Chapter 17

I have been staying with a friend in Yorkshire, in an out-of-the-way place, and I have seen a good deal of the parish clergyman there, who is rather a pathetic person, I think. It seems to me that he belongs to a type which is perhaps becoming more common, and the fact makes me somewhat anxious about the future of the Church of England, because it is a type that does not seem to me to correspond to the needs of the day at all. He was, I believe, the son of a solicitor in a small country town; he was educated at a local grammar-school, and went up to a small Cambridge College; here he took a pass-degree, and then went into a Theological College, of a rather advanced High-Church type. Having received a so-called classical education, he had no particular intellectual interests. He was not an athlete; he worked just enough to secure a pass-degree, and spent his time at Cambridge in mild sociability. He takes no interest in politics, books, art, games, or even agriculture. Just when his mind began to expand a little he went off to the Theological College, where he was indoctrinated with high ecclesiastical ideas, and formed a great idea of the supreme importance of his vocation. He had no impulse to examine the foundations of his faith, but he meekly assimilated a large number of doctrinal and traditional propositions, such as the Apostolic succession, the visible corporate Church, the sacrificial theory of the Eucharist, priestly absolution, and so forth. He is a believer in systematic confession, but is careful to say that this was not inculcated upon him, but only indicated, and that his belief in it is based on practical experience. He also imbibed a great love of liturgical and ceremonial usage. He was for a short time a country curate, and married a clergyman's daughter. His College gave him the living which he now holds, which is fairly endowed; and having some small means of his own, he lives comfortably. I will add that he is a thoroughly kindly man, and very conscientious in the discharge of what he conceives to be his duty. He has a great many services on Sunday, somewhat sparsely attended. He reads matins and vespers every day in his church, and gives an address on saints' days. But he seems to have no idea what his parishioners are doing or thinking about, and no particular desire to know. He is assiduous in visiting, in holding classes, in teaching; he has no sense of humour whatever; and the system of religion which he administers is so perfectly obvious and unquestioned a thing to him, that it never occurs to him to wonder if other people are not built on different lines. I have often, attended his church and heard him preach; but the sermons which I have heard are either expositions of high doctrine, or else discourses of what I can only call a very feminine and even finicking kind of morality; he preaches on the duty of church-going, on the profane use of scriptural language, on the sanctification of joy, on the advisability of family prayer, on religious meditation, on the examples of saints, on the privilege of devotional exercises, on the consecration of life, on the communion of saints, on the ministry of angels. But it seems all remote from daily life, and to be a species of religion that can only be successfully cultivated by people of abundant leisure. I do not mean to say that many of these things do not possess a certain refined beauty of their own; but I do feel that farmers and labourers are not, as a rule, in the stage in which such ideas are possible or even desirable. I have seen him conduct a children's service, and then he is in high content, surrounded by clean and well-brushed infants, and smiling girls. He sits in a chair on the chancel steps, in a paternal attitude, and leads them in a little meditation on the childhood of the Mother of Christ. Whenever he describes a scene out of the Bible, and he is fond of doing this, it always sounds as if he were describing a stained-glass window; his favourite qualities are meekness, submissiveness, devotion, holiness; and he is apt to illustrate his teaching by the example of the Apostles, whom we are to believe were men of singular modesty because we hear so very little about them. The modern world has no existence for him whatever; and yet one cannot say that he lives in the Middle Ages, because he knows so little about them; he moves in a paradise of cloistered virgins and mild saints; and the virtue that he chiefly extols is the virtue of faith; the more that reason revolts at a statement, the greater is the triumph of godly faith involved in accepting it unquestioned.

The result is that the little girls love him, the boys laugh at him, the women admire him, the men regard him as not quite a man. The only objects for which he raises money diligently are additions to the furniture of the church; he takes a languid interest in foreign missions, he mistrusts science, and social questions he frankly dislikes. I have heard him say, with an air of deep conviction, when the question of the unemployed is raised, "After all, we must remember that the only possible solution of these sad difficulties is a spiritual one."

