The Silent Isle

by Arthur Christopher Benson

XXXII

Strange that the sight of a man being guillotined should inspire me with a burning desire to inflict the very thing which I see another suffer! What a violent metaphor for a very minute matter! It is only a review which I have been reading, in which a pompous, and I imagine clerical, critic comes down with all his might on a man whom I gather to be a graceful and mildly speculative writer. The critic asks ponderously. What right has a man who seems to be untrained in philosophy and theology to speculate on philosophical and religious matters? He then goes on to quote a passage in which the writer attacks the current view of the doctrine of the Atonement, and he adds that a man who is unacquainted with the strides which theology has made of late years in the direction of elucidating that doctrine ought not to presume to discuss it at all. No doubt, if the writer in question made any claim to be discussing the latest theological position on the subject of the Atonement, in a technical way, he would be a mere sciolist; but he is only claiming to discuss the Current conception of the Atonement; and, as far as I can judge, he states it fairly enough. The truth is that the current conceptions of old theological doctrines tend to be very much what the original framers of those doctrines intended them to be. All that later theologians can do, when the old doctrine is exploded, is to prove that the doctrine can be modified and held in some philosophical or metaphysical sense, which was certainly not in the least degree contemplated by the theologians who framed it; but they are quite unable to explain to the man in the street what the new form of the doctrine is; and their only chance of doing that is to substitute for an old and perfectly clear doctrine a new and perfectly clear doctrine. The tone adopted by this critic reminds me of the tone adopted by Newman to his disciples. Mark Pattison relates how on one occasion he advanced, in Newman's presence, some liberal opinion, in the days when he was himself numbered among the Tractarians; and that Newman deposited, as was his wont, an icy "Very likely!" upon the statement; after which, Pattison says, you were expected to go into a corner and think over your sins. Not so does thought make progress!

But the larger question is this. What right have philosophers or theologians to arrogate to themselves the sole right of speculation in these matters? If religion is a vital matter, and if all of us who have any thoughts at all about life and its issues are by necessity to a certain extent practical philosophers, why should we meekly surrender the stuff of speculation to technical disputants? Of course, there are certain regions of experiment that must be left to specialists, and a scientist who devoted himself to embryology might justly complain of a man who aired views on the subject without adequate study. But as far as life goes, any thoughtful and intelligent man who has lived and reflected is in a sense a specialist. In life and conduct, in morality and religion, we are all of us making experiments all day long, whether we will or no; and it may be fairly said that a middle-aged man who has lived thoughtfully has given up far more time to his subject than the greatest scientist has devoted to his particular branch. A church-goer, like myself, has been lectured once or twice a week on theology for as long as he can remember. For years I have speculated, with deep curiosity, on problems of religion, on the object and ultimate issues of life and death. Neither philosophers nor theologians have ever discovered a final solution which satisfies all the data. The theologian, indeed, is encumbered by a vast mass of human tradition, which he is compelled to treat more or less as divine revelation. The whole religious position has been metamorphosed by scientific discovery; and what theologian or philosopher has ever come near to solving the incompatibility of the apparent inflexibility of natural law with the no less apparent liberty of moral choice? Theologians and philosophers may, if they choose, attempt to crush the speculations of an experimentalist in life, though I think they would be better employed in welcoming them as an instance of how theological and metaphysical conceptions strike upon the ordinary mind; but they shall not prevent one who, like myself, has observed life closely under aspects which the technical student has had no opportunity of observing it, from making my comment upon what I see. It is possible that such comments may appeal to ordinary people with even more force than technical considerations are likely to appeal. We have all to sin and to suffer, to enjoy and to fear; we find our instinct at variance with our reason and our moral sense alike. We have in our souls conceptions of justice, truth, purity, generosity, and we find the natural law, which we would fain believe is the law of God, constantly thwarting and even insulting these conceptions; and yet these conceptions are as real and vivid to us as the law which takes no account of them. We find theologians basing their faith on documents which every day appear to be less and less historical, and on deductions drawn from these documents by men who believed them to be historical. I have the utmost sympathy with the position in which theologians find themselves; but they have mostly their own prudence to thank for it; they are so cautious about sifting the chaff from the grain, that they will not throw away the chaff for fear of casting away a single grain. They are so averse to unsettling the faith of the weak, that the vitality has ebbed away from the faith of the strong; they have clung so hard to tradition, that they have obscured fact; they would confine the limbs of manhood in the garb of childhood; and thus they have forfeited the confidence of intelligent men, and ranged themselves with the credulous, the comfortable, and the unenterprising. Intolerant persecution is out of date, and the question will be solved by the stranding of the theological hull, owing to the quiet withdrawal of the vital tide.

