 CHAPTER 47 Ernest returned to Cambridge for the May term of 1858, on the plea of reading for ordination, with which now he was face to face and much nearer than he liked. Up to this time, though not religiously inclined, he had never doubted the truth of anything that had been told him about Christianity. He had never seen anyone who doubted, nor read anything that raised a suspicion in his mind as to the historical character of the miracles recorded in the Old and New Testaments. It must be remembered that the year 1858 was the last of a term during which the peace of the Church of England was singularly unbroken. Between 1844, when vestiges of creation appeared, and 1859, when essays and reviews marked the commencement of that storm which raged until many years afterwards, there was not a single book published in England that caused serious commotion within the bosom of the Church. Perhaps Buckle's history of civilization and Mill's liberty were the most alarming, but they, neither of them, reached the substratum of the reading public, and Ernest and his friends were ignorant of their very existence. The evangelical movement, with the exception to which I shall revert presently, had become almost a matter of ancient history. Tractarianism had subsided into a tenth day's wonder. It was at work, but it was not noisy. The vestiges were forgotten before Ernest went up to Cambridge. The Catholic aggression scare had lost its terrors. Ritualism was still unknown by the general provincial public, and the gorum and hamden controversies were defunct some years since. Descent was not spreading. The Crimean War was the one engrossing subject to be followed by the Indian mutiny and the Franco-Austrian War. These great events turned men's minds from speculative subjects, and there was no enemy to the faith which could arouse even a languid interest. At no time, probably since the beginning of the century, could an ordinary observer have detected less sign of coming disturbance than at that of which I am writing. I need hardly say that the calm was only on the surface. Older men who knew more than undergraduates were likely to do must have seen that the wave of skepticism which had already broken over Germany was setting towards our own shores, nor was it long indeed before it reached them. Ernest had hardly been ordained before three works in quick succession arrested the attention even of those who paid least heed to theological controversy. I mean essays and reviews, Charles Darwin's origin of species, and Bishop Colenso's criticisms on the Pentateuch. This however is a digression. I must revert to the one phase of spiritual activity which had any life in it during the time Ernest was at Cambridge. That is to say, to the remains of the evangelical awakening of more than a generation earlier, which was connected with the name of Simeon. There were still a good many Simeonites, or as they were more briefly called, Sims, in Ernest's time. Every college contained some of them, but their headquarters were at Caes, whether they were attracted by Mr. Clayton, who was at that time senior tutor, and among the sizers of St. John's. Behind the then chapel of this last named college, there was a labyrinth, this was the name at Bohr, of dingy, tumbledown rooms, tenanted exclusively by the poorest undergraduates, who were dependent upon sizerships and scholarships for the means of taking their degrees. To many, even at St. John's, the existence and whereabouts of the labyrinth in which these sizers chiefly lived was unknown. Some men in Ernest's time, who had rooms in the first court, had never found their way through the sinuous passage which led to it. In the labyrinth there dwelt men of all ages, from mere lads to grey-haired old men who had entered late in life. They were rarely seen except in Hall or Chapel or at Lecture, where their manners of feeding, praying, and studying were considered alike objectionable. No one knew whence they came, whether they went, nor what they did, for they never showed at Cricket or the boats. They were a gloomy, seedy-looking conferee who had as little to glory in, in clothes and manners as in, the flesh itself. Ernest and his friends used to consider themselves marvels of economy for getting on with so little money. But the greater number of dwellers in the labyrinth would have considered one half of their expenditure to be an exceeding measure of affluence, and so doubtless any domestic tyranny which had been experienced by Ernest was a small thing to what the average Johnian sciser had had to put up with. A few would at once emerge on its being found after their first examination that they were likely to be ornaments to the college. These would win valuable scholarships that would enable them to live in some degree of comfort and would amalgamate with the more studious of those who were in a better social position. But even these, with few exceptions, were long and shaking off the uncouthness they brought with them to the university, nor would their origin cease to be easily recognizable till they had become dons and tutors. I have seen some of these men attain high position in the world of politics or science, and yet still retain a look of labyrinth and Johnian sizeship. Unprepossessing, then, in feature, gait, and manners, unkempt and ill-dressed beyond what can be easily described, these poor fellows formed a class apart whose thoughts and ways were not as the thoughts and ways of Ernest and his friends, and it was among them that simianism chiefly flourished. Destined most of them for the church, for in those days holy orders were seldom heard of. The simianites held themselves to have received a very loud call to the ministry, and were ready to pinch themselves for years so as to prepare for it by the necessary theological courses. To most of them the fact of becoming clergymen would be the entree into a social position from which they were at present kept out, by barriers they well knew to be impassable. Ordination therefore opened fields for ambition which made at the central point in their thoughts, rather than as with Ernest, something which he would suppose would have to be done some day, but about which, as about dying, he hoped there would be no need to trouble himself as yet. By way of preparing themselves more completely they would have meetings in one another's rooms for tea and prayer and other spiritual exercises, placing themselves under the guidance of a few well-known tutors they would teach in Sunday schools, and be instant in season and out of season in imparting spiritual instruction to all whom they could persuade to listen to them. But the soil of the more prosperous undergraduates was not suitable for the seed they tried to sow, the small pieties with which they larded their discourse if chance threw them into the company of one whom they considered worldly, caused nothing but a version in the minds of those for whom they were intended. When they distributed tracts, dropping them by night into good men's letterboxes while they were asleep, their tracts got burnt, or met with even worse, contently. They were themselves also treated with the ridicule which they reflected proudly had been the lot of true followers of Christ in all ages. Even at their prayer meetings was the passage of St. Paul referred to in which he bids his Corinthian converts note concerning themselves that they were for the most part neither well-bred nor intellectual people. They reflected with pride that they too had nothing to be proud of in these respects, and like St. Paul glorified in the fact that in the flesh they had not much to glory. Christ had several Johnian friends, and came thus to hear about the Simeonites and to see some of them, who were pointed out to him as they passed through the courts. They had a repellent attraction for him. He disliked them, but he could not bring himself to leave them alone. On one occasion he had gone so far as to parody one of the tracts they had sent round in the night, and to get a copy dropped into each of the leading Simeonites' boxes. The subject he had taken was personal cleanliness. Cleanliness, he said, was next to godliness. He wished to know on which side it was to stand, and concluded by exhorting Simeonites to a freer use of the tub. I cannot commend my hero's humor in this matter. His tract was not brilliant, but I mentioned the fact as showing that at this time he was something of a soul and took pleasure in persecuting the elect, not as I have said that he had any hankering after skepticism, but because like the farmers in his father's village, though he would not stand seeing the Christian religion made light of, he was not going to see it taken seriously. Ernest's friends thought his dislike for the Simeonites was due to his being the son of a clergyman who, it was known, bullied him. It is more likely, however, that it rose from an unconscious sympathy with them, which, as in St. Paul's case, in the end, drew him into the ranks of those whom he had most despised and hated. CHAPTER 48 Once recently when he was down at home after taking his degree, his mother had had a short conversation with him about his becoming a clergyman, set on there too by Theobald, who shrank from the subject himself. This time it was during a turn taken in the garden, and not on the sofa, which was reserved for supreme occasions. "'You know, my dearest boy,' she said to him, "'that papa,' she always called Theobald Papa when talking to Ernest, "'is so anxious that you should not go into the church blindly and without fully realizing the difficulties of a clergyman's position. He has considered all of them himself and has been shown how small they are when they are faced boldly, but he wishes you too to feel them as strongly and completely as possible before committing yourself to irrevocable vows so that you may never, never have to regret the step you will have taken.' This was the first time Ernest had heard that there were any difficulties, and he had not unnaturally inquired in a vague way after their nature. "'That, my dear boy,' rejoined Christina, "'is a question which I am not fitted to enter upon either by nature or education. I might easily unsettle your mind without being able to settle it again. Oh no, such questions are far better avoided by women, and I should have thought by men, but papa wished