Scenes of Clerical Life

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by George Eliot

any lady's constitution, it is probable that a change accompanied by so few

  outward and visible signs, was rather the pretext than the ground of his

  dismissal in those additional cases. Mr Dunn was threatened with the loss of

  several good customers, Mrs Phipps and Mrs Lowme having set the example of

  ordering him to send in his bill; and the draper began to look forward to his

  next stock-taking with an anxiety which was but slightly mitigated by the

  parallel his wife suggested between his own case and that of Shadrach, Meshech,

  and Abednego, who were thrust into a burning fiery furance. For, as he observed

  to her the next morning, with that perspicacity which belongs to the period of

  shaving, whereas their deliverance consisted in the fact that their linen and

  woollen goods were not consumed, his own deliverance lay in precisely the

  opposite result. But convenience, that admirable branch system from the main

  line of self-interest, makes us all fellow-helpers in spite of adverse

  resolutions. It is probable that no speculative or theological hatred would be

  ultimately strong enough to resist the persuasive power of convenience: that a

  latitudinarian baker, whose bread was honourably free from alum, would command

  the custom of any dyspeptic Puseyite; that an Arminian with the toothache would

  prefer a skilful Calvinistic dentist to a bungler stanch against the doctrines

  of Election and Final Perseverance, who would be likely to break the booth in

  his head; and that a Plymouth Brother, who had a well-furnished grocery-shop in

  a favourable vicinage, would occasionally have the pleasure of furnishing sugar

  or vinegar to orthodox families that found themselves unexpectedly "out of"

  those indispensable commodities. In this persuasive power of convenience lay Mr

  Dunn's ultimate security from martyrdom. His drapery was the best in Milby; the

  comfortable use and wont of procuring satisfactory articles at a moment's notice

  proved too strong for Anti-Tryanite zeal; and the draper could soon look forward

  to his next stock-taking without the support of a Scriptural Parallel.

  On the other hand, Mr Dempster had lost his excellent client, Mr Jerome�a loss

  which galled him out of proportion to the mere monetary deficit it represented.

  The attorney loved money, but he loved power still better. He had always been

  proud of having early won the confidence of a conventicle-goer, and of being

  able to "turn the prop of Salem round his thumbn." Like most other men, too, he

  had a certain kindness towards those who had employed him when he was only

  starting in life; and just as we do not like to part with an old weather-glass

  from our study, or a two-feet ruler that we have carried in our pocket ever

  since we began business, so Mr Dempster did not like having to erase his old

  client's name from the accustomed drawer in the bureau. Our habitual life is

  like a wall hung with pictures, which has been shone on by the suns of many

  years: take one of the pictures away, and it leaves a definite blank space, to

  which our eyes can never turn without a sensation of discomfort. Nay, the

  involuntary loss of any familiar object almost always brings a chill as from an

  evil omen; it seems to be the first finger-shadow of advancing death.

  From all these causes combined, Mr Dempster could never think of his lost client

  without strong irritation, and the very sight of Mr Jerome passing in the street

  was wormwood to him.

  One day, when the old gentleman was coming up Orchard Street on his roan mare,

  shaking the bridle, and tickling her flank with the whip as usual, though there

  was a perfect mutual understanding that she was not to quicken her pace, Janet

  happened to be on her own door-step, and he could not resist the temptation of

  stopping to speak to that "nice little woman," as he always called her, though

  she was taller than all the rest of his feminine acquaintances. Janet, in spite

  of her disposition of take her husband's part in all public matters, could bear

  no malice against her old friend; so they shook hands.

  "Well, Mrs Dempster, I'm surry to my heart not to see you sometimes, that I am,"

  said Mr Jerome, in a plaintive tone. "But if you've got any poor people as wants

  help, and you know's deservin', send 'em to me, send 'em to me, just the same."

  "Thank you, Mr Jerome, that I will. Goodby."

  Janet made the interview as shot as she could, but it was not short enough to

  escape the observation of her husband, who, as she feared, was on his mid-day

  return from his office at the other end of the street, and this offence of hers,

  in speaking to Mr Jerome, was the frequently recurring theme of Mr Dempster's

  objurgatory domestic eloquence.

