The Early Life of Mark Rutherford (W. Hale White)

by William Hale White

“Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her.”

What they meant was not clear to me, but they were a signal of the approach of something which turned out to be of the greatest importance, and altered my history.

It was a new capacity. There woke in me an aptness for the love of natural beauty, a possibility of being excited to enthusiasm by it, and of deriving a secret joy from it sufficiently strong to make me careless of the world and its pleasures. Another effect which Wordsworth had upon me, and has had on other people, was the modification, altogether unintentional on his part, of religious belief. He never dreams of attacking anybody for his creed, and yet it often becomes impossible for those who study him and care for him to be members of any orthodox religious community. At any rate it would have been impossible in the town of Bedford. His poems imply a living God, different from the artificial God of the churches. The revolution wrought by him goes far deeper, and is far more permanent than any which is the work of Biblical critics, and it was Wordsworth and not German research which caused my expulsion from New College, of which a page or two further on. For some time I had no thought of heresy, but the seed was there, and was alive just as much as the seed-corn is alive all the time it lies in the earth apparently dead.

I have nothing particular to record of Cheshunt, the secluded Hertfordshire village, where the Countess of Huntingdon’s College then was. It stood in a delightful little half park, half garden, through which ran the New River: the country round was quiet, and not then suburban, but here and there was a large handsome Georgian house. I learnt nothing at Cheshunt, and did not make a single friend.

In 1851 or 1852 I was transferred, with two other students, to New College, St. John’s Wood. On February 3, 1852, the Principal examined our theological class on an inaugural lecture delivered at the opening of the college. The subject of the lecture was the inspiration of the Bible. The two students before mentioned were members of this class, and asked some questions about the formation of the canon and the authenticity of the separate books. They were immediately stopped by the Principal in summary style. “I must inform you that this is not an open question within these walls. There is a great body of truth received as orthodoxy by the great majority of Christians, the explanation of which is one thing, but to doubt it is another, and the foundation must not be questioned.” How well I recollect the face of the Principal! He looked like a man who would write an invitation to afternoon tea “within these walls”. He consulted the senate, and the senate consulted the council, which consisted of the senate and some well-known ministers. We were ordered to be present at a special council meeting, and each one was called up separately before it and catechized. Here are two or three of the questions, put, it will be remembered, without notice, to a youth a little over twenty, confronted by a number of solemn divines in white neckerchiefs.

“Will you explain the mode in which you conceive the sacred writers to have been influenced?”

“Do you believe a statement because it is in the Bible, or merely because it is true?”

“You are aware that there are two great parties on this question, one of which maintains that the inspiration of the Scriptures differs in kind from that of other books: the other that the difference is one only of degree. To which of these parties do you attach yourself?”

“Are you conscious of any divergence from the views expounded by the Principal in this introductory lecture?”

At a meeting of the council, on the 13th February, 1852, it was resolved that our opinions were “incompatible” with the “retention of our position as students”. This resolution was sent to us with another to the effect that at the next meeting of the council “such measures” would be taken “as may be thought advisable”. At this meeting my father, together with the father of one of my colleagues attended, and asked that our moral character should be placed above suspicion; that the opinions for which we had been condemned should be explicitly stated, and that we should be furnished with a copy of the creed by which we were judged. The next step on the part of the council was the appointment of a committee to interview us, and “prevent the possibility of a misapprehension of our views”. We attended, underwent examination once more, and once more repeated the three requests. No notice was taken of them, but on 3rd March we were asked if we would withdraw from the college for three months in order that we might “reconsider our opinions”, so that possibly we might “be led by Divine guidance to such views as would be compatible with the retention of our present position”. Idiomatic English was clearly not a strong point with the council. Of course we refused. If we had consented it might have been reasonably concluded that we had taken very little trouble with our “views”. Again we asked for compliance with our requests, but the only answer we got was that our “connexion with New College must cease”, and that with regard to the three requests, the council “having duly weighed them, consider that they have already sufficiently complied with them”.