me to speak to you upon the subject, so that there might be no mistake hereafter, and I have done so. Now, therefore, you know all.'" The conversation ended here, so far as this subject was concerned, and Ernest thought he did know all. His mother would not have told him he knew all, not about a matter of that sort, unless he actually did know it. Well, it did not come to very much. He supposed there were some difficulties, but his father, who at any rate was an excellent scholar and a learned man, was probably quite right here, and he need not trouble himself more about them. So little impression did the conversation make on him that it was not till long afterwards that, happening to remember it, he saw what a piece of sight of hand had been practiced upon him. Theobald and Christina, however, were satisfied that they had done their duty by opening their son's eyes to the difficulties of ascending to all a clergyman must ascend to. This was enough. It was a matter of rejoicing, that though they had been put so fully and candidly before him, he did not find them serious. It was not in vain that they had prayed for so many years to be made truly honest and conscientious. "'And now, my dear,' resumed Christina, after having disposed of all the difficulties that might stand in the way of Ernest becoming a clergyman, there is another matter on which I should like to have a talk with you. It is about your sister, Charlotte. You know how clever she is, and what a dear kind sister she has been and always will be to yourself and Joey. I wish my dearest Ernest that I saw more chance of her finding a suitable husband than I do at Battersby, and I sometimes think you might do more than you do to help her.' Ernest began to chafe at this, for he had heard it so often, but he said nothing. "'You know, my dear, a brother can do so much for his sister if he lays himself out to do it. A mother can do very little. Indeed, it is hardly a mother's place to seek out young men. It is a brother's place to find a suitable partner for his sister. All that I can do is try to make Battersby as attractive as possible to any of your friends whom you may invite. And in that, she added, with a little toss of her head, I do not think I have been deficient hitherto.' Ernest said he had already at different times asked several of his friends. "'Yes, my dear, but you must admit that they were none of them exactly the kind of young man whom Charlotte could be expected to take a fancy to. Indeed, I must own to having been a little disappointed that you should have yourself chosen any of these as your intimate friends.' Ernest winced again. "'You never brought down Figgins when you were at Ruffburrow. Now I should have thought Figgins would have been just the kind of boy whom you might have asked to come and see us.' Figgins had been gone through times out of number already. Ernest had hardly known him, and Figgins, being nearly three years older than Ernest, had left long before he did. Besides, he had not been a nice boy, and had made himself unpleasant to Ernest in many ways. "'Now,' continued his mother, "'there's Townley. I have heard you speak of Townley as having rode with you in a boat at Cambridge. I wish, my dear, you would cultivate your acquaintance with Townley and ask him to pay us a visit. The name has an aristocratic sound, and I think I have heard you say he is an eldest son.' Ernest flushed at the sound of Townley's name. What had really happened in respect of Ernest's friends was briefly this. His mother liked to get hold of the names of the boys and especially of any who were at all intimate with her son. The more she heard, the more she wanted to know. There was no gorging her to satiety. She was like a ravenous young cuckoo being fed upon a grass plot by a water wag-tail. She would swallow all that Ernest could bring her and yet be as hungry as before. And she always went to Ernest for her meals rather than to Joey. For Joey was either more stupid or more impenetrable. At any rate, she could pump Ernest much the better of the two. From time to time an actual live boy had been thrown to her, either by being caught and brought to Battersby, or by being asked to meet her if at any time she came to Ruffborough. She had generally made herself agreeable, or fairly agreeable, as long as the boy was present. But as soon as she got Ernest to herself again she changed her note. Into whatever form she might throw her criticisms it came always in the end to this, that his friend was no good, that Ernest was not much better, and that he should have brought her someone else, for this one would not do at all. The more intimate the boy had been, or was supposed to be with Ernest, the more he was declared to be not, till in the end he had hit upon the plan of saying, concerning any boy whom he particularly liked, that he was not one of his special chums, and that indeed he hardly knew why he had asked him, but he found he only fell on Silla in trying to avoid Caribdus. For though the boy was declared to be more successful it was Ernest who was not, for not thinking more highly of him. When she had once got hold of a name, she never forgot it. And how is so and so, she would exclaim mentioning some former friend of Ernest, with whom he had either now quarreled, or who had long since proved to be a mere comet and no fixed star at all. How Ernest wished he had never mentioned so and so's name, and vowed to himself that he would never talk about his friends in future. But in a few hours he would forget and would prattle away as imprudently as ever. Then his mother would pounce noiselessly on his remarks as a barn owl pounces upon a mouse, and would bring them up in appellate six months afterwards when they were no longer in harmony with their surroundings. Then there was Theobald. If a boy or college friend had been invited to Battersby, Theobald would lay himself out at first to be agreeable. He would do this well enough when he liked, and as regards the outside world he generally did like. His clerical neighbors, and indeed all his neighbors, respected him yearly more and more, and would have given Ernest sufficient cause to regret his imprudence if he had dared to hint that he had anything, however little, to complain of. Theobald's mind worked in this way. Now I know Ernest has told this boy what a disagreeable person I am, and I will just show him that I am not disagreeable at all, but a good old fellow, a jolly old boy, in fact a regular old brick, and that it is Ernest who is in fault all through. So he would behave very nicely to the boy at first, and the boy would be delighted with him, and side with him against Ernest. Of course, if Ernest had got the boy to come to Battersby, he wanted him to enjoy his visit, and was therefore pleased that Theobald should behave so well. But at the same time he stood so much in need of moral support, that it was painful to him to see one of his own familiar friends go over to the enemy's camp, for no matter how well we may know a thing, how clearly we may see a certain patch of color, for example as red. It shakes us and knocks us about to find another sea it, or be more than half inclined to see it as green. Theobald had generally begun to get a little impatient before the end of the visit, but the impression formed during the earlier part was the one which the visitor had carried away with him. Theobald never discussed any of the boys with Ernest. It was Christina who did this. Theobald let them come because Christina in a quiet, persistent way insisted on it. When they did come he behaved, as I have said, civilly. But he did not like it, whereas Christina did like it very much. She would have had half rough borough and half Cambridge to come and stay at Battersby if she could have managed it, and if it would not have cost so much money. She liked their coming, so that she might make a new acquaintance, and she liked tearing them to pieces and flinging the bits over Ernest as soon as she had had enough of them. The worst of it was that she had so often proved to be right. Boys and young men are violent in their affections, but they are seldom very constant. It is not till they get older that they really know the kind of friend they want. In their earlier essays young men are simply learning to judge character. Ernest had been no exception to the general rule. His swans had one after the other proved to be more or less geese, even in his own estimation, and he was beginning almost to think that his mother was a better judge of character than he was. But I think it may be assumed, with some certainty, that if Ernest had brought her a real young swan she would have declared it to be the ugliest and worst goose of all that she had yet seen. At first he had not suspected that his friends were wanted with a view to Charlotte. It was understood that Charlotte and they might perhaps take a fancy for one another, and that would be so very nice, would it not? But he did not see that there was any deliberate malice in the arrangement. Now, however, that he had awoke to what it all meant, he was less inclined to bring any friend of his to Battersby. It seemed to his silly young mind almost dishonest to ask your friend to come and see you when all you really meant was, please, marry my sister. It was like trying to obtain money under false pretenses. If he had been fond of Charlotte it might have been another matter, but he thought her one of the most disagreeable young women in the whole circle of his acquaintance. She was supposed to be very clever. All young ladies are either very pretty, or very clever, or very sweet. They may take their choice as to which category they will go for, but go for one of the three they must. It was hopeless to try and pass Charlotte off as either pretty or sweet. So she became clever as the only remaining alternative. Ernest ever knew what particular branch of study it was in which she showed her talent, for she could neither play nor sing nor draw, but so astute are women that his mother and Charlotte really did persuade him into thinking that she, Charlotte, had something more akin to true genius than any other member of the family. Not one, however, of all the friends whom Ernest had been inveigled into trying to inveigle had shown the least sign of being so far struck with Charlotte's commanding powers as to wish to make