Autobiographical Sketches Part 3

On recovering from that prostrating physical pain, I came to a very definite decision. I resolved that, whatever might be the result, I would take each dogma of the Christian religion, and carefully and thoroughly examine it, so that I should never again say "I believe" where I had not proved. So, patiently and steadily, I set to work. Four problems chiefly at this time pressed for solution. I. The eternity of punishment after death. II. The meaning of "goodness" and "love" as applied to a G.o.d who had made this world with all its evil and its misery. III. The nature of the atonement of Christ, and the "justice" of G.o.d in accepting a vicarious suffering from Christ, and a vicarious righteousness from the sinner. IV. The meaning of "inspiration" as applied to the Bible, and the reconciliation of the perfection of the author with the blunders and the immoralities of the work.

Maurice's writings now came in for very careful study, and I read also those of Robertson, of Brighton, and of Stopford Brooke, striving to find in these some solid ground whereon I might build up a new edifice of faith. That ground, however, I failed to find; there were poetry, beauty, enthusiasm, devotion; but there was no rock on which I might take my stand. Mansel's Bampton lectures on "The Limits of Religious Thought"

deepened and intensified my doubts. His arguments seemed to make certainty impossible, and I could not suddenly turn round and believe to order, as he seemed to recommend, because proof was beyond reach. I could not, and would not, adore in G.o.d as the highest Righteousness that which, in man was condemned as harsh, as cruel, and as unjust.

In the midst of this long mental struggle, a change occurred in the outward circ.u.mstances of my life. I wrote to Lord Hatherley and asked him if he could give Mr. Besant a Crown living, and he offered us first one in Northumberland, near Alnwick Castle, and then one in Lincolns.h.i.+re, the village of Sibsey, with a vicarage house, and an income of 410 per annum. We decided to accept the latter.

The village was scattered over a considerable amount of ground, but the work was not heavy. The church was one of the fine edifices for which the fen country is so famous, and the vicarage was a comfortable house, with large and very beautiful gardens and paddock, and with outlying fields.

The people were farmers and laborers, with a sprinkling of shopkeepers; the only "society" was that of the neighboring clergy, Tory and prim to an appalling extent. There was here plenty of time for study, and of that time I vigorously availed myself. But no satisfactory light came to me, and the suggestions and arguments of my friend Mr. D---- failed to bring conviction to my mind. It appeared clear to me that the doctrine of Eternal Punishment was taught in the Bible, and the explanations given of the word "eternal" by men like Maurice and Stanley, did not recommend themselves to me as anything more than skilful special pleading-- evasions, not clearings up, of a moral difficulty. For the problem was: Given a good G.o.d, how can he have created mankind, knowing beforehand that the vast majority of those whom he had created were to be tortured for evermore? Given a just G.o.d, how can he punish people for being sinful, when they have inherited a sinful nature without their own choice and of necessity? Given a righteous G.o.d, how can he allow sin to exist for ever, so that evil shall be as eternal as good, and Satan shall reign in h.e.l.l, as long as Christ in Heaven? The answer of the Broad church school was, that the word "eternal" applied only to G.o.d and to life which was one with his; that "everlasting" only meant "lasting for an age", and that while the punishment of the wicked might endure for ages it was purifying, not destroying, and at last all should be saved, and "G.o.d should be all in all". These explanations had (for a time) satisfied Mr.

D----, and I find him writing to me in answer to a letter of mine dated March 25th, 1872:

"On the subject of Eternal punishment I have now not the remotest doubt.

It is impossible to handle the subject exhaustively in a letter, with a sermon to finish before night. But you _must_ get hold of a few valuable books that would solve all kinds of difficulties for you. For most points read Stopford Brooke's Sermons--they are simply magnificent, and are called (1) Christian modern life, (2) Freedom in the Church of England, (3) and (least helpful) 'Sermons'. Then again there is an appendix to Llewellyn Davies' 'Manifestation of the Son of G.o.d', which treats of forgiveness in a future state as related to Christ and Bible. As to that special pa.s.sage about the Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost (to which you refer), I will write you my notions on it in a future letter."

