I
Sitting here in my pleasaunce on the lawn, surrounded by a riot of
hollyhocks, foxgloves, roses, geraniums, and other English flowers that
she described so vividly, and loved so well, I find myself celebrating
in my own way the hundredth anniversary of the birth of George Eliot.
Lying open beside me on the garden-seat is a very well-worn copy of
_Janet's Repentance_. It has been read many times, and must be read
again to-day. For even those who cannot go as far as Dr. Marcus Dods in
pronouncing it 'one of the greatest religious books ever written' will
at least agree that in religious feeling, spiritual insight and
evangelical intensity, it is among the most noble and most notable of
our English classics. The pity of it is that, long before the book was
written, its brilliant authoress had drifted away from that simple and
majestic faith which she so tenderly portrays. Indeed, I have sometimes
fancied that she wrote of Janet with a great wistfulness in her heart.
She seems to have felt that if, in the straits of her soul, she had
found her storm-tossed spirit in communion with personalities like those
by whom Janet was surrounded in the day of her distress, her spiritual
pilgrimage might have been a sunnier one. But she drifted. No other word
will describe the process. Some powerful but sensitive minds, like that
of Goethe--with whose works she was so familiar--have been driven or
torn from their anchorage by some sudden and desolating calamity; but
with George Eliot it was quite otherwise. She was a gentle English girl,
born on a farm, and passionately attached to the quiet beauty of the
countryside. She delighted in the village green, the rectory garden, the
fields waving with golden buttercups, and the shady woods in which the
primroses twinkled. She loved to watch the poppies tossing in the corn,
the wind sweeping over the red sea of clover, and the hyacinths nodding
on the banks of the silvery stream. The smell of the hay and the song of
the birds and the life of the fields were her ceaseless satisfaction and
refreshment. Perhaps, as she wandered about those winding lanes and
lonely bridle-paths, she became too contemplative, too introspective,
too much addicted to the analysis of frames and feelings. Perhaps,
dwelling so exclusively on the abstract and the ideal, her fresh young
spirit became unfitted for its rude impact with the actual and the real.
Perhaps, too, she was unfortunate in respect of the particular specimens
of the evangelical faith that came under her notice. Perhaps! At any
rate, she came at length into daily contact with men and women, and her
girlish faith reeled under the shock. It is one of the most grievous
tragedies of the spiritual realm that conscience often finds the sunny
climate of an ardent evangelism singularly enervating. The _emotional_
side of one's nature luxuriates in an atmosphere in which the _ethical_
side becomes languid and relaxed. A man must be very careful, as Mr.
Gladstone once incisively observed, to prevent his religion from
damaging his morality. The simpleminded people with whom this
sharp-witted and fresh-spirited young Englishwoman met had not fortified
themselves against that insidious peril. One woman told a lie and the
offense was sheeted home to her. '_Ah, well_,' she replied, in a
nonchalant and easy way, '_I do not feel that I have grieved the Spirit
much!_' George Eliot was horrified. She saw, to her disgust, that strong
religious feeling could consist with flagrant dishonor. Her finely
poised and sensitive soul experienced a revolt and a rebound. She
changed none of her opinions, yet she changed the entire attitude of her
mind; and, with the passage of time, the new attitude produced new
ideas. She had not quarreled with the faith of her childhood; she simply
lost her love for it. Her anchor relinquished its hold, and, almost
imperceptibly, she drifted. 'She glided out of the faith,' as Principal
Fairbairn so expressively puts it, 'as easily and as softly as if she
had been a ship obeying wind and tide, and her faith a sea that opened
silently before and closed noiselessly behind her.'
Wherefore let all those who name the name of Christ depart from
iniquity! For if, through any glaring inconsistency between my faith and
my behavior, I offend one of these little ones that believe in Him, it
were better, so the Master Himself declared, that a millstone were
hanged about my neck and that I were cast into the depths of the sea.