CHAPTER III--WATER LANE

I had now reached the end of my fourth year at college, and it was time for me to leave. I was sent down into the eastern counties to a congregation which had lost its minister, and was there "on probation"

for a month. I was naturally a good speaker, and as the "cause" had got very low, the attendance at the chapel increased during the month I was there. The deacons thought they had a prospect of returning prosperity, and in the end I received a nearly unanimous invitation, which, after some hesitation, I accepted. One of the deacons, a Mr.

Snale, was against me; he thought I was not "quite sound"; but he was overruled. We shall hear more of him presently. After a short holiday I entered on my new duties.

The town was one of those which are not uncommon in that part of the world. It had a population of about seven or eight thousand, and was a sort of condensation of the agricultural country round. There was one main street, consisting princ.i.p.ally of very decent, respectable shops.

Generally speaking, there were two shops of each trade; one which was patronised by the Church and Tories, and another by the Dissenters and Whigs. The inhabitants were divided into two distinct camps--of the Church and Tory camp the other camp knew nothing. On the other hand, the knowledge which each member of the Dissenting camp had of every other member was most intimate.

The Dissenters were further split up into two or three different sects, but the main sect was that of the Independents. They, in fact, dominated every other. There was a small Baptist community, and the Wesleyans had a new red-brick chapel in the outskirts; but for some reason or other the Independents were really the Dissenters, and until the "cause" had dwindled, as before observed, all the Dissenters of any note were to be found on Sunday in their meeting-house in Water Lane.

My predecessor had died in harness at the age of seventy-five. I never knew him, but from all I could hear he must have been a man of some power. As he got older, however, he became feeble; and after a course of three sermons on a Sunday for fifty years, what he had to say was so entirely antic.i.p.ated by his congregation, that although they all maintained that the gospel, or, in other words, the doctrine of the fall, the atonement, and so forth, should continually be presented, and their minister also believed and acted implicitly upon the same theory, they fell away--some to the Baptists, some to the neighbouring Independents about two miles off, and some to the Church, while a few "went nowhere."

When I came I found that the deacons still remained true. They were the skeleton; but the flesh was so woefully emaciated, that on my first Sunday there were not above fifty persons in a building which would hold seven hundred. These deacons were four in number. One was an old farmer who lived in a village three miles distant. Ever since he was a boy he had driven over to Water Lane on Sunday. He and his family brought their dinner with them, and ate it in the vestry; but they never stopped till the evening, because of the difficulty of getting home on dark nights, and because they all went to bed in winter-time at eight o'clock.

Morning and afternoon Mr. Catfield--for that was his name--gave out the hymns. He was a plain, honest man, very kind, very ignorant, never reading any book except the Bible, and barely a newspaper save Bell's Weekly Messenger. Even about the Bible he knew little or nothing beyond a few favourite chapters; and I am bound to say that, so far as my experience goes, the character so frequently drawn in romances of intense Bible students in Dissenting congregations is very rare. At the same time Mr. Catfield believed himself to be very orthodox, and in his way was very pious. I could never call him a hypocrite. He was as sincere as he could be, and yet no religious expression of his was ever so sincere as the most ordinary expression of the most trifling pleasure or pain.

The second deacon, Mr. Weeley, was, as he described himself, a builder and undertaker; more properly an undertaker and carpenter. He was a thin, tall man, with a tenor voice, and he set the tunes. He was entirely without energy of any kind, and always seemed oppressed by a world which was too much for him. He had depended a good deal for custom upon his chapel connection; and when the attendance at the chapel fell off, his trade fell off likewise, so that he had to compound with his creditors. He was a mere shadow, a man of whom nothing could be said either good or evil.

The third deacon was Mr. Snale, the draper. When I first knew him he was about thirty-five. He was slim, small, and small-faced, closely shaven, excepting a pair of little curly whiskers, and he was extremely neat. He had a little voice too, rather squeaky, and the marked peculiarity that he hardly ever said anything, no matter how disagreeable it might be, without stretching as if in a smile his thin little lips. He kept the princ.i.p.al draper's shop in the town, and even Church people spent their money with him, because he was so very genteel compared with the other draper, who was a great red man, and hung things outside his window. Mr. Snale was married, had children, and was strictly proper. But his way of talking to women and about them was more odious than the way of a debauchee. He invariably called them "the ladies," or more exactly, "the leedies"; and he hardly ever spoke to a "leedy" without a smirk and some faint attempt at a joke.

