The reason why this discovery amazed me as it did was, that I had never dreamt of its being possible for any one with respectable mental abilities to take religion thus au grand sérieux. I cannot say I had ever troubled my head much about religion at all; but still I had a vague idea of it as a thing which people of weak intellect sometimes made a fuss about, but which the wiser part of the world treated as a mere unreal conventionality—a sort of outer garment which was assumed and respected solely out of deference to Mrs. Grundy.
It was startling to me, therefore, to meet with such a living contradiction of this idea as Sister Helena. She was no fool, as I knew, but very much the reverse; and in her management of the hospital she gave daily proofs of good sense, shrewdness, and sound judgment, which made it impossible to think she would be led away by visionary notions, or act lightly and without due consideration. Nor was she a person who ever bestowed a thought upon Mrs. Grundy, or who could be suspected of any taint of humbug and unreality in either word or deed. Yet to this sensible, intelligent, absolutely honest woman, religion was a fact of such vital importance as to be the mainspring of her life—the one thing to be put before everything else! So extraordinary did it seem to me, that I should certainly have refused to believe in the phenomenon at all if I had not beheld it with my own eyes.
It appeared evident to me that it must need a very powerful engine to be the motive force of such steady, self-sacrificing, practical goodness as hers, and I thought I should like to understand somewhat of the nature of that engine. With this object in view I directed constant questions towards the subject that interested me, and thus it came about that religion was the theme upon which we conversed more frequently than any other. I do not recapitulate our conversations, because I consider they would be out of place in a book of this kind; but this much I will say, that they made a strong impression on me, and caused me to think of religion very differently from what I had done hitherto. She was the first person I had ever met whose deeds really harmonised with her professions, and all that she said had weight with me, because her life was an unmistakable proof that she honestly and fully did believe the things she professed to believe. I began to contemplate the possibility of there being a real meaning in the creeds and prayers which I had often heard and joined in when at church without attaching any sense at all to them. I began, too, to have an idea that perhaps church membership might be something more than a mere empty form, and that there might be some real advantage in belonging to that Church of which I had been a member all my life as a matter of course, and without ever supposing it could make the slightest difference to me, one way or other. And, more than all, in proportion as I became inclined to believe in the truth and reality of religion, so also did the conviction grow upon me that I myself was not exactly altogether what I should be, and that it behoved me to set about reforming.
I really did want to amend what was amiss, and to become better than I was; but still I did not want to be too good. Such goodness as Sister Helena's, for instance, was, I knew, far beyond my powers; and besides that, my hearty admiration for it in her did not lead me to desire it for myself, because I was quite sure that even if it were possible for me to attain to such a pitch of self-denying excellence, I should not enjoy it, as I was a deal too fond of worldly comforts and joys ever to be happy without them.
Certainly it was very singular that there should be so wide a difference between one person's sense of duty and another's. When first this difference struck me, I was inclined to be somewhat uneasy at the comparatively diminutive proportions of my own virtue; but then there occurred to me a very comfortable and reassuring way of accounting for it. People's bodies were predisposed towards measles, whooping cough, and other illnesses in varying degrees, and had them lightly or severely according to the extent of that predisposition; and some people even never had these illnesses at all—being apparently endowed with some constitutional peculiarity which acted as an antidote to the poison of disease. And from this I argued that probably people's minds varied in a similar fashion in regard to virtue—some being more, and some less receptive of it. I supposed that a person could only be affected by religion and goodness according to the degree of his mental predisposition towards such things, and that some people could never be influenced by them at all. I thought this supposition a perfectly reasonable one, and highly satisfactory also. For in that case it was obviously absurd to expect much goodness from a person whose mind was so constituted as to be antagonistic to virtuous influences; and of course no one could be blamed for what was merely a natural defect.
I propounded my theory triumphantly to Sister Helena one day when she was insisting upon the necessity of some virtue or other which I thought ordinary mortals need not trouble themselves about. But she refused absolutely to agree with me; declared that goodness was equally attainable by all who chose; and laughed at the idea of people having a natural liability towards or against it, like they might have towards or against a fever.
"All very well for you to talk," answered I; "but I should like to know how else it's to be accounted for that some people should be so much better than others as to become sisters, monks, and nuns, and all that sort of thing? I'm sure it must need a very special and uncommon predisposition towards goodness to make any one give up every mortal thing that can make them happy—as they do!"
"Not at all," she replied quickly; "you'll find good and earnest people in the world, just as much as in convents. It's a question of vocation—not of superior goodness. Some people have such a natural inclination for a conventual life that they are happier there than they would be in the world; and some people, on the other hand, are happier in the world. Each set seeks happiness in its own way. And for any one to join a religious community without having a real vocation for it is a very great mistake, and not a good or desirable thing at all."
"Well, then," said I, "you believe that people are born monks and nuns, just as they are born poets, painters, musicians, or sculptors. Nascitur non fit. After all, I don't see that that's so very unlike my predisposition theory."
"Why, there's this great difference," she said smiling; "according to you, some people would have no chance of goodness at all; and I maintain, on the contrary, that every one has an equal chance. Goodness certainly manifests itself differently in different individuals; but you can't argue from that that it exists in them in different degrees. Remember that it is no great hardship for a person who doesn't care for society to give it up; and that you mustn't judge the merit of an action by its effects, but by how much it costs the doer."