The pity of it all is that he is so entirely complacent, so absolutely unaware that there is anything amiss. He does not see that people have to be tenderly and simply wooed to religion, and that they have to be led to take an interest in their own characters and lives. His idea is that the Church is there, a holy and venerable institution, with undeniable claims on the allegiance and loyalty of all. Worship is to him a man's first duty and privilege; and if he finds that one of his parishioners thinks the services tedious, tiresome, or unintelligible, he looks upon him as a child of wrath, perverse and ungodly. The one chance a clergyman has to gain the confidence of the men of his congregation is when he prepares the boys for confirmation; but the vicar sees them, each alone, week after week, and initiates them into the theory of the Visible Church and the advisability of regular confession. I confess sadly that it does not seem to me to resemble Christianity at all; in the place of the shrewd, simple, tender, and wise teaching of Christ about daily life and effort, the duties of kindness, purity, unselfishness, he gives an elaborate picture of rites and ceremonies, of mystical and spiritual agencies, which play little part in the life of a day-labourer's son. If he would learn something about the points of a horse instead of about the points of an angel, if he would study the rotation of the crops instead of the rotation of Easter-tide, he would find himself far more in line with his flock: if he would busy himself with getting the boys and girls good places, he would soon have a niche in the hearts of his parishioners; all that he does is to give a ploughboy, who is going off to a neighbouring farm, a little manual of devotion, with ugly and sentimental chromo-lithographs, and beg him to use it night and morning.

His wife is of the same type, a prim and colourless woman, who believes intensely in her husband, and devotes herself to furthering his work. They have three rather priggish children, whose greatest punishment is not to be allowed to teach in the Sunday-school.

One does not like to laugh at a man whose whole life is spent in doing what he believes to be right; but he seems to have no hold on realities, and to be quite unable to throw himself, by imagination or sympathy, into what his people want or need. He has no belief in secular education, and thinks it makes people discontented and faithless. He is generous with his money, spending lavishly on the Church, but he does not believe in what he calls indiscriminate charity. The incident which has touched him more than any other in the course of his ministry, he will tell you, is when a poor old woman on her death-bed confided to him a few shillings to be spent on providing an altar-frontal. He gives a Sunday-school feast every year, which begins with a versicle and a response. "Thou openest Thine Hand," he says in a rich voice and the children pipe in chorus, "And fillest all things living with plenteousness." The day ends with a little service, which he thoroughly enjoys.

Even the services themselves are a dreary business, because he insists on the whole thing being choral; and little boys in short cassocks, with stocking-legs underneath, howl the responses and monotone the prayers to the accompaniment of a loud raw organ. He reads the lessons in what he calls a devotional way, which consists in reciting all episodes alike, the song of Deborah or the victories of Gideon, as if they were melancholy and pathetic reflections. He is fond of Gregorians and plain-song. The choirmen consist of a scrofulous invalid, his own gardener and coachman, and a bankrupt carpenter, given to drink and profuse repentance. But he is careful to say that he did not suggest the introduction of a choral service--"it was forced upon him by the wish of certain earnest and devoted helpers."

The fact is that the man is, as the children say, a real goose. There is nothing manly, vigorous, or sensible about him; he sometimes deplores the indifference of his parishioners to what he calls true Churchmanship, but he never thinks of comparing his ideal with the Gospel or with the actual conditions of the world. He seems to be hopelessly befogged; he is as certain as only a virtuous or stupid man can be that the religious system which he inculcates is the exact and deliberate development of the Spirit of Christ; and to hear him talk, you would suppose that the only joy in heaven resulted from a rumour that another church was added to the list of sanctuaries which had daily matins. The hopeless difficulty is that he considers his system so pure and lovely that to modify it in any way would seem to be a grievous compromise with worldliness, a violation of his high calling; he looks forward confidently to the time when the people of England will be a devotional and submissive flock, crowding daily to their village sanctuaries, and going back home with the glow and glory of the heavenly mysteries radiating from them in grave smiles and pious ejaculations.

It all seems to me a profoundly melancholy business. One does not wish to prevent people from worshipping God in the vicar's way, if they feel that thus they draw near to the divine presence; but it can only be a very small minority who will ever find satisfaction in this particular type of religion; and I must add that, for myself, I would not unwillingly see that minority reduced. It is a narrow, stuffy, and secluded region at best, remote from the open air, little alive to simplicity, manliness, humour, courage, and cheerfulness. What I resent about it is the solemn certainty with which this system is announced to be the eternal purpose and design of God for man. I am not in a position to say that it is not God's purpose, but nothing that I see in the world convinces me of it; and in any case I can only feel that if this type of religion continues to spread, which I believe it will do, if the better, more unaffected, more intellectual, more manly men begin to be alienated from the clerical profession, it will end in a complete indifference on the part of the nation to religion at all. The fault lies largely, I believe, with the seminaries. They have set up so exotic a standard, screwed up the ecclesiastical tone so high, that few but timid, unintellectual, cautious, and sentimental people will embrace a vocation where so many pledges have to be given. The type of old-fashioned village clergyman, who was at all events a man among men, kindly, generous, hospitable, tolerant, and sensible, seems doomed to extinction, and I cannot help thinking that it is a grievous pity. The new type of clergyman would think, on the other hand, that their disappearance is an unmixed blessing. They would say that they were sloppy, self-indulgent, secular persons, and that the improvement in tone and standard among the clergy was a pure gain; it all depends upon whether you put the social or the priestly functions of the clergyman highest. I am inclined to rate their social value very high, but then I prefer the parson to the priest. I dislike the idea of a priestly caste, an ecclesiastical tradition, a body of people who have the administering of mysterious spiritual secrets. I want to bring religion home to ordinary people, not to segregate it. I would rather have in every parish a wise and kindly man with the same interests as his neighbours, but with a good simple standard of virtuous and brotherly living, than a man endowed with spiritual powers and influences, upholding a standard of life that is subtle, delicate, and refined indeed, but which is neither simple nor practical, and to which the ordinary human being cannot conform, because it lies quite outside of his range of thought. To my mind, the essence of the Gospel is liberty and simplicity; but the Gospel of ecclesiasticism is neither simple nor free.

