Mark Rutherford’s Deliverance · Chapter 4 (2/2)

During almost the whole of her married life, before this affair between the squire and Clem, Mrs. Butts had had much trouble, although her trouble was, perhaps, rather the absence of joy than the presence of any poignant grief. She was much by herself. She had never been a great reader, but in her frequent solitude she was forced to do something in order to obtain relief, and she naturally turned to the Bible. It would be foolish to say that the Bible alone was to be credited with the support she received. It may only have been the occasion for a revelation of the strength that was in her. Reading, however, under such circumstances, is likely to be peculiarly profitable. It is never so profitable as when it is undertaken in order that a positive need may be satisfied or an inquiry answered. She discovered in the Bible much that persons to whom it is a mere literature would never find. The water of life was not merely admirable to the eye; she drank it, and knew what a property it possessed for quenching thirst. No doubt the thought of a heaven hereafter was especially consolatory. She was able to endure, and even to be happy because the vision of lengthening sorrow was bounded by a better world beyond. “A very poor, barbarous gospel,” thinks the philosopher who rests on his Marcus Antoninus and Epictetus. I do not mean to say, that in the shape in which she believed this doctrine, it was not poor and barbarous, but yet we all of us, whatever our creed may be, must lay hold at times for salvation upon something like it. Those who have been plunged up to the very lips in affliction know its necessity. To such as these it is idle work for the prosperous and the comfortable to preach satisfaction with the life that now is. There are seasons when it is our sole resource to recollect that in a few short years we shall be at rest. While upon this subject I may say, too, that some injustice has been done to the Christian creed of immortality as an influence in determining men’s conduct. Paul preached the imminent advent of Christ and besought his disciples, therefore, to watch, and we ask ourselves what is the moral value to us of such an admonition. But surely if we are to have any reasons for being virtuous, this is as good as any other. It is just as respectable to believe that we ought to abstain from iniquity because Christ is at hand, and we expect to meet Him, as to abstain from it because by our abstention we shall be healthier or more prosperous. Paul had a dream⁠—an absurd dream let us call it⁠—of an immediate millennium, and of the return of his Master surrounded with divine splendour, judging mankind and adjusting the balance between good and evil. It was a baseless dream, and the enlightened may call it ridiculous. It is anything but that, it is the very opposite of that. Putting aside its temporary mode of expression, it is the hope and the prophecy of all noble hearts, a sign of their inability to concur in the present condition of things.

Going back to Clem’s wife; she laid hold, as I have said, upon heaven. The thought wrought in her something more than forgetfulness of pain or the expectation of counterpoising bliss. We can understand what this something was, for although we know no such heaven as hers, a new temper is imparted to us, a new spirit breathed into us; I was about to say a new hope bestowed upon us, when we consider that we live surrounded by the soundless depths in which the stars repose. Such a consideration has a direct practical effect upon us, and so had the future upon the mind of Mrs. Butts. “Why dost thou judge thy brother,” says Paul, “for we shall all stand before the judgment-seat of God.” Paul does not mean that God will punish him and that we may rest satisfied that our enemy will be turned into hell fire. Rather does he mean, what we, too, feel, that, reflecting on the great idea of God, and upon all that it involves, our animosities are softened, and our heat against our brother is cooled.

One or two reflections may perhaps be permitted here on this passage in Mrs. Butts’ history.

The fidelity of Clem’s wife to him, if not entirely due to the New Testament, was in a great measure traceable to it. She had learned from the Epistle to the Corinthians that charity beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things; and she interpreted this to mean, not merely charity to those whom she loved by nature, but charity to those with whom she was not in sympathy, and who even wronged her. Christianity no doubt does teach such a charity as this, a love which is to be: independent of mere personal likes and dislikes, a love of the human in man. The natural man, the man of this century, uncontrolled by Christianity, considers himself a model of what is virtuous and heroic if he really loves his friends, and he permits all kinds of savage antipathies to those of his fellow creatures with whom he is not in harmony. Jesus on the other hand asks with His usual perfect simplicity, “If ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same?” It would be a great step in advance for most of us to love anybody, and the publicans of the time of Jesus must have been a much more Christian set than most Christians of the present day; but that we should love those who do not love us is a height never scaled now, except by a few of the elect in whom Christ still survives. In the gospel of Luke, also, Mrs. Butts read that she was to hope for nothing again from her love, and that she was to be merciful, as her Father in heaven is merciful. That is really the expression of the idea in morality, and incalculable is the blessing that our great religious teacher should have been bold enough to teach the idea, and not any limitation of it. He always taught it, the inward born, the heavenly law towards which everything strives. He always trusted it; He did not deal in exceptions; He relied on it to the uttermost, never despairing. This has always seemed to me to be the real meaning of the word faith. It is permanent confidence in the idea, a confidence never to be broken down by apparent failure, or by examples by which ordinary people prove that qualification is necessary. It was precisely because Jesus taught the idea, and nothing below it, that He had such authority over a soul like my friend’s, and the effect produced by Him could not have been produced by anybody nearer to ordinary humanity.

It must be admitted, too, that the Calvinism of those days had a powerful influence in enabling men and women to endure, although I object to giving the name of Calvin to a philosophy which is a necessity in all ages. “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.” This is the last word which can be said. Nothing can go beyond it, and at times it is the only ground which we feel does not shake under our feet. All life is summed up, and due account is taken of it, according to its degree. Mrs. Butts’ Calvinism, however, hardly took the usual dogmatic form. She was too simple to penetrate the depths of metaphysical theology, and she never would have dared to set down any of her fellow creatures as irrevocably lost. She adapted the Calvinistic creed to something which suited her. For example, she fully understood what St. Paul means when he tells the Thessalonians that because they were called, therefore they were to stand fast. She thought with Paul that being called; having a duty plainly laid upon her; being bidden as if by a general to do something, she ought to stand fast; and she stood fast, supported against all pressure by the consciousness of fulfilling the special orders of One who was her superior. There is no doubt that this dogma of a personal calling is a great consolation, and it is a great truth. Looking at the masses of humanity, driven this way and that way, the Christian teaching is apt to be forgotten that for each individual soul there is a vocation as real as if that soul were alone upon the planet. Yet it is a fact. We are blinded to it and can hardly believe it, because of the impotency of our little intellects to conceive a destiny which shall take care of every atom of life on the globe: we are compelled to think that in such vast crowds of people as we behold, individuals must elude the eye of the Maker, and be swept into forgetfulness. But the truth of truths is that the mind of the universe is not our mind, or at any rate controlled by our limitations.

This has been a long digression which I did not intend; but I could not help it. I was anxious to show how Mrs. Butts met her trouble through her religion. The apostle says that “they drank of that spiritual Rock which followed them, and that Rock was Christ.” That was true of her. The way through the desert was not annihilated; the path remained stony and sore to the feet, but it was accompanied to the end by a sweet stream to which she could turn aside, and from which she could obtain refreshment and strength.

Just about the time that we began our meetings near Drury Lane, I heard that Clem was dead; that he had died abroad. I knew nothing more; I thought about him and his wife perhaps for a day, but I had parted from both long ago, and I went on with my work.