"There is no more beautiful creature than a stag in his pride of antler, his coat of ruddy gold, his grace of form and motion. He seems the natural owner of the ferny coombes, the oak woods, the broad slopes of heather. They belong to him, and he steps upon the sward in lordly mastership. The land is his, and the hills; the sweet streams and rocky glens. He is infinitely more natural than the cattle and sheep that have strayed into his domains. For some inexplicable reason, although they, too, are in reality natural, when he is present they look as if they had been put there, and were kept there by artificial means. They do not, as painters say, shade in with the colours and shape of the landscape. He is as natural as an oak, or a fern, or a rock itself. He is earth-born, autochthon, and holds possession by descent. Utterly scorning control, the walls and hedges are nothing to him; he roams where he chooses, as fancy leads, and gathers the food that pleases him.
Pillaging the crops, and claiming his dues from the orchards and gardens, he exercises his ancient feudal rights, indifferent to the laws of house-people. Disturb him in his wild stronghold of oakwood or heather, and as he yields to force, still he stops and looks back proudly. He is slain, but never conquered. He will not cross with the tame park deer; proud as a Spanish n.o.ble, he disdains the fallow deer, and breeds only with his own race. But it is chiefly because of his singular adaptation and fitness to the places where he is found that he obtains our sympathy. The branching antlers accord so well with the deep, shadowy boughs and the broad fronds of the brake; the golden red of his coat fits to the foxglove, the purple heather, and later on to the orange and red of the beech; his easy-bounding motion springs from the elastic sward; his limbs climb the steep hill as if it were level; his speed covers the distance, and he goes from place to place as the wind. He not only lives in the wild, wild woods and moors, he grows out of them as the oak grows from the ground. The n.o.ble stag, in his pride of antler, is lord and monarch of all the creatures left in English forests and on English hills."
What do we purblind mortals see when we walk through a wood in winter?
Listen to what Jefferies saw in January, when the woods are at their very brownest, and all Nature seems wrapped in winter sleep:
"Some little green stays on the mounds where the rabbits creep and nibble the gra.s.ses. Cinquefoil remains green though faded, and wild parsley the freshest looking of all; plantain leaves are found under shelter of brambles, and the dumb nettles, though the old stalks are dead, have living leaves at the ground. Gray-veined ivy trails along, here and there is a frond of hart"s-tongue fern, though withered at the tip, and greenish-gray lichen grows on the exposed stumps of trees. These together give a green tint to the mound, which is not so utterly devoid of colour as the season of the year might indicate. Where they fail, brown brake fern fills the s.p.a.ces between the brambles; and in a moist spot the bunches of rushes are composed half of dry stalks, and half of green. Stems of willow-herb, four feet high, still stand, and tiny long-tailed t.i.ts perch sideways on them. Above, on the bank, another species of willow-herb has died down to a short stalk, from which springs a living branch, and at its end is one pink flower. A dandelion is opening on the same sheltered bank; farther on the gorse is sprinkled with golden spots of bloom. A flock of greenfinches starts from the bushes, and their colour shows against the ruddy wands of the osier-bed over which they fly. The path winds round the edge of the wood, where a waggon-track goes up the hill; it is deeply grooved at the foot of the hill. These tracks wear deeply into the chalk just where the ascent begins. The chalk adheres to the shoes like mortar, and for some time after one has left it each footstep leaves a white mark on the turf. On the ridge the low trees and bushes have an outline like the flame of a candle in a draught--the wind has blown them till they have grown fixed in that shape. In an oak across the ploughed field a flock of wood-pigeons have settled; on the furrows there are chaffinches, and larks rise and float a few yards farther away. The snow has ceased, and though there is no wind on the surface, the clouds high above have opened somewhat, not sufficient for the sun to shine, but to prolong the already closing afternoon a few minutes. If the sun shines to-morrow morning the lark will soar and sing, though it is January, and the quick note of the chaffinch will be heard as he perches on the little branches projecting from the trunks of trees below the great boughs. Thrushes sing every mild day in December and January, entirely irrespective of the season, also before rain."