them his own. And this may have had something to do with the rapidity and completeness with which Christina had dismissed them one after another and had wanted a new one. And now she wanted Townley. Ernest had seen this coming and had tried to avoid it, for he knew how impossible it was for him to ask Townley even if he had wished to do so. Townley belonged to one of the most exclusive sets in Cambridge and was perhaps the most popular man among the whole number of undergraduates. He was big and very handsome and it seemed to Ernest the handsomest man who he ever had seen or ever could see, for it was impossible to imagine a more lively and agreeable countenance. He was good at cricket and boating, very good-natured, singularly free from conceit, not clever, but very sensible. And lastly, his father and mother had been drowned by the overturning of a boat when he was only two years old and had left him as their only child and heir to one of the finest estates in the south of England. Fortune every now and then does things handsomely by a man all around. Townley was one of those to whom she had taken a fancy and the universal verdict in this case was that she had chosen wisely. Ernest had seen Townley as everyone else in the university, except of course Don's, had seen him, for he was a man of mark and being very susceptible he had liked Townley even more than most people did, but at the same time it never so much as entered his head that he should come to know him. He liked looking at him if he got a chance and was very much ashamed of himself for doing so, but there the matter ended. By a strange accident, however, during Ernest's last year when the names of the crews for the scratch fours were drawn, he had found himself coxswain of a crew among whom was none other than his special hero Townley. The three others were ordinary mortals, but they could row fairly well and the crew on the whole was a rather good one. Ernest was frightened out of his wits. When however the two met he found Townley no less remarkable for his entire want of anything like side and for his power of setting those whom he came across at their ease than he was for his outward accomplishments. The only difference he found between Townley and other people was that he was so very much easier to get on with. Of course Ernest worshipped him more and more. The scratch fours being ended, the connection between the two came to an end, but Townley never passed Ernest then sporth without a nod and a few good-natured words. In an evil moment he had mentioned Townley's name at Battersby and now what was the result? Here was his mother plaguing him to ask Townley to come down to Battersby and marry Charlotte. Why if he had thought there was the remotest chance of Townley's marrying Charlotte he would have gone down on his knees to him and told him what an odious young woman she was and implored him to save himself while there was yet time. But Ernest had not prayed to be made truly honest and conscientious for as many years as Christina had. He had tried to conceal what he felt and thought as well as he could and led the conversation back to the difficulties which a clergyman might feel to stand in the way of his being ordained. Not because he had any misgivings, but as a diversion. His mother, however, thought she had settled all that and he got no more out of her. Soon afterwards he found the means of escaping and was not slow to avail himself of them. For more information order volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rhonda Fetterman The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler Chapter 49 On his return to Cambridge in the May term of 1858, Ernest and a few other friends who were also intended for orders came to the conclusion that they must now take a more serious view of their position. They therefore attended chapel more regularly than hitherto and held evening meetings of a somewhat furtive character at which they would study the New Testament. They even began to commit the epistles of St. Paul to memory in the original Greek. They got up beverage on the 39 articles and Pearson on the Creed. In their hours of recreation they read Moors Mystery of Godliness which Ernest thought was charming and Taylor's Holy Living and Dying which also impressed him deeply through what he thought was the splendor of its language. They handed themselves over to the guidance of Dean Alfred's notes on the Greek Testament which made Ernest better understand what was meant by difficulties but also made him feel how shallow and impotent were the conclusions arrived at by German neologians with whose works being in a sense of German he was not otherwise acquainted. Some of the friends who joined him in these pursuits were Johnians and the meetings were often held within the walls of St. John's. I do not know how tidings of these furtive gatherings had reached the Simeonites but they must have come round to them in some way for they had not been continued for many weeks before a circular was sent to each of the young men who attended them informing them that the Reverend Gideon Hawke a well-known London evangelical preacher whose sermons were then much talked of was about to visit his young friend Badcock of St. John's and would be glad to say a few words to any who might wish to hear them in Badcock's rooms on a certain evening in May. Badcock was one of the most notorious of all the Simeonites. Not only was he ugly, dirty, ill-dressed, bumptious, and in every way objectionable, but he was deformed and waddled when he walked so that he had won a nickname which I can only reproduce by calling it here's my back and there's my back because the lower parts of his back emphasize themselves demonstratively as though about to fly off in different directions like the two extreme notes in the chord of the augmented sixth with every step he took. It may be guessed therefore that the recede of the circular had for a moment an almost paralyzing effect on those whom it was addressed owing to the astonishment which had occasioned them. It certainly was a daring surprise, but like so many deformed people, Badcock was forward and hard to check. He was a pushing fellow to whom the present was just the opportunity he wanted for carrying war into the enemy's quarters. Ernest and his friends consulted. Moved by the feeling that they were now preparing to be clergymen, they ought not to stand so stiffly on social dignity as here to for, and also perhaps by the desire to have a good private view of a preacher who was then much upon the lips of men, they decided to accept the invitation. When the appointed time came they went with some confusion and self-abasement to the rooms of this man on whom they had looked down hitherto as from an immeasurable height and with whom nothing would have made them believe a few weeks earlier that they could ever come to be on speaking terms. Mr. Hawk was a very different looking person from Badcock. He was remarkably handsome, or rather would have been but for the thinness of his lips, and a look of too great firmness and inflexibility. His features were a good deal like those of Leonardo da Vinci. Moreover he was kempt, looked invigorous health, and was of a ruddy countenance. He was extremely courteous in his manner and paid a good deal of attention to Badcock, of whom he seemed to think highly. All together our young friends were taken aback and inclined to think smaller beer of themselves and larger of Badcock than was agreeable to the old Adam who was still alive within them. A few well-known sims from St. John's and other colleges were present, but not enough to swamp the earnest set, as for the sake of brevity I will call them. After a preliminary conversation in which there was nothing to offend, the business of the evening began by Mr. Hawk standing up at one end of the table and saying, Let us pray. The earnest set did not like this, but they could not help themselves so they knelt down and repeated the Lord's prayer and a few others after Mr. Hawk, who delivered them remarkably well. Then when all had sat down, Mr. Hawk addressed them, speaking without notes and taking for his text the words, Saul, Saul, why persecute us thou me? Whether owing to Mr. Hawk's manner, which was impressive, or to his well-known reputation for ability, or whether from the fact that each one of the earnest set knew that he had been more or less a persecutor of the sims, and yet felt instinctively that the sims were after all much more like the early Christians than he was himself. At any rate, the text familiar though it was, went home to the consciences of earnest and his friends as it had never yet done. If Mr. Hawk had stopped here, he would have almost said enough. As he scanned the faces turned towards him and saw the impression he had made, he was perhaps minded to bring his sermon to an end before beginning it, but if so he reconsidered himself and proceeded as follows, I give the sermon in full, for it is a typical one and will explain a state of mind which in another generation or two will seem to stand sadly in need of explanation. My young friends, said Mr. Hawk, I am persuaded that there is not one of you here who doubts the existence of a personal God. If there were, it is to him assuredly that I should first address myself. Should I be mistaken in my belief that all here assembled accept the existence of a God who is present amongst us, though we see him not, and whose eye is upon our most secret thoughts? Let me implore the doubter to confer with me in private before we part. I will then put before him considerations through which God has been mercifully pleased to reveal himself to me, so far as any man can understand him, and which I have found bring peace to the minds of others who have doubted. I assume also that there is none who doubts, but that this God, after whose likeness we have been made, did in the course of time have pity upon man's blindness and assume our nature, taking flesh and coming down and dwelling among us as a man, indistinguishable physically from ourselves. He who made the sun, moon, and stars, the world and all that therein is, came down from heaven in the person of his son, with the express purpose of leading a scorned life and dying the most cruel, shameful death which fiendish ingenuity has invented. While on earth he worked many miracles, he