satiety of which I have spoken, and that it came so soon to me I
must take simply as an indication of difference of temperament.
It was not possible, even through the dark glass of
correspondence, to deceive his eagle eye in this matter, and his
suspicions accordingly took another turn. He conceived me to have
become, or to be becoming, a victim of 'the infidelity of the
age.'

In this new difficulty, he appealed to forms of modern literature
by the side of which the least attractive pages of Leviticus or
Deuteronomy struck me as even thrilling. In particular, he urged
upon me a work, then just published, called _The Continuity of
Scripture_ by William Page Wood, afterwards Lord Chancellor
Hatherley. I do not know why he supposed that the lucubrations of
an exemplary lawyer, delivered in a style that was like the
trickling of sawdust, would succeed in rousing emotions which the
glorious rhetoric of the Orient had failed to awaken; but Page
Wood had been a Sunday School teacher for thirty years, and my
Father was always unduly impressed by the acumen of pious
barristers.

As time went on, and I grew older and more independent in mind,
my Father's anxiety about what he called 'the pitfalls and snares
which surround on every hand the thoughtless giddy youth of
London' became extremely painful to himself. By harping in
private upon these 'pitfalls'--which brought to my imagination a
funny rough woodcut in an old edition of Bunyan, where a devil
was seen capering over a sort of box let neatly into the ground--
he worked himself up into a frame of mind which was not a little
irritating to his hapless correspondent, who was now 'snared'
indeed, limed by the pen like a bird by the feet, and could not
by any means escape. To a peck or a flutter from the bird the
implacable fowler would reply:

'You charge me with being suspicious, and I fear I cannot deny the
charge. But I can appeal to your own sensitive and thoughtful
mind for a considerable allowance. My deep and tender love for
you; your youth and inexperience; the examples of other young
men; your distance from parental counsel; our absolute and
painful ignorance of all the details of your daily life, except
what you yourself tell us:--try to throw yourself into the
standing of a parent, and say if my suspiciousness is
unreasonable. I rejoicingly acknowledge that from all I see you
are pursuing a virtuous, steady, worthy course. One good thing my
suspiciousness does:--ever and anon it brings out from you
assurances, which greatly refresh and comfort me. And again, it
carries me ever to God's Throne of Grace on your behalf Holy Job
suspected that his sons might have sinned, and cursed God in
their heart. Was not his suspicion much like mine, grounded on
the same reasons and productive of the same results? For it drove
him to God in intercession. I have adduced the example of this
Patriarch before, and he will endure being looked at again.'

In fact, Holy Job continued to be frequently looked at, and for
this Patriarch I came to experience a hatred which was as
venomous as it was undeserved. But what youth of eighteen would
willingly be compared with the sons of Job? And indeed, for my
part, I felt much more like that justly exasperated character,
Elihu the Buzite, of the kindred of Ram.

As time went on, the peculiar strain of inquisition was relaxed,
and I endured fewer and fewer of the torments of religious
correspondence. Nothing abides in one tense projection, and my
Father, resolute as he was, had other preoccupations. His
orchids, his microscope, his physiological researches, his
interpretations of prophecy, filled up the hours of his active
and strenuous life, and, out of his sight, I became not indeed
out of his mind, but no longer ceaselessly in the painful
foreground of it. Yet, although the reiteration of his anxiety
might weary him a little as it had wearied me well nigh to groans
of despair, there was not the slightest change in his real
attitude towards the subject or towards me.

I have already had occasion to say that he had nothing of the
mystic or the visionary about him. At certain times and on
certain points, he greatly desired that signs and wonders, such
as had astonished and encouraged the infancy of the Christian
Church, might again be vouchsafed to it, but he did not pretend
to see such miracles himself, nor give the slightest credence to
others who asserted that they did. He often congratulated himself
on the fact that although his mind dwelt so constantly on
spiritual matters it was never betrayed into any suspension of
the rational functions.

Cross-examination by letter slackened, but on occasion of my
brief and usually summer visits to Devonshire I suffered acutely
from my Father's dialectical appetites. He was surrounded by
peasants, on whom the teeth of his arguments could find no
purchase. To him, in that intellectual Abdera, even an unwilling
youth from London offered opportunities of pleasant contest. He
would declare himself ready, nay eager, for argument. With his
mental sleeves turned up, he would adopt a fighting attitude, and
challenge me to a round on any portion of the Scheme of Grace.
His alacrity was dreadful to me, his well-aimed blows fell on
what was rather a bladder or a pillow than a vivid antagonist.