Here is Cider-land:
"The Lower Path, after stile and hedge and elm, and gra.s.s that glows with golden b.u.t.tercups, quietly leaves the side of the double mounds and goes straight through the orchards. There are fewer flowers under the trees, and the gra.s.s grows so long and rank that it has already fallen aslant of its own weight. It is choked, too, by ma.s.ses of clogweed, that springs up profusely over the sight of old foundations; so that here ancient masonry may be hidden under the earth. Indeed, these orchards are a survival from the days when the monks laboured in vineyard and garden, and mayhap even of earlier times. When once a locality has got into the habit of growing a certain crop, it continues to produce it for century after century; and thus there are villages famous for apple or pear or cherry, while the district at large is not at all given to such culture.
"The trunks of the trees succeed each other in endless ranks, like columns that support the most beautiful roof of pink and white.
Here the bloom is rosy, there white prevails: the young green is hidden under the petals that are far more numerous than leaves, or even than leaves will be. Though the path really is in shadow as the branches shut out the sun, yet it seems brighter here than in the open, as if the place were illuminated by a million tiny lamps shedding the softest l.u.s.tre. The light is reflected and apparently increased by the countless flowers overhead.
"The forest of bloom extends acre after acre, and only ceases where hedges divide, to commence again beyond the boundary. A wicket-gate, all green with a film of vegetation over the decaying wood, opens under the very eaves of a cottage, and the path goes by the door--across a narrow meadow where deep and broad trenches, green now, show where ancient stews or fishponds existed, and then through a farmyard into a lane. Tall poplars rise on either hand, but there seem to be no houses; they stand in fact a field"s breadth back from the lane, and are approached by footpaths that every few yards necessitate a stile in the hedge.
"When a low thatched farmhouse does abut upon the way, the blank white wall of the rear part faces the road, and the front door opens on precisely the other side. Hard by is a row of beehives.
Though the modern hives are at once more economical and humane, they have not the old a.s.sociations that cling about the straw domes topped with broken earthenware to shoot off the heavy downfall of a thunderstorm.
"Everywhere the apple-bloom; the hum of bees; children sitting on the green beside the road, their laps full of flowers; the song of finches; and the low murmur of water that glides over flint and stone so shadowed by plants and gra.s.ses that the sunbeams cannot reach and glisten on it. Thus the straggling flower-strewn village stretches along beneath the hill and rises up the slope, and the swallows wheel and twitter over the gables where are their hereditary nesting-places. The lane ends on a broad dusty road, and, opposite, a quiet thatched house of the larger sort stands, endways to the street, with an open pitching before the windows.
There, too, the swallows" nests are crowded under the eaves, flowers are trained against the wall, and in the garden stand the same beautiful apple-trees."
Let us witness, with him, the dawn of a summer day:
"The star went on. In the meadows of the vale far away doubtless there were sounds of the night. On the hills it was absolute silence--profound rest. They slept peacefully, and the moon rose to the meridian. The pale white glow on the northern horizon slipped towards the east. After a while a change came over the night. The hills and coombes became gray and more distinct, the sky lighter, the stars faint, the moon that had been ruddy became yellow, and then almost white.
"Yet a little while, and one by one the larks arose from the gra.s.s, and first twittering and vibrating their brown wings just above the hawthorn bushes, presently breasted the aerial ascent, and sang at "Heaven"s Gate."
"Geoffrey awoke and leaned upon his arm; his first thought was of Margaret, and he looked towards the copse. All was still; then in the dawn the strangeness of that h.o.a.ry relic of the past sheltering so lovely a form came home to him. Next he gazed eastwards.
"There a great low bank, a black wall of cloud, was rising rapidly, extending on either hand, growing momentarily broader, darker, threatening to cover the sky. He watched it come up swiftly, and saw that as it neared it became lighter in colour, first gray, then white. It was the morning mist driven along before the breeze, whose breath had not reached him yet. In a few minutes the wall of vapour pa.s.sed over him as the waters rolled over Pharaoh. A puff of wind blew his hair back from his forehead, then another and another; presently a steady breeze, cool and refreshing. The mist drove rapidly along; after awhile gaps appeared overhead, and through these he saw broad s.p.a.ces of blue sky, the colour growing and deepening. The gaps widened, the mist became thinner; then this, the first wave of vapour, was gone, creeping up the hillside behind him like the rearguard of an army.