A little later, according, he wrote:

"With regard to your pa.s.sage of difficulty about the unpardonable sin, I would say: (1) If that sin is not to be forgiven in the world to come, it is implied that all other sins _are forgiven in the world to come_. (2) You must remember that our Lord's parables and teachings mainly concerned contemporary events and people. I mean, for instance, that in his great prophecy of _judgment_ he simply was speaking of the destruction of the Jewish polity and nation. The _principles_ involved apply through all time, but He did not apply them except to the Jewish nation. He was speaking then, not of 'the end of the _world_, (as is wrongly translated), but of 'the end of the _age_'. (Every age is wound up with a judgment. French Revolutions, Reformations, etc., are all ends of ages and judgments.) [Greek aion] does not, cannot, will not, and never did mean _world_, but _age_. Well, then, he has been speaking of the Jewish people. And he says that all words spoken against the Son of Man will be forgiven. But there is a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit of G.o.d--there is a confusion of good with evil, of light with darkness--which goes deeper down than this. When a nation has lost the faculty of distinguis.h.i.+ng love from hatred, the spirit of falsehood and hypocrisy from the spirit of truth, G.o.d from the Devil--_then its doom is p.r.o.nounced_--the decree is gone forth against it. As the doom of Judaism, guilty of this sin, _was then_ p.r.o.nounced. As the _decree against it had already gone forth. It is a national warning, not an individual one. It applies to two ages of this world, and not to two worlds_. All its teaching was primarily _national_, and is only thus to be rightly read-- if not all, rather _most of it_. If you would be sure of this and understand it, see the parables, etc., explained in Maurice's 'Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven' (a commentary on S. Luke). I can only indicate briefly in a letter the line to be taken on this question.

"With regard to the [Greek: elui, elui, lama sabbachthani]. I don't believe that the Father even momentarily hid his face from Him. The life of sons.h.i.+p was unbroken. Remark: (1) It is a quotation from a Psalm. (2) It rises naturally to a suffering man's lips as expressive of agony, though not exactly framed for _his_ individual _agony_. (3) The spirit of the Psalm is one of trust, and hope, and full faith, notwithstanding the 1st verse. (4) Our Lord's agony was very extreme, not merely of body but of _soul_. He spoke out of the desolation of one forsaken, not by his divine Father but by his human brothers. I have heard sick and dying men use the words of beloved Psalms in just such a manner.

"The impa.s.sibility of G.o.d (1) With regard to the Incarnation, this presents no difficulty. Christ suffered simply and entirely as man, was too truly a man not to do so. (2) With regard to the Father, the key of it is here. 'G.o.d _is_ love.' He does not need suffering to train into sympathy, because his nature is sympathy. He can afford to dispense with hysterics, because he sees ahead that his plan is working to the perfect result. I am not quite sure whether I have hit upon your difficulty here, as I have destroyed your last letter but one. But the 'Gospel of the Kingdom' is a wonderful 'eye-opener'."

Worst of all the puzzles, perhaps, was that of the existence of evil and of misery, and the racking doubt whether G.o.d _could_ be good, and yet look on the evil and the misery of the world unmoved and untouched. It seemed so impossible to believe that a Creator could be either cruel enough to be indifferent to the misery, or weak enough to be unable to stop it: the old dilemma faced me unceasingly. "If he can prevent it, and does not, he is not good; if he wishes to prevent it, and cannot, he is not almighty;" and out of this I could find no way of escape. Not yet had any doubt of the existence of G.o.d crossed my mind.

In August, 1872 Mr. D---- tried to meet this difficulty. He wrote:

"With regard to the impa.s.sibility of G.o.d, I think there is a stone wrong among your foundations which causes your difficulty. Another wrong stone is, I think, your view of the nature of the _sin_ and _error_ which is supposed to grieve G.o.d. I take it that sin is an absolutely necessary factor in the production of the perfect man. It was foreseen and allowed as a means to an end--as in fact an _education_.

"The view of all the sin and misery in the world cannot grieve G.o.d, any more than it can grieve you to see Digby fail in his first attempt to build a card-castle or a rabbit-hutch. All is part of the training. G.o.d looks at the ideal man to which all tends. The popular idea of the fall is to me a very absurd one. There was never an ideal state in the past, but there will be in the future. The Genesis allegory simply typifies the first awakening of consciousness of good and evil--of two _wills_ in a mind hitherto only animal-psychic.

