EDWARD GIBBON MARDON
I HAD now been “settled,” to use a Dissenting phrase, for nearly eighteen
months. While I was ill I had no heart in my work, and the sermons I
preached were very poor and excited no particular suspicion. But with
gradually returning energy my love of reading revived, and questions
which had slumbered again presented themselves. I continued for some
time to deal with them as I had dealt with the atonement at college. I
said that Jesus was the true Paschal Lamb, for that by His death men were
saved from their sins, and from the consequences of them; I said that
belief in Christ, that is to say, a love for Him, was more powerful to
redeem men than the works of the law. All this may have been true, but
truth lies in relation. It was not true when I, understanding what I
understood by it, taught it to men who professed to believe in the
Westminster Confession. The preacher who preaches it uses a vocabulary
which has a certain definite meaning, and has had this meaning for
centuries. He cannot stay to put his own interpretation upon it whenever
it is upon his lips, and so his hearers are in a false position, and
imagine him to be much more orthodox than he really is.
For some time I fell into this snare, until one day I happened to be
reading the story of Balaam. Balaam, though most desirous to prophesy
smooth things for Balak, had nevertheless a word put into his mouth by
God. When he came to Balak he was unable to curse, and could do nothing
but bless. Balak, much dissatisfied, thought that a change of position
might alter Balaam’s temper, and he brought him away from the high places
of Baal to the field of Zophim, to the top of Pisgah. But Balaam could
do nothing better even on Pisgah. Not even a compromise was possible,
and the second blessing was more emphatic than the first. “God,” cried
the prophet, pressed sorely by his message, “is not a man, that He should
lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent: hath He said, and
shall He not do it? or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good?
Behold, I have received commandment to bless: and He hath blessed; and I
cannot reverse it.”
This was very unsatisfactory, and Balaam was asked, if he could not
curse, at least to refrain from benediction. The answer was still the
same. “Told not I thee, saying, All that the Lord speaketh, that I must
do?” A third shift was tried, and Balaam went to the top of Peor. This
was worse than ever. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he broke
out into triumphal anticipation of the future glories of Israel. Balak
remonstrated in wrath, but Balaam was altogether inaccessible. “If Balak
would give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot go beyond the
commandment of the Lord, to do either good or bad of mine own mind; but
what the Lord saith, that will I speak.”
This story greatly impressed me, and I date from it a distinct
disinclination to tamper with myself, or to deliver what I had to deliver
in phrases which, though they might be conciliatory, were misleading.
About this time there was a movement in the town to obtain a better
supply of water. The soil was gravelly and full of cesspools, side by
side with which were sunk the wells. A public meeting was held, and I
attended and spoke on behalf of the scheme. There was much opposition,
mainly on the score that the rates would be increased, and on the
Saturday after the meeting the following letter appeared in the
_Sentinel_, the local paper:
“SIR,—It is not my desire to enter into the controversy now raging
about the water-supply of this town, but I must say I was much
surprised that a minister of religion should interfere in politics.
Sir, I cannot help thinking that if the said minister would devote
himself to the Water of Life—
‘that gentle fount
Progressing from Immanuel’s mount,’—
it would be much more harmonious with his function as a follower of
him who knew nothing save Christ crucified. Sir, I have no wish to
introduce controversial topics upon a subject like religion into your
columns, which are allotted to a different line, but I must be
permitted to observe that I fail to see how a minister’s usefulness
can be stimulated if he sets class against class. Like the widows in
affliction of old, he should keep himself pure and unspotted from the
world. How can many of us accept the glorious gospel on the Sabbath
from a man who will incur spots during the week by arguing about
cesspools like any other man? Sir, I will say nothing, moreover,
about a minister of the gospel assisting to bind burdens—that is to
say, rates and taxation—upon the shoulders of men grievous to be
borne. Surely, sir, a minister of the Lamb of God, who was shed for
the remission of sins, should be _against_ burdens.—I am sir, your
obedient servant,
“A CHRISTIAN TRADESMAN.”
I had not the least doubt as to the authorship of this precious epistle.
Mr. Snale’s hand was apparent in every word. He was fond of making
religious verses, and once we were compelled to hear the Sunday-school
children sing a hymn which he had composed. The two lines of poetry were
undoubtedly his. Furthermore, although he had been a chapel-goer all his
life, he muddled, invariably, passages from the Bible. They had no
definite meaning for him, and there was nothing, consequently, to prevent
his tacking the end of one verse to the beginning of another. Mr. Snale,
too, continually “failed to see.” Where he got the phrase I do not know,
but he liked it, and was always repeating it. However, I had no external
evidence that it was he who was my enemy, and I held my peace. I was
supported at the public meeting by a speaker from the body of the hall
whom I had never seen before. He spoke remarkably well, was evidently
educated, and I was rather curious about him.