"Out from the last fringe of mist shone a great white globe. Like molten silver, glowing with a lusciousness of light, soft and yet brilliant, so large and bright and seemingly so near--but just above the ridge yonder--shining with heavenly splendour in the very dayspring. He knew Eosphoros, the Light-Bringer, the morning star of hope and joy and love, and his heart went out towards the beauty and the glory of it. Under him the broad bosom of the earth seemed to breathe instinct with life, bearing him up, and from the azure ether came the wind, filling his chest with the vigour of the young day.
"The azure ether--yes, and more than that! Who that has seen it can forget the wondrous beauty of the summer morning"s sky? It is blue--it is sapphire--it is like the eye of a lovely woman. A rich purple shines through it; no painter ever approached the colour of it, no t.i.tian or other, none from the beginning. Not even the golden flesh of Rubens" women, through the veins in whose limbs a sunlight pulses in lieu of blood shining behind the tissues, can equal the hues that glow behind the blue.
"The East flamed out at last. Pencilled streaks of cloud high in the dome shone red. An orange light rose up and spread about the horizon, then turned crimson, and the upper edge of the sun"s disk lifted itself over the hill. A swift beam of light shot like an arrow towards him, and the hawthorn bush obeyed with instant shadow; it pa.s.sed beyond him over the green plain, up the ridge and away. The great orb, quivering with golden flames, looked forth upon the world."
The finest of all the papers written by Jefferies--as I have already said--is that called "The Pageant of Summer." It came out in _Longman"s Magazine_. I know nothing in the English language finer, whether for the sustained style or for the elevation of thought which fills it. Herein Jefferies surpa.s.sed himself as well as all other writers who have written upon Nature. This is perhaps because he fills the "Pageant"
which he describes with human love and human regrets. Without the life and presence of man, what is the beauty of Nature worth? I should like to quote it all--nay, to those who have read it again and again, the words live in the memory like the lines of Wordsworth"s "Ode to Immortality," and like them they fill the heart with tenderness and the eyes with tears. It is published in the last but one of his books, "The Life of the Fields," which everybody should make haste to possess, if only for this one paper. It opens quietly--with the rushes:
"Green rushes, long and thick, standing up above the edge of the ditch, told the hour of the year as distinctly as the shadow on the dial the hour of the day. Green and thick and sappy to the touch, they felt like summer, soft and elastic, as if full of life, mere rushes though they were. On the fingers they left a green scent; rushes have a separate scent of green, so, too, have ferns, very different to that of gra.s.s or leaves. Rising from brown sheaths, the tall stems enlarged a little in the middle, like cla.s.sical columns, and heavy with their sap and freshness, leaned against the hawthorn sprays. From the earth they had drawn its moisture, and made the ditch dry; some of the sweetness of the air had entered into their fibres, and the rushes--the common rushes--were full of beautiful summer. The white pollen of early gra.s.ses growing on the edge was dusted from them each time the hawthorn boughs were shaken by a thrush. These lower sprays came down in among the gra.s.s, and leaves and gra.s.s-blades touched.
"It was between the May and the June roses. The may-bloom had fallen, and among the hawthorn boughs were the little green bunches that would feed the redwings in autumn. High up the briars had climbed, straight and towering while there was a thorn, or an ash sapling, or a yellow-green willow to uphold them, and then curving over towards the meadow. The buds were on them, but not yet open; it was between the may and the rose.
"As the wind, wandering over the sea, takes from each wave an invisible portion, and brings to those on sh.o.r.e the ethereal essence of ocean, so the air lingering among the woods and hedges--green waves and billows--became full of fine atoms of summer. Swept from notched hawthorn-leaves, broad-topped oak-leaves, narrow ash sprays and oval willows; from vast elm cliffs and sharp-taloned brambles under; brushed from the waving gra.s.ses and stiffening corn, the dust of the sunshine was borne along and breathed. Steeped in flower and pollen to the music of bees and birds, the stream of the atmosphere became a living thing.
