in the Buttersfield vicarage were beginning to tell. The one consideration that determined Walden's relation to the larger Christianity arose out of this very action of personal discipline and personal inspiration. He began to feel, and in his own way to preach that theology is a mere conceit if it does not tell upon character. He clearly saw that Christianity is not a merely WITH MISS F AIRFIELD. 221 intellectual system, or a scheme of prizes based upon miracles now and menaces hereafter, but a cleansing and uplifting power in the life working out, the final purification and unselfishness of the soul. Nor was his judgment disturbed because of the exceptions which seemed to discredit its criticisms. On the contrary, they rather justified his election of so definite and practical a standard by paying Christianity the re- luctant tribute of imitation. "Where," said Walden, " I cannot understand a man's theological reasoning, I can understand his moral conduct; and where that is bad, the other cannot be good in any substantial degree." Eeasoning may be a mere recitation, but conduct is an actual revelation of the man. It is important to notice this change in Walden's mental attitude, first because it amounted to nothing less than a spiritual conversion brought about by a rational process, and second, because it changed the whole tone of his communications upon religious subjects When he was twitted with the objection that he had turned from theology to morality, he quietly inti- mated that the two were one only the one, morality, was concrete and estimable, whilst the other, theology, was abstract and boundless ; moreover, he denied that morality is a matter of attitude, calculation, or public attire, and he contended that it belonged to the heart, and that where the heart was wrong the very morality was immoral. Walden is now face to face with the lady of the 222 WALDEN STANYER. famous opalescent eyes. The simplicity and directness of her speech at once indicated entire sincerity of pur- pose, and proved beyond doubt the very modesty with which at first they seemed to be somewhat at variance. As he looked at her, Walden felt that he had never seen just such a face; fair faces, regular features, expressive eyes, are familiar enough, but in this face there was a peace that seemed to have underneath it a solemn grief, a sort of calm settling upon a once stormy sky : grief and storm were still there, but they were mastered and sanctified. Was it pain that drew the line across the fair brow ? Was it a conquered agony that gave that tone of singular sweetness to the naturally frank and genial voice ? Happily for Walden, Miss Fairfield became immediately interested in himself and his business, and showed a clear recollection of the Eev. Boston Bell, so that no time was lost in experi- mental inquiry. Miss Fairfield proved herself to be one of those speakers who can dispense with apologies, and easily carry a conversation from point to point without explaining the rapidity of her transitions. "Now," said she, greatly to Walden's amazement, "you may imagine that, in carrying on my Eescue work, I see people from many parts of the country ; may I ask you about one who came from your locality ? " "Certainly," said Walden; "but I cannot imagine who it can be." " I have only her own story to go by," Miss Fairfield continued, " but I have no reason to doubt its accuracy, WITH MISS FAIRFIELD. 223 Is there not a place a little way out of Overton, but still in the parish, called Dulsbury ? " "Yes." " Did a blind gentleman named Miller live there ? " " I have heard the name," said Walden, " and some kind of story connected with it, but it all happened before my time. I was a long time out of Overton when I was at school, but I have a confused recollection of seeing Mr. Miller walking about Overton." " Was he alone when you saw him ? " " I have an impression that there was a boy leading him." " Did you know anything about that boy ? " " Absolutely nothing." " Do you ever hear his name mentioned by any one ? " " Never." " Do you know what family Mr. Miller had ? " " No. I have heard some gossip about a girl of his doing something wrong, and running away, but I really know nothing about it. Even if I had heard the particulars I should have paid no attention to them, partly because I was so young, and my mind was full of other things." " Well, that is the person I want to talk about, and it would have assisted me very much if you could have given me some local information " " I can get it for you," Walden interrupted. " Her story is that Mr. Miller was blind, and that he kept a youth to read to him and go about with him ; not a servant-man, but a well-taught youth about her 224 WALDEN STANYER. own age, quite intelligent and high-spirited, and of winning manners. She says that after a year or two the youth left Dulsbury and came to London, and that he often wrote to her, which he was quite entitled to do, because of his character and the terms they had long been living upon. She says that she had occasion to visit a relative in London, and that he called upon her, and that in course of time he exerted quite a fascinating influence upon her imagination, and, in short, that she seemed to have no power to resist his will, the upshot being that she did not return to Dulsbury." " Went to the devil, I suppose," Walden exclaimed, with a touch of his early fire. Miss Fairfield had paused, and given him the opportunity. " No," said she, " that is not her account of the matter. She says she was fascinated simply spell- bound and powerless, and that she waited here on and on for weeks until she felt she could not return to her father. She left the house of her relative and did not go home. By-and-by her money was exhausted, and she had to find ways of living which were anything but agreeable, though never sinful." " Then she went to the devil sure enough," Walden exclaimed, in another pause. " Yes and no. She never lost her character, as that word is generally understood ; she was a fool, a victim of a bewildered imagination, an ungrateful daughter, all that sort of thing, all that she confesses and deplores, but beyond that she never went." WITH MISS FAIRFIELD. 225 " Then why did she not go home ? " " Just so. That is the question I have often asked. But you will come to learn that human nature is full of mysteries. That would have been the simplest thing to do, and the thing that would have saved her, but she did not do it." "Well," said Walden, "did you teU Mr. Bell this?" "No. I told him I could tell him something, but there was no time." " He is the wisest man I ever knew," said Walden. "What about Mr. Miller?" he continued. "Where is he ? " "Dead." " And did she never go to see him ? " "No." " Then hell is too good for her," said Walden, with glowing indignation. " She would have said so herself at one time," con- tinued Miss Fairfield; "but she claims to have seen her sin, and repented and been forgiven." " Never ! " said Walden. " Oh, don't say that ! " she exclaimed. "Would you care to see her ? " " Never I " Walden simply replied. " But is that Mr. Bell's doctrine ? * Is that Christ's doctrine ? " Miss Fairfield touched the right chord. Walden remembered his own denunciations of pharisaism, and Q 226 WALDEN STANYER. he remembered his mother, and he remembered Mr. Bell ; then his eyes moistened. " She was once an old neighbour, you know. She has played the fool; she has been in the school of suffering ; she knows what it is to be without food, or warmth, or home, or friends. Eemember her mother was dead." This cut Walden to the quick, for he could imagine any one going wrong who had no mother to flee to in the time of temptation and sorrow ; he remembered how he himself flung his arms around his mother and said, " Mother, pray with me as you did when I was a little child." He was quiet for a moment. " Poor soul ! " said he ; "I feel kindlier to her. Why, Christ came to save just such " " And worse than she," Miss Fairfield interrupted. " The very worst," said Walden ; " poor soul ! poor Mr. Miller ! I wish my mother was alive ; she could do something for her." " And when you see her," said Miss Fairfield, with sweet solemnity, " you will not treat her as an outcast. If you knew what she resisted, you would honour her ; she has cut herself to pieces with reproach on account of her wicked folly, yet she has an integrity which she prizes beyond all riches." " She is awfully poor, no doubt," said Walden. "No, she is not," Miss Fairfield replied; "at the same time, she is a good deal poorer than she might be. At any time she may claim her father's money, for he willed the whole of it to her; but she says WITH MISS FAIRFIELD. 227 she cannot touch a penny of it, for she feels as if she had murdered her father. She wants to give the whole of the money and it comes to several thousands to the blessed Eescue work, to save girls who are as bad as she herself might have been but for the dear Saviour's love and power, and she wants to spend the whole of her life as an atonement for the past." " Then," said Walden, " I must see her. Did Mr. Bell see her ? Did you tell him her story ? It would have touched him to the quick: his heart is nothing but love." " Mr. Bell saw her, but I did not tell him her story, for there was no time to go into the particulars of it. Mr. Bell seemed very much interested in our kind of Christian work." " He was immensely interested in you," said Walden a remark of which Miss Fairfield took no notice, for she hastened to add that the work was the most truly blessed that the human heart could conceive, and that no luxury could be compared with it for satisfaction and enjoyment. " Our rooms," said she, "are open night and day, and no poor creature is ever turned away from our doors. You must understand, Mr. Stanyer, that our work includes prevention as well as cure. Any poor soul may flee to us for refuge. Many have been saved from the extremity of sin, and Miss Miller is one of them." " When can I see her ? " Walden inquired. " I must think about that. I understand that if you do see her you will not refer to the past, but will 228 WALDEN STANYER. take her on my word as a young woman who has played the fool and suffered for it, but who never went into outer darkness." " I will see her on your own terms, Miss Fairfield," Walden replied in a low tone ; " I am interested in her because she once belonged to my parish, and because she is now under your kind care. I think, too, Mr. Bell will be glad to hear about her." "That is just one of my points," Miss Fairfield replied. " I do not want too many people to be interested in her. She is not a curiosity to be seen in a public show. I assure you, Mr. Stanyer, Miss Miller has her feelings, and most sensitive they are, and we are bound to respect them. Now look at this as a dreadful possibility. You see the young woman ; you tell Mr. Bell about her; both of you begin to refer to her present circumstances; by-and-by the entire parish will speak of nothing else; and out of all this gossip may come no little annoyance to a poor creature whose whole life is changed." " I see all that," said Walden, " so I put myself into your hands for guidance. I will keep within any limits you may prescribe." " I do not doubt your word." " My word will be kept," said Walden, " for the subject is solemn. Even Mr. Bell shall hear nothing about it from me, and that is pledging my word as deeply as I can pledge it." "Enough. You shall see her to-morrow at ten o'clock." WITH MISS FAIRFIELD. 