"Well then--there being no occasion for grief in watching the progress of his own perfect and unfailing plans--your difficulty in G.o.d's impa.s.sibility vanishes. Christ, _qua_ G.o.d, was, of course, impa.s.sible too. It seems to me that your position implies that G.o.d's 'designs' have partially (at least) failed, and hence the grief of perfect benevolence.

Now I stoutly deny that any jot or t.i.ttle of G.o.d's plans can fail. I believe in the ordering of all for the best. I think that the pain consequent on broken law is only an inevitable necessity, over which we shall some day rejoice.

"The indifference shown to G.o.d's love cannot pain Him. Why? because it is simply a sign of defectiveness in the creature which the ages will rectify. The being who is indifferent is not yet educated up to the point of love. But he _will be_. The pure and holy suffering of Christ was (pardon me) _wholly_ the consequence of his human nature. True it was because of the _perfection_ of his humanity. But his Divinity had nothing to do with it. It was his _human heart_ that broke. It was because he entered a world of broken laws and of incomplete education that he became involved in suffering with the rest of his race.....

"No, Mrs. Besant; I never feel at all inclined to give up the search, or to suppose that the other side may be right. I claim no merit for it, but I have an invincible faith in the morality of G.o.d and the moral order of the world. I have no more doubt about the falsehood of the popular theology than I have about the unreality of six robbers who attacked me three nights ago in a horrid dream. I exult and rejoice in the grandeur and freedom of the little bit of truth it has been given me to see. I am told that 'Present-day Papers', by Bishop Ewing (edited) are a wonderful help, many of them, to puzzled people: I mean to get them. But I am sure you will find that the truth will (even so little as we may be able to find out) grow on you, make you free, light your path, and dispel, at no distant time, your _painful_ difficulties and doubts. I should say on no account give up your reading. I think with you that you could not do without it. It will be a wonderful source of help and peace to you. For there are struggles far more fearful than those of intellectual doubt. I am keenly alive to the gathered-up sadness of which your last two pages are an expression. I was sorrier than I can say to read them. They reminded me of a long and very dark time in my own life, when I thought the light never would come. Thank G.o.d it came, or I think I could not have held out much longer. But you have evidently strength to bear it now. The more dangerous time, I should fancy, has pa.s.sed. You will have to mind that the fermentation leaves clear spiritual wine, and not (as too often) vinegar.

"I wish I could write something more helpful to you in this great matter.

But as I sit in front of my large bay window, and see the shadows on the gra.s.s and the sunlight on the leaves, and the soft glimmer of the rosebuds left by the storms, I cannot but believe that all will be very well. 'Trust in the Lord; wait patiently for him'--they are trite words.

But he made the gra.s.s, the leaves, the rosebuds, and the suns.h.i.+ne, and he is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And now the trite words have swelled into a mighty argument."

Despite reading and argument, my scepticism grew only deeper and deeper.

The study of W.R. Greg's "Creed of Christendom", of Matthew Arnold's "Literature and Dogma", helped to widen the mental horizon, while making a return to the old faith more and more impossible. The church services were a weekly torture, but feeling as I did that I was only a doubter, I spoke to none of my doubts. It was possible, I felt, that all my difficulties might be cleared up, and I had no right to shake the faith of others while in uncertainty myself. Others had doubted and had afterwards believed; for the doubter silence was a duty; the blinded had better keep their misery to themselves. I found some practical relief in parish work of a non-doctrinal kind, in nursing the sick, in trying to brighten a little the lot of the poor of the village. But here, again, I was out of sympathy with most of those around me. The movement among the agricultural laborers, due to the energy and devotion of Joseph Arch, was beginning to be talked of in the fens, and bitter were the comments of the farmers on it, while I sympathised with the other side. One typical case, which happened some months later, may stand as example of all.

There was a young man, married, with two young children, who was wicked enough to go into a neighboring county to a "Union Meeting", and who was, further, wicked enough to talk about it when he returned. He became a marked man; no farmer would employ him. He tramped about vainly, looking for work, grew reckless, and took to drink. Visiting his cottage one day I found his wife ill, a dead child in the bed, a sick child in her arms; yes, she "was pining; there was no work to be had". "Why did she leave the dead child on the bed? because there was no other place to put it."