He was, indeed, most unfairly handicapped,--I was naked, he in a
suit of chain armour,--for he had adopted a method which I
thought, and must still think, exceedingly unfair. He assumed
that he had private knowledge of the Divine Will, and he would
meet my temporizing arguments by asseverations,--'So sure as my
God liveth!' or by appeals to a higher authority,--'But what does
_my_ Lord tell me in Paul's Letter to the Philippians?' It was the
prerogative of his faith to know, and of his character to
overpower objection; between these two millstones I was rapidly
ground to powder.

These 'discussions', as they were rather ironically called,
invariably ended for me in disaster. I was driven out of my
_papier-mache_ fastnesses, my canvas walls rocked at the first peal
from my Father's clarion, and the foe pursued me across the
plains of Jericho until I lay down ignominiously and covered my
face. I seemed to be pushed with horns of iron, such as those
which Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah prepared for the
encouragement of Ahab.

When I acknowledged defeat and cried for quarter, my Father would
become radiant, and I still seem to hear the sound of his full
voice, so thrilling, so warm, so painful to my over-strained
nerves, bursting forth in a sort of benediction at the end of
each of these one-sided contentions, with 'I bow my knees unto
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that He would grant you,
according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with
might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in
your heart by faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth,
and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ
which passeth knowledge, that you might be filled with the
fullness of God.'

Thus solemn and thus ceremonious was my Father apt to become,
without a moment's warning, on plain and domestic occasions;
abruptly brimming over with emotion like a basin which an unseen
flow of water has filled and over-filled.

I earnestly desire that no trace of that absurd self-pity which
is apt to taint recollections of this nature should give falsity
to mine. My Father, let me say once more, had other interests
than those of his religion. In particular, at this time, he took
to painting in water-colours in the open air, and he resumed the
assiduous study of botany. He was no fanatical monomaniac.
Nevertheless, there was, in everything he did and said, the
central purpose present. He acknowledged it plainly; 'with me,'
he confessed, 'every question assumes a Divine standpoint and is
not adequately answered if the judgement-seat of Christ is not
kept in sight.'

This was maintained whether the subject under discussion was
poetry, or society, or the Prussian war with Austria, or the
stamen of a wild flower. Once, at least, he was himself conscious
of the fatiguing effect on my temper of this insistency, for,
raising his great brown eyes with a flash of laughter in them, he
closed the Bible suddenly after a very lengthy disquisition, and
quoted his Virgil to startling effect:--

Claudite jam rivos, pueri: Sat prata biberunt.

The insistency of his religious conversation was, probably, the
less incomprehensible to me on account of the evangelical
training to which I had been so systematically subjected. It was,
however, none the less intolerably irksome, and would have been
exasperating, I believe, even to a nature in which a powerful and
genuine piety was inherent. To my own, in which a feeble and
imitative faith was expiring, it was deeply vexatious. It led,
alas! to a great deal of bowing in the house of Rimmon, to much
hypocritical ingenuity in drawing my Father's attention away, if
possible, as the terrible subject was seen to be looming and
approaching. In this my stepmother would aid and abet, sometimes
producing incongruous themes, likely to attract my Father aside,
with a skill worthy of a parlour conjurer, and much to my
admiration. If, however, she was not unwilling to come, in this
way, to the support of my feebleness, there was no open collusion
between us. She always described my Father, when she was alone
with me, admiringly, as one 'whose trumpet gave no uncertain
sound'. There was not a tinge of infidelity upon her candid mind,
but she was human, and I think that now and then she was
extremely bored.

My Father was entirely devoid of the prudence which turns away
its eyes and passes as rapidly as possible in the opposite
direction. The peculiar kind of drama in which every sort of
social discomfort is welcomed rather than that the characters
should be happy when guilty of 'acting a lie', was not invented
in those days, and there can hardly be imagined a figure more
remote from my Father than Ibsen. Yet when I came, at a far later
date, to read _The Wild Duck_, memories of the embarrassing
household of my infancy helped me to realize Gregers Werle, with
his determination to pull the veil of illusion away from every
compromise that makes life bearable.

I was docile, I was plausible, I was anything but combative; if
my Father could have persuaded himself to let me alone, if he
could merely have been willing to leave my subterfuges and my
explanations unanalysed, all would have been well. But he refused
to see any difference in temperament between a lad of twenty and
a sage of sixty. He had no vital sympathy for youth, which in
itself had no charm for him. He had no compassion for the
weaknesses of immaturity, and his one and only anxiety was to be
at the end of his spiritual journey, safe with me in the house
where there are many mansions. The incidents of human life upon
the road to glory were less than nothing to him.