229 Walden would have left with this assurance, but Miss Fairfield detained and surprised him. "It is a rule of mine, Mr. Stanyer, never to lose an oppor- tunity of bringing some poor soul to the blessed Saviour, and that rule I must keep in your case. We could not do this kind of work but for the feeling that the work is Christ's, and that Christ is with us all the time we are doing it. You know that sweet word, ' the love of Christ constraineth us ; ' that is our motto ; that is our meat and drink ; we feed on Christ, and so Christ's work becomes second nature to us. Mr. Stanyer, do you heartily receive Christ as your Saviour ? " " Why do you ask me ? " Walden timidly inquired. " Because there are so many people who know a great deal about the blessed Lord, but do not tenderly and unchangeably love Him. They want to be too clever. They have turned my sweet Jesus into long, hard words which no one like me can make out. I do not believe that God saves the world by hard words. It would not be like Him. He works by love. He lays hold of the heart. He comes upon us quietly and unawares " " But He does not," said Walden, " despise the intellect He created." " No. But what you call intellect is given only here and there ; perhaps only one man in a hundred has it; it is a great gift, no doubt, so it is sparingly bestowed ; but every one can feel, every one has a heart ; every one can hear God's whisper in the soul. 230 WALDEN STANYER. I will only ask you, in all Christian love, whether you have given your heart to the blessed Saviour." It was evident to Walden that in a few moments more Miss Fairfield might have wrought herself into great excitement, and as he had received a promise that he should see Miss Miller in the morning, he thought it prudent to withdraw, lest her enthusiasm should become uncontrollable. Miss Fairfield had, however, started Walden upon the right course of thinking. " Say what we will," he soliloquized as he returned to his rooms, " people who believe what this young lady believes do more for the poor and the lost than is done by your profoundly clever men who talk learned jargon and pelt the world with polysyllables. What does all their vain talk come to ? Do they ever forego a meal in order that some poor child may be fed ? What have such men as Jenkins and Hawkins, and whatever their names may be, done in comparison with the work Miss Fairfield is doing? They discuss in darkness the metaphysical constitution of the Godhead, but this good soul seeks and saves the lost: they devote themselves to a little prig called Culture a painted puppet that is not worth worshipping ; but this woman keeps the house-door open night and day that wanderers may find shelter and rest : whilst they are talking, she is working ; whilst they are luxuriating, she is sacrificing herself for the good of others. What a fool I have been ! I thought the universe was a puzzle to be worked out, but now I WITH MISS FAIRFIELD. 231 see that the only way to be really clever is to be really good, that duty is the best explanation of mystery, and that obedience is the basis and condition of true education. God help me ! Even yet I may find liberty and rest." 232 WALDEN STANYER. CHAPTEE XXI. A DIALOGUE. Miss FAIKFIELD was for a time uncertain whether it was best that Walden should be introduced to Miss Miller, for what good object could be served? To gratify curiosity was wrong in every aspect, and what more could this introduction amount to ? On the other hand, there are unexplained impulses which it is always best to obey, as all history testifies. We never know what we are preparing for. We are always going on towards the next thing. Besides, reason's little light cannot last out to the final step in some difficult processes of thought, so the last action is one of faith ; it is like leaving the known land for the unknown sea. Why should Miss Miller be identified, gazed upon, pitied, patronized, congratulated? Let Miss Fan-field and Miss Miller talk it out, and get light by friction. Here is the frank and honest dialogue : Miss Fairfield. As Mr. Stanyer comes from your parish, he is aware of some kind of story about the A DIALOGUE. 233 Millers ; will it not be better for him to know you, and to know the truth about you ? Miss Miller. No one can know the truth ; the truth is more than what merely happened. I might tell all the facts one by one, and yet the truth would not and could not be told. Miss F. But he could be made to understand that the case against you is by no means so black as some may suppose. Miss M. But who would ever believe that such folly as mine could stop short of what is known as sin ? Besides, there is no sin greater than mine. I broke my father's heart. And he was blind, and his very blindness led him to trust me more Miss F. I am not excusing you ; I only remind you that you have repented, that your own heart has been broken, that you have found peace at the blessed Saviour's cross, and surely you have a right to claim the standing-ground of a penitent. Miss M. What if I am asked to go back to Duls- bury ? Miss F. Why not ? You owe something to your father's memory. It may be the right course to take. Go and tell your old neighbours your story, and if any social punishment is to be inflicted, you must submit to it, for you deserve it ; that very punishment may be the one thing you need to perfect your conversion. Your pride must be ground to powder. Miss M. There is more in that than in anything you have said. 234 WALDEN STANYER. Miss F. After the worst we may expect the best. We punish ourselves when by some decisive act we might end it for ever. It is like the toothache ; how much we suffer rather than have the aching tooth extracted ! I really think you might go to Dulsbury and tell the people all you can, and then prove your sincerity by a really devoted life. You might even turn your father's house into a branch of the Eescue Society. Miss M. That might be misunderstood. It might be regarded as theatrical. Miss F. Never mind ; do what you think is right, and put yourself for defence into the blessed Saviour's keeping. He has never forsaken you. When you had no home He found one for you. He intends some- thing to come out of your life, or He would not have led you as He has done. Christ wastes nothing useful. Miss M. Yes, He has led me in a wonderful way. My feet were almost gone ; my steps had well-nigh slipped. Sometimes I wonder, even now, if I am quite safe. When I think of my would-be destroyer, Jacob Watson, it is as if the bottomless pit were opening at my feet, not on his account so much as on my own, for it seems as if he might have escaped, and I should certainly have been lost. He had more excuse than I had. Oh, how could I tell the people every- thing ! They would stop me in the middle of my story and run away from me as from a raging plague. How could I explain the very first step I took ? Why did A DIALOGUE. 235 I not strangle the tempter, seeing I must either murder him or break my father's heart? But his proposals were so easy and so natural that I could see no harm in them. Perhaps I misunderstood him. Perhaps it was my vanity rather than my conscience that kept me from going straight back to my father, and telling him that I had only been a fool, not a criminal. Miss F. That would have been the thing to do. Miss M. If poor mother had been living, perhaps I would have done so. Miss F. Fathers are sometimes more pitiful than mothers. Miss M. My father never chided me. He never said one hard word to me. If I had gone back he never would have asked me one hard or sharp question. But that would have been part of my trouble. I could never have looked at him without feeling that I was wronging him in every breath I drew. All that passed before my mind before I came to my decision a decision which I now know to have been wrong. But it is too late. Poor blind father ! dear, dear father ! I have not suffered one tenth of my due. Miss F. Mr. Stanyer said hell was not hot enough for you. Miss M. He was quite right. I like him all the better for saying so. If he had treated the matter lightly, I should never have met him. His anger is his recommendation. Miss F. He turned livid with rage. Miss M. Thank God, for it shows that his heart is 236 WALDEN STANYER. neither cold nor callous. If any one tried to comfort me at the expense of the wrong I did to my father, I should despise and repulse him. This young man evidently has fine qualities. So had Jacob Watson. I am sorry to name them together ; but a strange fear comes over me lest he should in any degree entangle me and lessen my interest in work. This would seem to be impossible ; but who can say what is impossible ? As a girl of eighteen roaming in the green fields of Dulsbury, I never saw the possibility of my coming to Whitechapel. Ah me, dear old Dulsbury ! The lovely home, the childish delights, the chasing of butterflies, the gathering of wild flowers, the laughter of innocence, all this makes my heart cry in bitterness and pain. The day when I left school, and the piano which father had ready standing open for me as a present to mark my home-coming, and his insisting that the very first tune played upon it should be " Home, Sweet Home," all comes back upon me and makes my poor brain burn with fever. How his face glowed as he heard the simple strain ! and can I ever forget how he asked me to kiss his closed eyelids as well as his warm lips ? Talk about what is possible and what is impossible ! God, why did not the lightning strike me dead as I came down the green slopes of Dulsbury ? I feel as if I must go mad ! Even now I am on the brink. . . . Perhaps I had better spare myself the agony of this interview. Miss F. It will mark a new period in your life. Miss M. It will. I can never be concealed again. A DIALOGUE. 237 New responsibilities will come out of it. People will expect to hear about me, and will have some kind of claim upon me, and I shall be a sort of public property. ... I am bewildered. . . I wish I could feel the touch of a strong hand. ... I will try to sleep. . . . In my sleep I may see, . . . perhaps, I may see my father. Walden had material enough for dreaming that night, and not a thread of it was lost, though the dream-spirit did not put the threads very skilfully together, or work out a pattern which could be described in terms of art. Dulsbury, blindness, flight from home, a tempter assail- ing the ear with honied words; a woman ragged and bruised, flying through the rough wind in search of some kindly refuge; plunging rivers, steep hills, a funeral shadow darkening the sky of summer ; a deserted father; all these mixed themselves in com- pletest confusion, and yet so vividly that Walden had no doubt of the reality of the whole action. It seemed, when he awoke, that no mere commonplace could satisfy the mood which the dream had created. Only some startling revelation could preserve the fitness of things or save him from an anti-climax. Did Miss Fairfield know what she had promised when she fixed ten o'clock for the interview with Miss Miller? In words she had promised that the interview might mark a new period in Miss Miller's life. It was time that some such period should open, 238 WALDEN STANYER. for Miss Miller had long been suffering from an internal disease surgically regarded as incurable, which might possibly linger a long while, or might at almost any moment succumb to the cure of all-quieting death. No one had ever heard Miss Miller complain. No engagement relating to rescue work had been allowed to lapse on account of her personal suffer- ing. A new and tender expression investing her face with a kind of sacredness was one outcome of her continual pain. All her fellow-workers were conscious that some action was taking place which further and further separated Miss Miller from them, but in no wise diminished her sisterly love. The distance between them was of that intensely spiritual kind which myste- riously brought her nearer to them than ever she had been before, for she knew them better, saw more deeply into their experience, and touched all the line of their want and hope and penitence with a finer delicacy. In spiritual ministry Miss Miller was an angel in the house, the very sight of whom made the day longer and the work lighter. Yet the consuming disease was her own grim but fascinating secret ; a kind of bless- ing ; a sorrow that seemed to be working out for her that tribute which ought to be paid to avenging con- science and to tormenting memory. Every pang brought with it some sustaining suggestion; she was paying something ; she was making up a loss to her father; she was piecing together some garment she had torn ; somehow she was making up lost ground she could not tell just what it was, yet a feeling came A DIALOGUE. 