  Associating the loss of his old client with Mr Tryan's influence, Dempster began

  to know more distinctly why he hated the obnoxious curate. But a passionate

  hate, as well as a passionate love, demands some leisure and mental freedom.

  Persecution and revenge, like courtship and toadyism, will not prosper without a

  considerable expenditure of time and ingenuity, and these are not to spare with

  a man whose law-business and liver are both beginning to show unpleasant

  symptoms. Such was the disagreeable turn affairs were taking with Mr Dempster,

  and, like the general distracted by home intrigues, he was too much harassed

  himself to lay ingenious plans for harassing the enemy.

  Meanwhile, the evening lecture drew larger and larger congregations; not,

  perhaps, attracting many from that select aristocratic circle in which the

  Lowmes and Pittmans were predominant, but winning the larger proportion of Mr

  Crewe's morning and afternoon hearers, and thinning Mr Stickney's evening

  audieness at Salem. Evangelicalism was making its way in Milby, and gradually

  diffusing its subtle odour into chambers that were bolted and barred against it.

  The movement, like all other religious "revivals," had a mixed effect. Religious

  ideas have the fate of melodies, which, once set afloat in the world, are taken

  up by all sorts of instruments, some of them woefully coarse, feeble, or out of

  tune, until people are in danger of crying out that the melody itself is

  detestable. It may be that some of Mr Tryan's hearers had gained a religious

  vocabulary rather than religious experience; that here and there a weaver's

  wife, who, a few months before, had been simply a silly slattern, was converted

  into that more complex nuisance, a silly and sanctimonious slattern; that the

  old Adam, with the pertinacity of middle age, continued to tell fibs behind the

  counter, notwithstanding the new Adam's addiction to Bible-reading and family

  prayer; that the children in the Paddiford Sunday-school had their memories

  crammed with phrases about the blood of cleansing, imputed righteousness, and

  justification by faith alone, which an experience lying principally in

  chuck-farthing, hop-scotch, parental slappings, and longings after unattainable

  lolly-pop, served rather to darken than to illustrate; and that at Milby, in

  those distant days, as in all other times and places where the mental atmosphere

  is changing, and men are inhaling the stimulus of new ideas, folly often mistook <
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  itself for wisdom, ignorance gave itself airs of knowledge, and selfishness,

  turning its eyes upward, called itself religion.

  Nevertheless, Evangelicalism had brought into palpable existence and operation

  in Milby society that idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived

  for beyond the mere satisfaction of self, which is to the moral life what the

  addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life. No man can begin to

