The History of David Grieve

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

'The culture, too, of these aristocratic women, when they are cultured, is so curious. Quite unconsciously and innocently it takes itself for much more than it is, merely by contrast with the milieu—the milieu of material luxury and complication—in which it moves.

'But I am ungrateful. What a social power in the best sense such a woman might become—a woman so sensitively endowed, so nobly planned!'

David dropped his pen awhile. In the silence of the great house, a silence broken only by the breathings of a rainy autumn wind through the trees outside, his thought took that picture-making intensity which was its peculiar gift. Images of what had been in his own life, and what might have been—the dream of passion which had so deeply marked and modified his manhood—Elise, seen in the clearer light of his richer experience—his married years—the place of the woman in the common life—on these his mind brooded, one by one, till gradually the solemn consciousness of opportunities for ever missed, of failure, of limitation, evoked another, as solemn, but sweeter and more touching, of human lives irrevocably dependent on his, of the pathetic unalterable claim of marriage, the poverty and hopelessness of all self-seeking, the essential wealth, rich and making rich, of all self-spending. As he thought of his wife and son a deep tenderness flooded the man's whole nature. With a long sigh, it was as though he took them both in his arms, adjusting his strength patiently and gladly to the familiar weight.

Then, by a natural reaction, feeling, to escape itself, passed into speculative reminiscence and meditation of a wholly different kind.

'Our discussion to-night arose from an attack—if anyone so gentle can be said to attack—made upon me by Canon Aylwin, on the subject of those "Tracts on the New Testament"—tracts of mine, of which we have published three, while I have two or three more half done in my writing-table drawer. He said, with a certain nervous decision, that he did not wish to discuss the main question, but he would like to ask me, Could anyone be so sure of supposed critical and historical fact as to be clear that he was right in proclaiming it, when the proclamation of it meant the inevitable disturbance in his fellow-men of conceptions whereon their moral life depended? It was certain that he could destroy; it was most uncertain, even to himself, whether he could do anything else, with the best intentions; and, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, ought not the certainty of doing a moral mischief to outweigh, with any just and kindly mind, the much feebler and less solid certainty he may imagine himself to have attained with regard to certain matters of history and criticism?

'It was the old question of the rights of "heresy," the function of the individual in the long history of thought. We fell into sides: Lord Driffield and I against the Dean and Canon Aylwin. The Dean did not, indeed, contribute much. He sat with his square powerful head bent forward, throwing in a shrewd comment here and there, mainly on the logical course of the argument. But when we came to the main question, as we inevitably did, he withdrew altogether, though he listened.

'"No," he said, "no. I am not competent. It has not been my line in life. I have found more than enough to tax my strength in the practical administration of the goods of Christ. All such questions I leave, and must leave, to experts, such experts as"—and he mentioned the names of some of the leading scholars of the English Church—"or as my friend here", and he laid his hand affectionately on Canon Aylwin's knee.

'Strange! He leaves to experts such questions as those of the independence, authenticity, and trustworthiness of the Gospel records; of the culture and idiosyncrasies of the first two centuries as tending to throw light on those records; of the earliest growth of dogma, as, thanks mainly to German labour, it may now be exhibited within the New Testament itself. In a Church of private judgment, he takes all this at second hand, after having vowed at his ordination "to be diligent in such studies as help to the knowledge of the Scriptures"!

'Yet a better, a more God-fearing, a more sincere, and, within certain lines, a more acute man than Dean Manley it would certainly be difficult to find at the present time within the English Church. It is an illustration of the dualism in which so many minds tend to live, divided between two worlds, two standards, two wholly different modes of thought—the one applied to religion even in its intellectual aspect, the other applied to all the rest of existence. Yet—is truth divided?

'To return to Canon Aylwin. I could only meet his reproach, which he had a special right to make, for he has taken the kindliest interest in some of the earlier series of our "Workmen's Tracts," by going back to some extent to first principles. I endeavoured to argue the matter on ground more or less common to us both. If both knowledge and morality have only become possible for man by the perpetual action of a Divine spirit on his since the dawn of conscious life; if this action has taken effect in human history, as, broadly speaking, the Canon would admit, through a free and constant struggle of opposites, whether in the realm of interest or the realm of opinion; and if this struggle, perpetually reconciled, perpetually renewed, is the divinely ordered condition, nay, if you will, the sacred task of human life,—how can the Christian, who clings, above all men, to the victory of the Divine in the human, who, moreover, in the course of his history has affronted and resisted all possible "authorities" but that of conscience—how can he lawfully resent the fullest and largest freedom of speech, employed disinterestedly and in good faith, on the part of his brother man? The truth must win; and it is only through the free life of the spirit that she has hitherto prevailed. So much, at least, the English Churchman must hold.