The cottage consisted of one room and a "lean-to", and husband and wife, the child dead of fever and the younger child sickening with it, were all obliged to lie on the one bed. In another cottage I found four generations sleeping in one room, the great-grandfather and his wife, the grandmother (unmarried), the mother (unmarried), and the little child, while three men-lodgers completed the tale of eight human beings crowded into that narrow, ill-ventilated garret. Other cottages were hovels, through the broken roofs of which poured the rain, and wherein rheumatism and ague lived with the dwellers. How could I do aught but sympathise with any combination that aimed at the raising of these poor? But to sympathise with Joseph Arch was a crime in the eyes of the farmers, who knew that his agitation meant an increased drain on their pockets. For it never struck them that, if they paid less in rent to the absent landlord, they might pay more in wage to the laborers who helped to make their wealth, and they had only civil words for the burden that crushed them, and harsh ones for the builders-up of their ricks and the mowers of their harvests. They made common cause with their enemy, instead of with their friend, and instead of leaguing themselves with the laborers, as forming together the true agricultural interest, they leagued themselves with the landlords against the laborers, and so made fratricidal strife instead of easy victory over the common foe.

In the summer and autumn of 1872, I was a good deal in London with my mother.--My health had much broken down, and after a severe attack of congestion of the lungs, my recovery was very slow. One Sunday in London, I wandered into St. George's Hall, in which Mr. Charles Voysey was preaching, and there I bought some of his sermons. To my delight I found that someone else had pa.s.sed through the same difficulties as I about h.e.l.l and the Bible and the atonement and the character of G.o.d, and had given up all these old dogmas, while still clinging to belief in G.o.d. I went to St. George's Hall again on the following Sunday, and in the little ante-room, after the service, I found myself in a stream of people, who were pa.s.sing by Mr. and Mrs. Voysey, some evidently known to him, some strangers, many of the latter thanking him for his morning's work. As I pa.s.sed in my turn I said: "I must thank you for very great help in what you have said this morning", for indeed the possibility opened of a G.o.d who was really "loving unto every man", and in whose care each was safe for ever, had come like a gleam of light across the stormy sea of doubt and distress on which I had been tossing for nearly twelve months. On the following Sunday, I saw them again, and was cordially invited down to their Dulwich home, where they gave welcome to all in doubt. I soon found that the Theism they professed was free from the defects which revolted me in Christianity. It left me G.o.d as a Supreme Goodness, while rejecting all the barbarous dogmas of the Christian faith. I now read Theodore Parker's "Discourse on Religion", Francis Newman's "Hebrew Monarchy", and other works, many of the essays of Miss Frances Power Cobbe and of other Theistic writers, and I no longer believed in the old dogmas and hated while I believed; I no longer doubted whether they were true or not; I shook them off, once for all, with all their pain, and horror, and darkness, and felt, with relief and joy inexpressible, that they were all but the dreams of ignorant and semi-savage minds, not the revelation of a G.o.d. The last remnant of Christianity followed swiftly these cast-off creeds, though, in parting with this, one last pang was felt. It was the doctrine of the Deity of Christ. The whole teaching of the Broad Church School tends, of course, to emphasise the humanity at the expense of the Deity of Christ, and when the eternal punishment and the subst.i.tutionary atonement had vanished, there seemed to be no sufficient reason left for so stupendous a miracle as the incarnation of the Deity. I saw that the idea of incarnation was common to all Eastern creeds, not peculiar to Christianity; the doctrine of the unity of G.o.d repelled the doctrine of the incarnation of a portion of the G.o.dhead. But the doctrine was dear from a.s.sociation; there was something at once soothing and enn.o.bling in the idea of a union between Man and G.o.d, between a perfect man and divine supremacy, between a human heart and an almighty strength. Jesus as G.o.d was interwoven with all art, with all beauty in religion; to break with the Deity of Jesus was to break with music, with painting, with literature; the Divine Child in his mother's arms, the Divine Man in his Pa.s.sion and in his triumph, the human friend encircled with the majesty of the G.o.dhead--did inexorable Truth demand that this ideal figure, with all its pathos, its beauty, its human love, should pa.s.s into the Pantheon of the dead G.o.ds of the Past?

VIII.