  mould himself on a faith or an idea without rising to a higher order of

  experience: a principle of subordination, of self-mastery, has been introduced

  into his nature; he is no longer a mere bundle of impressions, desires, and

  impulses. Whatever might be the weaknesses of the ladies who pruned the

  luxuriance of their lace and ribbons, cut out garments for the poor, disributed

  tracts, quoted Scripture, and defined the true Gospel, they had learned

  this�that there was a divine work to be done in life, a rule of goodness higher

  than the opinion of their neighbours; and if the notion of a heaven in reserve

  for themselves was a little too prominent, yet the theory of fitness for that

  heaven consisted in purity of heart, in Christlike compassion, in the subduing

  of selfish desires. They might give the name of piety to much that was only

  puritanic egoism; they might call many things sin that were not sin; but they

  had at least the feeling that sin was to be avoided and resisted, and

  colour-blindness, which may mistake drab for scarlet, is better than total

  blindness which sees no distinction of colour at all. Miss Rebecca Linnet, in

  quiet attire, with a somewhat excessive solemnity of countenance, teaching at

  the Sunday School, visiting the poor, and striving after a standard of purity

  and goodness, had surely more moral loveliness than in those flaunting

  peonydays, when she had no other model then the costumes of the heroines in the

  circulating library. Miss Eliza Pratt, listening in rapt attention to Mr Tryan's

  evening lecture, no doubt found evangelical channels for vanity and egoism; but

  she was clearly in moral advance of Miss Phipps giggling under her feathers at

  old Mr Crewe's peculiarities of enunciation. And even elderly fathers and

  mothers, with minds, like Mrs Linnet's, too tough to imbibe much doctrine, were

  the better for having their hearts inclined towards the new preacher as a

  messenger from God. They became ashamed, perhaps, of their evil tempers, ashamed

  of their worldliness, ashamed of their trivial, futile past. The first condition

  of human goodness is something to love; the second, something to reverence. And

  this latter precious gift was brought to Milby by Mr Tryan and Evangelicalism.

  Yes, the movement was good, though it had that mixture of folly and evil which

  often makes what is good an offence to feeble and fastidious minds, who want

  human actions and characters riddled through the sieve of their own ideas,

  before they can accord their sympathy or admiration. Such minds, I dare say,

  would have found Mr Tryan's character very much in need of that riddling

  process. The blessed work of helping the world forward, happily does not wait to

  be done by perfect men; and I should imagine that neither Luther nor John

  Bunyan, for example, would have satisfied the modern demand for an ideal hero,

  who believes nothing but what is true, feels nothing but what is exalted, and

  does nothing but what is graceful. The real heroes, of God's making, are quite

  different: they have their natural heritage of love and conscience which they

  drew in with their mother's milk; they know one or two of those deep spiritual

  truths which are only to be won by long wrestling with their own sins and their

  own sorrows; they have earned faith and strength so far as they have done

  genuine work: but the rest is dry barren theory, blank prejudice, vague hearsay.

  Their insight is blended with mere opinion; their sympathy is perhaps confined

  in narrow conduits of doctrine, instead of flowing forth with the freedom of a

  stream that blesses every weed in its course; obstinacy or self-assertion will

  often interfuse itself with their grandest impulses; and their very deeds of

  self-sacrifice are sometimes only the rebound of a passionate egoism. So it was

  with Mr Tryan: and any one looking at him with the bird's-eye glance of a critic

  might perhaps say that he made the mistake of identifying Christianity with a

  too narrow doctrinal system; that he saw God's work too exclusively in

  antagonism to the world, the flesh, and the devil; that his intellectual culture

  was too limited �and so on; making Mr Tryan the text for a wise discourse on the

  characteristics of the Evangelical school in his day.

  But I am not poised at that lofty height. I am on the level and in the press

  with him, as he struggles his way along the stony road, through the crowd of

  unloving fellow-men. He is stumbling, perhaps; his heart now beats fast with

  dread, now heavily with anguish; his eyes are sometimes dim with tears, which he

  makes haste to dash away; he pushes manfully on, with fluctuating faith and

  courage, with a sensitive failing body; at last he falls, the struggle is ended,

  and the crowd closes over the space he has left.

  "One of the Evangelical clergy, a disciple of Venn," says the critic from his

  bird's-eye station. "Not a remarkable specimen; the anatomy and habits of his

  species have been determined long ago."

  Yet surely, surely the only true knowledge of our fellow-man is that which

  enables us to feel with him�which gives us a fine ear for the heartpulses that

  are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance and opinion. Our subtlest

  analysis of schools and sects must miss the essential truth, unless it be lit up

  by the love that sees in all forms of human thought and work, the life and death

  struggles of separate human beings.

  CHAPTER XI.

  Mr Tryan's most unfriendly observers were obliged to admit that he gave himself

  no rest. Three sermons on Sunday, a night-school for young men on Tuesday, a

  cottage-lecture on Thursday, addresses to school-teachers, and catechising of

  school-children, with pastoral visits, multiplying as his influence extended

  beyond his own district of Paddiford Common, would have been enough to tax

  severely the powers of a much stronger man. Mr Pratt remonstrated with him on

  his imprudence, but could not prevail on him so far to economise time and

  strength as to keep a horse. On some ground or other, which his friends found

  difficult to explain to themselves, Mr Tryan seemed bent on wearing himself out.

