A STUDY IN PURITANISM.

Otago Witness, Issue 2808, 8 January 1908, Page 78

A STUDY IN PURITANISM.

In my first article on this intensely interesting picture of an old epoch of Puritanism I emphasised the contrast there was between.. the narrow creed and the genial, tender, unselfish, character of the partners who field it. I conclude vapidly tlue picture which the son draws of his mother, and her story is the best illustration of this contract. There are no pages in the" book I have read ,with more poignant feeling than those in which the author tells the story of his mother's life and death. Never was there a life of greater self-sacrifice. She disliked teaching, but when the ruin of her spendthrift father left her brothers and 'herself without means, she became a governess in an Irish family. She was, -says her son, " well paid," and " she stayed in this distasteful ' environment, 'doing the work she hated most, while with the margin of her 'salary / she helped first one of her brothers' and then, the other through his' Cambridge course." The moment she received the news that the second brother had taken his degree, " with a sigh, of intense relief she resigned her situation and came straight back to England." At a later period she found herself great in powers of persuasion, and she became, in her small andi •womanly way, a gatHerer-in of souls, like John Wesley. J3he became also a voluminous writer. In the end she sickened-, andi you watch her ascend her Calvary of suffering and separation in a spirit^ of stoicism and patience that reveals the tremendous strength as well as the tremendous narrowness of her faith. She had to go all the "way from Islington, where she lived, t-O Pimlico to obtain the services of a doctor who claimed to have a special method of dealing with her malady ; in the end^she had to separate herself from her husband because the journey was longer and more tiring than she could bear, and! the absorption of her husband in his work compelled the husband to remain in his house at Islington, and so the forlorn boy and the forlorn and dying mother took " a gloomy lodging close to the doctor's house." And here is a little thumb-nail sketch .which concentrates in its tiny limits a whole panorama of agony and solitude: I was now my mother's sole and! ceaseless companion — the silent witness of her ' suffering, of her patience, of her vain and delusive attempts, to obtain alleviation of her anguish. For nearly three months I breathed the atmo-

sphere of pain, saw no other light, heard no other sounds, thought no other thoughts than those which accompany physical suffering and weariness. To my memory these weeks seem years ; I have no measure of .their monotony. The lodgings were" bare and yet tawdry ; out of dingy windows we looked from a. second storey upon a dull, small 6tree>t, drowned in autumnal fog. My father came to see us when he could,

but otherwise, save when we made our

morning expedition to the doctor, or when a slatternly girl waited upon us with our distasteful meals, we were

•lone — without any other occupation than to look forward to that occasional abatement of suffering which was what

we hoped for most. I hasten, to the end of the story. The doctor who had called for such, sacrifice© proved apparently to be a quack/ who simply tortured the unfortunate woman with what our author calls a. " savage treatment," which, of course, did her no good ; >and then there came this new step : "A day or two before Christmas, while the fruits -were piled in the shop fronts and she* butchers were shouting outside them forests of carcases, my father brought ws back in a cab through the streets to Isliagton, x feeble and languishing ionipariy." I give

—The Final Scene— i& the touching andi striking words of the auihor : It 3eem& almost iruel to the memory of their opinions that the only words which rise to my mind, the only ones wto'ch seem in the ka»t degree adequate to describe the attitude of my parents, had fallen from the pen of one whom, in 'their want of imaginative sympathy, they had regarded as anathema. But

John Henry Newman might have come

;Irom the contemplation of my mother's death-bed when he wrote: "All the trouble which the world inflicts upon us, and which flesh -cannot but feel — sorrow, pain, .care, bereavement — these avail not to disturb the tranquillity and the intensity .with which faith gazes at the Divine Majesty." It was " tranquillity,'' it was not the rapture of the mystic. Almost in the last hour of her life, urged to confess her " joy " in the Lord, my mother, rigidly honest, meticulous in self -analysis as ever, replied: "I have peace, but not joy. It would not dioi to go into eternity with a lie in tny mouth." When the very end approached, and her mind was growing cloudied, she gathered) her strength to say to my father: "I shall walk with Him in white. Won't you take your lamb and walk with me? " Confused with sorrow and alarm, my father failed to understand her meaning. She became agitated, v and she repeated two or three times : " Take our lamb and walk with me." Then my father comprehended, and pressed me forward ; her hand fell softly upon mine, and she seemed) content. Thus was my dedication, that had begun in my cradle, sealed with the most solemn, the most

poignant and irresistible insistence at the death-bed of the holiest and purest of women. And what a- weight, intolerable as the burden of Atlas, to lay on the shoulders of a little fragile child !

