by Edmund Gosse
He who, in quest of quiet, ‘Silence!’ hoots
Is apt to make the hubbub he imputes.
The young woman, in a more or less fainting condition, was presently removed from the water, and taken into the sort of tent which was prepared for candidates. It was found that she herself had wished to be a candidate and had earnestly desired to be baptized, but that this had been forbidden by her parents. On the supposition that she fell in by accident, a pious coincidence was detected in this affair; the Lord had pre-ordained that she should be baptized in spite of all opposition. But my Father, in his shrewd way, doubted. He pointed out to us, next morning, that, in the first place, she had not, in any sense, been baptized, as her head had not been immersed; and that, in the second place, she must have deliberately jumped in, since, had she stumbled and fallen forward, her hands and face would have struck the water, whereas they remained quite dry. She belonged, however, to the neighbour congregation, and we had no responsibility to pursue the inquiry any further.
Decorum being again secured, Mr S., with unimpaired dignity, proposed to the congregation a hymn, which was long enough to occupy them during the preparations for the actual baptism. He then retired to the vestry, and I (for I was to be the first to testify) was led by Miss Marks and Mary Grace into the species of tent of which I have just spoken. Its pale sides seemed to shake with the jubilant singing of the saints outside, while part of my clothing was removed and I was prepared for immersion. A sudden cessation of the hymn warned us that the Minister was now ready, and we emerged into the glare of lights and faces to find Mr S. already standing in the water up to his knees. Feeling as small as one of our microscopical specimens, almost infinitesimally tiny as I descended into his Titanic arms, I was handed down the steps to him. He was dressed in a kind of long surplice, underneath which—as I could not, even in that moment, help observing—the air gathered in long bubbles which he strove to flatten out. The end of his noble beard he had tucked away; his shirt sleeves were turned up at the wrist.
The entire congregation was now silent, so silent that the uncertain splashing of my feet as I descended seemed to deafen me. Mr S., a little embarrassed by my short stature, succeeded at length in securing me with one palm on my chest and the other between my shoulders. He said, slowly, in a loud, sonorous voice that seemed to enter my brain and empty it, ‘I baptize thee, my Brother, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost!’ Having intoned this formula, he then gently flung me backwards until I was wholly under the water, and then—as he brought me up again, and tenderly steadied my feet on the steps of the font, and delivered me, dripping and spluttering, into the anxious hands of the women, who hurried me to the tent—the whole assembly broke forth in a thunder of song, a paean of praise to God for this manifestation of his marvellous goodness and mercy. So great was the enthusiasm, that it could hardly be restrained so as to allow the other candidates, the humdrum adults who followed in my wet and glorious footsteps, to undergo a ritual about which, in their case, no one in the congregation pretended to be able to take even the most languid interest.
My Father’s happiness during the next few weeks it is now pathetic to me to look back upon. His sternness melted into a universal complaisance. He laughed and smiled, he paid to my opinions the tribute of the gravest consideration, he indulged—utterly unlike his wont—in shy and furtive caresses. I could express no wish that he did not attempt to fulfil, and the only warning which he cared to give me was one, very gently expressed, against spiritual pride.
This was certainly required, for I was puffed out with a sense of my own holiness. I was religiously confidential with my Father, condescending with Miss Marks (who I think had given up trying to make it all out), haughty with the servants, and insufferably patronising with those young companions of my own age with whom I was now beginning to associate.
I would fain close this remarkable episode on a key of solemnity, but alas! if I am to be loyal to the truth, I must record that some of the other little boys presently complained to Mary Grace that I put out my tongue at them in mockery, during the service in the Room, to remind them that I now broke bread as one of the Saints and that they did not.
Chapter 9
THE RESULT OF my being admitted into the communion of the ‘Saints’ was that, as soon as the nine days’ wonder of the thing passed by, my position became, if anything, more harassing and pressed than ever. It is true that freedom was permitted to me in certain directions; I was allowed to act a little more on my own responsibility, and was not so incessantly informed what ‘the Lord’s will’ might be in this matter and in that, because it was now conceived that, in such dilemmas, I could command private intelligence of my own. But there was no relaxation of our rigid manner of life, and I think I now began, by comparing it with the habits of others, to perceive how very strict it was.
