Transcribed from the 1904 Deighton Bell & Co. edition by David Price,
email ccx074@pglaf.org
THE CHAPEL
ON THE HILL
* * * * *
BY
ALFRED PRETOR
FELLOW OF ST. CATHARINE’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
AUTHOR OF ‘RONALD AND I’
* * * * *
“Some falls are means the happier to arise.”
—_Cymbeline_, IV. 2 _ad fin_
* * * * *
CAMBRIDGE
DEIGHTON BELL & CO.
LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS
1904
* * * * *
CAMBRIDGE
PRINTED BY JONATHAN PALMER
ALEXANDRA STREET
* * * * *
_To the_
_memory of_
‘_Judy_’
(_Ob. Aug. 27_, _1904_)
“A soul she had on earth.”
—BYRON.
“The more I learn to know man, the better I like dogs.”
—GERMAN PHILOSOPHER.
PREFACE
_To those_, _I think a lessening number_, _who may find themselves at
variance with_ “_my Rector’s_” _theology_, _I tender the following
quotation from one of the ablest and deepest thinkers of the past
century_:
“If, instead of the ‘glad tidings’ that there exists a Being in whom
all the excellences which the highest human mind can conceive exist
in a degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world is
ruled by a Being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we
cannot learn, nor what are the principles of his government, except
that ‘the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving’
does not sanction them; convince me of it, and I will bear my fate as
I may. But when I am told that I must believe this, and at the same
time call this Being by the names which express and affirm the
highest human morality, I say in plain terms I will call no being
good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my
fellow-creatures.”—J. S. MILL, _Examination of Sir W. Hamilton’s
Philosophy_, pp. 102, 103 (Criticism of Mansel).
_I have omitted from the above the author’s peroration_, _which is
couched in language too strong to suit the taste of the present
generation_.
_That the Bible is our one and only true guide_, _we believe_; _but we
are nowhere instructed to make an idol and a fetish of the form in which
it is presented_. _It was written to suit all times_; _we must read it
in the language of to-day_.
_In the controversy between the Squire and himself the Rector is by no
means guiltless of plagiarism_. _Ford_, _who knew Spain as intimately as
an Englishman can ever know it_, _advances the self-same arguments in his
comments on the national sport_.
_A word more and I have done_. _It is reported on good authority that
one of our greatest divines—the author of_ ‘Butler’s Analogy’—_held a
confident belief in the re-existence of animals_. _They share our doom
of suffering and death_: _why not our promise of happiness beyond_?
_They have done nothing to forfeit their reward_.
_A. P._
CAMBRIDGE,
_August_, 1904.
INTRODUCTION
RIVERDALE and I—to wit one Harold Stirling by name—had been close friends
almost since life began, at our private school, our public school, and
again at college. And we were meeting now for the last time as
undergraduates in Riverdale’s rooms at Cambridge. For the choice that
comes, once at any rate in a lifetime, to all, had come to us, and we had
chosen divergent, to some it would appear antagonistic, careers.
To judge from his personal appearance, Riverdale at any rate had chosen
wisely for himself when he elected to become an artist. Smoking at his
ease, in a picturesque environment of flowers and ferns, pictures and
statuettes, he looked like what he was—a well-to-do indolent dreamer, who
might possibly succeed as a painter, but would never make much of life in
any other line. Fortunately for him he had no need to trouble himself
about the future. A kindly fate had settled all this in advance, when
his only surviving relative, an uncle, had made him a comfortable
allowance of a thousand a year, adding the still more comfortable
assurance that the family estate of Riverdale should be his when the time
came that he himself should have no further use for it.
Study him, as the glow from a reading-lamp falls full on his features,
and you will say that his personality is concentrated in his eyes.
Sapphire blue they would have been called by a casual observer, but it
always seemed to me that they held in them a deeper tint, as of violet or
purple. But whatever their colour, they are about as rare in humanity as
is a blue rose or a green chrysanthemum among the creations of the floral
world. Not that they betoken much character, I think. It is simply
their beauty, and perhaps their rarity, that constitutes the attraction.
At any rate, veiled by long lashes, and set in Italian features, as was
the case with Riverdale, it is impossible to hold them indicative of
energy or activity in life.
