Now, in the story that lies open on the garden-seat beside me, all the
characters are very religious people. Yet they are divided sharply into
two classes. There are the very religious people who are all the worse
for their religion, and there are the very religious people who are all
the better for it. Mr. Dempster is a very religious man. In the opening
sentence of the story, the first sentence in the book, he acknowledges
his indebtedness to his Creator. He is a very religious man--and a
drunkard! Mr. Budd is also a very religious man. Indeed, he is warden at
the Parish Church. 'He is a small, sleek-headed bachelor of five and
forty, whose scandalous life has long furnished his more moral neighbors
with an afterdinner joke.' But a very religious man is Mr. Budd! Mrs.
Linnett is a very religious woman. She dotes on religious biography. 'On
taking up the biography of a celebrated preacher, she immediately turns
to the end to see what he died of,' and she likes the book all the
better if a sinister element enters into its composition. Mrs. Linnett
is a very religious woman--and a gossip! We are introduced to a whole
group of such characters--men and women who are very religious, but who
are none the better for their religion.
And, side by side with these unamiable figures, are a set of people,
equally religious, whose characters are immeasurably sweetened and
strengthened by their religion. It is not that they profess another
faith, attend another church, or spend lives remote from the affairs
with which the others have to do. As George Eliot herself pointed out,
when the publisher hesitated to commit himself to this manuscript, it
was not a case of one religion against another, or of one creed against
another, or of one church against another, or even of one minister
against another. The members of this second group move in the same
environment as do the members of the first; Sunday by Sunday they make
their way to the self-same sanctuaries; yet every day they grow in
gentleness, in thoughtfulness, in kindness, and in all those graces of
behavior that constitute the charm of lovable and helpful lives. In this
attractive group we find Mr. Jerome, Mr. Tryan, and little Mrs.
Pettifer.
It is, of course, an old story, vividly and startlingly retold. The same
cause will produce diametrically opposite effects. The sun that softens
the wax hardens the clay. The benefit that I derive from my religion,
and the enjoyment that it affords me, must depend upon the response that
I make to it. The rays of light that fade my coat add a warmer blush to
the petals of the rose. Why? My coat does not want the light and makes
no response to it; the rose cannot bloom without the light and drinks in
the soft rays as the source of all its beauty. Under the influence of
the sunshine, the violets in the vase droop and become noisome; the
living lilies under my window unfold and assume an even statelier grace.
It is all a matter of response. Religion was always beating upon the
lives of Mr. Dempster and Mr. Budd and Mrs. Linnett, as the sunlight
beats upon the coat and the cut-flowers. They did not open their hearts
to it; they made no eager response to it; it was a thing that shone upon
the surface, and that was all. Their lives consequently wilted and
shriveled and grew less beautiful. They were like violets made vile by
the very light that was designed to make them lovely. Mr. Tryan, Mr.
Jerome and Mrs. Pettifer, on the other hand, opened their hearts to the
love of God as the rose opens its petals to the light of the sun. Their
religion was a revelry to them. So far from its merely beating upon the
surface, as the sunlight beats upon the surface of the coat, it
saturated the very depths of their being. They were like the lilies
under my window; the rays that withered the violets in the vase only
make _them_ more graceful and more fair.