239 with all the pain which turned the pain into a holy and acceptable visitation, and made her joyously solemn as if in the very presence of God. Midnight was scarcely past .when Mr. Young, a neighbouring doctor, was called in to see Miss Miller. He knew the case too well to make many inquiries. It was evident to him that the secret battle was nearly over, and that no one was so sure of victory as the sufferer herself. " Doctor," said she, " the meeting cannot be long put off." The doctor thought the patient's mind was wandering a little, and that as usual she was thinking of her work among the poor and the ignorant. "Pray do not think of meetings now," said he, in that kind tone which made him a favourite in the sick- chambers of the poor. " By-and-by we may think of meetings, but just now we must see if we can make you well." " I shall be well to-night." " I hope so," the doctor replied, " but we must not hasten matters. Be quite still, for if you make any exertion you will weaken yourself and increase your pain." " But the meeting will take place this very night" " Very likely," said the doctor, " but you must not be there." "Then the meeting cannot take place," she re- plied. 240 WALDEN STANYER. " So much the better," the doctor answered. " It can easily be held some other time." " Ah, doctor," said the sweet sufferer, " you think my mind is wandering; I see you do. You are always kind, and you do not want to pain me, so you try to put me off with promises that the meeting will take place by-and-by. For all you have done I thank you. No one could have been gentler. You have been my friend and helper. The dear Lord sent you to me in my pain and weakness, and He will repay you more than I can. Doctor, to-night I will meet my father. I want to meet him. I long to see him." " Has he been sent for ? " the doctor tenderly in- quired. "Ah, doctor, doctor," was the reply, "you do not know my story. My blind father died died of a broken heart. I myself put the dagger into that poor heart. He is with the dear Lord in heaven, and in heaven I will meet him to-night." After a pause she continued : " He will not reproach me. He knows all. He knows now that there may be hallucination where there is no sin. Doctor, what a life is this ! How it contradicts itself ! What fools we are in our very wisdom ! But I am tired. I never felt so tired before. I must sleep." And Walden, as I have said, was also slumbering and dreaming, and seeing a thousand miracles in the haze of sleep. He saw a white figure ascending into the starry sky, and heard as it were the voice of singing in the still night. He saw a clerical figure shadowed A DIALOGUE. 241 on the wall of an old church, and the attitude was that of a man in prayer. He saw a woman's face, of gentle- ness ineffable, and on it was written, as if in cloud, the letters of his own name. All his life passed before him in dim outline, down to the last interview with Miss Fairfield, and as it passed it left no gloom or sadness behind it. When he awoke, Walden expected to keep his dream, examine it, and enter more fully into its subtle joy. But the dream receded paled vanished, and became an incoherent memory. When the dream withdrew, the fact of the appoint- ment with Miss Fairfield became more fully realized. The meeting was to be at ten o'clock, but Walden was in the vicinity of the house at half-past nine. He would not show undue haste, as if mere curiosity had overpowered him, so he walked at a short distance from the house, but quite within view of it. He took little notice of the men who were going in and coming out, supposing that in such an institution there must be work of all kinds to do. It is a quarter to ten now, and still the window-blinds are down. While Walden wondered, and again looked at his watch, to assure himself that he was right as to the time, a hand was laid upon his shoulder. " Mr. Bell ! " he exclaimed. " Undoubtedly," was the reply ; " the very same and no other. I ran up to London yesterday afternoon, and it occurred to me that somehow we might meet here or hereabouts, and right glad I am to be in such company. What is the plan ? " R 242 WALDEN STANYER. " I have an appointment with Miss Fairfield at ten o'clock," said Walden. " Good. What impression has she made upon you ? " " The best in the world. I never met such a woman such a young woman before. But somehow her look pains me, because she seems to be suffering so much pain herself. She did not tell me a word about her suffering, but I saw it in her face and heard it in her voice." " Well," said Mr. BeU, " I will go in with you." " She recalled you perfectly," said Walden ; " and I judge from her manner that your going with me will not be disagreeable." " You thought so from her manner ? " Mr. Bell eagerly inquired. "Yes. There is only one difficulty," Walden con- tinued ; " my appointment does not refer so much to Miss Fairfield as to a young woman under her care, a young woman known here as Miss Miller, who came from Dulsbury, and got into some sort of trouble and is now all right again. How would it be for you to walk about here until I see how things are likely to go ; then I can call you in, and Miss Fairfield may talk to you while I talk to Miss Miller ? " " Perhaps that would be best. So be it. You will find me at the corner window yonder. It wants but a minute of ten." Before ten struck, Walden had rung the bell. The door was opened by a young girl whose eyes were red with tears. A DIALOGUE. 243 " Miss Fairfield at home ? " Walden cheerfully in- quired. The girl was silent. " I have an appointment with Miss Fairfield at ten o'clock," Walden continued. "Please tell her that I am here to keep it." In a tone of wonderful tenderness the girl simply answered, "Miss Fairfield died at two o'clock this morning." " Can I see Miss Miller ? " Walden inquired, with something of almost reverence in his tone. "Who?" " Miss Miller." " There is no such person in the house." " Does she never come to the house ? " " No, sir." " I expected to meet her here this morning, at ten o'clock." Walden turned away from the door, bitterly saying to himself, " Fooled again ! This comes of your fine institutions ; I won't say a word to Mr. Bell about it. There must be some mistake, for how could a dying woman be playing a trick upon me ? No, that woman could never deceive me ; truth was written all over her face. I suppose the secret, whatever it was, is dead with her." 244 WALDEN STANYER. CHAPTER XXII. HER BIBLE. WHAT inward battle Mr. Bell had to fight no one knew but himself. He made no attempt to conceal his sighing, though he did not seek the relief of articulate expression. When Walden and he hurried away from the door, Walden had no idea as to the direction in which they were walking. In a few minutes they stood opposite a public-house, and Mr. Bell looked as if he had decided to go in. " Not in here, surely," said Walden. " No, no," was the hurried reply. " You do not understand. This den is called the Bull and Dog, and it was in a hayloft belonging to this place that she was first heard of by our set. I want to see that hayloft. I want to live in it. We are now close upon holy ground." How much further Mr. Bell would have said in the same direction we cannot tell, for this speech was interrupted by the sight of a clerical friend. " Hoxton ! " he exclaimed, " you out so early ? " " Yes," said Hoxton. " But explain your presence, my friend." " We have been let me introduce my friend Stanyer HER BIBLE. 245 down to call upon Miss Fairfield, and we have just been told she is dead." "So I have been told," said Hoxton; "so we may as well all be dead in this locality. A wonderful woman. An Israelite indeed. Bell, you look quite blanched ; come round to the vestry and rest awhile." " Thanks. Not now. I must get back to work. Is it long since you saw Miss Fairfield ? " " Not a week since. I used to make opportunities for seeing her. I assure you an interview with Miss Fairfield was a means of grace, on account of her spiritual feeling and spiritual insight. Until I knew her way of looking at life and thinking about God, I did not know what Christ had done for the world. Where other people puzzled themselves with long words and hard propositions, Miss Fairfield seemed to go straight into the very innermost truth, and bring back light and strength and peace." " I saw too little of her." "I don't know," said Hoxton; "time went for nothing in her society." " You saw her often ? " "Well, of course we were passing and repassing every day, and we generally had a word." " She did not go to church, I suppose ? " "Oh no. Miss Fairfield had a church of her own. She was not exactly a Dissenter. I don't think she belonged to any sect. I may say that, if she was a Dissenter, I wish we were all Dissenters." " I wonder who will have her little things ? " 246 WALDEN STANYER. " You may be sure she would not have much to leave." " She would have a Bible." " Oh, certainly." " Hoxton, I would give fifty pounds for that Bible." " Perhaps I can get it for you." " If you can, you will be the best friend I ever had." " You want it as a sort of keepsake ? " " Yes. In a talk like this, I may tell you that I once took her Bible out of her hand and opened it. I never saw a Bible so fully marked, in red and blue and orange ; and I kept her long enough in conversation to notice the sort of passages she had marked. I went straight to my lodging and wrote them down, and as soon as I got back to Buttersfield I marked my own Bible in the same places, and I wrote sermons on the texts. They were : ' Jesus wept ; ' ' Neither shall there be any more pain ; ' ' The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them ; ' ' There shall be no night there ; ' ' And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of saints.' Oh, Hoxton ! " and the poor fellow turned away, and no man could fitly speak to him. But it was as though the bitterness of death was past. A great peace stole over the heart of Boston Bell, and he could speak of Isbel with reverent familiarity. HER BIBLE. 247 " You never heard her sing, did you ? " "No." " A most thrilling voice, powerful in its very sweet- ness, and educated by its very pathos. You could hear the falling of tears in it. Oh, my dear Bell, it has broken me down many a time." " I want to hear all about it." " Of course she sang only simple little pieces, but they went straight to the heart. I have heard all the great oratorios, but I have never been so moved as when I have heard her sing that little thing, ' Shall we gather at the river ? ' and when the people took up the chorus, ''Yes, we'll gather at the river,' I have seen strong rough men in tears." Then there was silence. Then a final word " Will you do me a favour, Hoxton ? " " Certainly." " Then," said Mr. Bell, " take this money, spend it on the loveliest wreath you can buy, and ask the people to lay it" Bell stopped "to lay it on her heart." Mr. Bell and Walden had an almost silent journey into the country. Nothing would satisfy Mr. Bell but that Walden must go with him for the night at least to Buttersfield. He had much to say, and wanted to say it at his leisure. Walden was nothing loath, 248 WALDEN STANYER. for he loved Mr. Bell as a traveller might love a guide who had shown him safe footprints in a wilder- ness. " All this," said Walden, two days after the event, " has done me good." "All what, my boy?" "All this suffering and shame and experience of many kinds. I am a new man, and I see all things in a new light. I have played the fool. When I think of all the rude things I have said, and all the vanities I have cultivated, and all the silly people I have encouraged, I burn with shame. I wish I could rub out nearly all my yesterdays." Mr. Bell let him talk freely, for his own heart was weary and ill at ease. " What I once thought mysteries I now see to be simple. I never approached religious mysteries in the right way. I thought they were to be conquered by the intellect, now I see they are illuminated by the heart. God promises everything to purity, and nothing to genius. He confides His secret to the weak, and tells His counsel to them who fear Him." " Quite right, my boy." " Then, again, I went to the Bible for the wrong things for history, science, philosophy, and everything but the right thing." " What is the right thing, Walden ? " " Christ," was the instant reply. " I put myself such questions as, What does this Book want me to HER BIBLE. 