It was life to breathe it, for the air itself was life. The strength of the earth went up through the leaves into the wind. Fed thus on the food of the Immortals, the heart opened to the width and depth of the summer--to the broad horizon afar, down to the minutest creature in the gra.s.s, up to the highest swallow. Winter shows us Matter in its dead form, like the primary rocks, like granite and basalt--clear but cold and frozen crystal. Summer shows us Matter changing into life, sap rising from the earth through a million tubes, the alchemic power of light entering the solid oak; and see! it bursts forth in countless leaves. Living things leap in the gra.s.s, living things drift upon the air, living things are coming forth to breathe in every hawthorn bush. No longer does the immense weight of Matter--the dead, the crystallized--press ponderously on the thinking mind. The whole office of Matter is to feed life--to feed the green rushes, and the roses that are about to be; to feed the swallows above, and us that wander beneath them.
So much greater is this green and common rush than all the Alps.
"Fanning so swiftly, the wasp"s wings are but just visible as he pa.s.ses; did he pause, the light would be apparent through their texture. On the wings of the dragon-fly as he hovers an instant before he darts there is a prismatic gleam. These wing textures are even more delicate than the minute filaments on a swallow"s quill, more delicate than the pollen of a flower. They are formed of matter indeed, but how exquisitely it is resolved into the means and organs of life! Though not often consciously recognised, perhaps this is the great pleasure of summer, to watch the earth, the dead particles, resolving themselves into the living case of life, to see the seed-leaf push aside the clod and become by degrees the perfumed flower. From the tiny mottled egg come the wings that by-and-by shall pa.s.s the immense sea. It is in this marvellous transformation of clods and cold matter into living things that the joy and the hope of summer reside. Every blade of gra.s.s, each leaf, each separate floret and petal, is an inscription speaking of hope. Consider the gra.s.ses and the oaks, the swallows, the sweet blue b.u.t.terfly--they are one and all a sign and token showing before our eyes earth made into life. So that my hope becomes as broad as the horizon afar, reiterated by every leaf, sung on every bough, reflected in the gleam of every flower. There is so much for us yet to come, so much to be gathered, and enjoyed.
Not for you or me, now, but for our race, who will ultimately use this magical secret for their happiness. Earth holds secrets enough to give them the life of the fabled Immortals. My heart is fixed firm and stable in the belief that ultimately the sunshine and the summer, the flowers and the azure sky, shall become, as it were, interwoven into man"s existence. He shall take from all their beauty and enjoy their glory. Hence it is that a flower is to me so much more than stalk and petals. When I look in the gla.s.s I see that every line in my face means pessimism; but in spite of my face--that is my experience--I remain an optimist. Time with an unsteady hand has etched thin crooked lines, and, deepening the hollows, has cast the original expression into shadow. Pain and sorrow flow over us with little ceasing, as the sea-hoofs beat on the beach. Let us not look at ourselves but onwards, and take strength from the leaf and the signs of the field. He is indeed despicable who cannot look onwards to the ideal life of man. Not to do so is to deny our birthright of mind....
"It is the patient humble-bee that goes down into the forest of the mowing-gra.s.s. If entangled, the humble-bee climbs up a sorrel stem and takes wing, without any sign of annoyance. His broad back with tawny bar buoyantly glides over the golden b.u.t.tercups. He hums to himself as he goes, so happy is he. He knows no skep, no cunning work in gla.s.s receives his labour, no artificial saccharine aids him when the beams of the sun are cold, there is no step to his house that he may alight in comfort; the way is not made clear for him that he may start straight for the flowers, nor are any sown for him. He has no shelter if the storm descends suddenly; he has no dome of twisted straw well thatched and tiled to retreat to. The butcher-bird, with a beak like a crooked iron nail, drives him to the ground, and leaves him pierced with a thorn; but no hail of shot revenges his tortures. The gra.s.s stiffens at nightfall (in autumn) and he must creep where he may, if possibly he may escape the frost. No one cares for the humble-bee. But down to the flowering nettle in the mossy-sided ditch, up into the tall elm, winding in and out and round the branched b.u.t.tercups, along the banks of the brook, far inside the deepest wood, away he wanders and despises nothing. His nest is under the rough gra.s.ses and the mosses of the mound, a mere tunnel beneath the fibres and matted surface. The hawthorn overhangs it, the fern grows by, red mice rustle past....