One of the customs of the chapel was what were called Dorcas meetings.

Once a month the wives and daughters drank tea with each other; the evening being ostensibly devoted to making clothes for the poor. The husband of the lady who gave the entertainment for the month had to wait upon the company, and the minister was expected to read to them while they worked.

It was my lot to be Mr. Snale's guest two or three times when Mrs.

Snale was the Dorcas hostess. We met in the drawing-room, which was over the shop, and looked out into the town market-place. There was a round table in the middle of the room, at which Mrs. Snale sat and made the tea. Abundance of hot b.u.t.tered toast and m.u.f.fins were provided, which Mr. Snale and a maid handed round to the party.

Four pictures decorated the walls. One hung over the mantelpiece. It was a portrait in oils of Mr. Snale, and opposite to it, on the other side, was a portrait of Mrs. Snale. Both were daubs, but curiously faithful in depicting what was most offensive in the character of both the originals, Mr. Snale's simper being preserved; together with the peculiarly hard, heavy sensuality of the eye in Mrs. Snale, who was large and full-faced, correct like Mr. Snale, a member of the church, a woman whom I never saw moved to any generosity, and cruel not with the ferocity of the tiger, but with the dull insensibility of a cartwheel, which will roll over a man's neck as easily as over a flint. The third picture represented the descent of the Holy Ghost; a number of persons sitting in a chamber, and each one with the flame of a candle on his head. The fourth represented the last day. The Son of G.o.d was in a chair surrounded by clouds, and beside Him was a flying figure blowing a long mail-coach horn. The dead were coming up out of their graves; some were half out of the earth, others three-parts out--the whole of the bottom part of the picture being filled with bodies emerging from the ground, a few looking happy, but most of them very wretched; all of them being naked.

The first time I went to Mrs. Snale's Dorcas gathering Mr. Snale was reader, on the ground that I was a novice; and I was very glad to resign the task to him. As the business in hand was week-day and secular, it was not considered necessary that the selected subjects should be religious; but as it was distinctly connected with the chapel, it was also considered that they should have a religious flavour. Consequently the Bible was excluded, and so were books on topics altogether worldly. Dorcas meetings were generally, therefore, shut up to the denominational journal and to magazines. Towards the end of the evening Mr. Snale read the births, deaths, and marriages in this journal. It would not have been thought right to read them from any other newspaper, but it was agreed, with a fineness of tact which was very remarkable, that it was quite right to read them in one which was "serious." During the whole time that the reading was going on conversation was not arrested, but was conducted in a kind of half whisper; and this was another reason why I exceedingly disliked to read, for I could never endure to speak if people did not listen.

At half-past eight the work was put away, and Mrs. Snale went to the piano and played a hymn tune, the minister having first of all selected the hymn. Singing over, he offered a short prayer, and the company separated. Supper was not served, as it was found to be too great an expense. The husbands of the ladies generally came to escort them home, but did not come upstairs. Some of the gentlemen waited below in the dining-room, but most of them preferred the shop, for, although it was shut, the gas was burning to enable the a.s.sistants to put away the goods which had been got out during the day.

When it first became my turn to read I proposed the Vicar of Wakefield; but although no objection was raised at the time, Mr. Snale took an opportunity of telling me, after I had got through a chapter or two, that he thought it would be better if it were discontinued. "Because, you know, Mr. Rutherford," he said, with his smirk, "the company is mixed; there are young leedies present, and perhaps, Mr. Rutherford, a book with a more requisite tone might be more suitable on such an occasion." What he meant I did not know, and how to find a book with a more requisite tone I did not know.

However, the next time, in my folly, I tried a selection from George Fox's Journal. Mr. Snale objected to this too. It was "hardly of a character adapted for social intercourse," he thought; and furthermore, "although Mr. Fox might be a very good man, and was a converted character, yet he did not, you know, Mr. Rutherford, belong to us." So I was reduced to that cla.s.s of literature which of all others I most abominated, and which always seemed to me the most profane--religious and sectarian gossip, religious novels designed to make religion attractive, and other slip-slop of this kind. I could not endure it, and was frequently unwell on Dorcas evenings.