249 be and to do ? What kind of help does it offer me ? And after I got the Book's own answer, I had no doubt of the Book's inspiration. I must say that inspiration had not been properly defined to me. I looked for something mechanical, geometrical, measurable ; the truly spiritual function I had not seized properly." "But remember, Walden, you once thought that wonders could be done without the supernatural Christ." " So I did, but I no longer think so. That Christ is not supernatural but preternatural ; He is not the Christ of reason, He is the Christ of perplexity ; He is not even a dream-birth, He is a hideous conception of nightmare." " So I think, my boy." Walden warmed to his subject. " Such a Christ is useless, as well as intellectually impossible. He is small enough to be patronized. You could let Him out for hire. You could change Him according to the weather. Such a Christ is not worth stoning, and cer- tainly nobody would go to the trouble of crucifying Him." " Miss Fairfield worked under the true inspiration the inspiration that lasts longest and takes in the greatest range of service." " So I should think." "Yes, Walden, I know it. Miss Fairfield's Christ was the Saviour of the world. He was not a reformer, an educator, a pioneer, or anything of that sort. He did not found little clubs and savings banks and 250 WALDEN STANYER. debating societies; He died for the world, and rose again, and is to-day the almighty and omnipresent Factor in human progress. This was Miss Fairfield's conception, though she might put it in different words. The fact is, in my judgment, you cannot work for time until you have been filled with the very spirit of eternity; you cannot love your neighbour as yourself until you love God with all your heart. All your fire must come from the sun." " I feel that to be true, Mr. Bell." " It is true, my boy, and yet the anti-supernaturalists cannot or will not see it. They do not know that whenever they attempt to do good they are actually indebted for their impulses to the supernatural Christ whom they ignore. If I may say so, they have only a church- Christ ; that is, an ecclesiastical figure, a sort of ideal in porcelain. The true Christ, the Child of Eternity, the ineffable Sufferer, the Soul that carried the cross that the world might be saved, they never saw, they never knew, they never loved." Mr. Bell and Walden strolled leisurely towards the church, a retreat to which Mr. Bell always betook himself that he might overcome excitement, and so chasten his feeling as to turn it into an element of discipline. Dulsbury church seemed by its very age to be part of the Dulsbury landscape. It was not something rudely imposed upon the soil, but like some natural growth that had a right to be just where it was. All the trees knew it ; all the birds circled round HER BIBLE. 251 it ; all the odours of the wood and field floated round it like offered incense. Mr. Bell was within a few yards of the church door when the rural postman handed him a batch of letters, one of them longer in shape and more important-looking than the others. 252 WALDEN STANYER. CHAPTEE XXIII. THE UNEXPECTED LETTEK. THE important-looking letter was in the handwriting of Miss Fairfield, and was internally marked as having been written for Mr. Bell's confidential perusal, yet ending, as will be seen, with permission to make further use of it. The following is an unabridged transcript of the interesting communication : "SiK, " The dear Lord hath showed me that I must shortly put off this tabernacle, and as I think I know you well enough to write freely without being misunderstood, I will let my heart use my pen just as it pleases. When you read this my heart will have ceased to beat, and my spirit will be with God who made it. Blessed be the dear Lord's name, I have no fear of death, for I have given myself to Him wholly, that He may do with me what may seem good in His sight. Even my pain makes my prayer richer, and brings me much nearer to my sweet Jesus. It does not seem right not to have pain, for the dear Lord had much, and the cross laid a great darkness THE UNEXPECTED LETTER. 253 upon all His days. When I feel the pain I think Jesus sent it to me, and when it is sharpest I think it is the Lord calling away my mind to rest more com- pletely upon Him. But this pain means death. Yet what is death ? It has no sting. It can kill the body only. It is a kind of doorkeeper to the soul, opening the door to let the blood-bought soul fly away to the home we call heaven. Oh, sir, I know what it is to triumph over death, and to bid it welcome in the Lord's name. But I want to tell you one or two things which may make you doubt whether I do really know the Lord. My name is Miller " (Walden sprang to his feet as if fire had suddenly touched him, but presently resumed his position; Mr. Bell's absorption saving him from the need of explanation), " not Fairfield. I have done no sin in the particular course which led me away from home, after the manner which men call sin. A sinner, indeed, I am, for by my unpardon- able folly I have broken my father's heart. My poor father! He was blind. The young man who was his companion led me away, not by sin, but by vain imaginings, and so perverted my feeling that I could not return. I was wrong. I was basely wrong. Yet there is the black and unpardonable fact that I did not go back to my father, fall on his neck, and tell him all. It is easy to be wise at the end of things, and to see what we might have done; but the dear Lord does not let us begin at the end, and no doubt His wisdom is better than our ignorance. I have sinned against heaven. Yet but for my sin I never 254 WALDEN STANYER. should have known Jesus. You can only know Jesus by crawling to Him out of the very pit of sin. If you come to Him in any other way, you will always be finding fault with Him. But, as a clergyman, you know all this better than I do, so I will say no more about it. " I know more about you than you suppose. I have taken my own way of finding out things. You cannot ask me any questions, so you must trust my word that in writing to you I know well to whom I am writing. My work here brings me into contact with girls from various parts of the country, and if I tell you that one of these girls was from the parish of Buttersfield you will be able to guess a good deal. If I tell you that the girl was once a servant in the house of the Eev. Walton Bruce, of Overton, you will probably guess still more. If I tell you that I have had interviews with that good, simple-hearted, but pharisaical man in this very house, you will be able to see a little further in some directions. Oh, sir, how little that poor man knows about the dear Lord's cross ! He has taken up the Church as a profession, or as a livelihood, and the sweet Saviour has not handed to him the keys of the bright kingdom. " My dear father, a name I kiss as I write it, left me all his money. I have made you and Mr. Walden Stanyer (you see I know some of your local names) my executors, free of all responsibility, and the property THE UNEXPECTED LETTER. 255 will in due time come into your hands for distribution. Great care has been taken to make everything right in the eye of the law, so you need have no fear. You will have pleasure in helping the poor and lightening the load of the overburdened, for this is the very work of Him who bore the cross for us. Oh, to work for Jesus, this is bliss ! Now this is about all I have to say. All the rest will be made clear to you when I have been taken away. Not a penny of my dear father's money have I touched, for I was not worthy to lay a ringer upon it. The money was the reward of honesty, now let it be the servant of the poor. By-and-by you may make some use of this letter. If in any way you can use it so as to bring glory to the Lord who saved me when I was beyond the reach of every other hand, pray do what you think is best. I am weary, yet I am glad. God bless you ! " The two men sat under an old yew-tree in Dulsbury churchyard as they read the letter with absorbing interest. If tears fell upon the paper, there was no reason to be ashamed of the noble weakness. Of course they would accept the trust. They would do so for her sake, for Christ's sake, for the sake of the poor. Here was the very office that would balance their sentiment and dignify their speculation. How small the world seemed to them to be! Here was little, secluded Dulsbury, away among the green hills, palpitating with the tragic, tumultuous life of London ! The very churchyard in which they were sitting lost its 256 WALDEN STANYER. antiquity and mossy quietude under such unexpecte I revelations. " There is one sentence in this letter," said Mr. Bell, " which puts to flight all the sentimental brood." " The whole letter does that," said Walden. " True ; but one sentence is an answer to all the whining and refining and high canting of the snobs." "Which is it, Mr. Bell?" " This : ' You can only know Jesus by crawling to Him out of the very pit of sin.' That is it. There will, of course, be modifications of the term, but the substantial truth is there. Why, there is not a single ' sinner ' in some modern novels ! They are literary exquisites; they are dainty critics; they are well- dressed visitors at a flower-show ; they are persons who give opinions about the Saviour of the world! It is along the other line we must come to Christ along the line of sin and need and helplessness and shame ; then we see how wonderful is His character, and still more wonderful His salvation. Yes, Walden, Miss Fairfield has hit it." The two men fell into silence. In their eyes was the far-away look of wonder, broken by sudden kindlings of expectancy, as if presently the letter might be supplemented, or read to them, by the very voice of the writer. " Her own handwriting," said Mr. Bell, looking upon the letter, and turning it over and over with significant tenderness. THE UNEXPECTED LETTER. 257 " What wonderful self-control she had ! " Walden added. " You mean in conversation ? " " I mean in everything. I can never forget her look, her voice, and the thrilling touch of her hand. But there is something I never told you." " What is that, Walden ? " " I thought she had deceived me, or made a fool of me." " Of you ? " " Yes, sir. I had not the heart to tell you about it, but I can do so now, for everything has been made clear." "Well?" " In the interview I had with her the night before she died, she told me all Miss Miller's story, and promised that I should see Miss Miller herself at ten o'clock the next morning. You know what happened. When the girl told me that Miss Fairfield was dead, I asked to see Miss Miller, and the girl said she knew no such person. My heart sank within me, but I decided to say nothing. Now the whole thing is explained." " And now," said Mr. Bell, " we must work for her." " For ever ! " Walden exclaimed, with sudden energy; " it will be like working for my mother, it will be like working for Christ." " Now, my dear Walden, we want to ask a thousand questions, but the only lips that could answer them are closed for ever. The world is full of unanswered 3 258 WALDEN STANYER. questions. I want to know Ah, well, it is use- less, we must wait." Yes, we must wait. Our noisy, incoherent, bewilder- ing time must be rounded and glorified by God's eternity. We know it, yet we forget it. We know that our school-period is Eternity, yet our impatient vanity wants to anticipate at least an outline of all that is to come, and the Lord be that Lord infinite life or infinite space will not have it so. We should have less scepticism if we had more patience. ( 259 CHAPTER XXIV. HOXTON'S LETTER. IT was a holy resolve, yet the very utterance of it gave pain to the man who made it. His feeling was that he was