My Father was very fond of defining what was his own attitude at
this time, and he was never tired of urging the same ambition
upon me. He regarded himself as the faithful steward of a Master
who might return at any moment, and who would require to find
everything ready for his convenience. That master was God, with
whom my Father seriously believed himself to be in relations much
more confidential than those vouchsafed to ordinary pious
persons. He awaited, with anxious hope, 'the coming of the Lord',
an event which he still frequently believed to be imminent. He
would calculate, by reference to prophecies in the Old and New
Testament, the exact date of this event; the date would pass,
without the expected Advent, and he would be more than
disappointed,--he would be incensed. Then he would understand
that he must have made some slight error in calculation, and the
pleasures of anticipation would recommence.

Me in all this he used as a kind of inferior coadjutor, much as a
responsible and upper servant might use a footboy. I, also, must
be watching; it was not important that I should be seriously
engaged in any affairs of my own. I must be ready for the
Master's coming; and my Father's incessant cross-examination was
made in the spirit of a responsible servant who fidgets lest some
humble but essential piece of household work has been neglected.

My holidays, however, and all my personal relations with my
Father were poisoned by this insistency. I was never at my ease
in his company; I never knew when I might not be subjected to a
series of searching questions which I should not be allowed to
evade. Meanwhile, on every other stage of experience I was
gaining the reliance upon self and the respect for the opinion of
others which come naturally to a young man of sober habits who
earns his own living and lives his own life. For this kind of
independence my Father had no respect or consideration, when
questions of religion were introduced, although he handsomely
conceded it on other points. And now first there occurred to me
the reflection, which in years to come I was to repeat over and
over, with an ever sadder emphasis,--what a charming companion,
what a delightful parent, what a courteous and engaging friend my
Father would have been, and would pre-eminently have been to me,
if it had not been for this stringent piety which ruined it all.

Let me speak plainly. After my long experience, after my patience
and forbearance, I have surely the right to protest against the
untruth (would that I could apply to it any other word!) that
evangelical religion, or any religion in a violent form, is a
wholesome or valuable or desirable adjunct to human life. It
divides heart from heart. It sets up a vain, chimerical ideal, in
the barren pursuit of which all the tender, indulgent affections,
all the genial play of life, all the exquisite pleasures and soft
resignations of the body, all that enlarges and calms the soul
are exchanged for what is harsh and void and negative. It
encourages a stern and ignorant spirit of condemnation; it throws
altogether out of gear the healthy movement of the conscience; it
invents virtues which are sterile and cruel; it invents sins
which are no sins at all, but which darken the heaven of innocent
joy with futile clouds of remorse. There is something horrible,
if we will bring ourselves to face it, in the fanaticism that can
do nothing with this pathetic and fugitive existence of ours but
treat it as if it were the uncomfortable ante-chamber to a palace
which no one has explored and of the plan of which we know
absolutely nothing. My Father, it is true, believed that he was
intimately acquainted with the form and furniture of this
habitation, and he wished me to think of nothing else but of the
advantages of an eternal residence in it.

Then came a moment when my self-sufficiency revolted against the
police-inspection to which my 'views' were incessantly subjected.
There was a morning, in the hot-house at home, among the gorgeous
waxen orchids which reminded my Father of the tropics in his
youth, when my forbearance or my timidity gave way. The enervated
air, soaked with the intoxicating perfumes of all those
voluptuous flowers, may have been partly responsible for my
outburst. My Father had once more put to me the customary
interrogatory. Was I 'walking closely with God'? Was my sense of
the efficacy of the Atonement clear and sound? Had the Holy
Scriptures still their full authority with me? My replies on this
occasion were violent and hysterical. I have no clear
recollection what it was that I said,--I desire not to recall the
whimpering sentences in which I begged to be let alone, in which
I demanded the right to think for myself, in which I repudiated
the idea that my Father was responsible to God for my secret
thoughts and my most intimate convictions.

He made no answer; I broke from the odorous furnace of the
conservatory, and buried my face in the cold grass upon the lawn.
My visit to Devonshire, already near its close, was hurried to an
end. I had scarcely arrived in London before the following
letter, furiously despatched in the track of the fugitive, buried
itself like an arrow in my heart:

'When your sainted Mother died, she not only tenderly committed
you to God, but left you also as a solemn charge to me, to bring
you up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. That
responsibility I have sought constantly to keep before me: I can
truly aver that it has been ever before me--in my choice of a
housekeeper, in my choice of a school, in my ordering of your
holidays, in my choice of a second wife, in my choice of an
occupation for you, in my choice of a residence for you; and in
multitudes of lesser things--I have sought to act for you, not in
the light of this present world, but with a view to Eternity.