XLI

It was a pleasant, fresh autumn day, and the philosopher was in a good temper. He was my walking companion for that afternoon. He is always in a good temper, for the matter of that, but his temper has different kinds of goodness. He is always courteous and amiable; but sometimes he has a gentle irony about him and evades all attempts to be serious--to-day, however, he was both benevolent and expansive; and I plunged into his vast mind like a diver leaping headlong from a splash-board.

Let me describe my philosopher first. He is not what is called a social philosopher, a pretentious hedonist, who talks continuously and floridly about himself. I know one such, of whom an enthusiastic maiden said, in a confidential moment, that he seemed to her exactly like Goethe without any of his horrid immorality. Neither is he a technical philosopher, a dreary, hurrying man, travel-stained by faring through the ultimate, spectacled, cadaverous, uncertain of movement, inarticulate of speech. No, my philosopher is a trim, well-brushed man of the world, rather scrupulous about social conventions, as vigorous as Mr. Greatheart, and with a tenderness for the feebler sort of pilgrims. To-day he was blithe and yet serious; he allowed me to ask him questions, and he explained to me technical terms. I felt like a child dandled in the arms of a sage, allowed to blow upon his watch till it opened, and to pull his beard. "No," he said, "I don't advise you, at your age, to try and study philosophy. It requires rather a peculiar kind of mind. You will have to divest words of poetical associations and half-meanings, and arrive at a kind of mathematical appreciation of their value. You had much better talk to me, if you care to, and I will tell you all I can. Besides," he added, "much modern philosophy is a criticism of methods; it has become so special a business that we have most of us drifted quite beyond the horizon, like the higher mathematicians, into questions that have no direct meaning for the ordinary mind. We want a philosopher with a power of literary expression, who can make some attempt to translate our results into ordinary language." "Why could you not do it?" I said, "Ah," said he, "that is not my line! It needs a certain missionary spirit. The thing amuses and interests me; but I don't feel sure that it can be made intelligible--and moreover, I do not think it would be wholly profitable either. We have not determined enough; besides, ordinary people had better act by intuition rather than by reason. There are, too, many data missing, and perhaps the men of science will some day be in a position to give us some, but they have not got far enough yet."

And then we plunged into the subject; but I will not attempt to reproduce what was said, because I cannot remember it, and I should no doubt grossly misrepresent my master. But he led me a fine dance.

It was like a walk I took the other day when I was staying in a mountain country. A companion of mine, tired like myself of inaction, went off with me, and we climbed a high mountain. For some hours we walked in the clouds, in a close-shifting circle of mist, seeing nothing but the little cairns that marked the way, and the bleak grasses at our feet. Now and then we crossed a cold stream that came bubbling into our dim circle, and raved hoarsely away in fretted cataracts. Once we passed a black and silent tarn, with leaden waves lapping among the stones. Once or twice, as we descended, the skirts of the cloud drew up suddenly, and revealed black crags and rocky bastions, and down below a great valley, with sheep grazing, pastures within stone enclosures, little farms, and mountain bases red with fern.

That was like my mental excursion to-day. It was very cold and misty on the heights of my friend's mind. I recognised sometimes familiar things, but all strangely enlarged and transfigured. Once or twice, too, the whole veil flew up, and disclosed a familiar scene, which I felt had some dim connection with the chill and vaporous height, but I could not discern what it was; and when we came down again, the heights were still impenetrably shrouded.

Once indeed my friend emitted a flash of scorn, which was when I mentioned the religious commonplace that the desire of men's hearts to be assured of the continuity of identity was a proof that such a craving must find its fulfilment. "A pleasant dream!" he said. "One might as well affirm that the universal desire for wealth and health was a proof that all would be ultimately healthy and wealthy."