making himself a kind of double traitor. Boston Bell was not a married man in the ordinary sense, but he was deeply wedded to a memory and a vow, and these he felt he had dishonoured by the hold which he allowed Sister Isbel to get upon his heart, and even this was a mean way of mitigating his faithlessness, because it was involving a perfectly innocent lady in some degree of responsibility. But to foresee is not the prerogative of man. It is always on the other side of the hedge that heaven basks in its fullest glory. Beyond the next turn, at the top of the rough hill, the angel is awaiting us. It is better, there- fore, to have a parenthesis within every vow that relates to the future. To-morrow is as invisible as God. But this was Boston Bell's plight. He thought heaven was in his yesterdays, whereas it is always descending in a cloud whose glory appeals to the prepared vision. Within a week from the day of this solemn resolution, 260 WALDEN STANYER. Boston Bell received the following letter from his brother Hoxton : " Herewith, my dear Bell, receive a precious treasure. By every right it is yours, not mine ; yet I part with it reluctantly, and even grudgingly. Your vicarage will be the sweeter and the heavenlier because of this Bible. I have, after the remarks you made, ventured to look into it, and I find it to be in very deed a kind of auto- biography, a secret record of the heart. You will find a good many papers gummed into it ; these, I need not say, I have not read a word of, though there is no con- cealment about them ; it is only right, however, that I should say that my eye caught your signature on one of the papers, and this seems to confirm your title to have the book. I thought I could get it for you ; here it is. I am glad to have served a friend. "What I want to tell you something about is the funeral. I may begin by saying that there never was anything like it in Whitechapel. Even I, though residing for years on the very spot, had no idea how widely Miss Fairfield was known and how deeply she was respected. I call her Miss Fairfield, but the name that was on every tongue was ' Sister IsbeL' It appears, after all, that she did not belong to the Salvation Army, though she was never tired of saying that she owed everything to that irregular and peculiar society. Her work seemed to be very largely her own, as one might have expected from her original cast of mind. Do you know, I think her mind revealed itself in her very eyes. HOXTON'S LETTER. 261 There was something entrancing and beguiling in her expression as she looked straight at one. The soul that shone through them is now satisfied with the delights of heaven. But I am digressing. I think I am within the mark in saying that not fewer than ten thousand people were gathered around her grave. It might have been a bridal scene, so gloriously did the whole sky suggest liberty and life and immortality. Your wreath, roses and lilies, interspersed with maidenhair, I de- posited with my own hands, and I am afraid I got credit for the beautiful contribution, though on a plain little card I wrote this legend ' ISBEL. From Buttersfield, where she will live in many a dream.' " In writing these words, I think, my dear Bell, I rightly interpreted and expressed your feelings. In more respects than one the crowd was really wonderful. I don't think any big folks were at the funeral ; most of them would probably be at the Drawing-Eoom which the Prince of Wales was holding on behalf of the Queen. But the poor people, the people with sorrow written in every line of their faces, the people to whom life had apparently been cruel, how can I represent their number, their feeling, their conduct ! One of the better-dressed sort (but when I say better-dressed, you should really see the pathetic spectacle) gave a short speech or address perhaps 'sermon' would be a 262 WALDEN STANYER. better word which was profoundly affecting ; at least, I, for one, could not keep back the grateful tears. He took as a text or motto ' They cannot recompense thee, but thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.' " It appears that Isbel herself was a kind of preacher, and that people would listen to her who would listen to nobody else. I tell you frankly, my friend, that we make a mistake if we think poor people can be put off with any kind of twaddle; we may be too high- falutin' for them, but in poetic sensibility and manly feeling it will take us all our time to get ready for them. I should tell you, by the way, that not fewer than thirty young people, all in simple uniform, and looking as if they were living flowers, walked round the grave, singing in a very thrilling way ' Now the labourer's task is o'er ' and each dropped a small floral offering on the coffin. The whole thing would have charmed you by its tender and reverent simplicity. One little incident I must tell you. I suppose it was because I was a clergyman that the poor fellow made up to me. As to his get-up, he was the very pick of Whitechapel. I should describe him as Whitechapel at its best. I could not but be touched by the way in which he combed his hair, and I believe I am right in the idea that he had rubbed a little pomatum on it. Being a funeral, I think this was very probable. He stood bareheaded HOXTON'S LETTER. 263 at the grave. Soon after the ' Amen ' he came up to me, as I stood a little on one side, and said 'Name o' Butcher, sir; well beknown round here ' " ' Yes.' ' I was a bad un as you may say, up and down bad.' "'Yes.' "'She were like new milk to us all, sir, big and little ' " ' Yes.' "'Allus so cheery, and allus a-reading among the sunshine.' "'Yes.' " ' If there was no sunshine when she came, there was a heap on't before she was there five minutes.' " ' Yes.' " ' It was all begun in the hayloft at the Bull and Dog, when the gents as didn't know what they was a-talking about some silly gents as could hardly find their way up and downstairs, and I wanted the job o' chucker-out, as some o' the fellows was a-getting a little hot and cheeky ' " I hadn't the least idea what he was talking about. " ' She were there, sir.' " ' Oh, indeed.' " ' I know it, 'cos I spoke to her and walked a bit with her.' "'Good.' 264 WALDEN STANYER. " ' And didn't she drop a hot cinder on the coat-tails o' them funny gents, and make them look as if they would be glad o' a pail o' water ? ' " ' Did she ? ' " ' I tell ye. I saw it, and I was kind o' sorry for the poor chaps, 'cos I believe they was not a bad- meaning sort, only they was kind o' sufficated by what they was a-trying to say, as if there was a bag o' feathers i' their mouth.' " ' Well ? ' " ' She talked to me like running treacle, and I'm blessed if she didn't give me a bit o' a prayer to say over and over again ; and when I told my missus, she fell a-crying and a-going on, and we set to and touched up our little room a bit, and cleaned ourselves decent- like ; and my missus sent these bits o' flowers, and she kissed them afore she sent them, and I am stopping about 'cos I want to put them in down there when there's nobody a-looking.' " ' Why do you want nobody to see ? ' " ' Because I want to say something when I throw them in.' " ' Anything you can tell me ? ' " ' I want to say, " Bless ye, miss, and Whitechapel is very poor to-day 'cos you are not a-smiling among us." ' " I thought you would like to know this. The telling of it does not admit of being written, but let me assure you the poor fellow trembled with genuine feeling, and clearly showed that there is a work to be done HOXTOWS LETTER. 265 among what we call the slums and the outcasts that any man might well consider it worth his while to do. Good-bye, my dear Bell ; it has been a delight to me to serve you in this matter. If I can do anything more, I do hope you will not fail to say what it is. Another ' God bless you/ and another grip of your manly hand. Farewell" 266 WALDEN STANYER. CHAPTER XXV. WALDEN'S LETTEK. AND Walden ? He must tell his own simple story. In the valley of the shadow of death wise men see visions that never shine on the summer hills. Maybe Walden did. "MY DEAEEST FRIEND, "How can I thank you enough for sending me Mr. Hoxton's letter ? What a blessed gospel it is ; what a treasure more than gold ! I feel as if I had been baptized from heaven, and baptized by her own dear hand. Her life makes mine look so poor. I am ashamed of myself with a most consuming and humiliating shame. Whilst I have been befooled by intellectual vanity and unprofitable conceit, she was blessing many a heart, and driving from many a life the chilling shadows of despair. I bid farewell to my miserable past, and begin a new and useful life, sacred to the memory of Isbel the sainted. " Do you know, that since we have learned her story I have been able to clear up one or two things that before had no meaning to me. I had heard vague WALDEN'S LETTER. 267 references made to a young woman who had repeatedly been to Dulsbury churchyard, but no one paid any attention to the circumstance, because her nurse's dress seemed to show that her visits were in some way merely official. I went myself to the churchyard and found out Mr. Miller's grave, and it was like a little garden. ' The money comes regularly for it,' the sexton told me, ' no matter how expensive the flowers ; and it is a pleasure to work for the lady.' I asked if she was dressed like a nurse, but the sexton said she was not, though a nurse did sometimes come and ' look round.' I have no doubt that Isbel worked through a companion whom she brought from London, as she would not care to be personally identified, and turned into a kind of roving romance. ' The nurse is a sufferin' bit lassie,' said the Scotch sexton to me one day ; ' it made my heart sare to see the poor thing. I have no idea wha' she can be, for I am only a new hand meesel ; but the lassie talks like a preacher, and wants to d' iverybody guid.' That corresponds very closely with what Hoxton says, and leaves on my mind no doubt as to the identity of the nurse. "So much for one matter, but I have something more to tell you. The experiences we have had together and the instruction you have given me are going to have some happy issues. The other day I went as usual to the churchyard you know for what purpose and who should confront me but Mr. Bruce ? That we should meet within sight of my mother's 268 WALDEN STANYER. grave simply matured and sanctified the feeling of which I had been conscious for a considerable time. At first the old gentleman was stiff and distant in his manner, as indeed I might have expected, for I bitterly accused myself of injustice in my attitude towards him. " ' Mr. Bruce,' said I, ' allow me to speak to you.' " He merely bowed. " ' I have not acted properly towards you for years.' " There was an accent of wonder in his eyes. '"My speech and my attitude must have been offensive. I apologize.' " He put his arm through mine without saying a word, and led me to my mother's grave. We stood before it silently. I saw fine lines in the old man's face, on which my eyes rested with surprise. A strong feeling came over me that behind such a face there must be a really honest and good-meaning man, and I longed for him to make some answer to my apology, feeling at the same time that the answer must be gracious, because his face was so serene. " ' Walden.' " ' Yes, sir.' " ' I am an old man and you are a young one.' "'So.' " ' Your apology is welcome to my old heart.' "'Thank God.' " ' Let me tell you that many of your remarks set me thinking. I detested them at the time, and probably I did not conceal my disgust. They were startling. WALDENS LETTER. 