The rest of the small congregation was of no particular note. As I have said before, it had greatly fallen away, and all who remained clung to the chapel rather by force of habit than from any other reason. The only exception was an old maiden lady and her sister, who lived in a little cottage about a mile out of the town. They were pious in the purest sense of the word, suffering much from ill-health, but perfectly resigned, and with a kind of tempered cheerfulness always apparent on their faces, like the cheerfulness of a white sky with a sun veiled by light and lofty clouds. They were the daughters of a carriage-builder, who had left them a small annuity.

Their house was one of the sweetest which I ever entered. The moment I found myself inside it, I became conscious of perfect repose.

Everything was at rest; books, pictures, furniture, all breathed the same peace. Nothing in the house was new, but everything had been preserved with such care that nothing looked old. Yet the owners were not what is called old-maidish; that is to say, they were not superst.i.tious worshippers of order and neatness.

I remember Mrs. Snale's children coming in one afternoon when I was there. They were rough and ill-mannered, and left traces of dirty footmarks all over the carpet, which the two ladies noticed at once.

But it made no difference to the treatment of the children, who had some cake and currant wine given to them, and were sent away rejoicing.

Directly they had gone, the elder of my friends asked me if I would excuse her; she would gather up the dirt before it was trodden about.

So she brought a dust-pan and brush (the little servant was out) and patiently swept the floor. That was the way with them. Did any mischief befall them or those whom they knew, without blaming anybody, they immediately and noiselessly set about repairing it with that silent prompt.i.tude of nature which rebels not against a wound, but the very next instant begins her work of protection and recovery.

The Misses Arbour (for that was their name) mixed but little in the society of the town. They explained to me that their health would not permit it. They read books--a few--but they were not books about which I knew very much, and they belonged altogether to an age preceding mine. Of the names which had moved me, and of all the thoughts stirring in the time, they had heard nothing. They greatly admired Cowper, a poet who then did not much attract me.

The country near me was rather level, but towards the west it rose into soft swelling hills, between which were pleasant lanes. At about ten miles distant eastward was the sea. A small river ran across the High Street under a stone bridge; for about two miles below us it was locked up for the sake of the mills, but at the end of the two miles it became tidal and flowed between deep and muddy banks through marshes to the ocean. Almost all my walks were by the river-bank down to these marshes, and as far on as possible till the open water was visible.

Not that I did not like inland scenery: n.o.body could like it more, but the sea was a corrective to the littleness all round me. With the ships on it sailing to the other end of the earth it seemed to connect me with the great world outside the parochialism of the society in which I lived.

Such was the town of C-, and such the company amidst which I found myself. After my probation it was arranged that I should begin my new duties at once, and accordingly I took lodgings--two rooms over the shop of a tailor who acted as chapel-keeper, pew-opener, and s.e.xton.

There was a small endowment on the chapel of fifty pounds a year, and the rest of my income was derived from the pew-rents, which at the time I took charge did not exceed another seventy.

The first Sunday on which I preached after being accepted was a dull day in November, but there was no dullness in me. The congregation had increased a good deal during the past four weeks, and I was stimulated by the prospect of the new life before me. It seemed to be a fit opportunity to say something generally about Christianity and its special peculiarities. I began by pointing out that each philosophy and religion which had arisen in the world was the answer to a question earnestly asked at the time; it was a remedy proposed to meet some extreme pressure. Religions and philosophies were not created by idle people who sat down and said, "Let us build up a system of beliefs upon the universe; what shall we say about immortality, about sin?" and so on. Unless there had been antecedent necessity there could have been no religion; and no problem of life or death could be solved except under the weight of that necessity. The stoical morality arose out of the condition of Rome when the scholar and the pious man could do nothing but simply strengthen his knees and back to bear an inevitable burden. He was forced to find some counterpoise for the misery of poverty and persecution, and he found it in the denial of their power to touch him. So with Christianity.

Jesus was a poor solitary thinker, confronted by two enormous and overpowering organisations--the Jewish hierarchy and the Roman State.

He taught the doctrine of the kingdom of heaven; He trained Himself to have faith in the absolute monarchy of the soul, the absolute monarchy of His own; He tells us that each man should learn to find peace in his own thoughts, his own visions. It is a most difficult thing to do; most difficult to believe that my highest happiness consists in my perception of whatever is beautiful. If I by myself watch the sun rise, or the stars come out in the evening, or feel the love of man or woman,--I ought to say to myself, "There is nothing beyond this." But people will not rest there; they are not content, and they are for ever chasing a shadow which flies before them, a something external which never brings what it promises.