The struggle was a sharp one ere I could decide that intellectual honesty demanded that the question of the Deity of Christ should be a.n.a.lysed as strictly as all else, and that the conclusions come to from an impartial study of facts should be faced as steadily as though they dealt with some unimportant question. I was bound to recognise, however, that more than intellectual honesty would be here required, for if the result of the study were--as I dimly felt it would be--to establish disbelief in the supernatural claims of Christ, I could not but feel that such disbelief would necessarily entail most unpleasant external results. I might give up belief in all save this, and yet remain a member of the Church of England: views on Inspiration, on Eternal Torture, on the Vicarious Atonement, however heterodox, might be held within the pale of the Church; many broad church clergymen rejected these as decidedly as I did myself, and yet remained members of the Establishment; the judgment on "Essays and Reviews" gave this wide liberty to heresy within the Church, and a laywoman might well claim the freedom of thought legally bestowed on divines. The name "Christian" might well be worn while Christ was wors.h.i.+pped as G.o.d, and obeyed as the "Revealer of the Father's will", the "well-beloved Son", the "Savior and Lord of men". But once challenge that unique position, once throw off that supreme sovereignty, and then it seemed to me that the name "Christian" became a hypocrisy, and its renouncement a duty inc.u.mbent on an upright mind. But I was a clergyman's wife; my position made my partic.i.p.ation in the Holy Communion a necessity, and my withdrawal therefrom would be an act marked and commented upon by all. Yet if I lost my faith in Christ, how could I honestly approach "the Lord's Table", where Christ was the central figure and the recipient of the homage paid there by every wors.h.i.+pper to "G.o.d made man"? Hitherto mental pain alone had been the price demanded inexorably from the searcher after truth; now to the inner would be added the outer warfare, and how could I tell how far this might carry me?

One night only I spent in this struggle over the question: "Shall I examine the claims to Deity of Jesus of Nazareth?". When morning broke the answer was clearly formulated: "Truth is greater than peace or position. If Jesus be G.o.d, challenge will not shake his Deity; if he be Man, it is blasphemy to wors.h.i.+p him." I re-read Liddon's "Bampton Lectures" on this controversy and Renan's "Vie de Jesus". I studied the Gospels, and tried to represent to myself the life there outlined; I tested the conduct there given as I should have tested the conduct of any ordinary historical character; I noted that in the Synoptics no claim to Deity was made by Jesus himself, nor suggested by his disciples; I weighed his own answer to an enquirer, with its plain disavowal of G.o.dhood: "Why callest thou me good? There is none good save one, that is G.o.d" (Matt, xix., 17); I conned over his prayers to "my Father", his rest on divine protection, his trust in a power greater than his own; I noted his repudiation of divine knowledge: "Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, _neither the Son_, but the Father" (Mark xiii., 32); I studied the meaning of his prayer of anguished submission: "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pa.s.s from me! nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt" (Matt, xxvi., 39); I dwelt on his bitter cry in his dying agony: "My G.o.d, my G.o.d, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matt, xxvii., 46); I asked the meaning of the final words of rest: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" (Luke xxiii., 46). And I saw that, if there were any truth in the Gospels at all, they told the story of a struggling, suffering, sinning, praying man, and not of a G.o.d at all and the dogma of the Deity of Christ followed the rest of the Christian doctrines into the limbo of past beliefs.

Yet one other effort I made to save myself from the difficulties I foresaw in connexion with this final breach with Christianity. There was one man who had in former days wielded over me a great influence, one whose writings had guided and taught me for many years--Dr. Pusey, the venerable leader of the Catholic party in the Church, the learned Patristic scholar, full of the wisdom of antiquity. He believed in Christ as G.o.d; what if I put my difficulties to him? If he resolved them for me I should escape the struggle I foresaw; if he could not resolve them, then no answer to them was to be hoped for. My decision was quickly made; being with my mother, I could write to him unnoticed, and I sat down and put my questions clearly and fully, stating my difficulties and asking him whether, out of his wider knowledge and deeper reading, he could resolve them for me. I wish I could here print his answer, together with two or three other letters I received from him, but the packet was unfortunately stolen from my desk and I have never recovered it. Dr.

Pusey advised me to read Liddon's "Bampton Lectures", referred me to various pa.s.sages, chiefly from the Fourth Gospel, if I remember rightly, and invited me to go down to Oxford and talk over my difficulties.

Liddon's "Bampton Lectures" I had thoroughly studied, and the Fourth Gospel had no weight with me, the arguments in favor of its Alexandrian origin being familiar to me, but I determined to accept his invitation to a personal interview, regarding it as the last chance of remaining in the Church.