gave sight to the blind, raised the dead to life, fed thousands with a few loaves and fishes, and was seen to walk upon the waves, but at the end of his appointed time he died, as was fore determined upon the cross, and was buried by a few faithful friends. Those, however, who had put him to death set a jealous watch over his tomb. There is no one, I feel sure, in this room who doubts any part of the foregoing, but if there is, let me again pray him to confer with me in private, and I doubt not that by the blessing of God his doubts will cease. The next day, but one after our lord was buried, the tomb being still jealously guarded by enemies, an angel was seen descending from heaven, with glittering raiment and countenance that shone like fire. This glorious being rolled away the stone from the grave, and our lord himself came forth risen from the dead. My young friends, this is no fanciful story, like those of the ancient deities, but a matter of plain history as certain as that you and I are now here together. If there is one fact better vouched for than another in the whole range of certainties, it is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, nor is it less well assured that a few weeks after he had risen from the dead, our lord was seen by many hundreds of men and women to rise amid the host of angels into the air upon a heavenward journey till the clouds covered him and concealed him from the sight of men. It may be said that the truth of these statements has been denied, but what let me ask you has become of the questioners. Where are they now? Do we see them here or hear of them? Have they been able to hold what little ground they made during the supine-ness of the last century? Is there one of your fathers or mothers or friends who does not see through them? Is there a single teacher or preacher in this great university who has not examined what these men had to say and found it not? Did you ever meet one of them or do you find any of their books securing the respectful attention of those competent to judge concerning them? I think not. And I think also you know as well as I do why it is that they have sunk back into the abyss from which they for a time emerged. It is because after the most careful and patient examination by the ablest and most judicial minds of many countries, their arguments were found so untenable that they themselves renounced them. They fled from the field, routed, dismayed, ensuing for peace, nor have they again come to the front in any civilized country. You know these things. Why then do I insist upon them? My dear young friends, your own consciousness will have made the answer to each one of you already. It is because though you know so well that these things did verily and indeed happen, you know also that you have not realized them to yourselves as it was your duty to do, nor heeded their momentous awful import. And now let me go further. You all know that you will one day come to die, or if not to die, for there are not wanting signs which make me hope that the Lord may come again while some of us now present are alive, yet to be changed, for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, for this corruption must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality, and the saying shall be brought to pass that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. Do you or do you not believe that you will one day stand before the judgment seat of Christ? Do you or do you not believe that you will have to give an account for every idle word that you have ever spoken? Do you or do you not believe that you are called to live? Not according to the will of man, but according to the will of that Christ who came down from heaven out of love for you, who suffered and died for you, who calls you to him, and yearns toward you that you may take heed even in this your day. But who, if you heed not, will also one day judge you, and with whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning? My dear young friends, straight is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth to eternal life, and few there be that find it. Few, few, few, for he who will not give up all for Christ's sake has given up nothing. If you would live in the friendship of this world, if indeed you are not prepared to give up everything you most fondly cherish, should the Lord require it of you, then I say put the idea of Christ deliberately on one side at once. Spit upon him, buffet him, crucify him anew, do anything you like so long as you secure the friendship of this world while it is still in your power to do so. The pleasures of this brief life may not be worth paying for by the torments of eternity, but they are something while they last. If, on the other hand, you would live in the friendship of God and be among the number of those for whom Christ has not died in vain, if, in a word, you value your eternal welfare, then give up the friendship of this world, of assurity you must make your choice between God and Mammon, for you cannot serve both. I put these considerations before you, if so homely a term may be pardoned as a plain matter of business. There is nothing low or unworthy in this, as some lately have pretended, for all nature shows us that there is nothing more acceptable to God than an enlightened view of our own self-interest. Never let anyone's elude you here. It is a simple question of fact. Did certain things happen or did they not? If they did happen, is it reasonable to suppose that you will make yourselves and others more happy by one course of conduct or by another? And now let me ask you what answer you have made to this question, hither, too. Whose friendship have you chosen? If, knowing what you know, you have not yet begun to act according to the immensity of the knowledge that is in you, then he who builds his house and lays up his treasure on the edge of a crater of molten lava is a sane, sensible person in comparison with yourselves. I say this as no figure of speech or bugbear with which to frighten you, but as an unvarnished, unexaggerated statement which will be no more disputed by yourselves than by me. And now, Mr. Hawk, who up to this time had spoken with singular quietness, changed his manner to one of greater warmth and continued, oh my young friends, turn, turn, turn now while it is called today. Now from this hour, from this instant, stay not even to gird up your loins, look not behind you for a second, but fly into the bosom of that Christ who is to be found of all who seek him, and from that fearful wrath of God which lieth in weight for those who know not the things belonging to their peace. For the Son of Man cometh as a thief in the night, and there is not one of us can tell, but what this day his soul may be required of him. If there is even one here who has heeded me, and he let his eye fall for an instant upon almost all his hearers, but especially on the earnest set, I shall know that it was not for nothing that I felt the call of the Lord, and heard as I thought a voice by night that bade me come hither quickly, for there was a chosen vessel who had need of me. Here Mr. Hawke ended rather abruptly. His earnest manner, striking countenance, and excellent delivery had produced an effect greater than the actual words I have given can convey to the reader. The virtue lay in the man, more than what he said. As for the last few mysterious words about his having heard a voice by night, their effect was magical. There was not one who did not look down to the ground, nor who in his heart did not half believe that he was the chosen vessel on whose special behalf God had sent Mr. Hawke to Cambridge. Even if this were not so, each one of them felt that he was now for the first time in the actual presence of one who had a direct communication from the Almighty, and they were thus suddenly brought a hundredfold nearer to the New Testament miracles. They were amazed, not to say scared, and as though by tacit consent they gathered together, thanked Mr. Hawke for his sermon, said good night in a humble deferential manner to Badcock and the other Simeonites, and left the room together. They had heard nothing but what they had been hearing all their lives. How was it then that they were so dumbfounded by it? I suppose partly because they had lately begun to think more seriously, and were in a fit state to be impressed, partly from the greater directness with which each felt himself addressed, through the sermon being delivered in a room, and partly to the logical consistency, freedom from exaggeration, and profound air of conviction with which Mr. Hawke had spoken. His simplicity and obvious earnestness had impressed them even before he had alluded to his special mission. But this clenched everything, and the words, Lord is it I, were upon the hearts of each as they walked pensively home through moonlit courts and cloisters. I do not know what passed among the Simeonites after the earnest said had left them, but they would have been more than mortal if they had not been a good deal elated with the results of the evening. Why one of earnest friends was in the university eleven, and he had actually been in Badcock's rooms, and had slunk off on saying good night as meekly as any of them. It was no small thing to have scored a success like this. CHAPTER XV earnest felt now that the turning point of his life had come. He would give up all for Christ, even his tobacco. So he gathered together his pipes and pouches and locked them up in his portmanteau under his bed where they should be out of sight, and as much out of mind as possible. He did not burn them because someone might come in who wanted to smoke, and though he might abridge his own liberty, yet as smoking was not a sin, there was no reason why he should be hard on other people. After breakfast he left his rooms to call on a man named Dawson, who had been one of Mr. Hawke's hearers on the preceding evening, and who was reading for ordination at the forthcoming ember weeks, now only four months distant. This man had been always of a rather serious turn of mind, a little too much so for earnest tastes, but times had changed and Dawson's undoubted sincerity seemed to render him a fitting counselor for earnest at the present time. As he was going through the first court of Johns on his way to Dawson's rooms, he met Badcock and greeted him