269 They were utterly foreign to the spirit of the school in which I was trained, and they gave me real offence ' " ' You have my apology.' "'Enough. No man lowers himself by a frank apology. But, in memory of one of our early inter- views, it will surprise you to hear a man like me acknowledge that there is a good deal of drama in human life.' " ' You amaze me.' " ' I thought so. But you see that in my own way I am making a kind of apology to you.' " I started. " ' All right. I have given my mind a wider outlook. I have introduced far more elements into my method and range of thinking. I see now that life is indeed a drama in the sense in which you once defined that word ' " ' Why, Mr. Bruce ! ' I gasped. " ' My boy, it is I who was looking at things from the wrong standpoint. We live a wonderful life.' " ' My heart is full of joy.' "'And so is mine, Walden. I seem to know now the real meaning of being born again. I am a new man.' " ' Wonderful ! ' was all that I could exclaim. " ' And infinitely more wonderful than you have any idea of. Can you tell me anything about good old Upfield?' "'Not a word. I lost sight of him. The last 270 WALDEN STANYER. time I was in London I went to his house near the British Museum, but I could hear nothing of him. He never wrote letters if he could help it ; I don't think I ever had a letter from him. Mr. Upfield had no small-talk, no gossip, no news ; he was absorbed in his philosophical studies.' " ' Exactly so. I can tell you something about him.' " ' How glad you make me ! ' " ' I called to see him more than once or twice. But that is not what I have to tell you. I was with him when he died ' " ' When he died ? ' " ' Yes. Nor is that all. During the closing days of your mother's illness I had occasion to be in London, and it so happened that I ran up to see our old friend for half an hour, and, to my unspeakable regret, I found him unconscious. I sat at his bedside, and held his hand until he passed away. There was a time, which will be clearly in your memory, when you and I would have thought such a circumstance impossible. But I got to know him better. Walden, Mr. Upfield and your dear mother died on the same day.' " ' And this is her sacred resting-place.' " ' And before this holy shrine you and I are reconciled, and hereafter we shall live in a larger and clearer understanding.' "'That is absolutely certain. But now there is another point I should like to mention ' " ' Certainly.' " ' I feel that you will not be offended ' WALDEWS LETTER. 271 " ' On the contrary.' " ' It is about your clerical friend, Mr. Bell of Buttersfield.' " ' Well ? ' " ' I know him so thoroughly that I am sure you would honour him.' " ' You don't know everything about Mr. Bell, Walden.' " ' Not a soul in all the world can truly say a word against him.' " ' You have no doubt about that ? ' " ' Not a shadow.' " ' I know one soul, as you say, that knows much ' " ' Impossible ! ' " ' Be calm, my boy that knows a good deal in his favour.' " ' Oh ! that's right.' " ' And that poor old soul is at this moment looking at you ? ' " ' Mr. Bruce ! ' " ' The very same. I told you there was a good deal of drama ' " ' That's what I told you.' " ' You did, and I didn't believe it, and I treated you as an outcast for saying it; but I have lived to prove that the young man was right ' " 'What, about Mr. Bell ? ' " ' A good deal about Mr. Bell, and something that no one else can tell you.' 272 WALDEN STANYER. " ' Then let us sit down/ said I. " So we walked to the porch of the church and sat down on one of the inside forms, and Mr. Bruce made these remarks : " ' You know that Mr. Bell preaches a good deal in London ; no doubt you know that he is quite a popular favourite at St. Paul's ' "'Yes.' " ' Well, I have gone again and again to hear him. At first I did not like his manner ; I thought it aggressive and domineering. But careful study of his matter enabled me to get over that, and I may frankly tell you that he has given me a totally new view of the kingdom of God.' " ' That's the man.' " ' I used to think that we could not get beyond certain formal and mechanical arrangements ; that to keep within these was orthodoxy, and to go beyond them was heterodoxy. Mr. Bell has changed all that. The kingdom of God is a spirit, a temper, a heart-rule, an infinite love. That is what I have learnt from Mr. Bell.' " ' Mr. Bruce, I want to jump fifty feet in the air.' " ' That's the old Walden.' "'Yes, it is; I am a boy again. I think I have seen the resurrection.' "Then we were silent, for the fitness of things required that such talk should flow into the 'silent sea.' It seemed to me as if I was in the middle of a miracle, and did not know what was to happen next. WALDEWS LETTER. 273 The most romantic things were probable common- places. If you were to accuse me of taking side- glances at Mr. Bruce, I could not deny ' the soft impeachment ; ' for, strange as it may appear, I, none other than Walden Stanyer, did actually suspect the Eev. Walton Bruce of insanity when he expressed my own sentiments and convictions ! How very queer we all are ! If you had said just what Mr. Bruce said, it would have been taken as a matter of course, but Mr. Bruce himself saying it was regarded as in danger of lunacy ! No wonder he thought me a young lunatic when I said such things years ago, for I thought him intellectually insecure when he espoused and repeated my own cherished creed. Beading up to this point, I can imagine your look of surprise, but that half-amused look will deepen and darken into stupefaction when I tell you that Mr. Bruce introduced the name of Isbel ! I little knew, when I was poking juvenile fun at Mr. Bruce, how dangerous a man he might become. I used to think him little more than a soft, weak old woman, but it was my sagacity that was at fault. When I say 'dangerous,' I mean how dangerous he might have been if he had taken up the wrong side. His energy is invincible. Under all that demure clerical prudence and icy decorum there is something like a volcano. What do you think? Mr. Bruce had seen Isbel at Whitechapel, and he knew that you had spoken to her, and had other communication with her! It is simply astounding. Thank God our intercourse with Isbel has not T 274 WALDEN STANYER. lowered us in his esteem ; indeed, I think it has done us service. If Mr. Bruce calls upon you, I know how graciously you will receive him. " I must close. You cannot take much interest in our petty local affairs, because you know so little of us. The nice little Scotch woman who frightened you at first is going to marry a well-to-do widower, who hates bantams ; and Mary Butler is engaged to the Vicar of Wittledean, who has broad views and a narrow income. I mention these things because you know the women. Good-bye for the present. We are rich in our owner- ship of a common memory, and I am afraid I do not add much to your wealth by the assurance that, come hill or dale, bloom or frost, " I am your " WALDEN." Mr. Boston Bell, the famed orator of St. Paul's, kissed the letter and gummed it into label's Bible ; for the writer was as Jonathan to David. Little did Mr. Bell imagine that there was yet another note to be placed in that sacred receptacle ; it was from Miss Butler, and ran thus : " Walden Stanyer thinks you would like to have a letter from me respecting Miss Miller, as I had some opportunity of knowing how really and simply good she was. I knew her father, poor dear Mr. Miller, and many a time he made reference to Isbel, always WALDEWS LETTER. 275 assuring me of his confidence that one day she would clear her fame and be an honour to her parents. Oh, Mr. Bell, it was so touching to watch him when he spoke about Isbel, especially when he put out his hands as if groping for her, and when his blind eyes looked as though he really saw her ! Do you know, that once or twice I was tempted to rush into his arms as if I were Isbel. But it is almost impossible to deceive a blind man's sensitiveness ; besides, any attempt of the kind would only have added to the misery it was meant to comfort. I am telling you this not to show what I would have done, but to give you some idea of Mr. Miller's soft and tender heart. I know, and Isbel knew, how wrong it was for her not to come straight back and tell how bitterly she had been deceived. Mr. Miller was not one of those stony-hearted fathers who require minute explanations and elaborate apologies ; the voice of his child was all that he wanted to hear. It is the same with God. But that is not what I am now writing about. I want to tell you that long after her father's death I got to know Isbel through and through, and I was confident that God had not a more loving child in all His boundless family. We never met without her reading a few verses out of the Bible (Walden tells me he knows where that Bible is now), and asking me to kneel with her as she prayed. Until Isbel read the Bible I never knew what the Bible had to say to me. She explained it by her voice, and by her smile when she looked at me in the middle of the lesson. Mr. Bell, I do wish you could have heard 276 WALDEN STANYER. Isbel pray. You know we pray out of a Prayer-book, but Isbel prayed out of her heart, and it seemed as if God and she were face to face. Once she almost frightened me as she said in a soft low tone, ' A little nearer, Lord,' as if she wanted to whisper to Him. I opened my eyes and looked round, quite expecting to see a spirit ; but what more spiritual could I have seen than Isbel's own face ? It was full of light. It was a living glory ! I cannot write more. My heart is too full. 277 EPILOGUE. IN closing my intercourse with all these people, I wish to put into words something of the faith and feeling which survive the whole action of the story. The dramatic framework has served its purpose, and may drop to pieces ; let me now inquire as to the vital issues which take their mere mould and colour from transient personalities, but derive their true force and influence from unseen and immeasurable sources. The Christian Faith has nothing to fear from outside attack. Its nominal friends may hurt it, but not its avowed opponents. Nominal friends do not all see the full scope and the one purpose of the faith which they profess ; they are solicitous about details and incidents which do not affect the main thought ; in their idolatry of the form they may easily overlook or underestimate the reality of the power. Orthodoxy has often been its own foe, simply by mistaking nearness for greatness, and human conceit for divine revelation. The Christian gospel may be condensed into one expression, " salvation by Christ," and should bind itself to that one word as alone essential in the earlier spiritual experience. Christianity is only sent to the lost. It has nothing to say to the self-satisfied, the vain-minded, or the 278 WALDEN STANYER. proud in heart. Neglect of this fact has led to much wasteful battle. Christianity is God's answer to man's heart-cry. To mere intellect the gospel has nothing to say. It has come to show us our sinfulness, God's love, and Christ's cross. If we are not conscious of need, we have no business to discuss the meaning of Calvary. All this is luminously and pathetically illustrated by the personal ministry of our Lord. When did He call " the righteous " to repentance ? When did He tell a Pharisee that he was not far from the Kingdom of Heaven? On the other hand, He went after "that which was lost;" He companied with publicans and sinners ; He recalled prodigal sons ; He healed broken hearts ; He welcomed the self-accused and the self- despairing. What is the attitude of Christian service to-day ? Are we not much too anxious to reconcile reason; and further, to assure science that our dispo- sition is friendly, and to give the higher criticism the foremost seat in the synagogue ? We have thus taken away the function of Christ, and made Him a common man. We have forgotten that He is not a debater, but a Saviour, and that as a Physician He came only to the sick. It becomes clearer year by year that the authority of Opinion must be denned and modified if Christian Society, or the Christian Church, is to be preserved and turned to the highest uses. What is the un- changeable or permanent quantity in the Church ? History shows that Opinion is not unchangeable ; by so much, therefore, the answer is simplified. If EPILOGUE. 