'Before your childhood was past, there seemed God's manifest
blessing on our care; for you seemed truly converted to Him; you
confessed, in solemn baptism, that you had died and had been
raised with Christ; and you were received with joy into the bosom
of the Church of God, as one alive from the dead.

'All this filled my heart with thankfulness and joy, whenever I
thought of you:--how could it do otherwise? And when I left you
in London, on that dreary winter evening, my heart, full of
sorrowing love, found its refuge and its resource in this
thought,--that you were one of the lambs of Christ's flock;
sealed with the Holy Spirit as His; renewed in heart to holiness,
in the image of God.

'For a while, all appeared to go on fairly well: we yearned,
indeed, to discover more of heart in your allusions to religious
matters, but your expressions towards us were filial and
affectionate; your conduct, so far as we could see, was moral and
becoming; you mingled with the people of God, spoke of occasional
delight and profit in His ordinances; and employed your talents
in service to Him.

'But of late, and specially during the past year, there has become
manifest a rapid progress towards evil. (I must beg you here to
pause, and again to look to God for grace to weigh what I am
about to say; or else wrath will rise.)

'When you came to us in the summer, the heavy blow fell full upon
me; and I discovered how very far you had departed from God. It
was not that you had yielded to the strong tide of youthful
blood, and had fallen a victim to fleshly lusts; in that case,
however sad, your enlightened conscience would have spoken
loudly, and you would have found your way back to the blood which
cleanseth us from all sin, to humble confession and self-
abasement, to forgiveness and to recommunion with God. It was not
this; it was worse. It was that horrid, insidious infidelity,
which had already worked in your mind and heart with terrible
energy. Far worse, I say, because this was sapping the very
foundations of faith, on which all true godliness, all real
religion, must rest.

'Nothing seemed left to which I could appeal. We had, I found, no
common ground. The Holy Scriptures had no longer any authority:
you had taught yourself to evade their inspiration. Any
particular Oracle of God which pressed you, you could easily
explain away; even the very character of God you weighed in your
balance of fallen reason, and fashioned it accordingly. You were
thus sailing down the rapid tide of time towards Eternity,
without a single authoritative guide (having cast your chart
overboard), except what you might fashion and forge on your own
anvil,--except what you might _guess_, in fact.

'Do not think I am speaking in passion, and using unwarrantable
strength of words. If the written Word is not absolutely
authoritative, what do we know of God? What more than we can
infer, that is, guess,--as the thoughtful heathens guessed,--
Plato, Socrates, Cicero,--from dim and mute surrounding
phenomena? What do we know of Eternity? Of our relations to God?
Especially of the relations of a sinner to God? What of
reconciliation? What of the capital question--How can a God of
perfect spotless rectitude deal with me, a corrupt sinner, who
have trampled on those of His laws which were even written on my
conscience?...

'This dreadful conduct of yours I had intended, after much prayer,
to pass by in entire silence; but your apparently sincere
inquiries after the cause of my sorrow have led me to go to the
root of the matter, and I could not stop short of the development
contained in this letter. It is with pain, not in anger, that I
send it; hoping that you may be induced to review the whole
course, of which this is only a stage, before God. If this grace
were granted to you, oh! how joyfully should I bury all the past,
and again have sweet and tender fellowship with my beloved Son,
as of old.'

The reader who has done me the favour to follow this record of
the clash of two temperaments will not fail to perceive the
crowning importance of the letter from which I have just made a
long quotation. It sums up, with the closest logic, the whole
history of the situation, and I may leave it to form the epigraph
of this little book.

All that I need further say is to point out that when such
defiance is offered to the intelligence of a thoughtful and
honest young man with the normal impulses of his twenty-one
years, there are but two alternatives. Either he must cease to
think for himself; or his individualism must be instantly
confirmed, and the necessity of religious independence must be
emphasized.

No compromise, it is seen, was offered; no proposal of a truce
would have been acceptable. It was a case of 'Everything or
Nothing'; and thus desperately challenged, the young man's
conscience threw off once for all the yoke of his 'dedication',
and, as respectfully as he could, without parade or remonstrance,
he took a human being's privilege to fashion his inner life for
himself.