You had to endure hardness after you were nine. You learnt out of Mrs.
Markham's "History of England," and you were not allowed to read the
conversations between Richard and Mary and Mrs. Markham because they made
history too amusing and too easy to remember. For the same reason you
translated only the tight, dismal pages of your French Reader, and
anything that looked like an interesting story was forbidden. You were to
learn for the sake of the lesson and not for pleasure's sake. Mamma said
you had enough pleasure in play-time. She put it to your honour not to
skip on to the more exciting parts.
When you had finished Mrs. Markham you began Dr. Smith's "History of
England." Honour was safe with Dr. Smith. He made history very hard to
read and impossible to remember.
The Bible got harder, too. You knew all the best Psalms by heart, and the
stories about Noah's ark and Joseph and his coat of many colours, and
David, and Daniel in the lions' den. You had to go straight through the
Bible now, skipping Leviticus because it was full of things you couldn't
understand. When you had done with Moses lifting up the serpent in the
wilderness you had to read about Aaron and the sons of Levi, and the
wave-offerings, and the tabernacle, and the ark of the covenant where
they kept the five golden emerods. Mamma didn't know what emerods were,
but Mark said they were a kind of white mice.
You learnt Old Testament history, too, out of a little book that was all
grey slabs of print and dark pictures showing the earth swallowing up
Korah, Dathan and Abiram, and Aaron and the sons of Levi with their long
beards and high hats and their petticoats, swinging incense in fits of
temper. You found out queerer and queerer things about God. God made the
earth swallow up Korah, Dathan and Abiram. He killed poor Uzzah because
he put out his hand to prevent the ark of the covenant falling out of the
cart. Even David said he didn't know how on earth he was to get the ark
along at that rate. And there were the Moabites and the Midianites and
all the animals: the bullocks and the he-goats and the little lambs and
kids. When you asked Mamma why God killed people, she said it was because
he was just as well as merciful, and (it was the old story) he hated sin.
Disobedience was sin, and Uzzah had been disobedient.
As for the lambs and the he-goats, Jesus had done away with all that. He
was God's son, and he had propitiated God's anger and satisfied his
justice when he shed his own blood on the cross to save sinners. Without
shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. You were not to bother
about the blood.
But you couldn't help bothering about it. You couldn't help being sorry
for Uzzah and the Midianites and the lambs and the he-goats.
Perhaps you had to sort things out and keep them separate. Here was the
world, here were Mamma and Mark and kittens and rabbits, and all the
things you really cared about: drawing pictures, and playing the
Hungarian March and getting excited in the Easter holidays when the white
evenings came and Mark raced you from the Green Man to the Horns Tavern.
Here was the sudden, secret happiness you felt when you were by yourself
and the fields looked beautiful. It was always coming now, with a sort of
rush and flash, when you least expected it.
And _there_ was God and religion and duty. The nicest part of religion
was music, and knowing how the world was made, and the beautiful sounding
bits of the Bible. You could like religion. But duty was doing all the
things you didn't like because you didn't like them. And you couldn't
honestly say you liked God. God had to be propitiated; your righteousness
was filthy rags; so you couldn't propitiate him. Jesus had to do it for
you. All you had to do was to believe, really believe that he had done
it.
But supposing you hadn't got to believe it, supposing you hadn't got to
believe anything at all, it would be easier to think about. The things
you cared for belonged to each other, but God didn't belong to them. He
didn't fit in anywhere. You couldn't help feeling that if God was love,
and if he was everywhere, he ought to have fitted in. Perhaps, after all,
there were two Gods; one who made things and loved them, and one who
didn't; who looked on sulking and finding fault with what the clever kind
God had made.
When the midsummer holidays came and brook-jumping began she left off
thinking about God.