Such, apart from the work which was necessary in obedience to his grand original impulse, were the studies he pursued in Oxford. At the same time he had another occupation in hand, strangely out of accord at once with those studies and with his own thoughts. This was the publication of poor Meredith’s book, the “Voice from the Grave,” at which he had laboured to the latest moment of his life. In it was represented another world, an altogether contradictory type of existence. Between Colin’s intellectual friends, to whom the “Hereafter” was a curious and interesting but altogether baffling subject of investigation, and the dying youth who had gone out of this world in a dauntless primitive confidence of finding himself at once in the shining streets and endless sunshine of the New Jerusalem, the difference was so great as to be past counting. As for the young editor, his view of life was as different from Meredith’s as it was from that of his present companions. The great light of heaven was to Colin, as to many others, as impenetrable as the profoundest darkness; he could neither see into it, nor permit himself to make guesses of what was going on beyond; and, consequently, he had little sympathy with the kind of piety which regards life as a preparation for death. Sometimes he smiled, sometimes he sighed over the proofs as he corrected them; sometimes, but for knowing as he did the utter truthfulness with which the dead writer had set forth his one-sided and narrow conception of the world, Colin would have been disposed to toss into the fire those strange warnings and exhortations. But when he thought of the young author, dead in his youth, and of all the doings and sayings of those months in which they lived together, and, more touching still, of those conversations that were held on the very brink of the grave, and at the gate of heaven, his heart smote him. And then his new friends broke in upon him, and discussed the book with opinions so various that Colin could but admire and wonder. One considered them a curious study of the internal consciousness, quite worthy the attention of a student of mental phenomena. Another was of opinion that such stuff was the kind of nutriment fit for the uneducated classes, who had strong religious prejudices, and no brains to speak of. When Colin found his own sentiments thrown back to him in this careless fashion, he began to see for the first time the conceit and self-importance of his judgment; and many discussions followed, as might be supposed.
“When religion becomes a matter of self-interest,” said one of the young men met in his rooms on one such occasion, “I don’t see any attraction in it. I don’t understand what you can see in this rubbish, Campbell. Inflated humbug and sordid calculations——”
“Hush!” said Colin, with a sparkle in his eyes, “the writer was of the kind of man that saints were once made of—and I believe in saints for my part.”
“Well, yes,” said his interlocutor; “I don’t mean to be vulgar: one can’t help to a certain extent believing in saints—though our wise fathers you know thought otherwise.” Perhaps the young speaker would not have thought it necessary to be civil to them, if it had not been that a former generation had made fun of the saints.
“And as for self-interest,” said Colin, “I don’t see how a man can have an altogether generous and patronizing love for God. A child’s love for his father is always interested in a kind of way. The love that has no self-regard in it, is pity or patronage rather than love.”
“Oh, love!” said Colin’s friend, who had not been altogether thinking of that; and then another speaker broke in.
“For my part, it is the emotional aspect of religion that chiefly interests me,” he said; “in a philosophical point of view, you know. But the only way you can influence the masses is by working on their feelings. It would be different, of course, with a set of fellows like you.”
“We are superior to that sort of thing,” said Colin. “Perhaps we have no feelings. When a man becomes a Don, I don’t see what use he has for such superfluities.”
“You are going to be a Don yourself, I suppose,” said some one. “You are sure of your Fellowship, of course.”
Upon which Colin smiled with the pleasant arrogance of his age. “Something better than that,” he said. “I am not the kind of stuff that Dons are made of. I am going home to Scotland to the Kirk.”