It was my custom on Saturdays to go out for the whole of the day by the
river, seawards, to prepare for the Sunday. I was coming home rather
tired, when I met this same man against a stile. He bade me
good-evening, and then proceeded to thank me for my speech, saying many
complimentary things about it. I asked who it was to whom I had the
honour of talking, and he told me he was Edward Gibbon Mardon. “It was
Edward Gibson Mardon once, sir,” he said, smilingly. “Gibson was the
name of a rich old aunt who was expected to do something for me, but I
disliked her, and never went near her. I did not see why I should be
ticketed with her label, and as Edward Gibson was very much like Edward
Gibbon, the immortal author of the _Decline and Fall_, I dropped the ‘s’
and stuck in a ‘b.’ I am nothing but a compositor on the _Sentinel_, and
Saturday afternoon, after the paper is out, is a holiday for me, unless
there is any reporting to do, for I have to turn my attention to that
occasionally.”
Mr. Edward Gibbon Mardon, I observed, was slightly built, rather short,
and had scanty whiskers which developed into a little thicker tuft on his
chin. His eyes were pure blue, like the blue of the speedwell. They
were not piercing, but perfectly transparent, indicative of a character
which, if it possessed no particular creative power, would not permit
self-deception. They were not the eyes of a prophet, but of a man who
would not be satisfied with letting a half-known thing alone and saying
he believed it. His lips were thin, but not compressed into bitterness;
and above everything there was in his face a perfectly legible frankness,
contrasting pleasantly with the doubtfulness of most of the faces I knew.
I expressed my gratitude to him for his kind opinion, and as we loitered
he said:
“Sorry to see that attack upon you in the _Sentinel_. I suppose you are
aware it was Snale’s. Everybody could tell that who knows the man.”
“If it is Mr. Snale’s, I am very sorry.”
“It is Snale’s. He is a contemptible cur and yet it is not his fault.
He has heard sermons about all sorts of supernatural subjects for thirty
years, and he has never once been warned against meanness, so of course
he supposes that supernatural subjects are everything and meanness is
nothing. But I will not detain you any longer now, for you are busy.
Good-night, sir.”
This was rather abrupt and disappointing. However, I was much absorbed
in the morrow, and passed on.
Although I despised Snale, his letter was the beginning of a great
trouble to me. I had now been preaching for many months, and had met
with no response whatever. Occasionally a stranger or two visited the
chapel, and with what eager eyes did I not watch for them on the next
Sunday, but none of them came twice. It was amazing to me that I could
pour out myself as I did—poor although I knew that self to be—and yet
make so little impression. Not one man or woman seemed any different
because of anything I had said or done, and not a soul kindled at any
word of mine, no matter with what earnestness it might be charged. How I
groaned over my incapacity to stir in my people any participation in my
thoughts or care for them!
Looking at the history of those days now from a distance of years,
everything assumes its proper proportion. I was at work, it is true,
amongst those who were exceptionally hard and worldly, but I was seeking
amongst men (to put it in orthodox language) what I ought to have sought
with God alone. In other, and perhaps plainer phrase, I was expecting
from men a sympathy which proceeds from the Invisible only. Sometimes,
indeed, it manifests itself in the long-postponed justice of time, but
more frequently it is nothing more and nothing less than a consciousness
of approval by the Unseen, a peace unspeakable, which is bestowed on us
when self is suppressed.
I did not know then how little one man can change another, and what
immense and persistent efforts are necessary—efforts which seldom succeed
except in childhood—to accomplish anything but the most superficial
alteration of character. Stories are told of sudden conversions, and of
course if a poor simple creature can be brought to believe that hell-fire
awaits him as the certain penalty of his misdeeds, he will cease to do
them; but this is no real conversion, for essentially he remains pretty
much the same kind of being that he was before.
I remember while this mood was on me, that I was much struck with the
absolute loneliness of Jesus, and with His horror of that death upon the
cross. He was young and full of enthusiastic hope, but when He died He
had found hardly anything but misunderstanding. He had written nothing,
so that He could not expect that His life would live after Him.