with some deference. His advance was received with one of those ecstatic gleams which shown occasionally upon the face of Badcock, and which, if earnest had known more, would have reminded him of Robes Pierre. As it was, he saw it and unconsciously recognized the unrest and self-seekingness of the man, but could not yet formulate them. He disliked Badcock more than ever. But as he was going to profit by the spiritual benefits which he had put in his way, he was bound to be civil to him, and civil he therefore was. Badcock told him that Mr. Hawke had returned to town immediately his discourse was over, but that before doing so he had inquired particularly who earnest and two or three others were. I believe each one of earnest friends was given to understand that he had been more or less particularly inquired after. Ernest's vanity, for he was his mother's son, was tickled at this. The idea again presented itself to him that he might be the one for whose benefit Mr. Hawke had been sent. There was something too in Badcock's manner which conveyed the idea that he could say more if he chose, but had been enjoined to silence. On reaching Dawson's rooms he found his friend in raptures over the discourse of the preceding evening. Hardly less delighted was he with the effect it had produced on Ernest. He had always known, he said, that Ernest would come round. He had been sure of it, but he had hardly expected the conversion to be so sudden. Ernest said no more had he, but now that he saw his duty so clearly he would get ordained as soon as possible, and take a curacy even though the doing so would make him have to go down from Cambridge earlier, which would be a great grief to him. Dawson applauded this determination, and it was arranged that as Ernest was still more or less of a weak brother, Dawson should take him, so to speak, in spiritual tow for a while, and strengthen and confirm his faith. An offensive and defensive alliance, therefore, was struck up between this pair, who were in reality singularly ill assorted, and Ernest said to work to master the books on which the bishop would examine him. Others gradually joined them till they formed a small set or church, for these are the same things, and the effect of Mr. Hawke's sermon instead of wearing off in a few days, as might have been expected, became more and more marked, so much that it was necessary for Ernest's friends to hold him back rather than urge him on, for he seemed likely to develop, as indeed he did for a time, into a religious enthusiast. In one matter only did he openly backslide. He had, as I said above, locked up his pipes and tobacco so that he might not be tempted to use them. All day long on the day after Mr. Hawke's sermon he let them lie in his portmanteau bravely, but this was not very difficult, as he had for some time given up smoking till after-haul. After-haul this day he did not smoke till chapel time, and then went to chapel in self-defense. When he returned he determined to look at the matter from a common sense point of view. On this he saw that provided tobacco did not injure his health, and he really could not see that it did. It stood much on the same footing as tea or coffee. Tobacco had nowhere been forbidden in the Bible, but then it had not been discovered, and had probably only escaped prescription for this reason. We can conceive of St. Paul or even our Lord himself as drinking a cup of tea, but we cannot imagine either of them smoking a cigarette or a church warden. Ernest could not deny this, and admitted that Paul would almost certainly have condemned tobacco in good terms if he had known of its existence. Was it not then taking a rather mean advantage of the apostle to stand on his not having actually forbidden it? On the other hand it was possible that God knew Paul would have forbidden smoking, and had purposely arranged the discovery of tobacco for a period at which Paul should be no longer living. This might seem rather hard on Paul considering all he had done for Christianity, but it would be made up to him in other ways. These reflections satisfied Ernest that on the whole he had better smoke, so he sneaked to his portmanteau and brought out his pipe and tobacco again. There should be moderation he felt in all things, even in virtue. So for that night he smoked immoderately. It was a pity, however, that he had bragged to Dawson about giving up smoking. The pipes had better be kept in a cupboard for a week or two, till in other and easier respects Ernest could have proved his steadfastness. Then they might steal out again little by little, and so they did. Ernest now wrote home a letter couched in a vein different from his ordinary ones. His letters were usually all common form and padding, for as I have already explained, if he wrote about anything that really interested him, his mother always wanted to know more and more about it. Every fresh answer being as the lopping off of a hydra's head and giving birth to a half dozen or more new questions. But in the end it came invariably to the same result. Namely that he ought to have done something else or ought not to go on doing as he proposed. Now, however, there was a new departure, and for the thousandth time he concluded that he was about to take a course of which his father and mother would approve, and in which they would be interested, so that at last he and they might get on more sympathetically than here to for. He therefore wrote a gushing, impulsive letter, which afforded much amusement to myself as I read it, but which is too long for reproduction. One passage ran, I am now going towards Christ. The greater number of my college friends are I fear going away from him. We must pray for them that they may find peace that is in Christ even as I have myself founded. Ernest covered his face with his hands for shame as he read this extract from the bundle of letters he had put into my hands. They had been returned to him by his father on his mother's death, his mother having carefully preserved them. Shall I cut it out? said I. I will, if you like. Certainly not, he answered, and if good-natured friends have kept more records of my follies, pick out any plums that may amuse the reader and let him have his laugh over them. But fancy what effect a letter like this, so unled up to, must have produced at Battersby. Even Christina refrained from ecstasy over her sons having discovered the power of Christ's word, while Theobald was frightened out of his wits. It was well his son was not going to have any doubts or difficulties and that he would be ordained without making a fuss over it. But he smelt mischief in this sudden conversion of one who had never yet shown any inclination towards religion. He hated people who did not know where to stop. Ernest was always so utre and strange there was never any knowing what he would do next, except that it would be something unusual and silly. If he was to get the bit between his teeth after he got ordained and bought his living he would play more pranks than ever he Theobald had done. The fact doubtless of his being ordained and having bought a living would go a long way to steady him and if he married his wife must see to the rest. This was his only chance and to do justice to his sagacity. Theobald in his heart did not think very highly of it. When Ernest came down to Battersby in June he imprudently tried to open up a more unreserved communication with his father than was his want. The first of Ernest's snipe-like flights on being flushed by Mr. Hawks Sermon was in the direction of ultra evangelicalism. Theobald himself had been much more low than high church. This was the normal development of the country clergymen during the first years of his clerical life between we will say the years 1825 to 1850. But he was not prepared for the almost contempt with which Ernest now regarded the doctrines of baptismal regeneration and priestly absolution. Hoity-toity indeed what business had he with such questions. Nor for his desire to find some means of reconciling methodism and the church. Theobald hated the church of Rome but he hated dissenters too for he found them as a general rule troublesome people to deal with. He always found people who did not agree with him troublesome to deal with. Besides they set up for knowing as much as he did. Nevertheless if he had been let alone he would have leaned towards them rather than towards the high church party. The neighbouring clergy however would not let him alone. One by one they had come under the influence directly or indirectly of the Oxford movement which had begun 20 years earlier. It was surprising how many practices he now tolerated which in his youth he would have considered popish. He knew very well therefore which way things were going in church matters and saw that as usual Ernest was setting himself the other way. The opportunity for telling his son that he was a fool was too favourable not to be embraced and Theobald was not slow to embrace it. Ernest was annoyed and surprised for had not his father and mother been wanting him to be more religious all his life now that he had become so they were still not satisfied. He said to himself that a prophet was not without honour save in his own country but he had been lately or rather until lately getting into an odious habit of turning proverbs upside down and it occurred to him that a country is sometimes not without honour save for its own profit. Then he laughed and for the rest of the day felt more as he used to feel before he had heard Mr. Hawks sermon. He returned to Cambridge for the long vacation in 1858 none too soon for he had to go in for the voluntary theological examination which bishops were now beginning to insist upon. He imagines all the time he was reading that he was storing himself with the knowledge that would best fit him for the work he had taken in hand. In truth he was cramming for a pass. In due time he did pass, creditably, and was ordained deacon with a half a dozen others of his friends in the autumn of 1858. He was then just twenty-three years old. End of Chapter 50. Recording by Rhonda Fetterman. Chapters 51 and 52 of The Way of All Flesh. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rhonda Fetterman. