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_ When I think over all that Ernest told me about his prison
meditations, and the conclusions he was drawn to, it occurs to me
that in reality he was wanting to do the very last thing which it
would have entered into his head to think of wanting. I mean that
he was trying to give up father and mother for Christ's sake. He
would have said he was giving them up because he thought they
hindered him in the pursuit of his truest and most lasting
happiness. Granted, but what is this if it is not Christ? What is
Christ if He is not this? He who takes the highest and most self-
respecting view of his own welfare which it is in his power to
conceive, and adheres to it in spite of conventionality, is a
Christian whether he knows it and calls himself one, or whether he
does not. A rose is not the less a rose because it does not know
its own name.
What if circumstances had made his duty more easy for him than it
would be to most men? That was his luck, as much as it is other
people's luck to have other duties made easy for them by accident of
birth. Surely if people are born rich or handsome they have a right
to their good fortune. Some I know, will say that one man has no
right to be born with a better constitution than another; others
again will say that luck is the only righteous object of human
veneration. Both, I daresay, can make out a very good case, but
whichever may be right surely Ernest had as much right to the good
luck of finding a duty made easier as he had had to the bad fortune
of falling into the scrape which had got him into prison. A man is
not to be sneered at for having a trump card in his hand; he is only
to be sneered at if he plays his trump card badly.
Indeed, I question whether it is ever much harder for anyone to give
up father and mother for Christ's sake than it was for Ernest. The
relations between the parties will have almost always been severely
strained before it comes to this. I doubt whether anyone was ever
yet required to give up those to whom he was tenderly attached for a
mere matter of conscience: he will have ceased to be tenderly
attached to them long before he is called upon to break with them;
for differences of opinion concerning any matter of vital importance
spring from differences of constitution, and these will already have
led to so much other disagreement that the "giving up" when it
comes, is like giving up an aching but very loose and hollow tooth.
It is the loss of those whom we are not required to give up for
Christ's sake which is really painful to us. Then there is a wrench
in earnest. Happily, no matter how light the task that is demanded
from us, it is enough if we do it; we reap our reward, much as
though it were a Herculean labour.
But to return, the conclusion Ernest came to was that he would be a
tailor. He talked the matter over with the chaplain, who told him
there was no reason why he should not be able to earn his six or
seven shillings a day by the time he came out of prison, if he chose
to learn the trade during the remainder of his term--not quite three
months; the doctor said he was strong enough for this, and that it
was about the only thing he was as yet fit for; so he left the
infirmary sooner than he would otherwise have done and entered the
tailor's shop, overjoyed at the thoughts of seeing his way again,
and confident of rising some day if he could only get a firm
foothold to start from.
Everyone whom he had to do with saw that he did not belong to what
are called the criminal classes, and finding him eager to learn and
to save trouble always treated him kindly and almost respectfully.
He did not find the work irksome: it was far more pleasant than
making Latin and Greek verses at Roughborough; he felt that he would
rather be here in prison than at Roughborough again--yes, or even at
Cambridge itself. The only trouble he was ever in danger of getting
into was through exchanging words or looks with the more decent-
looking of his fellow-prisoners. This was forbidden, but he never
missed a chance of breaking the rules in this respect.
Any man of his ability who was at the same time anxious to learn
would of course make rapid progress, and before he left prison the
warder said he was as good a tailor with his three months'
apprenticeship as many a man was with twelve. Ernest had never
before been so much praised by any of his teachers. Each day as he
grew stronger in health and more accustomed to his surroundings he
saw some fresh advantage in his position, an advantage which he had
not aimed at, but which had come almost in spite of himself, and he
marvelled at his own good fortune, which had ordered things so
greatly better for him than he could have ordered them for himself.
His having lived six months in Ashpit Place was a case in point.
Things were possible to him which to others like him would be
impossible. If such a man as Towneley were told he must live
henceforth in a house like those in Ashpit Place it would be more
than he could stand. Ernest could not have stood it himself if he
had gone to live there of compulsion through want of money. It was
only because he had felt himself able to run away at any minute that
he had not wanted to do so; now, however, that he had become
familiar with life in Ashpit Place he no longer minded it, and could
live gladly in lower parts of London than that so long as he could
pay his way. It was from no prudence or forethought that he had
served this apprenticeship to life among the poor. He had been
trying in a feeble way to be thorough in his work: he had not been
thorough, the whole thing had been a fiasco; but he had made a
little puny effort in the direction of being genuine, and behold, in
his hour of need it had been returned to him with a reward far
richer than he had deserved. He could not have faced becoming one
of the very poor unless he had had such a bridge to conduct him over
to them as he had found unwittingly in Ashpit Place. True, there
had been drawbacks in the particular house he had chosen, but he
need not live in a house where there was a Mr Holt and he should no
longer be tied to the profession which he so much hated; if there
were neither screams nor scripture readings he could be happy in a
garret at three shillings a week, such as Miss Maitland lived in.