"All the procession of living and growing things pa.s.ses. The gra.s.s stands up taller and still taller, the sheaths open, and the stalk arises, the pollen clings till the breeze sweeps it. The bees rush past, and the resolute wasps; the humble-bees, whose weight swings them along. About the oaks and maples the brown chafers swarm, and the fern-owls at dusk, and the blackbirds and jays by day, cannot reduce their legions while they last. Yellow b.u.t.terflies, and white, broad red admirals, and sweet blues; think of the kingdom of flowers which is theirs! Heavy moths burring at the edge of the copse; green, and red, and gold flies: gnats, like smoke, around the tree-tops; midges so thick over the brook, as if you could haul a netful; tiny leaping creatures in the gra.s.s; bronze beetles across the path; blue dragonflies pondering on cool leaves of water-plantain. Blue jays flitting, a magpie drooping across from elm to elm; young rooks that have escaped the hostile shot blundering up into the branches; missel thrushes leading their fledglings, already strong on the wing, from field to field. An egg here on the sward dropped by a starling; a red ladybird creeping, tortoise-like, up a green fern frond. Finches undulating through the air, shooting themselves with closed wings, and linnets happy with their young....
"Straight go the white petals to the heart; straight the mind"s glance goes back to how many other pageants of summer in old times!
When perchance the sunny days were even more sunny; when the stilly oaks were full of mystery, lurking like the Druid"s mistletoe in the midst of their mighty branches. A glamour in the heart came back to it again from every flower; as the sunshine was reflected from them, so the feeling in the heart returned tenfold. To the dreamy summer haze love gave a deep enchantment, the colours were fairer, the blue more lovely in the lucid sky. Each leaf finer, and the gross earth enamelled beneath the feet. A sweet breath on the air, a soft warm hand in the touch of the sunshine, a glance in the gleam of the rippled waters, a whisper in the dance of the shadows.
The ethereal haze lifted the heavy oaks and they were buoyant on the mead, the rugged bark was chastened and no longer rough, each slender flower beneath them again refined. There was a presence everywhere though unseen, on the open hills, and not shut out under the dark pines. Dear were the June roses then because for another gathered. Yet even dearer now with so many years as it were upon the petals; all the days that have been before, all the heart-throbs, all our hopes lie in this opened bud. Let not the eyes grow dim, look not back but forward; the soul must uphold itself like the sun. Let us labour to make the heart grow larger as we become older, as the spreading oak gives more shelter. That we could but take to the soul some of the greatness and the beauty of the summer!
"I cannot leave it; I must stay under the old tree in the midst of the long gra.s.s, the luxury of the leaves, and the song in the very air. I seem as if I could feel all the glowing life the sunshine gives and the south wind calls to being. The endless gra.s.s, the endless leaves, the immense strength of the oak expanding, the unalloyed joy of finch and blackbird; from all of them I receive a little. Each gives me something of the pure joy they gather for themselves. In the blackbird"s melody one note is mine; in the dance of the leaf shadows the formed maze is for me, though the motion is theirs; the flowers with a thousand faces have collected the kisses of the morning. Feeling with them, I receive some, at least, of their fulness of life. Never could I have enough; never stay long enough--whether here or whether lying on the shorter sward under the sweeping and graceful birches, or on the thyme-scented hills. Hour after hour, and still not enough. Or walking the footpath was never long enough, or my strength sufficient to endure till the mind was weary. The exceeding beauty of the earth, in her splendour of life, yields a new thought with every petal. The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer we can stay among these things so much the more is s.n.a.t.c.hed from inevitable Time. Let the shadow advance upon the dial--I can watch it with equanimity while it is there to be watched. It is only when the shadow is _not_ there, when the clouds of winter cover it, that the dial is terrible. The invisible shadow goes on and steals from us.
But now, while I can see the shadow of the tree and watch it slowly gliding along the surface of the gra.s.s, it is mine. These are the only hours that are not wasted--these hours that absorb the soul and fill it with beauty. This is real life, and all else is illusion, or mere endurance. Does this reverie of flowers and waterfall and song form an ideal, a human ideal, in the mind? It does; much the same ideal that Phidias sculptured of man and woman filled with a G.o.dlike sense of the violet fields of Greece, beautiful beyond thought, calm as my turtle-dove before the lurid lightning of the unknown. To be beautiful and to be calm, without mental fear, is the ideal of nature. If I cannot achieve it, at least I can think it."
