Mark Rutherford’s Deliverance

some of our disciples. I do not think that church or chapel would have done them much good. Preachers are like unskilled doctors with the same pill and draught for every complaint. They do not know where the fatal spot lies on lung or heart or nerve which robs us of life. If any of these persons just described had gone to church or chapel they would have heard discourses on the usual set topics, none of which would have concerned them. Their trouble was not the forgiveness of sins, the fallacies of Arianism, the personality of the Holy Ghost, or the doctrine of the Eucharist. They all wanted something distinctly. They had great gaping needs which they longed to satisfy, intensely practical and special. Some of these necessities no words could in any way meet. It was obvious, for instance, that Clark must at once be taken away from his gallery and his copying if he was to live⁠—at least in sanity. He had fortunately learned shorthand, and M’Kay got him employment on a newspaper. His knowledge of his art was by no means perfect at first, but he was sent to attend meetings where verbatim reports were not necessary, and he quickly advanced. Taylor, too, we tried to remove, and we succeeded in attaching him to a large club as an out-of-doors porter. The poor man was now at least in the open air, and freed from insolent tyranny. This, however, was help such as anybody might have given. The question of most importance is, What gospel had we to give? Why, in short, did we meet on the Sunday? What was our justification? In the first place, there was the simple quietude. The retreat from the streets and from miserable cares into a place where there was peace and room for reflection was something. It is all very well for cultivated persons with libraries to scoff at religious services. To the poor the cathedral or the church might be an immense benefit, if only for the reason that they present a barrier to worldly noise, and are a distinct invitation by architecture and symbolic decoration to meditation on something beyond the business which presses on them during the week. Poor people frequently cannot read for want of a place in which to read. Moreover, they require to be provoked by a stronger stimulus than that of a book. They willingly hear a man talk if he has anything to say, when they would not care to look at what he said if it were printed. But to come more closely to the point. Our main object was to create in our hearers contentment with their lot; and even some joy in it. That was our religion; that was the central thought of all we said and did, giving shape and tendency to everything. We admitted nothing which did not help us in that direction, and everything which did help us. Our attempts, to anyone who had not the key, may have seemed vague and desultory. We might by a stranger have been accused of feeble wandering, of idle dabbling, now in this subject and now in that, but after a while he would have found that though we were weak creatures, with no pretence to special knowledge in any subject, we at least knew what we meant, and tried to accomplish it. For my own part, I was happy when I had struck that path. I felt as if somehow, after many errors, I had once more gained a road, a religion in fact, and one which essentially was not new but old, the religion of the Reconciliation, the reconciliation of man with God; differing from the current creed in so far as I did not lay stress upon sin as the cause of estrangement, but yet agreeing with it in making it my duty of duties to suppress revolt, and to submit calmly and sometimes cheerfully to the Creator. This surely, under a thousand disguises, has been the meaning of all the forms of worship which we have seen in the world. Pain and death are nothing new, and men have been driven into perplexed scepticism, and even insurrection by them, ever since men came into being. Always, however, have the majority, the vast majority of the race, felt instinctively that in this scepticism and insurrection they could not abide, and they have struggled more or less blindly after explanation; determined not to desist till they had found it, and reaching a result embodied in a multitude of shapes irrational and absurd to the superficial scoffer, but of profound interest to the thoughtful. I may observe, in passing, that this is a reason why all great religions should be treated with respect, and in a certain sense preserved. It is nothing less than a wicked waste of accumulated human strivings to sneer them out of existence. They will be found, every one of them, to have incarnated certain vital doctrines which it has cost centuries of toil and devotion properly to appreciate. Especially is this true of the Catholic faith, and if it were worth while, it might be shown how it is nothing less than a divine casket of precious remedies, and if it is to be brutally broken, it will take ages to rediscover and restore them. Of one thing I am certain, that their rediscovery and restoration will be necessary. I cannot too earnestly insist upon the need of our holding, each man for himself, by some faith which shall anchor him. It must not be taken up by chance. We must fight for it, for only so will it become our faith. The halt in indifference or in hostility is easy enough and seductive enough. The halfhearted thinks that when he has attained that stage he has completed the term of human wisdom. I say go on: do not stay there; do not take it for granted that there is nothing beyond;