279 Opinion is necessarily and happily changeable, then all formal creeds, catechisms, and standards are also changeable as expressions of human judgment upon divine or spiritual questions. They have, of course, transient importance as indicating points of progress or phases of education, but they can have no finality, and therefore no abiding authority. The " fathers " have never been allowed to think for us on astronomy, chemistry, biology, or navigation, except in the usual temporary sense, and more than this should not be claimed for them in questions theological and spiritual. They never claimed more for themselves. The very fact that, either by correction or enlargement, Protestant theologians have amended former creeds, is proof enough that they recognized the liberty of others to advance upon what they themselves had done. They would not have amended what they believed to be divine ; that they did not believe human creeds to be divine is proved by the fact that they amended them. I have to submit that Opinion, by being put into a false position, has been clothed with factitious authority ; and that not until Opinion has been properly defined and limited, can wise and useful union be established in other words, that Christian life and co-operation are now suffering from mis- placement of emphasis. The supreme question should be What would the Founder of Christianity do were He to return to the Church? I cannot but feel that He would at once 280 WALDEN STANYER. banish every formal and pedantic theologian from His altars. Scribes and Pharisees were always excluded from His approbation. To make theology a science is to make the Church an academy. From my point of view, the Church is better represented by the term " hospital " than by the term " college " or " univer- sity ; " and if there is any better term than " hospital," it is the term " nursery." All pomp of ceremony, all grandeur of institutionalism, all technicality of learn- ing, seem to be foreign to the spirit and purpose of Jesus Christ; indeed, all organization other than brotherhood may easily become a stumbling-block in the way of vital progress. Why ? Because it has its monopolies, its vested interests, its stubborn pre- cedents, its official successions, and its sensitive re- munerations. Mechanical organization easily lends itself to the service of skilled hands. Christ never carried organization further than divine communion and mutual edification. His disciples were meant to be living men, who had living answers to living questions. That livingness, if I may so say, is the unchangeable and permanent quantity in the Church. The Church that wants to mould the nineteenth century by opinions that 'were suited to the fourth century, will be justly relegated to the antiquity whose very spirit it has failed to interpret. We are only true followers of Christ in proportion as we are filled with His spirit. What was His spirit ? We recognize its holiness, nobility, and beneficence, more clearly per- haps than we recognize its revolutionariness, its onward EPILOGUE. 281 pressure, its vehement and unquenchable aspiration. We have deposited our theology in the Court of Arches or the Court of Chancery, whereas Christ lived His theology and embodied it in the uplifted and enriched lives of other men. We write our doctrines in trust- deeds ; Christ wrote His in the human heart. Christ lived evermore towards the present and the future ; we live dreamily and superstitiously in the past. Can anything be further from true veneration for Christ ? But this is always so. Men memorialize Luther, and then wish to live quiet lives. Men give monumental brass to heroes dead, and denounce all living heroes as demagogues. So with Christ ; in history He is heroic, in present action He is a convenience or a compromise. What, then, would Christ do were He to come again ? The most of our institutionalise! He would burn as with fire; endowments and funds, investments and securities, parchments and protections, He might con- sume as stubble. It is at once irrational and hopeless to suppose that all men can be united in Opinion upon subjects which relate to things infinite and eternal, yet it is equally irrational to suppose that there is no solid ground of true and practical union. It will be asked, " How can two walk together except they be agreed ? " But, I answer, agreed in what ? Is the agreement in opinion or in something deeper ? And, again, what is " walking together " ? Is it identity, or complement of thought ? Is the one companion a voice, and the other an echo ? Has it been made possible by some unheard-of miracle 282 WALDEN STANYER. that two men see everything from the same point of view, use words with identical colour and emphasis, keep together pari passu in all intellectual movement, and practically cancel each other's identity by mutual fusion ? This would be miracle enough, but what would it be in the case of two more, and two hundred, and two thousand, and two million ? In some such way we may enable ourselves to see that unity in mere Opinion is not a miracle, but an impossibility. In some other direction must unity be looked for. True unity must be found in true feeling. All the higher senti- ments may be said to yearn for unity. Veneration, tenderness, religious consciousness, aspiration, felt need of sympathy, assured kinship with higher life than we have yet realized, the instinct of human brotherhood, and all the action of moral discipline and service, along this living line men may meet in helpful and enduring fellowship, even when their opinions are in open conflict. Yet the war of Opinion will be chastened and probably sanctified by the influence of holy and gracious feeling. A tender heart will soften an exasperated tongue. Far be it from me to suggest the suspension of intellectual activity ; I would change its centre, or enlarge its orbit, or purge its vanity, but certainly not discourage its reverent ambition. I would submit the proposition that a religious doctrine is larger than any form in which it can be expressed, and that consequently the form cannot be regarded as sufficient and final. To this I would add, that orthodoxy should not be judged by the form, which is temporary because EPILOGUE. 283 imperfect, but by the doctrine, which is indestructible because essential. Let us look at instances. One theologian says that the impenitent wicked are sentenced to conscious torment throughout eternal duration ; another says that they die, it may be after a certain period ; another says that remedial ministries operate beyond the grave, and that a time will come when all souls will find restoration through obedience. Can these opinions ever be reconciled? Clearly not. Who shall say which of them is right, since each of the three theologians is armed with chapter and verse ? If one of them was an interpreter of the Bible, another an inventor of religious philosophies, and a third a good-natured sentimentalist, it might be easy to decide which to follow ; but this is far from being the case. Each blames the other for not understanding the Bible ; each has his lexicon and grammar; each claims to represent the very thought and purpose of God. Is there, then, any modus vivendi available to all three, and consistent with genuine and useful unity ? From my point of view there is. They all agree in the con- demnation of sin ; they all agree that sin must undergo punishment; they all agree that the punishment due to sin must be inflicted by God and not by man: agreeing upon all these vital points, they might com- plete their agreement by saying, submissively, but confidently: Let us leave the rest with God; He will do that which is right : the one absolute certainty is that sin cannot escape punishment. Surely in this 284 WALDEN STAN YE R. agreement there is no lack of energy, and no lack of solemn inspiration in the work of seeking the imme- diate salvation of the world. Look at the various theories of the Atonement. One theory is known as substitutionary, or vicarious ; an- other as moral and exemplary; another is revelatory of a certain economy of Sacrifice which is supposed to pervade the universe. Are these theories reconcilable ? Possibly not. Yet each theorist has his chapter and verse. One blames the other for not taking the plain words of Scripture. In this instance, as in the former, let us see how many points of agreement there are. Each agrees that sin must be divinely or supernaturally treated ; each agrees that Christ came into the world to bear away its sin ; each agrees that by Christ alone is human redemption possible : why not rest there ? Let each man see Christ's work in his own way ; let him even change that way from time to time, according to varying light : the one thing that is never changeable is that the Atonement comes from the divine side, not the human, because it is in the power of God alone to deal with human sin. Here we return to the proposi- tion that the doctrine of the Atonement is greater than any form in which it can be expressed ; it may, indeed, include all forms, and having included them all, may overflow them all. In other words, unity will be found in the doctrine, not in any one method of its statement. About the Bible itself there is no lack of diverse EPILOGUE. 285 opinion. To some minds its punctuation is inspired : every jot is immediately from heaven. To others there is no mechanical inspiration, or inspiration that assumes final mechanical form. Some do not hesitate to dis- tinguish between the Bible being the Word of God, and the Word of God being found in the Bible. Others are satisfied with the view that the Bible is an inspired presentation of the development of the religious instinct, and of God's action upon the human mind. Some believe that humanity, not mere individuality, is inspired. These opinions never can be brought into harmony. But there is no need to harmonize them if we accept the doctrine that the greater should rule the lesser. Once more look at the points of agreement. It is agreed that revelation is possible; it is agreed that revelation is actual ; it is agreed that, as in no other book, God speaks to man in the Bible; it is agreed that in the Bible every form of human experience is anticipated and provided for. Here is basis enough for intelligent and cordial union. The men who accept such a basis cannot yield themselves to any merely wanton liberty, for by the very admissions they have made they have shown that any liberty they claim must be regulated by reverence, and must contribute to the consolidation of the central doctrine. The quality of character assumed in all this discussion is too high, and too sacred, to admit the frivolous supposition that the men can be at once earnest and licentious in thought. When such men claim liberty, their claim is limited and specialized by their character. 286 WALDEN STANYER. Christian life and co-operation are now suffering from a misplacement of emphasis. Take the Sabbath question as an illustration. Some persons contend that Saturday should be observed as the Sabbath; according to others, the Sabbath extends from the twilight of one day to the twilight of another ; others concern themselves with the quality and degree of work permissible on the Sabbath day : these are questions which cannot be authoritatively settled, so the result of their discussion is disappointment and irritation. The emphasis is directed to the wrong points. The thing that is universally and heartily conceded is the need of rest, and all beyond that is matter of locality, convenience, or expediency. If any man insists that all the days of the week should be spent in labour, he is a heretic ; on the other hand, the man who claims one day in seven for rest is by so much a true disciple of Christ. Why not magnify the point of agreement, and leave details to be adjusted by special conditions ? In the need of rest find the law; in the method of profiting by it find the sphere of liberty. But even in the method of profiting by it there may be another division into law and freedom ; thus, one man will have early communion, another will have liturgical prayer, another will have extempo- raneous service, another will invoke the spirit and invite the solaces of Nature. Is there any point in which such men can agree ? If there is, then that is the point to which all emphasis should be directed. Compared with that all other points are unimportant. EPILOGUE. 