I said that Christianity was essentially the religion of the unknown and of the lonely; of those who are not a success. It was the religion of the man who goes through life thinking much, but who makes few friends and sees nothing come of his thoughts. I said a good deal more upon the same theme which I have forgotten.

After the service was over I went down into the vestry. n.o.body came near me but my landlord, the chapel-keeper, who said it was raining, and immediately went away to put out the lights and shut up the building. I had no umbrella, and there was nothing to be done but to walk out in the wet. When I got home I found that my supper, consisting of bread and cheese with a pint of beer, was on the table, but apparently it had been thought unnecessary to light the fire again at that time of night. I was overwrought, and paced about for hours in hysterics. All that I had been preaching seemed the merest vanity when I was brought face to face with the fact itself; and I reproached myself bitterly that my own creed would not stand the stress of an hour's actual trial.

Towards morning I got into bed, but not to sleep; and when the dull daylight of Monday came, all support had vanished, and I seemed to be sinking into a bottomless abyss. I became gradually worse week by week, and my melancholy took a fixed form. I got a notion into my head that my brain was failing, and this was my first acquaintance with that most awful malady hypochondria. I did not know then what I know now, although I only half believe it practically, that this fixity of form is a frequent symptom of the disease, and that the general weakness manifests itself in a determinate horror, which gradually fades with returning health.

For months--many months--this dreadful conviction of coming idiocy or insanity lay upon me like some poisonous reptile with its fangs driven into my very marrow, so that I could not shake it off. It went with me wherever I went, it got up with me in the morning, walked about with me all day, and lay down with me at night. I managed, somehow or other, to do my work, but I prayed incessantly for death; and to such a state was I reduced that I could not even make the commonest appointment for a day beforehand. The mere knowledge that something had to be done agitated me and prevented my doing it.

In June next year my holiday came, and I went away home to my father's house. Father and mother were going, for the first time in their lives, to spend a few days by the seaside together, and I went with them to Ilfracombe. I had been there about a week, when on one memorable morning, on the top of one of those Devonshire hills, I became aware of a kind of flush in the brain and a momentary relief such as I had not known since that November night. I seemed, far away on the horizon, to see just a rim of olive light low down under the edge of the leaden cloud that hung over my head, a prophecy of the restoration of the sun, or at least a witness that somewhere it shone.

It was not permanent, and perhaps the gloom was never more profound, nor the agony more intense, than it was for long after my Ilfracombe visit. But the light broadened, and gradually the darkness was mitigated. I have never been thoroughly restored. Often, with no warning, I am plunged in the Valley of the Shadow, and no outlet seems possible; but I contrive to traverse it, or to wait in calmness for access of strength.

When I was at my worst I went to see a doctor. He recommended me stimulants. I had always been rather abstemious, and he thought I was suffering from physical weakness. At first wine gave me relief, and such marked relief that whenever I felt my misery insupportable I turned to the bottle. At no time in my life was I ever the worse for liquor, but I soon found the craving for it was getting the better of me. I resolved never to touch it except at night, and kept my vow; but the consequence was, that I looked forward to the night, and waited for it with such eagerness that the day seemed to exist only for the sake of the evening, when I might hope at least for rest. For the wine as wine I cared nothing; anything that would have dulled my senses would have done just as well.

But now a new terror developed itself. I began to be afraid that I was becoming a slave to alcohol; that the pa.s.sion for it would grow upon me, and that I should disgrace myself, and die the most contemptible of all deaths. To a certain extent my fears were just. The dose which was necessary to procure temporary forgetfulness of my trouble had to be increased, and might have increased dangerously.

But one day, feeling more than usual the tyranny of my master, I received strength to make a sudden resolution to cast him off utterly.

Whatever be the consequence, I said, I will not be the victim of this shame. If I am to go down to the grave, it shall be as a man, and I will bear what I have to bear honestly and without resort to the base evasion of stupefaction. So that night I went to bed having drunk nothing but water. The struggle was not felt just then. It came later, when the first enthusiasm of a new purpose had faded away, and I had to fall back on mere force of will. I don't think anybody but those who have gone through such a crisis can comprehend what it is. I never understood the maniacal craving which is begotten by ardent spirits, but I understood enough to be convinced that the man who has once rescued himself from the domination even of half a bottle, or three-parts of a bottle of claret daily, may a.s.sure himself that there is nothing more in life to be done which he need dread.