The main difference in my lot as a communicant from that of a mere dweller in the tents of righteousness was that I was expected to respond with instant fervour to every appeal of conscience. When I did not do this, my position was almost worse than it had been before, because of the livelier nature of the responsibility which weighed upon me. My little faults of conduct, too, assumed shapes of terrible importance, since they proceeded from one so signally enlightened. My Father was never tired of reminding me that, now that I was a professing Christian, I must remember, in everything I did, that I was an example to others. He used to draw dreadful pictures of supposititious little boys who were secretly watching me from afar, and whose whole career, in time and eternity, might be disastrously affected if I did not keep my lamp burning.
The year which followed upon my baptism did not open very happily at the Room. Considerable changes had now taken place in the community. My Father’s impressive services, a certain prestige in his preaching, the mere fact that so vigorous a person was at the head of affairs, had induced a large increase in the attendance. By this time, if my memory does not fail me as to dates, we had left the dismal loft over the stables, and had built ourselves a perfectly plain, but commodious and well-arranged chapel in the centre of the village. This greatly added to the prosperity of the meeting. Everything had combined to make our services popular, and had attracted to us a new element of younger people. Numbers of youthful masons and carpenters, shop-girls and domestic servants, found the Room a pleasant trysting-place, and were more or less superficially induced to accept salvation as it was offered to them in my Father’s searching addresses. My Father was very shrewd in dealing with mere curiosity or idle motive, and sharply packed off any youths who simply came to make eyes at the girls, or any ‘maids’ whose only object was to display their new bonnet-strings. But he was powerless against a temporary sincerity, the simulacrum of a true change of heart. I have often heard him say,—of some young fellow who had attended our services with fervour for a little while, and then had turned cold and left us,—‘and I thought that the Holy Ghost had wrought in him!’ Such disappointments grievously depress an evangelist.
Religious bodies are liable to strange and unaccountable fluctuations. At the beginning of the third year since our arrival, the congregation seemed to be in a very prosperous state, as regards attendance, conversions and other outward signs of activity. Yet it was quite soon after this that my Father began to be harassed by all sorts of troubles, and the spring of 1860 was a critical moment in the history of the community. Although he loved to take a very high tone about the Saints, and involved them sometimes in a cloud of laudatory metaphysics, the truth was that they were nothing more than peasants of a somewhat primitive type, not well instructed in the rules of conduct and liable to exactly the same weaknesses as invade the rural character in every country and latitude. That they were exhorted to behave as ‘children of light,’ and that the majority of them sincerely desired to do credit to their high calling, could not prevent their being beset by the sins which had affected their forebears for generations past.
The addition of so man
y young persons of each sex to the communion led to an entirely new class of embarrassment. Now there arose endless difficulties about ‘engagements,’ about youthful brethren who ‘went out walking’ with even more youthful sisters. Glancing over my Father’s notes, I observe the ceaseless repetition of cases in which So-and-So is ‘courting’ Such-an-one, followed by the melancholy record that he has ‘deserted’ her. In my Father’s stern language, ‘desertion’ would very often mean no more than that the amatory pair had blamelessly changed their minds; but in some cases it meant more and worse than this. It was a very great distress to him that sometimes the young men and women who showed the most lively interest in Scripture, and who had apparently accepted the way of salvation with the fullest intelligence, were precisely those who seemed to struggle with least success against a temptation to unchastity. He put this down to the concentrated malignity of Satan, who directed his most poisoned darts against the fairest of the flock.
In addition to these troubles, there came recriminations, mutual charges of drunkenness in private, all sorts of petty jealousy and scandal. There were frequent definite acts of ‘backsliding’ on the part of members, who had in consequence to be ‘put away.’ No one of these cases might be in itself extremely serious, but when many of them came together they seemed to indicate that the church was in an unhealthy condition. The particulars of many of these scandals were concealed from me, but I was an adroit little pitcher, and had cultivated the art of seeming to be interested in something else, a book or a flower, while my elders were talking confidentially. As a rule, while I would fain have acquired more details, I was fairly well-informed about the errors of the Saints, although I was often quaintly ignorant of the real nature of those errors.