  His enemies were at no loss to account for such a course. The Evangelical

  curate's selfishness was clearly of too bad a kind to exhibit itself after the

  ordinary manner of a sound, respectable selfishness. "He wants to get the

  reputation of a saint," said one; "He's eaten up with spiritual pride," said

  another; "He's got his eye on some fine living, and wants to creep up the

  bishop's sleeve," said a third.

  Mr Stickney, of Salem, who considered all voluntary discomfort as a remnant of

  the legal spirit, pronounced a severe condemnation on this self-neglect, and
r />   expressed his fear that Mr Tryan was still far from having attained true

  Christian liberty. Good Mr Jerome eagerly seized this doctrinal view of the

  subject as a means of enforcing the suggestions of his own benevolence; and one

  cloudy afternoon, in the end of November, he mounted his roan mare with the

  determination of riding to Paddiford and "arguying" the point with Mr Tryan.

  The old gentleman's face looked very mournful as he rode along the dismal

  Paddiford lanes, between rows of grimy houses, darkened with handlooms, while

  the black dust was whirled about him by the cold November wind. He was thinking

  of the object which had brought him on this afternoon ride, and his thoughts,

  according to his habit when alone, found vent every now and then in audible

  speech. It seemed to him, as his eyes rested on this scene of Mr Tryan's

  labours, that he could understand the clergyman's self-privation without

  resorting to Mr Stickney's theory of defective spiritual enlightenment. Do not

  philosophic doctors tell us that we are unable to discern so much as a tree,

  except by an unconscious cunning which combines many past and separate

  sensations; that no one sense is independent of another, so that we can hardly

  taste a fricassee, or tell whether our pipe is alight or not, in the dark, and

  the most intelligent boy, if accommodated with claws or hoofs instead of

  fingers, would be likely to remain on the lowest form? If so, it is easy to

  understand that our discernment of men's motives must depend on the completeness

  of the elements we can bring from our own susceptibility and our own experience.

  See to it, friend, before you pronounce a too hasty judgment, that your own

  moral sensibilities are not of a hoofed or clawed character. The keenest eye

  will not serve, unless you have the delicate fingers, with their subtle nerve

  filaments, which elude scientific lenses, and lose themselves in the invisible

  world of human sensations.

  As for Mr Jerome, he drew the elements of his moral vision from the depths of

  his veneration and pity. If he himself felt so much for these poor things to

  whom life was so dim and meagre, what must the clergyman feel who had undertaken

  before God to be their shepherd?

  "Ah!" he whispered, interruptedly, "it's too big a load for his conscience, poor

  man! He wants to mek himself their brother, like; can't abide to preach to the

  fastin' on a full stomach. Ah! he's better nor we are, that's it�he's a deal

  better nor we are."

  Here Mr Jerome shook his bridle violently, and looked up with an air of moral

  courage, as if Mr Stickney had been present, and liable to take offence at this

  conclusion. A few minutes more brought him in front of Mrs Wagstaff's, where Mr

  Tryan lodged. He had often been here before, so that the contrast between this

  ugly square brick house, with its shabby bit of grass-plot, stared at all round

  by cottage windows, and his own pretty white home, set in a paradise of orchard,

  and garden, and pasture, was not new to him; but he felt it with fresh force

  to-day, as he slowly fastened his roan by the bridle to the wooden paling, and

  knocked at the door. Mr Tryan was at home, and sent to request that Mr Jerome

  would walk up into his study, as the fire was out in the parlour below.

  At the mention of a clergyman's study, perhaps, your too active imagination

  conjures up a perfect snuggery, where the general air of comfort is rescued from

  a secular character by strong ecclesiastical suggestions in the shape of the

  furniture, the pattern of the carpet, and the prints on the wall; where, if a

  nap is taken, it is in an easy-chair with a Gothic back, and the very feet rest

  on a warm and velvety simulation of church windows; where the pure art of

  rigorous English Protestantism smiles above the mantel-piece in the portrait of

  an eminent bishop, or a refined Anglican taste is indicated by a German print

 

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