XXXIII

My way this afternoon lay through a succession of old hamlets, one closely bordering on another, that lie all along the base of the wold. I have no doubt that the reason for their position is simply that it is just along the base of the hills that the springs break out, and a village near a perennial and pure spring generally represents a very old human settlement indeed. Sometimes the wold drew near the road, sometimes lay more remote; its pale fallows, its faintly-tinted pastures, seemed to lie very quietly to-day under the grey laden sky. Here a chalk-pit showed its miniature precipices; here a leafless covert detached its wiry sprays against the light. The villages were pretty enough, with their quaint, irregular white cottages, comfortably thatched, among the little orchards and gardens; and in every village the ancient, beautiful church, each with a character of its own and a special feature of interest or beauty, lay nestled in trees, or held up its grey tower over ricks and barns. We are apt to forget what beautiful things these churches are, because they are so common, so familiar; if there were but a few of them, we should make careful pilgrimages to see them, but now we hardly turn off the road to visit them.

I often wonder what exactly the feeling and the spirit were that produced them, what the demand precisely was that created the supply. I suppose they were almost always the gift of some wealthy person; of course labour and perhaps materials were cheaper, but there must have been a much larger proportion of people employed in the trade of building than is the case nowadays; probably these churches were slowly and leisurely built, in the absence of modern mechanical facilities. It is difficult to conceive how the thing was carried out at all in places with so few resources—how the stone was conveyed thither over the infamous miry roads, how the carving was done, how the builders were lodged and fed. One would like, too, to know exactly what part the churches played in the social life of the place. Some people would have us believe that the country people of that date had a simple enjoyment of beauty and artistic instincts which caused them to take a pleasure, which they do not now feel, in these beautiful little sanctuaries. I do not know what the evidence is for that. I find it very hard to believe that our agricultural labourers have gone backwards in this respect; I should imagine it was rather the other way. My impression is that education has probably increased the power of perception and appreciation rather than diminished it. It is possible that the absence of excitement, of diffuse reading, of communication in those days may have tended to concentrate the affections and interests of agricultural people more on their immediate surroundings, but I rather doubt it; the problem is, considering the much greater roughness and coarseness of village life in the Middle Ages, how there could have existed a poetical and artistic instinct among villagers, which they have now forfeited.

These churches certainly indicate that a very different view of religion prevailed; they testify to a simpler and stronger sense of religion than now exists, but not, I think, to a truer sense of it. They stand, I do not doubt, for a much more superstitious and barbarous view of the relation of God to men; the people who built them had, I imagine, the idea of conciliating God by the gift of a seemly sanctuary, a hope of improving not only their spiritual prospects in the after-life, but of possibly advancing their material prosperity in this, by thus displaying their piety and zeal in God's service. I cannot believe that the churches were designed with the intention of making the rustic inhabitants of the place holier, more virtuous, more refined—except incidentally; they were built more in obedience to ecclesiastical tradition, in a time when rationalism had not begun to cast doubt on what I may call the Old Testament theory of the relation of God to men—the theory of a wrathful power, vindictive, jealous of recognition, withholding blessings from the impious and heaping them upon the submissive. As to those who worshipped there, I imagine that the awe and reverence they felt was based upon the same sort of view, and connected religious observance with the hope of prosperity and wealth, and the neglect of it with the fear of chastisement. If misfortune fell upon the godly, they regarded it as the chastening of God inflicted upon the sons of His love; if it fell upon the ungodly, it was a punishment for sin; religion was a process by which one might avert the punishment of sin, induce the bestowal of favours, and in any case improve one's future prospects of heaven. No doubt this form of religion produced a simpler kind of faith, and a profounder reverence; but I do not think that they were very beautiful qualities when so produced, because they seem to me very alien from the simplicity of the religion of Christ. The difficulty in which popular religion finds itself, nowadays, is that in a Protestant Church like our own, neither priest nor people believe in the old mechanical theories of religion, and yet the people are not yet capable of being moved by purer conceptions of it. A priest can no longer threaten his congregation sincerely with the penalties of hell for neglecting the observances of the Church; on the other hand, the conception of religion as a refining, solemnising attitude of soul, bringing tranquillity and harmony into life, is too subtle an idea to have a very general hold upon unimaginative persons. Thus the beauty of these exquisite and stately little sanctuaries, enriched by long associations and touched with a delicate grace by the gentle hand of time, has something infinitely pathetic about it. The theory that brought them into existence has lost its hold, while the spirit that could animate them and give them a living message has not yet entered them; the refined grace, the sweet solemnity of these simple buildings, has no voice for the plain, sensible villager; it cannot be interpreted to him. If all the inhabitants of a village were humble, simple, spiritually minded people, ascetic in life, with a strong sense of beauty and quality, then a village church might have a tranquil and inspiring influence. But who that knows anything of village life can anticipate even in the remote future such a type of character prevailing? Meanwhile the beautiful churches, with all the grace of antiquity and subtle beauty, must stand as survivals of a very different condition of life and belief; while we who love them can only hope that a more vital consciousness of religion may come back to the shrines from which somehow the significance seems to have ebbed away. They are now too often mere monuments and memorials of the past. Can one hope that they may become the inspiration and the sanctification of the present?