* "Father and son." (Heinemann; 8s 6d net.)

The life of the child thus left desolate 1 became, of course, sadder still. His father felt terribly the loss of his faithful companion, and! hi& religion naturally took an even more sombre hue. It- is saddening to think of how the life of the child — who ought to have been romping with other children, playing marbles, and licking aud getting licked by ,his companions — was darkened in such a home. Here is a- picture which illustrates how little joy there w.is for the child at 'the moment when only the joyous side of life ought to be taught or known : I continued to have no young companions. But on summer evenings I used to drag njy father out, taking the initiative myself, stamping in playing impatience at his irresolution, fetching, bis hat and stick, and waiting. We used to sally forth at la6t together, hand in hand, descending the Caledonian road, with all its .shops, as far as Mother Shipton, or else, winding among the semi- gent eel squares and terraces westward by Copenhagen street, or, best of all, mounting to the Regent's Canal, where we paused to lean over the bridge and watch flotillas of ducks steer under us, or little white dogs dash, impotently fraious, from stem to stern of the great, lazy barges painted in a crucfe vehemence of vermilion and azure. These were happy hours, when the spectre of religion ceased to overshadow us for a little while, when my father forgot the , Apocalypse and dropped his austere phraseology, and when our bass and treble voices used to ring out together over some mirthful recollection of his

past experiences. Little soft oases • these in the hard desert of our sandy spiritual life at home. To complete the picture of the life of this strange pair let me just quote this little sketch of the interior : As I look back upon this far-away time, I am surprised at the absence in it of any figures but our own. He and I together, now in the study among the sea-anemones and star-fishes ; now on the canal bridge, looking down at the ducks; now at our hard little meals, served up as fchose of a dreamy widower are likely to be when one maid-of-all-worfc provides them ; now under the lamp at the maps we loved so much; this is what I see — no third presence is ever with us. —The Boy and His Father. —

Th© boy and his father left London, and for several years lived in South "Devon, with but only one other companion 11 — firstr, a governess; and then, in time, a stepmother, who took her place. The father devoted his time, as before, to his scientific studies and writings, and to the Scriptures. passed through a painful crisis when his fellow-naturalists — with Darwin and ' Lyell at their head — began to give th© world the first suggestions of that gospel of Evolution 1 <vhich was to revolutionise the scientific world a- few years later. The son — as will be gathered from what I have already told of his view of religion — accepts whole-heartedly the gospel of Darwin ; and he tells, -therefore, with a certain wistfulness and regret the refusal of his father to accept the new gospel. Instead of accepting it, the elder man devoted immense energy and all his knowledge and acquirements to writing a volume which was to bring back peace where there had been so much warfare, and certainty where there 'had been so much doubt. "Never," says the son, "■was a, book cash upon the waters witli greater anticipation of success than was thus curious, this obstinate* this fanatical volume." "My fatter," he adds, "lived in a fever of suspense waiting for the tremendous issue." i His 'book he expected would "bring all the turmoil of scientific speculation to a close, fling geology into the arms of Scripture, and make the lion

eat grass with the lamb. . . . My father . . . alone held the key which could smoothly open the lock of geological mystery. Be offered it with a glowing gesture to Atheists and Christians alike. This was to be the universal panacea; this the system of intellectual therapeutics which could not but heal all the maladies of the age." To any man of letters who has gpne through similar agonising alternations of hope and despair when producing a book, it will be easy to Tealiee the state of/ the fatheris mind at this great moment in his career ; and equally easy- to understand that awful chill of disappointment and even despair which followed the appearance of the book. "Alas!" writes the son, "Atheists and Christians alike looked at it and laughed, and threw it away." In the course of that- dismal - winter, a 6 the post began to bring in private letters, few and , chilly, and public reviews, many and scornful, my father looked in vain for the acquiescence of the scientific societies and in vain for the gratitude of those "thousands of thinking persons" which he had rashly assured himself of receiving. ... A gloom, cold and dismal, descended upon our morning tea-cuns. It was what the poets mean "by an 'Tnsipissated" gloom ; it thickened day by day as hope and self-confidence evaporated in thin clouds of disappointment. ... 9« fconld not recover from amazement at having offended everybody by an enterprise which had been undertaken in the cause of universal reconciliation. And the poor child — destined himself in the future to join the rapfcs of those enemies who had renounced his father s faith and scorned his Eirenicon — the poor child meantime had to suffer from this additional burden of the narrow and gloomy home. Here is another little