Nevertheless His confidence in His own errand had risen so high, that He
had not hesitated to proclaim Himself the Messiah: not the Messiah the
Jews were expecting, but still the Messiah. I dreamed over His walks by
the lake, over the deeper solitude of His last visit to Jerusalem, and
over the gloom of that awful Friday afternoon.
The hold which He has upon us is easily explained, apart from the dignity
of His recorded sayings and the purity of His life. There is no Saviour
for us like the hero who has passed triumphantly through the distress
which troubles _us_. Salvation is the spectacle of a victory by another
over foes like our own. The story of Jesus is the story of the poor and
forgotten. He is not the Saviour for the rich and prosperous, for they
want no Saviour. The healthy, active, and well-to-do need Him not, and
require nothing more than is given by their own health and prosperity.
But every one who has walked in sadness because his destiny has not
fitted his aspirations; every one who, having no opportunity to lift
himself out of his little narrow town or village circle of acquaintances,
has thirsted for something beyond what they could give him; everybody
who, with nothing but a dull, daily round of mechanical routine before
him, would welcome death, if it were martyrdom for a cause; every
humblest creature, in the obscurity of great cities or remote hamlets,
who silently does his or her duty without recognition—all these turn to
Jesus, and find themselves in Him. He died, faithful to the end, with
infinitely higher hopes, purposes, and capacity than mine, and with
almost no promise of anything to come of them.
Something of this kind I preached one Sunday, more as a relief to myself
than for any other reason. Mardon was there, and with him a girl whom I
had not seen before. My sight is rather short, and I could not very well
tell what she was like. After the service was over he waited for me, and
said he had done so to ask me if I would pay him a visit on Monday
evening. I promised to do so, and accordingly went.
I found him living in a small brick-built cottage near the outskirts of
the town, the rental of which I should suppose would be about seven or
eight pounds a year. There was a patch of ground in front and a little
garden behind—a kind of narrow strip about fifty feet long, separated
from the other little strips by iron hurdles. Mardon had tried to keep
his garden in order, and had succeeded, but his neighbour was disorderly,
and had allowed weeds to grow, blacking bottles and old tin cans to
accumulate, so that whatever pleasure Mardon’s labours might have
afforded was somewhat spoiled.
He himself came to the door when I knocked, and I was shown into a kind
of sitting-room with a round table in the middle and furnished with
Windsor chairs, two arm-chairs of the same kind standing on either side
the fireplace. Against the window was a smaller table with a green baize
tablecloth, and about half-a-dozen plants stood on the window-sill,
serving as a screen. In the recess on one side of the fireplace was a
cupboard, upon the top of which stood a tea-caddy, a workbox, some
tumblers, and a decanter full of water; the other side being filled with
a bookcase and books. There were two or three pictures on the walls; one
was a portrait of Voltaire, another of Lord Bacon, and a third was Albert
Dürer’s St. Jerome. This latter was an heirloom, and greatly prized I
could perceive, as it was hung in the place of honour over the
mantelpiece.
After some little introductory talk, the same girl whom I had noticed
with Mardon at the chapel came in, and I was introduced to her as his
only daughter Mary. She began to busy herself at once in getting the
tea. She was under the average height for a woman, and delicately built.
Her head was small, but the neck was long. Her hair was brown, of a
peculiarly lustrous tint, partly due to nature, but also to a looseness
of arrangement and a most diligent use of the brush, so that the light
fell not upon a dead compact mass, but upon myriads of individual hairs,
each of which reflected the light. Her eyes, so far as I could make out,
were a kind of greenish grey, but the eyelashes were long, so that it was
difficult exactly to discover what was underneath them. The hands were
small, and the whole figure exquisitely graceful; the plain black dress,
which she wore fastened right up to the throat, suiting her to
perfection. Her face, as I first thought, did not seem indicative of
strength. The lips were thin, but not straight, the upper lip showing a
remarkable curve in it. Nor was it a handsome face. The complexion was
not sufficiently transparent, nor were the features regular.
During tea she spoke very little, but I noticed one peculiarity about her
manner of talking, and that was its perfect simplicity. There was no
sort of effort or strain in anything she said, no attempt by emphasis of
words to make up for the weakness of thought, and no compliance with that
vulgar and most disagreeable habit of using intense language to describe
what is not intense in itself. Her yea was yea, and her no, no. I
observed also that she spoke without disguise, although she was not rude.
