Mark Rutherford’s Deliverance · Chapter 1 (3/3)

London Sundays to persons who are not attached to any religious community, and have no money to spend, are rather dreary. We tried several ways of getting through the morning. If we heard that there was a preacher with a reputation, we went to hear him. As a rule, however, we got no good in that way. Once we came to a chapel where there was a minister supposed to be one of the greatest orators of the day. We had much difficulty in finding standing room. Just as we entered we heard him say, “My friends, I appeal to those of you who are parents. You know that if you say to a child ‘go,’ he goeth, and if you say ‘come,’ he cometh. So the Lord”⁠—But at this point M’Kay, who had children, nudged me to come out; and out we went. Why does this little scene remain with me? I can hardly say, but here it stands. It is remembered, not so much by reason of the preacher as by reason of the apparent acquiescence and admiration of the audience, who seemed to be perfectly willing to take over an experience from their pastor⁠—if indeed it was really an experience⁠—which was not their own. Our usual haunts on Sunday were naturally the parks and Kensington Gardens; but artificial limited enclosures are apt to become wearisome after a time, and we longed for a little more freedom if a little less trim. So we would stroll towards Hampstead or Highgate, the only drawback to these regions being the squalid, ragged, half town, half suburb, through which it was necessary to pass. The skirts of London when the air is filled with northeasterly soot, grit, and filth, are cheerless, and the least cheerful part of the scene is the inability of the vast wandering masses of people to find any way of amusing themselves. At the corner of one of the fields in Kentish Town, just about to be devoured, stood a public-house, and opposite the door was generally encamped a man who sold nothing but Brazil nuts. Swarms of people lazily wandered past him, most of them waiting for the public-house to open. Brazil nuts on a cold black Sunday morning are not exhilarating, but the costermonger found many customers who bought his nuts, and ate them, merely because they had nothing better to do. We went two or three times to a freethinking hall, where we were entertained with demonstrations of the immorality of the patriarchs and Jewish heroes, and arguments to prove that the personal existence of the devil was a myth, the audience breaking out into uproarious laughter at comical delineations of Noah and Jonah. One morning we found the place completely packed. A “celebrated Christian,” as he was described to us, having heard of the hall, had volunteered to engage in debate on the claims of the Old Testament to Divine authority. He turned out to be a preacher whom we knew quite well. He was introduced by his freethinking antagonist, who claimed for him a respectful hearing. The preacher said that before beginning he should like to “engage in prayer.” Accordingly he came to the front of the platform, lifted up his eyes, told God why he was there, and besought Him to bless the discussion in the conversion “of these poor wandering souls, who have said in their hearts that there is no God, to a saving faith in Him and in the blood of Christ.” I expected that some resentment would be displayed when the wandering souls found themselves treated like errant sheep, but to my surprise they listened with perfect silence; and when he had said “Amen,” there were great clappings of hands, and cries of “Bravo.” They evidently considered the prayer merely as an elocutionary showpiece. The preacher was much disconcerted, but he recovered himself, and began his sermon, for it was nothing more. He enlarged on the fact that men of the highest eminence had believed in the Old Testament. Locke and Newton had believed in it, and did it not prove arrogance in us to doubt when the “gigantic intellect which had swept the skies, and had announced the law which bound the universe together was satisfied?” The witness of the Old Testament to the New was another argument, but his main reliance was upon the prophecies. From Adam to Isaiah there was a continuous prefigurement of Christ. Christ was the point to which everything tended; and “now, my friends,” he said, “I cannot sit down without imploring you to turn your eyes on Him who never yet repelled the sinner, to wash in that eternal Fountain ever open for the remission of sins, and to flee from the wrath to come. I believe the sacred symbol of the cross has not yet lost its efficacy. For eighteen hundred years, whenever it has been exhibited to the sons of men, it has been potent to reclaim and save them. ‘I, if I be lifted up,’ cried the Great Sufferer, ‘will draw all men unto Me,’ and He has drawn not merely the poor and ignorant but the philosopher and the sage. Oh, my brethren, think what will happen if you reject Him. I forbear to paint your doom. And think again, on the other hand, of the bliss which awaits you if you receive Him, of the eternal companionship with the Most High and with the spirits of just men made perfect.” His hearers again applauded vigorously, and none less so than their appointed leader, who was to follow on the other side. He was a little man with small eyes; his shaven face was dark with a black beard lurking under the skin, and his nose was slightly turned up. He was evidently a trained debater who had practised under railway arches, discussion “forums,” and in the classes promoted by his sect. He began by saying that he could not compliment his friend who had just sat down on the inducements which he had offered them to become Christians. The New Cut was not a nice place on a wet day, but he had rather sit at a stall there all day long with his feet on a basket than lie in the bosom of some of the just men made perfect portrayed in the Bible. Nor, being married, should he feel particularly at ease if he had to leave his wife with David. David certainly ought to have got beyond all that kind of thing, considering it must be over 3,000 years since he first saw Bathsheba; but we are told that the saints are forever young in heaven, and this treacherous villain, who would have been tried by a jury of twelve men and hung outside Newgate if he had lived in the nineteenth century, might be dangerous now. He was an amorous old gentleman up to the very last. (Roars of laughter.) Nor did the speaker feel particularly anxious to be shut up with all the bishops, who of course are amongst the elect, and on their departure from this vale of tears tempered by ten thousand a year, are duly supplied with wings. Much more followed in the same strain upon the immorality of the Bible heroes, their cruelty, and the cruelty of the God who sanctioned it. Then followed a clever exposition of the inconsistencies of the Old Testament history, the impossibility of any reference to Jesus therein, and a really earnest protest against the quibbling by which those who believed in the Bible as a revelation sought to reconcile it with science. “Finally,” said the speaker, “I am sure we all of us will pass a vote of thanks to our reverend friend for coming to see us, and we cordially invite him to come again. If I might be allowed to offer a suggestion, it would be that he should make himself acquainted with our case before he pays us another visit, and not suppose that we are to be persuaded with the rhetoric which may do very well for the young women of his congregation, but won’t go down here.” This was fair and just, for the eminent Christian was nothing but an ordinary minister, who, when he was prepared for his profession, had never been allowed to see what are the historical difficulties of Christianity, lest he should be overcome by them. On the other hand, his sceptical opponents were almost devoid of the faculty for appreciating the great remains of antiquity, and would probably have considered the machinery of the Prometheus Bound or of the Iliad a sufficient reason for a sneer. That they should spend their time in picking the Bible to pieces when there was so much positive work for them to do, seemed to me as melancholy as if they had spent themselves upon theology. To waste a Sunday morning in ridiculing such stories as that of Jonah was surely as imbecile as to waste it in proving their verbal veracity.