In the evening Mrs. Ranby was lamenting in general and rather customary terms, her own exceeding sinfulness. Mr. Ranby said, "You accuse yourself rather too heavily, my dear: you have sins to be sure." "And pray what sins have I, Mr. Ranby?" said she, turning upon him with so much quickness that the poor man started. "Nay," said he meekly, "I did not mean to offend you; so far from it, that hearing you condemn yourself so grievously, I intended to comfort you, and to say that except a few faults—" "And pray what faults?" interrupted she, continuing to speak however, lest he should catch an interval to tell them. "I defy you, Mr. Ranby, to produce one." "My dear," replied he, "as you charged yourself with all, I thought it would be letting you off cheaply by naming only two or three, such as—." Here, fearing matters would go too far, I interposed, and softening things as much as I could for the lady, said, "I conceived that Mr. Ranby meant, that though she partook of the general corruption—" Here Ranby, interrupting me with more spirit than I thought he possessed, said "General corruption, sir, must be the source of particular corruption: I did not mean that my wife was worse than other women."—"Worse, Mr. Ranby, worse?" cried she. Ranby, for the first time in his life, not minding her, went on, "As she is always insisting that the whole species is corrupt, she can not help allowing that she herself has not quite escaped the infection. Now to be a sinner in the gross and a saint in the detail; that is, to have all sins, and no faults, is a thing I do not quite comprehend."
After he had left the room, which he did as the shortest way of allaying the storm, she apologized for him, said, "he was a well-meaning man, and acted up to the little light he had;" but added, "that he was unacquainted with religious feelings, and knew little of the nature of conversion."
Mrs. Ranby, I found, seems to consider Christianity as a kind of free-masonry, and therefore thinks it superfluous to speak on serious subjects to any but the initiated. If they do not return the sign, she gives them up as blind and dead. She thinks she can only make herself intelligible to those to whom certain peculiar phrases are familiar; and though her friends may be correct, devout, and both doctrinally and practically pious; yet if they can not catch a certain mystic meaning, if there is not a sympathy of intelligence between her and them, if they do not fully conceive of impressions, and can not respond to mysterious communications, she holds them unworthy of intercourse with her. She does not so much insist on high moral excellence as the criterion of their worth, as on their own account of their internal feelings.
She holds very cheap, that gradual growth in piety which is, in reality, no less the effect of divine grace, than those instantaneous conversions, which she believes to be so common. She can not be persuaded that, of every advance in piety, of every improvement in virtue, of every illumination of the understanding, of every amendment in the heart, of every rectification of the will, the Spirit of God is no less the author, because it is progressive, than if it were sudden. It is true Omnipotence can, when he pleases, still produce these instantaneous effects, as he has sometimes done; but as it is not his established or common mode of operation, it seems vain and rash, presumptuously to wait for these miraculous interferences. An implicit dependence, however, on such interferences, is certainly more gratifying to the genius of enthusiasm, than the anxious vigilance, the fervent prayer, the daily struggle, the sometimes scarcely perceptible though constant progress of the sober-minded Christian. Such a Christian is fully aware that his heart requires as much watching in the more advanced as in the earliest stages of his religious course. He is cheerful in a well-grounded hope, and looks not for ecstasies, till that hope be swallowed up in fruition. Thankful if he feel in his heart a growing love to God, and an increasing submission to his will, though he is unconscious of visions, and unacquainted with any revelation but that which God has made in his word. He remembers, and he derives consolation from the remembrance, that his Saviour, in his most gracious and soothing invitation to the "heavy laden," has mercifully promised "rest," but he has no where promised rapture.
CHAPTER VI.
But to return to Mrs. Ranby's daughters. Is this consistency, said I to myself, when I compared the inanity of the life with the seriousness of the discourse: and contrasted the vacant way in which the day was spent, with the decent and devout manner in which it was begun and ended? I recollected, that under the early though imperfect sacred institution, the fire of the morning and evening sacrifice was never suffered to be extinguished during the day.
Though Mrs. Ranby would have thought it a little heathenish to have had her daughters instructed in polite literature, and to have filled a leisure hour in reading to her a useful book, that was not professedly religious, she felt no compunction at their waste of time, or the trifling pursuits in which the day was suffered to spend itself. The piano-forte, when they were weary of the harp, copying some indifferent drawings, gilding a set of flower-pots, and netting white gloves and veils, seemed to fill up the whole business of these immortal beings, of these Christians, for whom it had been solemnly engaged that they should manfully fight under Christ's banner.
On a further acquaintance, I was much more inclined to lay the blame on their education than their dispositions. I found them not only good-humored, but charitably disposed: but their charities were small and casual, often ill applied, and always without a plan. They knew nothing of the state, character, or wants of the neighboring poor; and it had never been pointed out to them that the instruction of the young and ignorant made any part of the duty of the rich toward them.
When I once ventured to drop a hint on this subject to Mrs. Ranby, she drily said there were many other ways of doing good to the poor, besides exposing her daughters to the probability of catching diseases, and the certainty of getting dirt by such visits. Her subscription was never wanting when she was quite sure that the object was deserving. As I suspected that she a little over-rated her own charity, I could not forbear observing, that I did not think it demanded a combination of all the virtues to entitle a poor sick wretch to a dinner. And though I durst not quote so light an authority as Hamlet to her, I could not help saying to myself, Give every man his due, and who shall 'scape whipping? O! if God dealt so rigidly with us; if he waited to bestow his ordinary blessings till we were good enough to deserve them, who would be clothed? who would be fed? who would have a roof to shelter him?