The manners of the cultivated classes are sometimes very charming, and
more particularly their courtesy, which puts the guest so much at his
ease, and constrains him to believe that an almost personal interest is
taken in his affairs, but after a time it becomes wearisome. It is felt
to be nothing but courtesy, the result of a rule of conduct uniform for
all, and verging very closely upon hypocrisy. We long rather for
plainness of speech, for some intimation of the person with whom we are
talking, and that the mask and gloves may be laid aside.
Tea being over, Miss Mardon cleared away the tea-things, and presently
came back again. She took one of the arm-chairs by the side of the
fireplace, which her father had reserved for her, and while he and I were
talking, she sat with her head leaning a little sideways on the back of
the chair. I could just discern that her feet, which rested on the
stool, were very diminutive, like her hands.
The talk with Mardon turned upon the chapel. I had begun it by saying
that I had noticed him there on the Sunday just mentioned. He then
explained why he never went to any place of worship. A purely orthodox
preacher it was, of course, impossible for him to hear, but he doubted
also the efficacy of preaching. What could be the use of it, supposing
the preacher no longer to be a believer in the common creeds? If he
turns himself into a mere lecturer on all sorts of topics, he does
nothing more than books do, and they do it much better. He must base
himself upon the Bible, and above all upon Christ, and how can he base
himself upon a myth? We do not know that Christ ever lived, or that if
He lived His life was anything like what is attributed to Him. A mere
juxtaposition of the Gospels shows how the accounts of His words and
deeds differ according to the tradition followed by each of His
biographers.
I interrupted Mardon at this point by saying that it did not matter
whether Christ actually existed or not. What the four evangelists
recorded was eternally true, and the Christ-idea was true whether it was
ever incarnated or not in a being bearing His name.
“Pardon me,” said Mardon, “but it does very much matter. It is all the
matter whether we are dealing with a dream or with reality. I can dream
about a man’s dying on the cross in homage to what he believed, but I
would not perhaps die there myself; and when I suffer from hesitation
whether I ought to sacrifice myself for the truth, it is of immense
assistance to me to know that a greater sacrifice has been made before
me—that a greater sacrifice is possible. To know that somebody has
poetically imagined that it is possible, and has very likely been
altogether incapable of its achievement, is no help. Moreover, the
commonplaces which even the most freethinking of Unitarians seem to
consider as axiomatic, are to me far from certain, and even unthinkable.
For example, they are always talking about the omnipotence of God. But
power even of the supremest kind necessarily implies an object—that is to
say, resistance. Without an object which resists it, it would be a
blank, and what, then, is the meaning of omnipotence? It is not that it
is merely inconceivable; it is nonsense, and so are all these abstract,
illimitable, self-annihilative attributes of which God is made up.”
This negative criticism, in which Mardon greatly excelled, was all new to
me, and I had no reply to make. He had a sledge-hammer way of expressing
himself, while I, on the contrary, always required time to bring into
shape what I saw. Just then I saw nothing; I was stunned, bewildered,
out of the sphere of my own thoughts, and pained at the roughness with
which he treated what I had cherished.
I was presently relieved, however, of further reflection by Mardon’s
asking his daughter whether her face was better. It turned out that all
the afternoon and evening she had suffered greatly from neuralgia. She
had said nothing about it while I was there, but had behaved with
cheerfulness and freedom. Mentally I had accused her of slightness, and
inability to talk upon the subjects which interested Mardon and myself;
but when I knew she had been in torture all the time, my opinion was
altered. I thought how rash I had been in judging her as I continually
judged other people, without being aware of everything they had to pass
through; and I thought, too, that if I had a fit of neuralgia, everybody
near me would know it, and be almost as much annoyed by me as I myself
should be by the pain.
It is curious, also, that when thus proclaiming my troubles I often
considered. my eloquence meritorious, or, at least, a kind of talent for
which I ought to praise God, contemning rather my silent friends as
something nearer than myself to the expressionless animals. To parade my
toothache, describing it with unusual adjectives, making it felt by all
the company in which I might happen to be, was to me an assertion of my
superior nature. But, looking at Mary, and thinking about her as I
walked home, I perceived that her ability to be quiet, to subdue herself,
to resist the temptation for a whole evening of drawing attention to
herself by telling us what she was enduring, was heroism, and that my
contrary tendency was pitiful vanity. I perceived that such virtues as
patience and self-denial—which, clad in russet dress, I had often passed
by unnoticed when I had found them amongst the poor or the humble—were
more precious and more ennobling to their possessor than poetic
yearnings, or the power to propound rhetorically to the world my
grievances or agonies.
Miss Mardon’s face was getting worse, and as by this time it was late, I
stayed but a little while longer.