Two or three remarks begotten of experience in this matter deserve record. One is, that the most powerful inducement to abstinence, in my case, was the interference of wine with liberty, and above all things its interference with what I really loved best, and the transference of desire from what was most desirable to what was sensual and base. The morning, instead of being spent in quiet contemplation and quiet pleasures, was spent in degrading antic.i.p.ations. What enabled me to conquer, was not so much heroism as a susceptibility to n.o.bler joys, and the difficulty which a man must encounter who is not susceptible to them must be enormous and almost insuperable. Pity, profound pity, is his due, and especially if he happen to possess a nervous, emotional organisation. If we want to make men water-drinkers, we must first of all awaken in them a capacity for being tempted by delights which water-drinking intensifies. The mere preaching of self-denial will do little or no good.

Another observation is, that there is no danger in stopping at once, and suddenly, the habit of drinking. The prisons and asylums furnish ample evidence upon that point, but there will be many an hour of exhaustion in which this danger will be simulated and wine will appear the proper remedy. No man, or at least very few men, would ever feel any desire for it soon after sleep. This shows the power of repose, and I would advise anybody who may be in earnest in this matter to be specially on guard during moments of physical fatigue, and to try the effect of eating and rest. Do not persist in a blind, obstinate wrestle. Simply take food, drink water, go to bed, and so conquer not by brute strength, but by strategy.

Going back to hypochondria and its countless forms of agony, let it be borne in mind that the first thing to be aimed at is patience--not to get excited with fears, not to dread the evil which most probably will never arrive, but to sit down quietly and WAIT. The simpler and less stimulating the diet, the more likely it is that the sufferer will be able to watch through the wakeful hours without delirium, and the less likely is it that the general health will be impaired. Upon this point of health too much stress cannot be laid. It is difficult for the victim to believe that his digestion has anything to do with a disease which seems so purely spiritual, but frequently the misery will break up and yield, if it do not altogether disappear, by a little attention to physiology and by a change of air. As time wears on, too, mere duration will be a relief; for it familiarises with what at first was strange and insupportable, it shows the groundlessness of fears, and it enables us to say with each new paroxysm, that we have surmounted one like it before, and probably a worse.

CHAPTER IV--EDWARD GIBBON MARDON

I had now been "settled," to use a Dissenting phrase, for nearly eighteen months. While I was ill I had no heart in my work, and the sermons I preached were very poor and excited no particular suspicion.

But with gradually returning energy my love of reading revived, and questions which had slumbered again presented themselves. I continued for some time to deal with them as I had dealt with the atonement at college. I said that Jesus was the true Paschal Lamb, for that by His death men were saved from their sins, and from the consequences of them; I said that belief in Christ, that is to say, a love for Him, was more powerful to redeem men than the works of the law. All this may have been true, but truth lies in relation. It was not true when I, understanding what I understood by it, taught it to men who professed to believe in the Westminster Confession. The preacher who preaches it uses a vocabulary which has a certain definite meaning, and has had this meaning for centuries. He cannot stay to put his own interpretation upon it whenever it is upon his lips, and so his hearers are in a false position, and imagine him to be much more orthodox than he really is.

For some time I fell into this snare, until one day I happened to be reading the story of Balaam. Balaam, though most desirous to prophesy smooth things for Balak, had nevertheless a word put into his mouth by G.o.d. When he came to Balak he was unable to curse, and could do nothing but bless. Balak, much dissatisfied, thought that a change of position might alter Balaam's temper, and he brought him away from the high places of Baal to the field of Zophim, to the top of Pisgah. But Balaam could do nothing better even on Pisgah. Not even a compromise was possible, and the second blessing was more emphatic than the first.

"G.o.d," cried the prophet, pressed sorely by his message, "is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent: hath He said, and shall He not do it? or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good? Behold, I have received commandment to bless: and He hath blessed; and I cannot reverse it."

This was very unsatisfactory, and Balaam was asked, if he could not curse, at least to refrain from benediction. The answer was still the same. "Told not I thee, saying, All that the Lord speaketh, that I must do?" A third shift was tried, and Balaam went to the top of Peor.