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler. Chapter 51 Ernest had been ordained to accuracy in one of the central parts of London. He hardly knew anything of London yet, but his instincts drew him thither. The day after he was ordained he entered upon his duties, feeling much as his father had done when he found himself boxed up in the carriage with Christina on the morning of his marriage. Before the first three days were over he became aware that the light of the happiness which he had known during his four years at Cambridge had been extinguished, and he was appalled by the irrevocable nature of the step which he now felt he had taken much too hurriedly. The most charitable excuse that I could make for the vagaries which will now be my duty to chronicle is that the shock of change consequent upon his becoming suddenly religious, being ordained, and leaving Cambridge had been too much for my hero, and had for the time thrown him off an equilibrium which was yet little supported by experience, and therefore as a matter of course unstable. Everyone has a mass of bad work in him, which he will have to work off and get rid of before he can do better. And indeed the more lasting a man's ultimate good work is, the more sure he is to pass through a time and perhaps a very long one, in which there seems very little hope for him at all. We must all sow our spiritual wild oats. The fault I feel personally disposed to find with my godson is not that he had wild oats to sow, but that they were such an exceedingly tame and uninteresting crop. The sense of humor and tendency to think for himself, of which till a few months previously he had been showing fair promise, were nipped as though by a late frost, while his earlier habit of taking on trust everything that was told him by those in authority, and following everything out to the bitter end, no matter how preposterous, returned with redoubled strength. I suppose this was what might have been expected from anyone placed as Ernest was now, especially when his antecedents are remembered, but it surprised and disappointed some of his cooler headed Cambridge friends who had begun to think well of his ability. To himself it seemed that religion was incompatible with half-measures, or even with compromise. Circumstances had led to his being ordained. For the moment he was sorry they had, but he had done it and must go through with it. He therefore set himself to find out what was expected of him, and to act accordingly. His rector was a moderate high churchman of no very pronounced views. An elderly man who had had too many curates not to have long since found out that the connection between rector and curate, like that between employer and employed in every other walk of life, was a mere matter of business. He had now two curates of whom Ernest was the junior. The senior curate was named Pryor, and when this gentleman made advances, as he presently did, Ernest in his forlorn state was delighted to meet them. Pryor was about twenty-eight years old. He had been at Eaton and at Oxford. He was tall and passed generally for good-looking. I only saw him once for about five minutes, and then thought him odious both in manners and appearance. Perhaps it was because he caught me up in a way I did not like. I had quoted Shakespeare for lack of something better to fill up a sentence, and had said that one touch of nature made the whole world kin. Ah! said Pryor in a bold brazen way which displeased me. But one touch of the unnatural makes it more kindred still. And he gave me a look as though he thought me an old bore and did not care two straws whether I was shocked or not. Naturally enough, after this I did not like him. This, however, is anticipating, for it was not till Ernest had been there three or four months in London that I happened to meet his fellow curate, and I must deal here rather with the effect he produced upon my godson than upon myself. Besides being what was generally considered good-looking, he was faultless in his get-up, and altogether the kind of man whom Ernest was sure to be afraid of and yet be taken in by. The style of his dress was very high church, and his acquaintances were exclusively of the extreme high church party. But he kept his views a good deal in the background in his rector's presence, and that gentleman, though he looked a scance on some of Pryor's friends, had no such ground of complaint against him as to make him sever the connection. Pryor, too, was popular in the pulpit, and take him all around, it was probable that many worse curates would be found for one better. When Pryor called on my hero, as soon as the two were alone together, he eyed him all over with a quick penetrating glance, and seemed not dissatisfied with the result. For I must say here that Ernest had improved in personal appearance under the more genial treatment he had received at Cambridge. Pryor, in fact, approved of him sufficiently to treat him civilly, and Ernest was immediately won by anyone who did this. It was not long before he discovered that the high church party, and even Rome itself, had more to say for themselves than he had thought. This was his first snipe-like change of flight. Pryor introduced him to several of his friends. They were all of them young clergymen, belonging, as I have said, to the highest of the high church school. But Ernest was surprised to find how much they resembled other people when among themselves. This was a shock to him. It was ere long a still greater one to find that certain thoughts which he had warred against as fatal to his soul, and which he had imagined he should lose once for all on ordination, were still as troublesome to him as they had been. He also saw plainly enough that the young gentlemen who formed the circle of Pryor's friends were in much the same unhappy predicament as himself. This was deplorable. The only way out of it that Ernest could see was that he should get married at once. But then he did not know anyone whom he wanted to marry. He did not know any woman, in fact, whom he would not rather die than marry. It had been one of Theobald's and Christina's main objects to keep him out of the way of women, and they had so far succeeded that women had become to him mysterious, inscrutable objects to be tolerated when it was impossible to avoid them, but never to be sought out or encouraged. As for any man loving, or even being at all fond of any woman, he supposed it was so. But he believed the greater number of those who professed such sentiments were liars. Now, however, it was clear that he had hoped against hope too long, and that the only thing to do was to go and ask the first woman who would listen to him to come and be married to him as soon as possible. He broached this to Pryor, and was surprised to find that this gentleman, though attentive to such members of his flock as were young and good-looking, was strongly in favor of the celibacy of the clergy, as indeed were the other demure young clerics to whom Pryor had introduced Ernest. CHAPTER 52 You know, my dear Pontifex, said Pryor to him some few weeks after Ernest had become acquainted with him, when the two were taking a constitutional one day in Kensington Gardens. You know, my dear Pontifex, it is all very well to quarrel with Rome, but Rome has reduced the treatment of the human soul to a science, while our own church, though so much purer in many respects, has no organized system either of diagnosis or pathology. I mean, of course, spiritual diagnosis and spiritual pathology. Our church does not prescribe remedies upon any settled system, and what is still worse, even when her physicians have, according to their lights, discerned the disease and pointed out the remedy. She has no discipline which will ensure it's being actually applied. If our patients do not choose to do as we tell them, we cannot make them. Perhaps really under all the circumstances this is as well, for we are spiritually mere horse doctors as compared with the Roman priesthood, nor can we hope to make much headway against the sin and misery that surround us till we return in some respects to the practice of our forefathers and of the greater part of Christendom. Ernest asked in what respects it was that his friend desired a return to the practice of our forefathers. Why, my dear fellow, can you really be ignorant? It is just this. Either the priest is indeed a spiritual guide as being able to show people how they ought to live better than they can find out for themselves, or he is nothing at all. He has no raison d'etre. If the priest is not as much a healer and director of men's souls as a physician is of their bodies, what is he? The history of all ages has shown, and surely you must know this as well as I do, that as men cannot cure the bodies of their patients if they have not been properly trained in hospitals under skilled teachers, so neither can souls be cured of their more hidden ailments without the help of men who are skilled in soul craft, or in other words, of priests. What do one half of our formularies and rubrics mean if not this? How, in the name of all that is reasonable, can we find out the exact nature of a spiritual malady unless we have had experience of other similar cases? How can we get this without express training? At present, we have to begin all experiments for ourselves without profiting by the organized experience of our predecessors, in as much as that experience is never organized or coordinated at all. At the outset, therefore, each one of us must ruin many souls which could be saved by knowledge of a few elementary principles. Ernest was very much impressed. As for men, curing themselves continued prior. They could no more cure their own souls than they can cure their own bodies or manage their own law affairs. In these two last cases they see the folly of meddling with their own cases clearly enough and go to a professional advisor as a matter of course. Surely a man's soul is at once a more difficult and intricate matter to treat and at the same time it is more important to him that it should be treated rightly than that either his body or his money should be so. What are we to think of the practice of a church which encourages people to rely on unprofessional advice in matters affecting their eternal welfare when they would not think of jeopardizing their worldly affairs by such insane conduct? Ernest could see no weak place in this. These ideas had crossed his own mind vaguely before now but he had never