Books: The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford

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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 principal 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 buttered toast and muffins 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 God 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 assistants 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 class 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
superstitious 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 promptitude 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: nobody 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 sexton.
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. Nobody 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 passion 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 assure 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 anticipations. What enabled me to
conquer, was not so much heroism as a susceptibility to nobler 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
God. 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.
"God," 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.
This was worse than ever. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he
broke out into triumphal anticipation of the future glories of Israel.
Balak remonstrated in wrath, but Balaam was altogether inaccessible.
"If Balak would give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot go
beyond the commandment of the Lord, to do either good or bad of mine
own mind; but what the Lord saith, that will I speak."

This story greatly impressed me, and I date from it a distinct
disinclination to tamper with myself, or to deliver what I had to
deliver in phrases which, though they might be conciliatory, were
misleading.

About this time there was a movement in the town to obtain a better
supply of water. The soil was gravelly and full of cesspools, side by
side with which were sunk the wells. A public meeting was held, and I
attended and spoke on behalf of the scheme. There was much opposition,
mainly on the score that the rates would be increased, and on the
Saturday after the meeting the following letter appeared in the
Sentinel, the local paper:

"Sir,--It is not my desire to enter into the controversy now raging
about the water-supply of this town, but I must say I was much
surprised that a minister of religion should interfere in politics.
Sir, I cannot help thinking that if the said minister would devote
himself to the Water of Life -

'that gentle fount
Progressing from Immanuel's mount,' -

it would be much more harmonious with his function as a follower of him
who knew nothing save Christ crucified. Sir, I have no wish to
introduce controversial topics upon a subject like religion into your
columns, which are allotted to a different line, but I must be
permitted to observe that I fail to see how a minister's usefulness can
be stimulated if he sets class against class. Like the widows in
affliction of old, he should keep himself pure and unspotted from the
world. How can many of us accept the glorious gospel on the Sabbath
from a man who will incur spots during the week by arguing about
cesspools like any other man? Sir, I will say nothing, moreover, about
a minister of the gospel assisting to bind burdens--that is to say,
rates and taxation--upon the shoulders of men grievous to be borne.
Surely, sir, a minister of the Lamb of God, who was shed for the
remission of sins, should be AGAINST burdens.--I am sir, your obedient
servant,

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