I am thinking of “A Conversation” for one of the summer numbers of the Nineteenth Century, in which some of the questions which are only suggested in the book may be carried a good deal further. For the more I think and read the more plain the great lines of that distant past become to me, the more clearly I see God at work there, through the forms of thought, the beliefs, the capacities of the first three centuries, as I see Him at work now, through the forms of thought, the beliefs and capacities of our own. Christianity was the result of many converging lines of thought and development. The time was ripe for a moral revolution, and a great personality, and the great personality came. That a life of importance and far-reaching influence could have been lived within the sphere of religion at that moment, or for centuries afterwards, without undergoing a process of miraculous amplification, would, I think, have been impossible. The generations before and the generations after supply illustration after illustration of it. That Jesus, our dear Master, partly shared this tendency of his time and was partly bewildered and repelled by it, is very plain to me.
As to the belief in the Resurrection, I have many things to say about it, and shall hope to say them in public when I have pondered them long enough. But I long to say them not negatively, for purposes of attack, but positively, for purposes of reconstruction. It is about the new forms of faith and the new grounds of combined action that I really care intensely. I want to challenge those who live in doubt and indecision from year’s end to year’s end, to think out the matter, and for their children’s sake to count up what remains to them, and to join frankly for purposes of life and conduct with those who are their spiritual fellows. It is the levity or the cowardice that will not think, or the indolence and self-indulgence that is only too glad to throw off restraints, which we have to fear. But in truth for religion, or for the future, I have no fear at all. God is his own vindication in human life.
But apart from the religious argument, the characters in Robert Elsmere aroused the greatest possible interest, especially perhaps that of Catherine.
“As an observer of the human ant-hill, quite impartial by this time,” wrote Prof. Huxley, “I think your picture of one of the deeper aspects of our troubled times admirable. You are very hard on the philosophers: I do not know whether Langham or the Squire is the more unpleasant—but I have a great deal of sympathy with the latter, so I hope he is not the worse.
“If I may say so, I think the picture of Catherine is the gem of the book. She reminds me of her namesake of Siena—and would as little have failed in any duty, however gruesome. You remember Sodoma’s picture?”
The appreciation of her French friends was always very dear to Mrs. Ward, and amongst them too the book was eagerly read by a small circle, though, as Scherer warned her, the subject could never become a popular one in France. But both he and M. Taine were greatly excited by it, while M. André Michel of the Louvre, to whom she had entrusted the copy which she desired to present to M. Taine, wrote her a delightful account of his embassy:
PARIS.
ce 31 janvier, 1889.
CHERE MADAME,—
Votre lettre m’a été une bien agréable surprise et une bien intéressante lecture. Je l’ai immédiatement communiquée à M. Taine, en lui remettant l’exemplaire que vous lui destiniez de Robert Elsmere et je vous avoue qu’en me rendant chez lui à cet effet, je me rengorgeais un peu, très-fier de servir d’intermédiaire entre l’auteur de Robert Elsmere et celui de la Littérature Anglaise. L’âne portant des reliques chez son évêque ne marchait pas plus solennellement!
M. Taine a été très-touché de cet hommage venant de vous, et je pense qu’il vous en a déjà remercié lui-même. J’aurais voulu que vous eussiez pu entendre—incognito—avec quelle vivacité de sympathie et d’admiration il parlait de votre livre. Pendant plusieurs jours, il n’a pas été question d’autre chose chez lui.