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The Zeit-Geist
[Illustration: Zeit-geist logo]
THE
Zeit-Geist
Library
of
_COMPLETE NOVELS_
in One Volume.
_Paper, 1s. 6d.; cloth, 2s._
Early Volumes.
By L. DOUGALL.
THE ZEIT-GEIST.
With Frontispiece.
By GYP.
CHIFFON'S MARRIAGE.
With Portrait of Author.
By FRANKFORT MOORE.
THE SALE OF A SOUL.
With Frontispiece.
By the Author of "A Yellow Aster."
A NEW NOVEL.
With Frontispiece.
_Other volumes to follow._
Each volume with designed
Title-page.
LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO.,
PATERNOSTER ROW.
[Illustration: Bust]
[Illustration: Title page]
The Zeit-Geist
L. DOUGALL
Author of Beggars All, What Necessity Knows, etc.
LONDON
HUTCHINSON & CO
PATERNOSTER ROW
"I ... create evil. I am
the Lord."
_Isa. xlv. 6, 7._
"Where will God be
absent? In His face
Is light, but in His shadow
there is healing too:
Let Guido touch the shadow
and be healed!"
_The Ring and the Book._
"If Nature is the garment
of God, it is woven without
seam throughout."
_The Ascent of Man._
OXFORD, _January 1895_.
_When travelling in Canada, in the region north of Lake Ontario, I came
upon traces of the somewhat remarkable life which is the subject of the
following sketch.
Having applied to the school-master in the town where Bartholomew Toyner
lived, I received an account the graphic detail and imaginative insight
of which attest the writer's personal affection. This account, with only
such condensation as is necessary, I now give to the world. I do not
believe that it belongs to the novel to teach theology; but I do believe
that religious sentiments and opinions are a legitimate subject of its
art, and that perhaps its highest function is to promote understanding
by bringing into contact minds that habitually misinterpret one
another._
THE ZEIT-GEIST.
CHAPTER I.
PROLOGUE.
To-day I am at home in the little town of the fens, where the Ahwewee
River falls some thirty feet from one level of land to another. Both
broad levels were covered with forest of ash and maple, spruce and
tamarack; but long ago, some time in the thirties, impious hands built
dams on the impetuous Ahwewee, and wide marshes and drowned wood-lands
are the result. Yet just immediately at Fentown there is neither marsh
nor dead tree; the river dashes over its ledge of rock in a foaming
flood, runs shallow and rapid between green woods, and all about the
town there are breezy pastures where the stumps are still standing, and
arable lands well cleared. The little town itself has a thriving look.
Its public buildings and its villas have risen, as by the sweep of an
enchanter's wand, in these backwoods to the south of the Ottawa valley.
There was a day when I came a stranger to Fentown. The occasion of my
coming was a meeting concerning the opening of new schools for the
town--schools on a large and ambitious plan for so small a place. When
the meeting was over, I came out into the street on a mild September
afternoon. The other members of the School Council were with me. There
were two clergymen of the party. One of them, a young man with thin,
eager face, happened to be at my side.
"This Mr. Toyner, whose opinion has been so much consulted, was not
here to-day?" I said this interrogatively.
"No, ah--but you'll see him now. He has invited you all to a garden
party, or something of that sort. He's in delicate health. Ah--of
course, you know, it is natural for me to wish his influence with the
Council were much less than it is."
"Indeed! He was spoken of as a philanthropist."
"It's a very poor love to one's fellow-man that gives him all that his
vanity desires in the way of knowledge without leading him into the
Church, where he would be taught to set the value of everything in its
right proportion."
I was rather struck with this view of the function of the Church.
"Certainly," I replied, "to see all things in right proportion is
wisdom; but I heard this Toyner mentioned as a religious man."
"He has some imaginations of his own, I believe, which he mistakes for
religion. I do not know him intimately; I do not wish to. I believe he
has some sort of desire to do what is right; but that, you know, is a
house built upon the sand, unless it is founded upon the desire for
instruction as to what _is_ right. Every one cries up his generosity;
for instance, one of my church-wardens tells him that we need a new
organ in the church and the people won't give a penny-piece towards it,
so Toyner says, with his benevolent smile, 'They must be taught to give.