To Oxford, accordingly, I took the train, and made my way to the famous Doctor's rooms. I was shown in, and saw a short, stout gentleman, dressed in a ca.s.sock, and looking like a comfortable monk; but the keen eyes, steadfastly gazing straight into mine, told me of the power and subtlety hidden by the unprepossessing form. The head was fine and impressive, the voice low, penetrating, drilled into a somewhat monotonous and artificially subdued tone. I quickly found that no sort of enlightenment could possibly result from our interview. He treated me as a penitent going to confession, seeking the advice of a director, not as an enquirer struggling after truth, and resolute to obtain some firm standing-ground in the sea of doubt, whether on the sh.o.r.es of orthodoxy or of heresy. He would not deal with the question of the Deity of Jesus as a question for argument; he reminded me: "You are speaking of your judge," when I pressed some question. The mere suggestion of an imperfection in Jesus'

character made him shudder in positive pain, and he checked me with raised hand, and the rebuke: "You are blaspheming; the very thought is a terrible sin". I asked him if he could recommend to me any books which would throw light on the subject: "No, no, you have read too much already. You must pray; you must pray." Then, as I said that I could not believe without proof, I was told: "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed," and my further questioning was checked by the murmur: "O my child, how undisciplined! how impatient!". Truly, he must have found in me--hot, eager, pa.s.sionate in my determination to know, resolute not to profess belief while belief was absent--but very little of that meek, chastened, submissive spirit to which he was accustomed in the penitents wont to seek his counsel as their spiritual guide. In vain did he bid me pray as though I believed; in vain did he urge the duty of blind submission to the authority of the Church, of yielding, unreasoning faith, which received but questioned not. He had no conception of the feelings of the sceptical spirit; his own faith was solid as a rock-- firm, satisfied, unshakeable; he would as soon have committed suicide as have doubted of the infallibility of the "Universal Church".

"It is not your duty to ascertain the truth," he told me sternly. "It is your duty to accept and to believe the truth as laid down by the Church; at your peril you reject it; the responsibility is not yours so long as you dutifully accept that which the Church has laid down for your acceptance. Did not the Lord promise that the presence of the Spirit should be ever with his Church, to guide her into all truth?"

"But the fact of the promise and its value are the very points on which I am doubtful," I answered.

He shuddered. "Pray, pray," he said. "Father, forgive her, for she knows not what she says."

It was in vain I urged that I had everything to gain and nothing to lose by following his directions, but that it seemed to me that fidelity to truth forbade a pretended acceptance of that which was not believed.

"Everything to lose? Yes, indeed. You will be lost for time and lost for eternity."

"Lost or not," I rejoined, "I must and will try to find out what is true, and I will not believe till I am sure."

"You have no right to make terms with G.o.d," he answered, "as to what you will believe and what you will not believe. You are full of intellectual pride."

I sighed hopelessly. Little feeling of pride was there in me just then, and I felt that in this rigid unyielding dogmatism there was no comprehension of my difficulties, no help for me in my strugglings. I rose and, thanking him for his courtesy, said that I would not waste his time further, that I must go home and just face the difficulties out, openly leaving the Church and taking the consequences. Then for the first time his serenity was ruffled.

"I forbid you to speak of your disbelief," he cried. "I forbid you to lead into your own lost state the souls for whom Christ died."

Slowly and sadly I took my way back to the station, knowing that my last chance of escape had failed me. I recognised in this famous divine the spirit of the priest, which could be tender and pitiful to the sinner, repentant, humble, submissive, craving only for pardon and for guidance, but which was iron to the doubter, to the heretic, and would crush out all questionings of "revealed truth", silencing by force, not by argument, all challenge of the traditions of the Church. Out of such men were made the Inquisitors of the Middle Ages, perfectly conscientious, perfectly rigid, perfectly merciless to the heretic. To them heretics were and are centres of infectious disease, and charity to them "the worst cruelty to the souls of men". Certain that they hold "by no merit of our own, but by the mercy of our G.o.d the one truth which he hath revealed", they can permit no questionings, they can accept nought but the most complete submission. But while man aspires after truth, while his brain yearns after knowledge, while his intellect soars upward into the heaven of speculation and "beats the air with tireless wing", so long shall those who demand faith be met by challenge for proof, and those who would blind him shall be defeated by his determination to gaze unblenching on the face of Truth, even though her eyes should turn him into stone.