laid hold of them or set them in an orderly manner before himself. Nor was he quick at detecting false analogies and the misuse of metaphors. In fact he was a mere child in the hands of his fellow curate. And what resumed prior does all this point to? Firstly to the duty of confession. The outcry against which is absurd as an outcry would be against dissection as part of the training of medical students. Granted these young men must see and do a great deal we do not ourselves like even to think of. But they should adopt some other profession unless they are prepared for this. They may even get inoculated with poison from a dead body and lose their lives but they must stand their chance. So if we aspire to be priests indeed as well as name we must familiarize ourselves with the minutest and most repulsive details of all kinds of sin so that we may recognize it in all its stages. Some of us must doubtlessly perish spiritually in such investigations. We cannot help it. All science must have its martyrs and none of these will deserve better of humanity than those who have fallen in the pursuit of spiritual pathology. Ernest grew more and more interested but in the meekness of his soul said nothing. I do not desire the martyrdom for myself continued the other. On the contrary I will avoid it to the very utmost of my power but if it be God's will that I should fall while studying what I believe most calculated to advance his glory then I say not my will oh lord but thine be done. This was too much even for Ernest. I heard of an Irish woman once he said with a smile who said she was a martyr to the drink and so she was rejoined prior with warmth and he went on to show that this good woman was an experimentalist whose experiment though disastrous in its effects upon herself was pregnant with instruction to other people. She was thus a true martyr or witness to the frightful consequences of intemperance to the saving doubtless of many who but for her martyrdom would have taken to drinking. She was one of a forlorn hope whose failure to take a certain position went to the proving it to be impregnable and therefore to the abandonment of all attempt to take it. This was almost as great a gain to mankind as the actual taking of the position would have been. Besides he added more hurriedly the limits of vice and virtue are wretchedly ill-defined half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence. Ernest asked timidly for an instance no no said prior I will give you no instance but I will give you a formula that shall embrace all instances it is this that no practice is entirely vicious which has not been extinguished among the comliest most vigorous and most cultivated races of mankind in spite of centuries of endeavor to extirpate it if a vice in spite of such efforts can still hold its own among the most polished nations it must be founded on some immutable truth or fact in human nature and must have some compensatory advantage which we cannot afford altogether to dispense with but said Ernest timidly is not this virtually doing away with all distinctions between right and wrong and leaving people without any moral guide whatever not the people was the answer it must be our care to be guides to these for they are and always will be incapable of guiding themselves sufficiently we should tell them what they must do and in an ideal state of things should be able to enforce their doing it perhaps when we are better instructed the ideal state may come about nothing will so advance it as greater knowledge of spiritual pathology on our part for this three things are necessary firstly absolute freedom and experiment for us the clergy secondly absolute knowledge of what the laity think and do and of what thoughts and actions result in what spiritual conditions and thirdly a compacter organization among ourselves if we are to do any good we must be a closely united body and must be sharply divided from the laity also we must be free from those ties which a wife and children involve i can hardly express the horror with which i am filled by seeing english priests living in what i can only designate as open matrimony it is deplorable the priests must be absolutely sexless if not in practice yet at any rate in theory absolutely and that too by a theory so universally accepted that none shall venture to dispute it but said earnest has not the bible already told people what they ought and ought not to do and is it not enough for us to insist on what can be found here and let the rest alone if you begin with the bible was the rejoinder you are three parts gone on the road to infidelity and will go to the other part before you know where you are the bible is not without its value to us in the clergy but for the laity it is a stumbling block which cannot be taken out of their way too soon or too completely of course i mean on the supposition that they read it which happily they seldom do if people read the bible as the ordinary british churchmen or church woman reads it it is harmless enough but if they read it with any care which we should assume they will if we give it them at all it is fatal to them what do you mean said earnest more and more astonished but more and more feeling that he was at least in the hands of a man who had definite ideas your question shows me that you have never read your bible a more unreliable book was never put upon paper take my advice and don't read it not till you are a few years older and may do so safely but surely you believe the bible when it tells you of such things as that christ died and rose from the dead surely you believe this said earnest quite prepared to be told that prior believed nothing of the kind i do not believe it i know it but how if the testimony of the bible fails on that of the living voice of the church which i know to be infallible and to be informed of christ himself end of chapter 52 recording by ronda fetterman chapters 53 and 54 of the way of all flesh this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org recording by ronda fetterman the way of all flesh by samuel butler chapter 53 the foregoing conversation and others like it made a deep impression upon my hero if next day he had taken a walk with mr hawk and heard what he had to say on the other side he would have been just as much struck and is ready to fling off what prior had told him as he was now to throw aside all he had ever heard from anyone except prior but there was no mr hawk at hand so prior had everything his own way embryo minds like embryo bodies pass through a number of strange metamorphoses before they adopt their final shape it is no more to be wondered at that one who is going to turn out a roman catholic should have passed through stages of being first a methodist and then a free thinker then that a man should at some former time have been a mere cell and later on an invertebrate animal earnest however could not be expected to know this embryos never do embryos think with each stage of their development that they have now reached the only condition which really suits them this they say must certainly be their last in as much as its clothes will be so great a shock that nothing could survive it every change is a shock every shock is a pro tonto death what we call death is only a shock great enough to destroy our power to recognize a past and a present as resembling one another it is the making us consider the points of difference between our present and our past greater than the points of resemblance so that we can no longer call the former of these two in any proper sense a continuation of the second but find it less trouble to think of it as something that we choose to call new but to let this pass it was clear that spiritual pathology i confess that i do not know myself what spiritual pathology means but prior and earnest doubtless did was the great decideratum of the age it seemed to earn us that he had made this discovery himself and had been familiar with it all his life that he had never known in fact of anything else he wrote long letters to his college friends expounding his views as though he had been one of the apostolic fathers as for the old testament writers he had no patience with them do oblige me i find him writing to one friend by reading the prophet zakariah and giving me your candid opinion upon him he is poor stuff full of yanky bounce it is sickening to live in an age when such balder dash can be gravely admired whether as poetry or prophecy this was because prior had set him against zakariah i do not know what zakariah had done i should think myself that zakariah was a very good prophet perhaps it was because he was a bible writer and not a very prominent one that prior selected him as one through whom to disparage the bible in comparison with the church to his friend dawson i find him saying a little later on prior and i continue our walks working out each other's thoughts at first he used to do all the thinking but i think i am pretty well abreast of him now and rather chuckle at seeing that he is already beginning to modify some of the views he held most strongly when i first knew him then i think he was on the high road to roam now however he seems to be a good deal struck with a suggestion of mine in which you too perhaps may be interested you see we must infuse new life into the church somehow we are not holding our own against either roam or infidelity i may say in passing that i do not believe earnest had as yet ever seen an infidel not to speak to i proposed there for a few days back to prior and he fell in eagerly with the proposal as soon as he saw that i had the means of carrying it out that we should set on a foot of spiritual movement somewhat analogous to the young england movement of 20 years ago the aim of which shall be at once to outbid roam on the one hand and skepticism on the other for this purpose i see nothing better than the formation of an institution or college for placing the nature and treatment of sin on a more scientific basis than it rests at present we want to borrow a useful term of priors a college of spiritual pathology where young men i suppose earnest thought he was no longer young by this time may study the nature and treatment of the sins of the soul as medical students study those of the bodies of their patients such a college as you will probably admit will approach both