Tell them I will give half if they will give the other half.' But if the
Roman Catholic priest or a Methodist goes to him the next day for a
subscription, he gives just as willingly if, as is likely, he thinks the
object good. What can you do with a man like that, who has no principle?
It's impossible to have much respect for him."
Now I myself am a school-master, versed in the lore of certain books
ancient and modern, but knowing very little about such a practical
matter as applied theology; nor did I know very much then concerning the
classification of Christians among themselves: but I think that I am not
wrong in saying that this young man belonged to that movement in the
Anglican Church which fights strongly for a visible unity and for Church
tradition. I am so made that I always tend to agree with the man who is
speaking, so my companion was encouraged by my sympathy.
He went on: "I can do with a man that is out-and-out anything. I can
work with a Papist; I can work with a Methodist, as far as I can
conscientiously meet him on common ground, and I can respect him if he
conscientiously holds that he is right and I am wrong: but these
fellows that are neither one thing nor the other--they are as dangerous
as rocks and shoals that are just hidden under the water. You never know
when you have them."
We were upon the broad wooden side-walk of an avenue leading from the
central street of the town to a region of outstanding gardens and
pleasure-grounds, in which the wooden villas of the citizens stood among
luxuriant trees. It is a characteristic of Fentown that the old trees
about the place have been left standing.
A new companion came to my side, and he, as fate would have it, was
another clergyman. He was an older man, with a genial, bearded face. I
think he belonged to that party which takes its name from the Evangel of
whose purity it professes itself the guardian.
"You are going to this entertainment which Mr. and Mrs. Toyner are
giving?" The cordiality of his common-place remark had a certain
restraint in it.
"You are going also?"
"No; it is not a house at which I visit. I have lived here for
twenty-five years, and of course I have known Mr. Toyner more or less
all that time. I do not know how I shall be able to work on the same
Council with him; but we shall see. We, who believe in the truth of
religion, must hold our own if we can."
I was to be the master of the new schools. I pleased him with my assent.
"I am rather sorry," he continued, "to tell the truth, that you should
begin your social life in Fentown by visiting Mr. Toyner; but of course
this afternoon it is merely a public reception, and after a time you
will be able to judge for yourself. I do not hesitate to say that I
consider his influence, especially with the young people, of a most
dangerous kind. For a long time, you know, he and his wife were quite
ostracised--not so much because of their low origin as because of their
religious opinions. But of late years even good Christians appear
disposed to be friendly with them. Money, you know--money carries all
things before it."
"Yes, that is too often the case."
"Well, I don't say that Toyner doesn't hold up a certain standard of
morality among the young men of the place, but it's a pretty low one;
and he has them all under his influence. There isn't a young fellow that
walks these streets, whether the son of clergyman or beggar, who is not
free to go to that man's house every evening and have the run of his
rooms and his books. And Toyner and his wife will sit down and play
cards with them; or they'll get in a lot of girls, and have a dance, or
theatricals,--the thin end of the wedge, you know, the thin end of the
wedge! And all the young men go to his house, except a few that we've
got in our Christian Association."
The speaker was stricter in his views than I saw cause to be; but then,
I knew something of his life; he was giving it day by day to save the
men of whom he was talking. He had a better right than I to know what
was best for them.
"When you have a thorough-going man of the world," he said, "every one
knows what that means, and there's not so much harm done. But this Mr.
Toyner is always talking about God, and using his influence to make
people pray to God. Such men are not ready to pray until they are
prepared to give up the world! The God that he tells them of is a
fiction of his imagination; indeed, I might say a mere creature of his
fancy, who is going to save all men in the end, whatever they do!"
"A Universalist!"
"Oh, worse than that--at least, I have read the books of Universalists
who, though their error was great, did not appear to me so far astray. I
cannot understand it! I cannot understand it!" he went on; "I cannot
understand the influence that he has obtained over our more educated
class; for twenty years ago he was himself a low, besotted drunkard, and
his wife is the daughter of a murderer! Still less do I understand how
such people can claim to be religious at all, and yet not see to what
awful evil the small beginnings of vice must lead. I tell you, if a man
is allowed by Providence to lead an easy life, and remains unfaithful,
he may still have some good metal in him which adversity might refine;
but when people have gone through all that Toyner and his wife have been
through--not a child that has been born to them but has died at the
breast--I say, when they have been through all that, and still lead a
worldly, unsatisfactory life, you may be sure that there is nothing in
them that has the true ring of manhood or womanhood."