Not infrequently, persons who had fallen into sin repented of it under my Father’s penetrating ministrations. They were apt in their penitence to use strange symbolic expressions. I remember Mrs Pewings, our washerwoman, who had been accused of intemperance and had been suspended from communion, reappearing with a face that shone with soap and sanctification, and saying to me, ‘Oh! blessed Child, you’re wonderin’ to zee old Pewings here again, but He have rolled away my mountain!’ For once, I was absolutely at a loss, but she meant that the Lord had removed the load of her sins, and restored her to a state of grace.
It was in consequence of these backslidings, which had become alarmingly frequent, that early in 1860 my Father determined on proclaiming a solemn fast. He delivered one Sunday what seemed to me an awe-inspiring address, calling upon us all closely to examine our consciences, and reminding us of the appalling fate of the Church of Laodicea. He said that it was not enough to have made a satisfactory confession of faith, nor even to have sealed that confession in baptism, if we did not live up to our protestations. Salvation, he told us, must indeed precede holiness of life, yet both are essential. It was a dark and rainy winter morning when he made this terrible address, which frightened the congregation extremely. When the marrow was congealed within our bones, and when the bowed heads before him, and the faintly audible sobs of the women in the background, told him that his lesson had gone home, he pronounced the keeping of a day in the following week as a fast of contrition. ‘Those of you who have to pursue your daily occupations will pursue them, but sustained only by the bread of affliction and by the water of affliction.’
His influence over these gentle peasant people was certainly remarkable, for no effort was made to resist his exhortation. It was his customary plan to stay a little while, after the morning meeting was over, and in a very affable fashion to shake hands with the saints. But on this occasion he stalked forth without a word, holding my hand tight until we had swept out into the street.
How the rest of the congregation kept this fast I do not know. But it was a dreadful day for us. I was awakened in the pitchy night to go off with my Father to the Room, where a scanty gathering held a penitential prayer-meeting. We came home, as dawn was breaking, and in process of time sat down to breakfast, which consisted—at that dismal hour—of slices of dry bread and a tumbler of cold water each. During the morning, I was not allowed to paint, or write, or withdraw to my study in the box-room. We sat, in a state of depression not to be described, in the breakfast-room, reading books of a devotional character, with occasional wailing of some very doleful hymn. Our midday dinner came at last; the meal was strictly confined, as before, to dry slices of the loaf and a tumbler of water.
The afternoon would have been spent as the morning was, and so my Father spent it. But Miss Marks, seeing my white cheeks and the dark rings round my eyes, besought leave to take me out for a walk. This was permitted, with a pledge that I should be given no species of refreshment. Although I told Miss Marks, in the course of the walk, that I was feeling ‘so leer’ (our Devonshire phrase for hungry), she dared not break her word. Our last meal was of the former character, and the day ended by our traipsing through the wet to another prayer-meeting, whence I returned in a state bordering on collapse, and was put to bed without further nourishment. There was no great hardship in all this, I daresay, but it was certainly rigorous. My Father took pains to see that what he had said about the bread and water of affliction was carried out in the bosom of his own family, and by no one more unflinchingly than by himself.
My attitude to other people’s souls when I was out of my Father’s sight was now a constant anxiety to me. In our tattling world of small things he had extraordinary opportunities of learning how I behaved when I was away from home; I did not realise this, and I used to think his acquaintance with my deeds and words savoured almost of wizardry. He was accustomed to urge upon me the necessity of ‘speaking for Jesus in season and out of season,’ and he so worked upon my feelings that I would start forth like St Teresa, wild for the Moors and martyrdom. But any actual impact with persons marvellously cooled my zeal, and I should hardly ever have ‘spoken’ at all if it had not been for that unfortunate phrase ‘out of season.’ It really seemed that one must talk of nothing else, since if an occasion was not in season it was out of season; there was no alternative, no close time for souls.