—Sketch of a Characteristic Interior —

of that epoch in English life ; an interior that is not so common nowadays, but is still, alas ! to be counted by the tens of thousands : During that grimr season my father ■was no lovely companion, and circumstance after circumstance culminated to, drive him further from humanity. H*

missed more than ever the sympathetic ear of my mother; there was present to support him nothing of that- artful female casuistry which insinuates inta the wounded consciousness of a man that conviction that after all he is right and all the world is .wrong. My father used to tramp in solitude round and round the red ploughed field which was. going to he his lawn, ory sheltering himself from the- thin Devonian .rain, pace up and down the still naked verandah, where blossoming creepers- were to be. • ... It was nQw that, I fancy, ho began to be angry with. God. How much devotion had he given, how many sacrifices had he made, only to be left storming round this red morass with no one in all the world ,to care for hint except, one pale-faced 2hild with its cheek pressed to the window. j. Reserved, self-restrained, as this passage is, what a whole world of fevered) passion, of raging despair, of tragic gloom it suggests ! It makes one give a shudder. And then, immediately there comes a. certain glow of admiration, mingled with a certain intellectual pity and contempt, when another sido of thje father is exhibited, that stern . adhesion to principle, that relentless self-control and 6elf-subjugation which were the glory of this narrow man. The father "was aceus-" tomed in his brighter moments . . ';. " occasionally to sing loud Dorsetshire songs of his early days in a strange, broad, Wesgex lingo that I loved." • One October afternoon he and I were sitting on the verandah, and my father was singing; just, round J,he corner, out of sight, two carpenters were putting up the framework of a greenhouse. In a pause, one of them said to his fellow, "He can zing a song zo well's another, though he be a minister." My father, who was holding my 'hand loosely, clutched it, and, looking up, I saw his eyes darken. He never sang a secular song again during the whole of his life.

I have not the space to continue, -the story of the father's faith and the soit-'s unfaith throughout all its details ; I must: even pass aver many passages which. I had marked for quotation because of their beauty of style or their illuminating glimpses • of. a certain .stage of religious fanaticism. Two or tKr-ee passages more, -will help to complete^ the r picture of the mind of such a man as the central figure -in this story of the spiritual life. . Almost by accident the boy had got hold of some of the plays of Shakespeare, and, "these were enough to steep my horizon with al¥ the colours of sunTfse." It will be understood, then, how he felt when, attending an evangelical meeting, he had this experience : An elderly man, fat and greasy, with a voice like a- bassoon and an imperfcnrb- , able assurance, was denouncing the spread of infidelity and the lukewarm-, ness of profeeeing Christians, who refrained from battling with the wickedj ness at their doors. They were like the i Laodiceans whom the Angel of th© AjP°~ calypse spewed out of his-mouth.- For instance, why. the orator stoked, "is no one rising to check tbe^outburst of idolatry in our midst? At this very moment," he went on, "there is proceeding, "unreproved, a blasphemous celebration; of the birth of Shakespeare, a lost soul now suffering for his sins in hell." . . . No one in that audience raise*! a word of protest, and my spirits fell to nadir.

Even for the father this was too- much, and he trie* to soften down the remark when he was going over the incidents of the day. But the glass was, in its way, little better than the original statement. "Brother So-and-so," he remarked, "was not, -in my judgment, justified in saying what he did. The. uncovenanted mercies of ; God are not revealed to us. Before co ' harshly speaking of Shakespeare as 'a lost , 6oul in hell,' he should have remembered how little we know of trie poet's history. _ The light of salvation was widely disseminated in the land during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and we cannot' know that Shakespeare did not accept the atone-, meat .of Christ in. simple faith before he came to die."'