As he thought further he remembered that all things work together
for good to them that love God; was it possible, he asked himself,
that he too, however imperfectly, had been trying to love him? He
dared not answer Yes, but he would try hard that it should be so.
Then there came into his mind that noble air of Handel's: "Great
God, who yet but darkly known," and he felt it as he had never felt
it before. He had lost his faith in Christianity, but his faith in
something--he knew not what, but that there was a something as yet
but darkly known which made right right and wrong wrong--his faith
in this grew stronger and stronger daily.
Again there crossed his mind thoughts of the power which he felt to
be in him, and of how and where it was to find its vent. The same
instinct which had led him to live among the poor because it was the
nearest thing to him which he could lay hold of with any clearness
came to his assistance here too. He thought of the Australian gold
and how those who lived among it had never seen it though it
abounded all around them: "There is gold everywhere," he exclaimed
inwardly, "to those who look for it." Might not his opportunity be
close upon him if he looked carefully enough at his immediate
surroundings? What was his position? He had lost all. Could he
not turn his having lost all into an opportunity? Might he not, if
he too sought the strength of the Lord, find, like St Paul, that it
was perfected in weakness?
He had nothing more to lose; money, friends, character, all were
gone for a very long time if not for ever; but there was something
else also that had taken its flight along with these. I mean the
fear of that which man could do unto him. Cantabil vacuus. Who
could hurt him more than he had been hurt already? Let him but be
able to earn his bread, and he knew of nothing which he dared not
venture if it would make the world a happier place for those who
were young and loveable. Herein he found so much comfort that he
almost wished he had lost his reputation even more completely--for
he saw that it was like a man's life which may be found of them that
lose it and lost of them that would find it. He should not have had
the courage to give up all for Christ's sake, but now Christ had
mercifully taken all, and lo! it seemed as though all were found.
As the days went slowly by he came to see that Christianity and the
denial of Christianity after all met as much as any other extremes
do; it was a fight about names--not about things; practically the
Church of Rome, the Church of England, and the freethinker have the
same ideal standard and meet in the gentleman; for he is the most
perfect saint who is the most perfect gentleman. Then he saw also
that it matters little what profession, whether of religion or
irreligion, a man may make, provided only he follows it out with
charitable inconsistency, and without insisting on it to the bitter
end. It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and
not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger lies. This was
the crowning point of the edifice; when he had got here he no longer
wished to molest even the Pope. The Archbishop of Canterbury might
have hopped about all round him and even picked crumbs out of his
hand without running risk of getting a sly sprinkle of salt. That
wary prelate himself might perhaps have been of a different opinion,
but the robins and thrushes that hop about our lawns are not more
needlessly distrustful of the hand that throws them out crumbs of
bread in winter, than the Archbishop would have been of my hero.
Perhaps he was helped to arrive at the foregoing conclusion by an
event which almost thrust inconsistency upon him. A few days after
he had left the infirmary the chaplain came to his cell and told him
that the prisoner who played the organ in chapel had just finished
his sentence and was leaving the prison; he therefore offered the
post to Ernest, who he already knew played the organ. Ernest was at
first in doubt whether it would be right for him to assist at
religious services more than he was actually compelled to do, but
the pleasure of playing the organ, and the privileges which the post
involved, made him see excellent reasons for not riding consistency
to death. Having, then, once introduced an element of inconsistency
into his system, he was far too consistent not to be inconsistent
consistently, and he lapsed ere long into an amiable indifferentism
which to outward appearance differed but little from the
indifferentism from which Mr Hawke had aroused him.
By becoming organist he was saved from the treadmill, for which the
doctor had said he was unfit as yet, but which he would probably
have been put to in due course as soon as he was stronger. He might
have escaped the tailor's shop altogether and done only the
comparatively light work of attending to the chaplain's rooms if he
had liked, but he wanted to learn as much tailoring as he could, and
did not therefore take advantage of this offer; he was allowed,
however, two hours a day in the afternoon for practice. From that
moment his prison life ceased to be monotonous, and the remaining
two months of his sentence slipped by almost as rapidly as they
would have done if he had been free. What with music, books,
learning his trade, and conversation with the chaplain, who was just
the kindly, sensible person that Ernest wanted in order to steady
him a little, the days went by so pleasantly that when the time came
for him to leave prison, he did so, or thought he did so, not
without regret. _
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