It was a strange coincidence that had made bosom friends of two natures
so antagonistic, to all appearance, as Riverdale’s and mine. But it was
a coincidence that occurs oftener than would at first sight seem
possible. Perhaps it is explicable by the well-known theory that every
character is on the search for its complement. If so, it may well be
that my own sturdy directness found its natural relaxation in the
captivating indifferentism of my friend. Anyhow, the companionship had
begun early at school, where a mutual admiration for one’s opposite is
often the secret of a lifelong friendship. And as Riverdale’s good looks
and careless insouciance had always been found irresistible, it was my
own commonplace personality that was envied by my schoolfellows for the
dignity it had acquired by his friendship.
And now that I have given you an idea of my friend, let me for once
attempt the impossible and try to describe myself. An athlete I think I
may call myself, for I have raced and rowed and played cricket and
football ever since I was a boy of ten—of the type which is welcomed in
all our schools as the recognised trainer of youth. Not so very plain, I
hope, and certainly well set up in the way of muscles and sinews. But
quite as certainly not in any way striking like Riverdale, and without
the faintest pretension to anything remarkable in the direction of
beauty. Finally, and to complete the portrait, fair in complexion, with
blue eyes and a slight tendency to freckles, which I abominate. In all
respects a worthy foil to Riverdale’s dreamy picturesqueness.
Left an orphan at an early date, with a comfortable income of £300 a
year, I had never known the want of money, though I had no large balance
to waste on the luxuries that had become necessaries to my friend.
Without any real talent, and notwithstanding my devotion to athletics, I
had taken a fair degree, and learned something of theology under the
guidance of one of the leading minds at Cambridge. Only as yet I had
come to no conclusions outside the main doctrines of our faith; and to
what end my views were shaping themselves I had never paused on my way to
consider. Experience and circumstances, as they developed themselves,
would, I supposed, answer the question, and, having been confronted as
yet by no definite difficulties, I had not troubled to bethink me how I
should meet them.
“And now tell me, Eric,” I asked, “where are all the Cupids and Psyches
and Fauns to go while you are painting dusky Venetians and the
fair-haired beauties of Genoa?”
“Oh, I’ve taken a flat, Harold, in a house overlooking Battersea Park,
and they’ll all be transferred there as soon as I am off to-morrow. By
the way, you must look in on them now and then, and see that they are all
right. And you must have that little gladiator I brought from Rome for
yourself. It would never do to separate you, for I’m sure you’d never be
happy without him. Rather like you, I think he is, with his steady
sturdy gaze, as if he knew he had a tough business before him, but
intended to make the best of it, and worry through. Lucky we weren’t
born in each other’s shoes, any way for me, Harold. I couldn’t have
faced life without funds, but should have drifted down and down till I
ended the business with a dose of morphia.”
“What nonsense, Eric. I do wish you wouldn’t cheapen yourself like that.
You’ve talent enough for both of us, and will be exhibiting in the
Academy while I’m a country curate, and a poor one at that. By the way,
if you don’t mind, I’d sooner have that Antinous than the gladiator. I
don’t particularly want a replica of myself, if it’s all the same to you,
while you might have posed for the Antinous, if you’d been handy; and it
will be better than nothing to have it to look at when I haven’t got the
original on the other side of the table. And now, old friend, good-bye.
It’s past twelve already, and I’ve all my packing to do before the
morning. For I shall be off long before a sybarite like you thinks of
stirring. Let me hear from you now and then, and don’t let the foreign
signoras and Roman models steal all your heart from me.”
The next day we had parted; he to enjoy life and study art in all the
best galleries on the continent, and I to prepare myself for Ordination
in a quiet village of the West.
CHAPTER I
IT was a cheerful scene on which my eye rested as I looked out upon it
from the Rector’s study, while awaiting my introduction to the Rector
himself. Two large bay windows opened on a terrace, from which a short
flight of steps led down to a lawn, fringed with gaily-coloured flower
beds. Through the open windows streamed into the room a veritable flood
of light and air, creating an atmosphere in which sadness and depression
would have been hopelessly out of place.
“Impossible,” I murmured, “to write a gloomy Calvinistic sermon in a room
like this, though it’s strange, by the way, that his letters should have
told me nothing of his views.”
The emerald lawn in the foreground contrasted pleasantly with the violet
haze that rested on the far horizon, and the very air itself seemed
steeped in quiet and repose. Only the song of birds and the mysterious
hum of insect-life broke the stillness of the summer day, to which the
chafing of a trout stream, as it murmured over its rocky bed at the foot
of the Rectory garden, sounded a soft accompaniment.
And out past the Rectory grounds, past the cheery meadow-land beyond,
where reaping was now in progress, I caught a glimpse of the far off sea
and the Isle of Portland lying on the line of the horizon, with a
delicate veil of summer gauze folded about its head. The charm of it all
wove a spell upon me like a dream.