roam on the one hand and science on the other roam as giving the priesthood more skill and therefore is paving the way for their obtaining greater power and science by recognizing that even free thought has a certain kind of value in spiritual inquiries to this purpose prior and i have resolved to devote ourselves henceforth heart and soul of course my ideas are still unshaped and all will depend upon the men by whom the colleges first worked i am not yet a priest but prior is and if i were to start the college prior might take charge of it for a time and i work under him nominally as his subordinate prior himself suggested this is it not generous of him the worst of it is that we have not enough money i have it is true five thousand pounds but we want at least ten thousand pounds so prior says before we can start when we are fairly underway i might live at the college and draw a salary from the foundation so that is all one or nearly so whether i invest my money in this way or in buying a living besides i want very little it is certain that i shall never marry no clergyman should think of this and an unmarried man can live on next to nothing still i do not see my way to as much money as i want and prior suggests that as we can hardly earn more now we must get it by a judicious series of investments prior knows several people who make quite a handsome income out of very little or indeed i may say nothing at all by buying things at a place they call the stock exchange i don't know much about it yet but prior says i should soon learn he thinks indeed that i have shown rather a talent in this direction and under proper auspices should make a very good man of business others of course and not i must decide this but a man can do anything if he gives his mind to it and though i should not care about having more money for my own sake i care about it very much when i think of the good i could do with it by saving souls from such horrible torture hereafter why if the thing succeeds and i really cannot see what is to hinder it it is hardly possible to exaggerate its importance nor the proportions which it may ultimately assume etc etc again i asked earnest whether he minded my printing this he winced but said no not if it helps you to tell your story but don't you think it's too long i said it would let the reader see for himself how things were going in half the time that it would take me to explain them to him very well then keep it by all means i continue turning over my file of earnest letters and find as follows thanks for your last in answer to which i send you a rough copy of a letter i sent to the times a day or two back they did not insert it but it embodies pretty fully my ideas on the parochial visitation question and prior fully approves of the letter think it carefully over and send it back to me when read for it is so exactly my present creed that i cannot afford to lose it i should very much like to have a viva voce discussion on these matters i can only see for certain that we have suffered a dreadful loss and being no longer able to excommunicate we should excommunicate rich and poor alike and pretty freely too if this power were restored to us we could i think soon put a stop to by far the greater part of the sin and misery with which we are surrounded these letters were written only a few weeks after earnest had been ordained but they are nothing to others that he wrote a little later on in his eagerness to regenerate the church of england and through this the universe by the means which prior had suggested to him it occurred to him to try to familiarize himself with the habits and thoughts of the poor by going and living among them i think he got this notion from kingsley's alton lock which high churchman though he for this nonce was he had devoured as he had devoured stanley's life of arnold dickens novels and whatever other literary garbage of the day was most likely to do him harm at any rate he actually put his scheme into practice and took lodgings in ash pit place a small street in the neighborhood of drury lane theater in a house of which the landlady was the widow of a cab man this lady occupied the whole ground floor in the front kitchen there was a tinker the back kitchen was led to a bellows mender on the first floor came earnest with his two rooms which he furnished comfortably for one must draw the line somewhere the two upper floors were parceled out among four different sets of lodgers there was a tailor named halt a drunken fellow who used to beat his wife at night till her screams woke the house above him there was another tailor with a wife but no children these people were wesleyans given to drink but not noisy the two back rooms were held by single ladies who it seemed to earnest must be respectively connected for well-dressed gentlemanly looking young men used to go up and down the stairs past earnest rooms to call it any rate on miss snow earnest had heard her door slam after they had passed he thought too that some of them went to see miss maitland's mrs. jup the landlady told earnest that these were brothers and cousins of miss snows and that she was herself looking out for a situation as a governess but at present had an engagement as an actress at the drury lane theater earnest asked whether miss maitland in the top back was also looking out for a situation and was told she was wanting an engagement as a milliner he believed whatever mrs. jup told him chapter 54 this move on earnest part was variously commented upon by his friends the general opinion being that it was just like pond effects who was sure to do something unusual wherever he went but that on the whole the idea was commendable christina could not restrain herself went on sounding her clerical neighbors she found them inclined to applaud her son for conduct which they idealized into something much more self-denying than it really was she did not quite like his living in such an unaristocratic neighborhood but what he was doing would probably get into the newspapers and then great people would take notice of him besides it would be very cheap down among these poor people he could live for next to nothing and might put by a great deal of his income as for temptations there could be few or none in such a place as that this argument about cheapness was the one which she most successfully met theobald who grumbled more suo that he had no sympathy with his son's extravagance and conceit when christina pointed out to him that it would be cheap he replied that there was something in that on earnest himself the effect was to confirm the good opinion of himself which had been growing upon him ever since he had begun to read for orders and to make him flatter himself that he was among the few who were ready to give up all for christ air long he began to conceive of himself as a man with a mission and a great future his lightest and most hastily formed opinions began to be of momentous importance to him and he inflicted them as i have already shown on his old friends week by week becoming more and more on te te with himself and his own crotchets i should like well enough to draw a veil over this part of my hero's career but cannot do so without marring my story in the spring of 1859 i find him writing i cannot call the visible church christian till its fruits are christian that is until the fruits of the members of the church of england are in conformity or something like conformity with her teaching i cordially agree with the teaching of the church of england in most respects but she says one thing and does another and until excommunication yes and wholesale excommunication be resorted to i cannot call her a christian institution i should begin with our rector and if i found it necessary to follow him up by excommunicating the bishop i should not flinch even from this the present london rectors are hopeless people to deal with my own is one of the best of them but the moment prior and i show signs of wanting to attack an evil in a way not recognized by routine or of remedying anything about which no outcry has been made we are met with i cannot think what you mean by all of this disturbance nobody else among the clergy sees these things and i have no wish to be the first to begin turning things topsy-turvy and then people call him a sensible man i have no patience with them however we know what we want and as i wrote to dawson the other day i have a scheme on foot which will i think fairly meet the requirements of the case but we want more money and my first move towards getting this has not turned out quite so satisfactorily as prior and i had hoped we shall however i doubt not retrieve it shortly when urnus came to london he intended to do a good deal of house to house visiting but prior had talked him out of this even before he settled down in his new and strangely chosen apartments the line he now took was that if people wanted christ they must prove their want by taking some little trouble and the trouble required of them was that they should come and seek him earnest out there he was in the midst of them ready to teach if people did not choose to come to him it was no fault of his my great business here he writes again to dawson is to observe i am not doing much in parish work beyond my share of the daily services i have a man's bible class and a boy's bible class and a good many young men and boys to whom i give instruction one way or another then there are sunday school children with whom i fill my room on a sunday evening as full as it will hold and let them sing hymns and chants they like this i do a great deal of reading chiefly of books which prior and i think most likely to help we find nothing comparable to the jesuits prior is a thorough gentleman and an admirable man of business no less observant of the things of this world in fact than of the things above by a brilliant coup he has retrieved or nearly so a rather serious loss which threatened to delay indefinitely the execution of our great scheme he and i dally gather fresh principles i believe great things are before me and i am strong in the hope of being able by and by to affect much as for you i bid you god speed be bold but logical speculative but cautious daringly courageous but properly circumspect with all etc etc i think this may do for the present end of chapter 54 recording by ronda fetterman