287 The point of unity is in the avowed need of worship the outgoing of the soul towards personalities or ministries above us, yet accessible to aspiration eloquent or speechless. " Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." One man wants much church, another wants little ; one man haunts with delight the sanctuary of a parish, another pines for the free communion of what he calls Nature. Be it so. No man can be damned for loving and studying the marvellous works of God. Personally, I cannot accompany that man. I need something other warmer, closer, tenderer ; some- thing which more deeply affects my moral moods. What I want I could not find in Nature, and what the other man wants he could not find at church ; yet we both agree in our conscious need of rest, and in our aspiration after something beyond and above. Why not magnify the point of agreement, and then cede to one another the right of private judgment ? This course of reasoning necessarily ends in such a modification of formal creeds as amounts to their practical extinction as vital instruments. Nor is such extinction to be deplored, because (1) authoritative or official creeds virtually close all theological inquiry ; as for private judgment, it is simply deposed with contempt: the Church becomes an organization, with an organized creed, an organized orthodoxy, and an organized tribunal; and thus individual criticism or individual dissent is robbed of the dignity of con- viction and degraded to the level of impertinence. 288 WALDEN STANYER. . There is the creed, how dare you question it ? There is the deliverance of the elders, why cavil against it ? There is the united judgment of the ages, why not thankfully accept it ? Not only is inquiry prohibited, but (2) brotherhood is weakened and impeded by suspicion. A thinker is easily mistaken for a heretic. Worse than this, mechanical repetition is easily mistaken for steadfast sincerity. A creed comes to be regarded as a species of ecclesiastical currency, and therefore to clip it, or enlarge it, or rewrite its superscription, is an offence against the papal mint which must be severely punished. (3) The main- tenance or defence of literal creeds often means the subordination of the spirit to the letter, and by so much becomes a protest against all intellectual pro- gress. Ecclesiastical history may be cited in witness. If creeds could keep hypocrites out of the Church, they would serve a useful purpose ; but the contrary is the fact, for the greater the knave, the less difficulty will he have with any creed. But hypocrisy is not the only evil to be dreaded. Between sincerity and hypocrisy there is a middle zone full of spiritual danger, viz. the zone of mental reservation a ground rank with the weeds of parentheses, footnotes, mar- ginalia, ambiguities, and modified emphasis. What can be more destructive of moral health ? Yet how subtle is the temptation to take refuge in that middle zone ! See what may be involved and risked by a fearless policy income, social credit, fraternal confidence, official promotion, popular applause ! What, then, is EPILOGUE. 289 to be done ? Admitting the evil, what is the remedy ? To so bold an inquiry I will not return a timid reply. In my judgment, the remedy is to put all creeds, catechisms, articles, and standards into the category of landmarks, which have served their historical purpose, and to deplete them of all authority and living influence. By them the dead rule the living, which is not only a solecism, but a peril and an injustice. Is not Christ dead? Are not the apostles dead ? No; they would have been dead if they had embodied their teaching in literal or mechanical forms, but this they never did. Theirs was a ministry of principles, of practical beneficence, of universal propositions, of profound and aggressive reforms, so it stands to-day the model of all action that proceeds by illumination and that responds to immediate necessity. Hence I venture to submit the suggestion the Bible, grammatically and sympathetically in- terpreted, should displace all creeds, and at once guarantee and regulate all spiritual liberty. The Church need not always talk religion, but it should talk every subject religiously. At all times and everywhere the Church should enlighten ignorance, relieve poverty, denounce oppression, and uphold justice; it should, too, be the friend of all progress in art, in music, in science, in letters; then, when it discourses upon the ineffable mysteries of its most holy faith, it will do so with that sacred majesty and elevating effect which never fail to crown and glorify well-tested honesty and impartial beneficence. u 290 WALDEN STANYER. Boston Bell has written an outline of his own creed, and with it I close my book : " I have carefully considered various theories of life and its destinies, and I have in the end accepted the Christian theory as beyond all comparison the completest and best. At this moment I do not raise any question about authority, divine or human; I simply look at the theories themselves, and on the ground of reason I elect the Christian view as it is in- terpreted by the Evangelical Churches. In that view, so interpreted, I find rest and joy. Intellectually, therefore, I am a Christian. " I find the Christian theory in the Bible. In the mean time I do not even ask who wrote the Bible, or who recommends the Bible ; at this moment the Bible is nothing more to me than a book which has, so to say by chance come in my way. I soon see that it is a very quaint old book, very dramatic, and quite audacious and dogmatic in its way of treating all questions. It makes no apologies ; it talks ' straight ; ' it touches the most profound and sensitive subjects. In its very first chapters it uses such words as ' God,' 'created,' 'man,' 'die,' 'good,' 'evil.' In fact, these are all the words there are in the English language, perhaps in any language, all other words can be traced back to these originals. I have heard some persons talk of the Bible as a development, and so it may be ; but it is very wonderful that there is nothing in its latest parts that is not germinally in its opening EPILOGUE. 291 pages. God is there, and man, and sin, and a promised Victor. A great battle is declared, and the defeat is to take the form of a head fatally ' bruised.' The beginning is itself a development. The language is civilized, copious, affluent, refined, those great ideas, God, man, sin, penalty, salvation, are not infantile or initial I cannot but notice their venerableness. Something must have gone before them. Time rests on the assumption of Eternity. " The Bible makes no attempt to define God, or to account for Him, or to explain Him. It is man who needs to be explained. We are told how he, poor creature, came to be; but not a word about God's birth, or origin, or pedigree. All littleness falls within explicable limits ; there is a greatness which lies beyond words. Creators can only be inferred from their creations. We approach them backwards. How feebly the Bible might have begun ! Thus : ' There is a wonderful Being called God, self-existent, inde- pendent, infinite, sovereign ' Why, faith would have been killed by polysyllables. This is not the Bible way. It says, 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,' and I believe it ; the idea fills me, satisfies me, delights me. It is the best idea upon the subject I have ever heard. At this moment I am not troubling myself about who wrote it, or in- vented it, or dreamed it. There it is, and it is enough. " Evolution does not frighten ma It is even a greater mystery than the old idea of creation. Even environ- ment does not stagger my faith. When I have read all 292 WALDEN STANYER. the long words I still want to pray. They are beautiful words when I am quite well holiday words ; words to frighten young people with, and timid people, and igno- rant people. What garden-breaker would not be terrified if, on approaching the orchard, he saw this notice up Angiospermous Dicotyledons kept here ! That would keep the thief at bay! So, when I am quite well, I like to see long words and exercise my tongue in their pronunciation. But when my poor worn heart is ill, I go back to little words to ' love,' ' peace,' ' truth,' ' faith,' ' hope/ ' God.' These are short words with great meanings, not long words with a dozen meanings. When I have done wrong I go to little words. My intellectual vanity is crushed, and my soul cries out for peace. It is just here that the Evangelical Faith makes itself graciously felt. It is most when we need it most. The deeper our sin, the tenderer its love. When non-Evangelical preachers speak to me, they tell me to behave myself, and to mind what I am about ; then they give me a dose of polysyllables, and tell me to go back for another. This is what I do not want. My heart aches, and I must therefore have a heart-medicine, a heart-cure. Evangelical teaching goes to the very root and core of my disease. It is adapted to me. For me it must have been sent from heaven. It tells me that, however bad I am, I may be forgiven ! This is good news. This is the very music of heaven. This is just what I want. Evangelical doctrine can get down to my heart's agony EPILOGUE. 293 and take all the pain away. That is why it will stand when all little theories, inventions, hypotheses, and intellectual vanities wither and die. Like all other men, I have had my choice of theories Unitarianism, Positivism, Agnosticism, Materialism, One-worldism and I have deliberately and gratefully adopted the Evangelical conception of life and conduct and destiny. It is by no means wanting in mental power, yet it is supremely tender, gracious, hopeful, comforting. Only Evangelical preaching is worth listening to. It puts the preacher in his right place. It gives him a message to deliver. It constitutes him a fellow-sinner and elevates him into a fellow-believer. Oh, the sweetness of it all ! It offers pardon even to recreants from itself. It has patience with heretics. It offers to give his faith back to the doubter and the believer. How vast it is, how motherly, how gloriously like God ! " It must not be supposed that Christians have not examined other systems of faith, and that Evangelical believers are unacquainted with the heresies. We know them all; we have outworn some of them, and the whole of them we have analyzed and compared. We claim, therefore, to be Evangelical by conviction, and to dwell in the house of believing Eeason. Why did the multitudes gather around Jesus? Because He was Himself a multitude. He knew all men, spoke to all men, understood all men. That is true of the Evangelical conception. It is not a class idea that only experts can understand. It is not a small idea 294 WALDEN STANYER. that only bigots can appreciate. It is not a selfish idea that only the rich can enjoy. All other depth is shallowness to it. In height it dwarfs the very sky. In glory it puts out the sun. For myself I love it ; I cannot live without it ; it is the very gladness and trumpet-note of my joy joy's joy. " The soul of it all is Christ. He is so sufficient, so accessible, so infinitely gentle. Once I thought I had to understand Christ, but I soon came to see that I had not to understand Christ, but to believe Him. There is all the difference. And it is a difference which Keason accepts in all other directions. The infant does not understand the mother; it clings to her. We may not understand navigation, yet we may go to sea. All life is founded on faith. I simply trust to the word of Christ, and wait all that comes. Nor is this mere sentiment ; when I come to work it out, I find it is severe and daily discipline. I have to slay myself every day. I have to rebuke my ambition, abase my pride, deny my appetites; I have to fast without making any reputation for abstinence, and I have to give without blowing a trumpet. Faith comes from the cross on which Eeason has been crucified. It is a great mystery, very great, most painful, most blessed." THE END. LONDON : FEINTED BT WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 6TAMFOBD STREET AND CHASING CEOSS. I ..-