But though I understood little, and remembered less, I felt somehow that it did me good to be brought face to face with these austere problems. It had a bracing effect to have my comfortable intuitions plucked from me, and to be bidden to walk alone. It was vaguely inspiring to look into the misty world that lies behind history and religion and science, the world where one can perhaps be sure of nothing except of one's own consciousness, and not too sure of that. Bracing I say, because of its bareness and precariousness, its sense of ultimate insecurity. I came back to earth not discouraged or dismayed, but more conscious than ever of the urgency of practical problems and the actuality of life. And so, as I say, out of my breathless ramble among ultimate causes and conceptions, I came back to the world with a great sense of zest and relief, as the diver of whom I spoke sees the water grow paler and greener before his swimming eyes, and next moment feels the sunlight about him and sees the willows and the river-bank. I came back filled with a sense of far-off possibilities, and yet more sure than ever that we must neither idle nor despair, but walk swiftly and patiently and help each other along. Not only did I feel my duty to my fellows to be more clear and sure; but my own need of help, my own insignificance, to be more pleasantly insistent. Out of the world where I was only sure of my own consciousness I came down into the world where I am no less practically sure of the presence of millions of similar souls, very blind and weak, perhaps, but very real and dear. On those cloudy hills I had gone astray as a sheep that is lost; and then suddenly there was the sense of the shepherd walking near me--the shepherd himself!--for the philosopher was only a lesser kind of angel bearing a vial in his hands; the blessed sense of being searched for and guided and tenderly chidden and included in the welcome fold. I hope that my philosopher may yet walk on the hills with me, if only for the sake of the love I bear the green valleys; and when I see the great stream passing silently from translucent pool to pool, overhung by rowans and sun-warmed rocks, I shall be glad to think that I have walked on the heights where it was gathered and drawn, and that I have heard it talk hoarsely to itself, cold and uncomforted, among the bleak and dripping stones.

XLII

I have just returned from a few days in town, feeling that it is good to have been there, if only for the sake of the return to the cool silence of these solitary fields. I am not ungrateful for all the kindness which I have received, but I cannot help thinking of the atmosphere which I have left with a kind of horror.

The friend with whom I have been staying is a man of considerable wealth. He has no occupation but the pursuit of culture. He is married to a charming wife, also wealthy; but they are childless, and the result is that they have nothing to expend their energies upon except books and art and society. At long intervals my friend produces a tiny volume, beautifully printed and bound, which he presents to his friends. Last year it was an account of some curious religious ceremonies which he came across in a tour in Brittany. I dare say I am wrong, but it seems to me that the only charm of these grotesque and absurd rites is that country people should practise them quietly and secretly, as a matter of old and customary tradition. The moment that the cultivated stranger comes among them with his philological and sociological explanations, their pretty significance seems to me to be gone. I do not care a brass farthing what they are all about; they are old, they are legendary; as performed by people who have grown up among them, and seen them practised from childhood as a matter of course, they have a certain grace of congruity about them, as the schoolmen say. But printed gravely in a book they seem to me to be nothing but barbarous and foolish games of childish import.

Another year he found some Finnish legends when he was on a yachting cruise, which he translated into an ungainly English. The tales are utterly worthless, not a spark of romance from beginning to end, only typical of an age which I humbly thank God we have left behind.

This year he is full of Balearic music; he played me a number of dreary and monotonous tunes, which he said were so characteristic. But if they were characteristic, and I have no reason to doubt his word, they only seem to me to prove that those islanders are destitute of musical taste and instinct to a quite singular degree.

While I was up in town, my friends certainly did their best to amuse me; they had agreeable people of a literary type to luncheon, tea, and dinner. We heard some music, we went to a play or two, we went to look at some pictures. But I confess to having laboured under an increasing depression, because the whole thing was conducted by rule and line, and in a terribly businesslike way; we knew beforehand exactly what we were to look out for. We did not go in a liberal and expectant spirit, hoping that we might find or see or hear some unexpectedly beautiful thing, but we went in a severely critical spirit, to see if we could detect how the painters and musicians, whose art we were to inspect, deviated from received methods. We went, indeed, not to gain an impression of originality and personality, but to look out for certain tabulated qualities; it depressed me too, perhaps unduly, to hear the jargon with which these criticisms were heralded. The triumph appeared to be to use a set of terms, appropriate to one art, of the effects produced by the others; thus in music we went in search of colour and light, of atmospheric effect and curve; in painting it seemed we were in search of harmony, rhythm, and tone. I should not have minded if I had felt that these words really meant anything in the minds of those who used them; but it seemed to me that the critics were more in love with their terminology than with the effects themselves; and still more, that they went not to form novel impressions, but to search for things which they had been told to expect.