May we not say indeed, that never any man has heretofore spoken of Nature as this man speaks? He has given new colours to the field and hedge; he has filled them with a beauty which we never thought to find there; he has shown in them more riches, more variety, more fulness, more wisdom, more Divine order than we common men ever looked for or dreamed of. He has taught us to look around us with new eyes; he has removed our blindness; it is a new world that he has given to us. What, what shall we say--what can we say--to show our grat.i.tude towards one who has conferred these wonderful gifts upon his fellow-men?
CHAPTER X.
"THE STORY OF MY HEART."
In the history of literature one happens, from time to time, upon a book which has been written because the author had no choice but to write it.
He was compelled by hidden forces to write it. There was no rest for him, day or night, so soon as the book was complete in his mind, until he sat down to write it. And then he wrote it at a white heat. For eighteen years, Jefferies says, he pondered over this book--he means, that he brooded over these and cognate subjects from the time of adolescence. At last his mind was full, and then--but not till then--he wrote it.
Those who have not read it must understand at the outset that it is the book of one who dares to question for himself on the most important subject which can occupy the mind. To some men--very young men especially--it seems an easy thing to question and to go on following the questions to their logical end. An older man knows better; he has learned, perhaps by his own experience, that to carry on unto the end such an inquiry, fearless of whither it may lead, is an act requiring very great courage, clearness and strength of mind, and carelessness of other men"s opinion. It is, in fact, an act which to begin and to carry through is beyond the courage and the mental powers of most. I do not mean the so-called intellectual process gone through by every young man who takes up the common carping and girding at received forms of religion, and boldly declares among an admiring circle that he renounces them all--I mean a long, patient, and wholly reverent inquiry by whatever line or lines may be possible to a man. For it must not be forgotten that, though there are many lines of independent research and inquiry, there are few men to whom even one is actually possible. This, however, we do not openly acknowledge; every person, however illiterate and untrained, considers himself, not only free, but also qualified, to be an advocate, or an opponent, of religion. Freedom of thought is so great a thing that one would not have it otherwise. As for the lines of inquiry, scientific men, of whom there are few, apply scientific methods to certain books held sacred by the Church, with whatever results may happen; some scientific men, after this research, find that they can remain Christians, others resigning, at least, the orthodox form of that faith. Scholars of language, mythology, Oriental antiquities, of whom also there are comparatively few, may approach the subject by these lines. Others, like the late Mr. Cotter Morison, the like of whom are rare, may consider the subject in relation to the history, development, and proved effect of certain doctrines upon humanity. Others, again, a.s.suming that the pretensions of priests essentially belong to the Christian religion, may compare these pretensions with those of other and older religions. Again, the difficulty or impossibility of reconciling statements in so-called inspired works, the incongruity of ancient Oriental customs as compared with modern and European ideas--these and many other points, all of which require a scholar to deal with them, may furnish lines of investigation. But, indeed, the modes of attack may be indefinitely varied. On all sides, doctrinal religion has been, and is daily, attacked; at all points it has been, and is daily, defended to the full satisfaction of the defenders. The a.s.sailants can never perceive that they are beaten off at every point; the defenders can never be made to understand that their stronghold has been utterly demolished.
The Religious Problem at the present moment has been, in fact, so far advanced that research, defence, or attack by persons not qualified by special education in one or other of these lines is absolutely futile.
For the greater number, dulness of perception, ignorance, want of early training, self-conceit, and that sheer incapacity either to perceive or to tell the truth which seems to be a special firmity of the age, make research impossible, attack futile, and defence powerless. And even for those who seem to have the right to lead, the fact that we are born into the ideas of our time, as well as into its creeds and traditions, is a dire obstacle to clearness of vision. We are surrounded, from birth upwards, by a network of ideas, many false, many conventional, many mere prejudices. But, such as they are, they tear the flesh if we try to break through them; by reason of these bonds we cannot march straight, we cannot see clearly. Education, reading, the literature, and the common talk of the day, so far from helping us, seem only to raise up thicker clouds about us which we cannot disperse, neither can we pa.s.s through them.