I was left alone to enter Mr. Toyner's gates. I found myself in a large
pleasure-ground, where Nature had been guided, not curtailed, in her
work. I was walking upon a winding drive, walled on either side by a
wild irregular line of shrubs, where the delicate forms of acacias and
crab-apples lifted themselves high in comparison to the lower lilac and
elderberry-bushes. I watched the sunlit acacias as they fluttered,
spreading their delicate leaves and golden pods against the blue above
me. I made my way leisurely in the direction of music which I heard at
some distance. I had not advanced far before another person came into my
path.
He was a slight, delicate man of middle size. His hair and moustache
were almost quite white. Something in the air of neatness and perfection
about his dress, in the extreme gravity and clearness of his grey eyes,
even in the fine texture of that long, thin, drooping moustache, made it
evident to me that this new companion was not what we call an ordinary
person.
"Your friend did not come in with you." The voice spoke disappointment;
the speaker looked wistfully at the form of the retreating clergyman
which he could just see through a gap in the shrubs.
"You wished him to come?"
"I saw you coming. I came toward the gate in the hope that he might
come in." Then he added a word of cordial greeting. I perceived that I
was walking with my host.
There are some men to whom one instinctively pays the compliment of
direct speech. "I have been walking with two clergymen. I understand
that you differ from both with regard to religious opinion."
It appeared to me that after this speech of mine he took my measure
quietly. He did not say in so many words he did not see that this
difference of opinion was a sufficient reason for their absence, but by
some word or sign he gave me to understand that, adding:
"I feel myself deprived of a great benefit in being without their
society. They are the two best and noblest men I know."
"It is rare for men to take pleasure in the society of their
opponents."
"Yet you will admit that to be willing to learn from those from whom we
differ is the only path to wisdom."
"It is difficult to tread that path without letting go what we already
have, and that produces chaos."
With intensity both of thought and feeling he took up the words that I
had dropped half idly, and showed me what he thought to be the truth and
untruth of them. There was a grave earnestness in his speech which made
his opinion on this subject suddenly become of moment to me, and his
intensity did not produce any of that sensation of irritation or
opposition which the intensity of most men produces as soon as it is
felt.
"You think that the chief obstacle which is hindering the progress of
true religion in the world at present is that while we will not learn
from those who disagree with us we can obtain no new light, and that
when we are willing to reach after their light we become also willing to
let go what we have had, so that the world does not gain but loses by
the transaction. This is, I admit, an obstacle to thought; but it is not
the essential difficulty of our age."
"Let us consider," I said, in my pedantic way, "how my difficulty may be
overcome, and then let us discuss that one you consider to be
essential."
Toyner's choice of words, like his appearance, betrayed a strong, yet
finely chiselled personality.
"We are truly accustomed now to the idea that whatever has life cannot
possibly remain unchanged, but must always develop by leaving some part
behind and producing some part that is new. It is God's will that the
religious thought of the world, which is made up of the thought of
individuals, shall proceed in this way, whether we will or not, but it
must always help progress when we can make our wills at one with God's
in this matter; we go faster and safer so. Now to say that to submit
willingly to God's law of growth is to produce chaos must certainly be a
fallacy. It must then be a fallacy to argue that to keep a mind open to
all influences is antagonistic to the truest religious life; we
cannot--whether we wish or not, we _cannot_--let go any truth that has
been assimilated into our lives; and what truth we have not assimilated
it is no advantage to hold without agitation. We know better where we
are when we are forced to sift it. It is the very great apparent
advantage of recognised order that deceives us! When we lose that
_apparent_ advantage, when we lose, too, the familiar names and
symbols, and think, like children, that we have lost the reality they
have expressed to us, a very low state of things _appears_ to result.
The strain and stress of life become much greater. Ah! but, my friend,
it is that strain and stress that shape us into the image of God."
"You hinted, I think, that to your mind there was a more real obstacle,
one peculiar to our age."
