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 around 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 trapesing 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 realize 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 marvelously 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 respondent, I was always conscious of that innermost quality which I had learned to recognize 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.'