There was no more depressing tyranny in the time of Dickens than the tyranny exercised in the name of a rigid and repressive religion.
The gloomy taint that was in the Murdstone blood darkened the Murdstone religion, which was austere and wrathful. I have thought, since, that its assuming that character was a necessary consequence of Mr. Murdstone’s firmness, which wouldn’t allow him to let anybody off from the utmost weight of the severest penalties he could find any excuse for. Be this as it may, I well remember the tremendous visages with which we used to go to church, and the changed air of the place. Again, the dreaded Sunday comes round, and I file into the old pew first, like a guarded captive brought to a condemned service. Again, Miss Murdstone, in a black-velvet gown, that looks as if it had been made out of a pall, follows close upon me; then my mother; then her husband. Again, I listen to Miss Murdstone mumbling the responses, and emphasizing all the dread words with a cruel relish. Again, I see her dark eyes roll round the church when she says “miserable sinners,” as if she were calling all the congregation names. Again, I catch rare glimpses of my mother, moving her lips timidly between the two, with one of them muttering at each ear like low thunder. Again, I wonder with a sudden fear whether it is likely that our good old clergyman can be wrong, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone right, and that all the angels in heaven can be destroying angels. Again, if I move a finger or relax a muscle of my face, Miss Murdstone pokes me with her prayer book, and makes my side ache.
Mrs. Chillip said: “Mr. Murdstone sets up an image of himself and calls it the Divine Nature,” and “what such people as the Murdstones call their religion is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance.” Mild and cautious Mr. Chillip observed, “I don’t find authority for Mr. and Miss Murdstone in the New Testament,” and his good wife added, “The darker tyrant Mr. Murdstone becomes, the more ferocious is his religious doctrine.”
When David first learned that Mr. Murdstone had married his mother he relieved the swelling in his little heart by crying in his bedroom. His mother naturally felt a sympathy for her boy. Mr. Murdstone reproved her for her lack of “firmness,” ordered her out of the room, and gave David his first lesson in “obedience.”
“David,” he said, making his lips thin, by pressing them together, “if I have an obstinate horse or dog to deal with, what do you think I do?”
“I don’t know.”
“I beat him.”
I had answered in a kind of breathless whisper, but I felt, in my silence, that my breath was shorter now.
“I make him wince, and smart. I say to myself, ‘I’ll conquer that fellow;’ and if it were to cost him all the blood he had, I should do it.”
There are still a few schoolmaster tyrants who boast of their ability “to subdue children.” They are barbarians, who understand neither the new education nor the new theology, who have not learned to recognise and reverence the individual selfhood of each child, who themselves fear God’s power more than they feel his love.