“If the Rector is as nice as his Rectory, I shall have a pleasant time of
it,” I said to myself. And the next moment the unspoken thought was
answered in the affirmative, for I felt my hand warmly grasped by the
gentlest-looking and most benevolent of men. And my heart went out to
him on the instant, as to one whose help and guidance I knew would never
fail me, even when my work under him should be ended, and, whether for
good or evil, laid behind me among the retrospects of life.
“Yes, you’ll do,” he said, after studying me keenly for half-a-minute
with eyes that pierced me through and through. “You look as if you’d
work hard in the right way, and make friends with my villagers and
parishioners. They are a queer lot—to be led, not driven. Above all,
you look as if you had no foolish fads or fancies—the only things I can’t
tolerate when there is so much real work to be done. And you’ll be
content to do it closely on the lines laid down for us all in the Sermon
on the Mount, before Christianity, as Christ left it, had lost its
identity among a crowd of sects and superstitions. By the way, you must
have been surprised, I imagine, that I asked no questions in my letters
as to your opinions, and gave you no hints about my own.
“The fact is,” he continued, “I care more for what a man does than for
what he thinks, and if you will look after my cottagers, soul and
body—beginning with the body first—you and I will get on well together,
no matter what opinions you hold on all the open questions of the day.
Of course I don’t use the term ‘open’ of anything plainly taught us in
the Gospel narrative and the precepts of our Church. Though even the
latter, as it seems to me, might have been conceived in a somewhat wider
spirit without being wide enough to embrace the Christianity of Christ.
And for this reason I am altogether opposed to commissions and enquiries
of any kind that might impose still further limits and restrictions where
He Himself has made none. What are wanted for the Church are active
energetic workmen, and the wider the doors are thrown open the more of
them we shall get for the work. Think what missionary effort itself
could accomplish if all its labourers were content to waive, one and all
of them, their private specifics, and preach only the clear unquestioned
truths which the Master Himself has sanctioned.
“On all questions but these you may hold what theories you will—that the
world was created in six days or in six times as many millions of years;
that the Old Testament miracles were literal facts, or allegories for the
suggestion of much-needed truths. And you may hold, if you will, that no
creature that has life will perish. We are told, are we not? that He
‘will save both man and beast,’ which means, if its means anything, that
other creatures besides man will have a portion in the future state.
“But think well and carefully before you teach an Eternity of Punishment.
The responsibility of doing so is far too grave to be carelessly incurred
in the light of a wider and clearer-sighted knowledge. Almost it seems
that the guess which Charlotte Brontë hazarded in the mouth of one of her
characters will before long have crystallized into doctrine: ‘No; I
cannot believe that. I hold another creed, which no one ever taught me,
and which I never mention, but in which I delight, and to which I cling,
for it extends hope to all; it makes eternity a rest—a mighty home, not a
terror and an abyss.’
“Above all things, do not confuse your mind and paralyse your energies
with the question, so all-engrossing now-a-days, of the co-existence of
good and evil, of joy and sorrow, in the world, which is after all no
mystery at all. Or, if there be a mystery, surely it lies in the fact
that anyone should have thought a world of infinite perfection possible.
Why, the fallacy was refuted by Plato himself, to whom it was a
self-evident truth that the creations of The Infinite must needs be
finite and imperfect: in other words, not ‘infinitely’ but only ‘very’
good.
“Limitation, imperfection and (by consequence) evil, with their natural
development in sin and suffering and death, were the inevitable portion
of created life, but accompanied (thank heaven!) with a birthright of
possibilities for good, that, rightly used here and hereafter, shall make
us worthy of association, at the last perhaps of union, with the Infinite
Itself.
“Forgive me if my sermon has wearied you. I can at any rate summarise it
in brief. Teach mainly what has come to us directly from our Master’s
lips—first and foremost, the paramount duty of unselfishness; it embodies
the whole duty of man to man, and a part at least of his duty to his
Creator. And remember that those who came after Him were after all but
men, not exempt from the bias of inclination and judgment, who sometimes
(it is quite possible) may have obscured where they thought to enlighten.
To be followed therefore with all care and caution whenever they defined
or limited what He left wide enough to embrace the world.
“Of course you will dine with me to-night,” he added cheerily, “and I’ll
try to make amends for the penance I have inflicted on you. Besides, I
want your opinion on the trout from the Rectory stream.”