XXXIV

I have just returned from a very curious and interesting visit. I have been to stay with an old school friend of my own, a retired Major; he has a small place of his own in the country, and has lately married a very young and pretty wife. I met him by chance in my club in London, looking more grey and dim than a man who has just married a lovely and charming girl ought to look. He asked me rather pressingly to come and stay with him; and though I do not like country-house visits, for the sake of the old days I went.

Well, it was a very interesting visit; I was warmly welcomed. The young wife, who I must say is the daughter of a penniless country clergyman with a large family, was radiant; the Major was quietly and undemonstratively pleased to see me; the veil of the years fell off, and I found myself back on the old easy terms with him, as when we were schoolboys together thirty years ago. He is a very simple and transparent creature, and I read him as if he were a book. He indulged in almost extravagant panegyrics of his wife and descriptions of his own happiness. But I very soon made a discovery: his charming wife is, not to put too fine a point upon it, a fool. She is perfectly harmless, good-natured, and virtuous. But she is a very silly and a very conventional girl She is full of delight at her promotion; but she is entirely brainless, and not even very affectionate. She as wholly preoccupied about her new possessions, and the place she is going to take in the county; she cares for her husband, because he represents her social success, and because he is a creditable and presentable man. But she has no grain of sympathy, perception, humour, or emotion. I began by thinking it was rather a tragedy; my old friend had married for love; he is anything but a fool himself, except for this one serious error, the falling in love with a girl who can give him none of the things he desires. He is a very serious, simple, intelligent, and tenderhearted fellow, with all sorts of odd ideas of his own, which he produces with an admirable humility. He likes books; he reads poetry—I even suspect him of writing it. He is interested in social problems, and has a dozen kindly enterprises—a club, a carving class, a natural history society, and so forth—for the benefit of the village where he lives. He would have been an ideal country clergyman; he is an excellent man of business, and does a good deal of county work. He is fond of sport, too—in fact, one of those grave, affectionate, solid men who are to be found living quietly in every part of England—a characteristic Englishman, indeed. But the strain of romance in his nature has for once led him wrong, and the mistake seemed irreparable. I was at first inclined to regard him with deep compassion. He is the soul of chivalry, and it struck me as deeply pathetic to see him smiling indulgently, but with a sad and bewildered air, at the terrible snobbishness, to be candid, which his lively wife's conversation revealed. She was for ever talking about "the right people," and the only subject which seemed to arouse her enthusiasm was the fact that she had been received on equal terms by some of the wives of neighbouring squires. The Major tried to give a pleasant turn to the conversation, and when he was alone with me, after praising the practical good sense of his wife, added, "Of course she hasn't quite settled down yet! She has lived rather a poky life, and the change has upset her a little." That was the nearest that the good fellow could get to an apology, and it touched me a good deal. I did my part, and praised my hostess's charm and beauty, and expressed gratitude for the warmth of my welcome.