My Father was very generous. He used to magnify any little effort that I made, with stammering tongue, to sanctify a visit; and people, I now see, were accustomed to give me a friendly lead in this direction, so that they might please him by reporting that I had ‘testified’ in the Lord’s service. The whole thing, however, was artificial, and was part of my Father’s restless inability to let well alone. It was not in harshness or in ill-nature that he worried me so much; on the contrary, it was all part of his too-anxious love. He was in a hurry to see me become a shining light, everything that he had himself desired to be, yet with none of his shortcomings.
It was about this time that he harrowed my whole soul into painful agitation by a phrase that he let fall, without, I believe, attaching any particular importance to it at the time. He was occupied, as he so often was, in polishing and burnishing my faith, and he was led to speak of the day when I should ascend the pulpit to preach my first sermon. ‘Oh! if I may be there, out of sight, and hear the gospel message proclaimed from your lips, then I shall say, “My poor work is done. Oh! Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”’ I cannot express the dismay which this aspiration gave me, the horror with which I anticipated such a nunc dimittis. I felt like a small and solitary bird, caught and hung out hopelessly and endlessly in a great glittering cage. The clearness of the personal image affected me as all the texts and prayers and predictions had failed to do. I saw myself imprisoned for ever in the religious system which had caught me and would whirl my helpless spirit as in the concentric wheels of my nightly vision. I did not struggle against it, because I believed that it was inevitable, and that there was no other way of making peace with the terrible and ever-watchful ‘God who is a jealous God.’ But I looked forward to my fate without zeal and without exhilaration, and the fear of the Lord altogether swallowed up and cancelled any notion of the love of Him.
I should
do myself an injustice, however, if I described my attitude to faith at this time as wanting in candour. I did very earnestly desire to follow where my Father led. That passion for imitation, which I have already discussed, was strongly developed at this time, and it induced me to repeat the language of pious books in godly ejaculations which greatly edified my grown-up companions, and were, so far as I can judge, perfectly sincere. I wished extremely to be good and holy, and I had no doubt in my mind of the absolute infallibility of my Father as a guide in heavenly things. But I am perfectly sure that there never was a moment in which my heart truly responded, with native ardour, to the words which flowed so readily, in such a stream of unction, from my anointed lips. I cannot recall anything but an intellectual surrender; there was never joy in the act of resignation, never the mystic’s rapture at feeling his phantom self, his own threadbare soul, suffused, thrilled through, robed again in glory by a fire which burns up everything personal and individual about him.
Through thick and thin I clung to a hard nut of individuality, deep down in my childish nature. To the pressure from without, I resigned everything else, my thoughts, my words, my anticipations, my assurances, but there was something which I never resigned, my innate and persistent self. Meek as I seemed, and gently responsive, I was always conscious of that innermost quality which I had learned to recognise in my earlier days in Islington, that existence of two in the depths who could speak to one another in inviolable secrecy.
‘This a natural man may discourse of, and that very knowingly, and give a kind of natural credit to it, as to a history that may be true; but firmly to believe that there is divine truth in all these things, and to have a persuasion of it stronger than of the very thing we see with our eyes; such an assent as this is the peculiar work of the Spirit of God, and is certainly saving faith.’ This passage is not to be found in the writings of any extravagant Plymouth Brother, but in one of the most solid classics of the Church, in Archbishop Leighton’s ‘Commentary on the First Epistle of Peter.’ I quote it because it defines, more exactly than words of my own could hope to do, the difference which already existed, and in secrecy began forthwith to be more and more acutely accentuated, between my Father and myself. He did indeed possess this saving faith, which could move mountains of evidence, and suffer no diminution under the action of failure or disappointment. I, on the other hand—as I began to feel dimly then, and see luminously now—had only acquired the habit of giving what the Archbishop means by ‘a kind of natural credit’ to the doctrine so persistently impressed upon my conscience. From its very nature this could not but be molten in the dews and exhaled in the sunshine of life and thought and experience.