Does, then, this act of superlative courage, demanded by fearless inquiry, always lead the man who has achieved it towards atheism or agnosticism? Not so. The history of the Churches shows that there have been many men who have embarked upon such an inquiry honestly and boldly, and have come out of it armed and strengthened with a natural religion upon which they have been able to graft a Christianity far deeper, stronger, and more real than that which is commonly taught in the pulpits, the schools, the catechisms, and the litanies of the Churches. But, as we said before, such an inquiry is not possible for every man.
In Jefferies" "Story of My Heart" we have a tale half told. You may read in it, if you will, the abandonment, rather than the loss, of his early faith; you cannot read in it, but you shall hear, if you persist to the end of this volume, how he found it again. But the man who has once thrown off the old yoke of Authority can never put it on again.
Henceforth he stands alone, yet not alone, for he is face to face with his G.o.d.
Again, the network of custom and tradition which lies around us contains all our friends as well as ourselves. Those who are unlucky (or lucky) enough to break through and to get outside it have to separate themselves from their friends; they have to find new friends--which is difficult--new companions, at least. And then the novel position is a kind of standing challenge to old friends. The old equality is gone, because, if the new philosopher is right, he is intellectually far above his a.s.sociates. And since friendship cannot endure the loss of equality, the ties of years are severed. Instead of the warmth of friendship, one feels, with the coldness, the reproach of isolation.
This is a consideration, however, which would weigh little with Jefferies, who lived, of free choice, in isolation.
Again, many men find a sufficient support on the great questions of faith--which they seldom or never formulate to themselves--in the fact that certain men, whom they very deeply venerate, believe in certain doctrines. That such a man as Dean Stanley, for instance--a scholar, a man of unblemished life, whose purity of soul and natural n.o.bility of character lifted him high above the average of man--was also a devout Christian, and a pillar of the Church of England, has been, and is still, a solid guarantee to thousands who remember his example that the religion which was able to light his feet through the valley of death, and to sustain his heart while life was ebbing, must be true. This is a kindly and a natural aid to faith. And it is another ill.u.s.tration of the immense, the boundless influence of example. The mediaeval scholar believed in the Christian religion because even the horrible scandals of Rome could not destroy it. The modern Churchman modestly and humbly believes his creed mainly because men very greatly his superiors in learning and in elevation of soul believe it, and find in it their greatest consolation, and their only hope. Jefferies had no such reverence. The great leaders of the Church came not to the Wiltshire Downs. His own reason should suffice for himself. Was he, therefore, presumptuous? While any rags of Protestant independence and freedom of thought yet linger among us, let us, a thousand times, say, No!
Other men, as is well known, take refuge in Authority. This seems so easy as to be elementary in its simplicity. Authority does not interfere with the practical business of life, with the getting as much wealth as we can, and as much enjoyment as we can, while life lasts. And after death Authority kindly a.s.sures us that all shall be done for us to ensure ultimate enjoyment of more good things. We cannot, certainly, all seek into the origins and causes of things; some must listen and obey. There is the Authority of example; there is also the Authority of Church rule and discipline. But Jefferies was one of those who cannot listen and obey.
Most books which deal with the difficulties and the loss of faith deal also largely at the outset with the bitterness and the agonies of the soul when doubt begins; with the long discussions based upon premises which are first questioned tentatively, and then wholly denied; with the consequent estrangement of friends; with the laying down of one set of shackles in order to take up another, as when a man, after infinite heart-searchings, exchanges one little sect for another.
Others, again, who think it necessary to put aside their religion, do so with a curious rage. They vehemently despise, and have no words too strong for their contempt of those who refuse to follow them. As for the doctrines themselves, they are--these renegades cry aloud--unworthy the consideration of any who have the least pretensions to intellect.
Everybody knows this kind. The pervert--the renegade--is the fiercest of persecutors, the most intolerant in practice. The bitterness in his mind is caused, or it is increased, by the galling fact that though he is a rebel, he is always, whatever sect he has abandoned, an unsuccessful rebel. His old king yet reigneth; he cannot dethrone that king; it is impossible for him; at the most he can but seduce from their allegiance a few, and for all his railing the loyal subjects of that king remain loyal.