The Revolution in Tanner’s Lane

gesture. Her precious promptitude of expression made her invaluable as a companion to her father. He was English all over and all through; hypochondriacal, with a strong tendency to self-involution and self-absorption. She was only half English, or rather altogether French, and when he came home in the evening he often felt as if some heavy obstruction in his brain and about his heart were suddenly dissolved. She and her mother were like Hercules in the house of Admetus. Before Hercules has promised to rescue Alcestis we feel that the darkness has disappeared. Pauline was loved by her father with intense passion. When she was a little child, and he was left alone with a bitter sense of wrong, a feeling that he had more than his proper share of life’s misery, his heart was closed, and he cared for no friendship. But the man’s nature could not be thus thwarted, and gradually it poured itself out in full flood⁠—denied exit elsewhere⁠—at this one small point. He rejoiced to find that he had not stiffened into death, and he often went up to her bedside as she lay asleep, and the tears came, and he thanked God, not only for her but for his tears. He could not afford to bring her up like a lady, but he did his best to give her a good education. He was very anxious that she should learn French, and as she was wonderfully quick at languages, she managed in a very short time to speak it fluently.

XX

The Reverend Thomas Broad’s Exposition of Romans 8:7

Such was the Coleman household when Mr. Thomas Broad called one fine Monday afternoon about three months after he had been at college. He had preached his first sermon on the Sunday before, in a village about twelve miles from London in a northeasterly direction, somewhere in the flat regions of Essex. Mr. Thomas was in unusually good humour, for he had not broken down, and thought he had crowned himself with glory. The trial, to be sure, was not very severe. The so-called chapel was the downstairs living-room of a cottage holding at a squeeze about five-and-twenty people. Nevertheless, there was a desk at one corner, with two candles on either side, and Mr. Thomas was actually, for the first time, elevated above an audience. It consisted of the wheelwright and his wife, both very old, half a dozen labourers, with their wives, and two or three children. The old wheelwright, as he was in business, was called the “principal support of the cause.” The “cause,” however, was not particularly prosperous, nor its supporters enthusiastic. It was “supplied” always by a succession of first-year’s students, who made their experiments on the corpus vile here. Spiritual teaching, spiritual guidance, these poor peasants had none, and when the Monday came they went to their work in the marshes and elsewhere, and lived their blind lives under grey skies, with nothing left in them of the Sunday, save the recollection of a certain routine performed which might one day save them from some disaster with which flames and brimstone had something to do. It was not, however, a reality to them. Neither the future nor the past was real to them; no spiritual existence was real; nothing, in fact, save the most stimulant sensation. Once upon a time, a man, looking towards the celestial city, saw “The reflection of the sun upon the city (for the city was of pure gold), so exceeding glorious that he could not as yet with open face behold it, save through an instrument made for that purpose;” but Mr. Thomas Broad and his hearers needed no smoked glass now to prevent injury to their eyes. Mr. Thomas had put on a white neckerchief, had mounted the desk, and had spoken for three-quarters of an hour from the text, “The carnal mind is at enmity with God.” He had received during the last three weeks his first lectures on the “Scheme of Salvation,” and his discourse was a reproduction of his notes thereon. The wheelwright and his wife, and the six labourers with their wives, listened as oxen might listen, wandered home along the lanes heavy-footed like oxen, with heads towards the ground, and went heavily to bed. The elder student who had accompanied Mr. Thomas informed him that, on the whole, he had acquitted himself very well, but that it would be better, perhaps, in future to be a little simpler, and avoid what “may be called the metaphysics of Redemption.”

“No doubt,” said he, “they are very attractive, and of enormous importance. There is no objection to expound them before a cultivated congregation in London; but in the villages we cannot be too plain⁠—that, at least, is my experience. Simply tell them we are all sinners, and deserve damnation. God sent His Son into the world. If we believe in Him we shall be saved; if not, we shall be lost. There is no mystery in that; everybody can understand it; and people are never weary of hearing the old old gospel.”

Mr. Thomas was well contented with himself, as we have said, when he knocked at Zachariah’s door. It was opened by Pauline. He took off his hat and smiled.

“My name is Broad. I come from Cowfold, and know the Allens very well. I am now living in London, and having heard of you so often, I thought I should like to call.”

“Pray come in,” she said; “I am very glad to see you. I wish my father were here.”

He was shown into the little front room, and after some inquiries about his relations Pauline asked him where was his abode in London.

“At the Independent College. I am studying for the ministry.”

Pauline was not quite sure what “the ministry” meant; but as Mr. Thomas had yesterday’s white tie round his neck⁠—he always “dirtied out” the Sunday’s neckerchief on Monday, and wore a black one on the