Ever since I first met him I have been puzzled to know how it was that I
often knew so nearly what Toyner meant when he only partially expressed
his thought; he had this power over my understanding. He was my master
from the first.
He laid his hand now slightly upon my arm, as though to emphasise what
he said.
"It is a little hard to explain it reverently," he said, "and still
harder to understand why the difficulty should have come about, but in
our day it would seem that the nights of prayer and the fresh intuition
into the laws of God's working, which we see united in the life of our
great Example, have become divorced. It is their union again that we
must have--that we shall have; but at present there is the difficulty
for every man of us--the men who lead us in either path are different
men and lead different ways. Our law-givers are not the men who meet God
upon the mount. Our scientists are not the teachers who are pre-eminent
for fasting and prayer. We who to be true to ourselves must follow in
both paths find our souls perplexed."
In front of us, as we turned a curve in the drive, a bed of scarlet
lilies stood stately in the sun, and a pair of bickering sparrows rose
from the fountain near which they grew. Toyner made a slight gesture of
his hand. With the eagerness of a child he asked:
"Is it not hard to believe that we may ask and expect forgiveness and
gifts from the God who by slow inevitable laws of growth clothes the
lilies, who ordains the fall of every one of these sparrows, foresees
the fall and ordains it--the God whose character is expressed in
physical law? The texts of Jesus have become so trite that we forget
that they contain the same vision of 'God's mind in all things' that
makes it so hard to believe in a personality in God, that makes prayer
seem to us so futile."
We came out of the shrubbery upon a bank that dropped before us to a
level lawn. I found myself in the midst of a company of people among
whom were the other members of the new School Council. Below, upon the
lawn, there was a little spectacle going on for our entertainment--a
morris-dance, simply and gracefully performed by young people dressed
in quaintly fashioned frocks of calico; there was good music too--one or
two instruments, to which they danced. Round the other side of the grass
an avenue of stately Canadian maples shut in the view, except where the
river or the pale blue of the eastern horizon was seen in glimpses
through their branches. Behind us the sun's declining rays fell upon an
old-fashioned garden of holly-hocks and asters, so that the effect, as
one caught it turning sideways, was like light upon a stained-glass
window, so rich were the dyes. I saw all this only as one sees the
surroundings of some object that interests supremely.
The man who had been walking with me said simply, "This is my wife."
Before me stood a woman who had the power that some few women have of
making all those whom they gather round them speak out clearly and
freshly the best that is in them.
Ah! we live in a new country. Its streets are not paved with gold, nor
is prosperity to be attained without toil; but it gives this one
advantage--room for growth; whatever virtue a soul contains may reach
its full height and fragrance and colour, if it will.
I did not know then that the beginning of this provincial _salon_, which
Toyner's wife had kept about her for so many years, and to which she
gave a genuine brilliance, however raw the material, had been a wooden
shanty, in which a small income was made by the sale of home-brewed
beer.
I always remember Ann Toyner as I saw her that first time. Her eyes were
black and still bright; but when I looked at them I remembered the
little children that had died in her arms, and I knew that her hopes
had not died with them, but by that suffering had been transformed. As I
heard her talk, my own hopes lifted themselves above their ordinary
level.
Husband and wife stood together, and I noticed that the white shawl that
was crossed Quakerwise over her thin shoulders seemed like a counterpart
of his careful dress, that the white tresses that were beginning to show
among her black ones were almost like a reflection of his white hair. I
felt that in some curious way, although each had so distinct and strong
a personality, they were only perfect as a part of the character which
in their union formed a perfect whole. They stood erect and looked at us
with frank, kindly eyes; we all found to our surprise that we were
saying what we thought and felt, and not what we supposed we ought to
say.
As I talked and looked at them, the words that I had heard came back to
my mind. "His wife is the daughter of a murderer, and he has come up
from the lowest, vilest life." Some indistinct thought worked through my
mind whose only expression was a disconnected phrase: "I saw a new
heaven and a new earth."
In the years since then I have learned to know the story of Toyner and
his wife. Now that they are gone away from us, I will tell what I know.
His was a life which shows that a man cut off from all contact with his
brother-thinkers may still be worked upon by the great over-soul of
thought: his is the story of a weak man who lived a strong life in a
strength greater than his own.