During this same visit to London I saw Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Scott for the first time. I had gone down to Dulwich to see Mr. and Mrs. Voysey, and after dinner we went over to Upper Norwood, and I was introduced to one of the most remarkable men I have ever met. At that time Mr. Scott was an old man, with beautiful white hair, and eyes like those of a hawk gleaming from under s.h.a.ggy eyebrows; he had been a man of magnificent physique, and though his frame was then enfeebled, the splendid lion-like head kept its impressive strength and beauty, and told of a unique personality. Of Scotch descent and wellborn, Thomas Scott had, as a boy, been a page at the French Court; his manhood was spent in many lands, for he "was a mighty hunter", though not "before the Lord". He had lived for months among the North American Indians, sharing the hards.h.i.+ps of their wild life; he had hunted and fished all over the world. At last, he came home, married, and ultimately settled down at Ramsgate, where he made his home a centre of heretical thought. He issued an enormous number of tracts and pamphlets, and each month he sent out a small packet to hundreds of subscribers and friends. This monthly issue of heretical literature soon made itself a power in the world of thought; the tracts were of various shades of opinion, but were all heretical: some moderate, some extreme; all were well-written, cultured and polished in tone--this was a rule to which Mr. Scott made no exceptions; his writers might say what they liked, but they must have something real to say, and they must say that something in good English. The little white packets found their way into many a quiet country parsonage, into many a fas.h.i.+onable home.

His correspondence was world-wide and came from all cla.s.ses--now a letter from a Prime Minister, now one from a blacksmith. All were equally welcome, and all were answered with equal courtesy. At his house met people of the most varying opinions. Colenso, Bishop of Natal, Edward Maitland, E. Vansittart Neale, Charles Bray, Sara Hennell, W.J. Birch, R.

Suffield, and hundreds more, clerics and laymen, scholars and thinkers, all gathered in this one home, to which the right of _entree_ was gained only by love of Truth and desire to spread Freedom among men.

Mr. Scott devoted his fortune to this great work. He would never let publishers have his pamphlets in the ordinary way of trade, but issued them all himself and distributed them gratuitously. If anyone desired to subscribe, well and good, they might help in the work, but make it a matter of business he would not. If anyone sent money for some tracts, he would send out double the worth of the money enclosed, and thus for years he carried on this splendid propagandist work. In all he was n.o.bly seconded by his wife, his "right hand" as he well named her, a sweet, strong, gentle, n.o.ble woman, worthy of her husband, and than that no higher praise can be spoken. Of both I shall have more to say hereafter, but at present we are at the time of my first visit to them at Upper Norwood, whither they had removed from Ramsgate.

Kindly greeting was given by both, and on Mr. Voysey suggesting that judging by one essay of mine that he had seen--an essay which was later expanded into the one on "Inspiration", in the Scott series--my pen would be useful for propagandist work, Mr. Scott bade me try what I could do, and send him for criticism anything I thought good enough for publication; he did not, of course, promise to accept an essay, but he promised to read it. A question arose as to the name to be attached to the essay, in case of publication, and I told him that my name was not my own to use, and that I did not suppose that Mr. Besant could possibly, in his position, give me permission to attach it to a heretical essay; we agreed that any essays I might write should for the present be published anonymously, and that I should try my hand to begin with on the subject of the "Deity of Jesus of Nazareth". And so I parted from those who were to be such good friends to me in the coming time of struggle.

IX.

My resolve was now made, and henceforth there was at least no more doubt so far as my position towards the Church was concerned. I made up my mind to leave it, but was willing to make the leaving as little obtrusive as possible. On my return to Sibsey I stated clearly the ground on which I stood. I was ready to attend the Church services, joining in such parts as were addressed to "the Supreme Being", for I was still heartily Theistic; "the Father", shorn of all the horrible accessories hung round him by Christianity, was still to me an object of adoration, and I could still believe in and wors.h.i.+p One who was "righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works", although the Moloch to whom was sacrificed the well-beloved son had pa.s.sed away for ever from my creed. Christian I was not, though Theist I was, and I felt that the wider and more generous faith would permit me to bow to the common G.o.d with my Christian brethren, if only I was not compelled to pay homage to that "Son of Man"