His Position. — And when it cam© to- his own turn to define his position to those outside his > ovrxt little communion, the^ father was almost as illiberal as the inspired evan* gelis't

He did not wish to judge, he protested ; but he could not admit that a single Unitarian (or "SociniaJi," as he preferaed to say) could possibly be redeemed; and he had no hope of eternal salvation for the inhabitants of Catholic

countries. I recollect his ' speaking of Austria. He questioned whether a single Austrian subject, except, as ha 6aid, here and there a pious^ and extremely ignorant individual, who had not comprehended the errors of the Papacy, but had humbly studied his Bible, couici hope to find eternal life. He thought that the ordinary Chinaman or savage aative oi Fiji had a better chance of sal- . vation than any cardinal in the * Vatican. And even in the priesthood of the* Church of England he believed that, while many were called, few, , indeed, would be found to have been chosen.

The faith of the father was also-narrow, not merely in eucll intolerance as I have just quoted, but in the exclusion of anythink like philanthropic effort for tnegood of others as part of religious duty. "His aspirations," writes the eon, x "were individual and metaphysical" : ■

A.t the present hour, so complete ,-is thp revolution which ha» overturned th©

Puritanism of which he was perhaps the latest surviving type that all classes

of religious persons combine in placing philanthropic activity, the objective Attitude, iii the foreground. It is extraordinary how far-reaching -the change has been, so that nowadays a religion which does not combine with its sub-, iective faith a strenuous labour for th© good of others is hardly held to possess any religious principle. worth holding

■ The propaganda of beneficence, this 'constant attention to the moral and physical improvement of persons who have been neglected, is quite recent as a leading feature of religion, though indeed it seems to have formed some part of the Saviour's original design.' It was unknown to the great divines of the seventeenth century, whether ■ Catholic or Protestant, and it offered but a

shadowy attraction to my father, who .was. the last of their disciples. When Bossuet Ms hearers to listen to

the "cry de, misere a l'entour de nous, gui devrait nous fondre 1© cceur," he - started a , new thing in the world of theology. We may search the famous -"Rule -and Exercises'' of Holy .Living" from cover 'to cover; and not learn that Jeremy Taylor- would have thought that any activity of ' the districts-visitor or th© Salvation lassie ' came within the

category -of saintliness..

The- breach between the father and son, which' had been in preparation almost from the start, came ultimately when the son, launched on London life, master of his own destinies and his own thoughts , finally announced to his father "a' human being's privilege to fashion his. inner life for himself." .

—A Creed Summed Up. —

My last quotation will be the considered, restrained, 'and yet vehement indictment, with which the "son sums up the creed of the father: After my long -experience, after my patience and forbearance, I have surely the Tight to protest against the untruth '(would that I could apply to it any other word) ' ithat evangelical religion, or any other religion in a- violent form, is a ; wholesome or valuable ot~ desirable

adjunct to human life. It divides heart from heart. It sets up a vain, chimerical ideal, in the barren pursuit of which all the tender indulgent affections, all >ho genial play oiflife, all the exquisite pleasures and soft resignations of the ibody, all that enlarges and' calms the 'soul, are exchanged for what is harsh and void and negative. £t "encourages a stern and ignorant spirit of condemnationj it throws altogether out of gear the healthy movements of the conscience ; it invents virtues which are sterile and cruel; it invents sins which are no sins at- all, but which darken, the heaven of innocent jay with futile clouds of remorse. There -is something horrible, ' if -we bring ourselves to face it, in the fanaticism that can do nothing with this pathetic and fugitive existence of ours but treat it as if it were the uncomfortable- antechamber "to a palace which- no one' has explored" -and of the plan of which we know absolutely nothing.

Such is this lemarkable history of a great section of English life and English thought. I Hope all my readers will peruse it for themselves, for even in two articles I have not been able to do more than give an occasional glimpse into its leading themes. They will, then, as I do now, part from it with a curious feeling, of having lived in intimacy -with a little group of human beings — interesting, noble, pathetic, futile ; in microcosm that eternal failure of human character -and human life which is the unending and the incurable malady that no theologies and no laws can do more than mitigate and slightly diminished.— l - P. s -Weekly.