Mark Rutherfords Deliverance | Page 9

really was, and then she died.
There are some natures that cannot unfold under pressure or in the
presence of unregarding power. Hers was one. They require a clear
space round them, the removal of everything which may overmaster
them, and constant delicate attention. They require too a recognition of
the fact, which M'Kay for a long time did not recognise, that it is folly
to force them and to demand of them that they shall be what they
cannot be. I stood by the grave this morning of my poor, pale, clinging
little friend now for some years at peace, and I thought that the tragedy
of Promethean torture or Christ-like crucifixion may indeed be
tremendous, but there is a tragedy too in the existence of a soul like
hers, conscious of its feebleness and ever striving to overpass it, ever
aware that it is an obstacle to the return of the affection of the man
whom she loves.
Meals, as I have said, were disagreeable at M'Kay's, and when we
wanted to talk we went out of doors. The evening after our visit to the
debating hall we moved towards Portland Place, and walked up and
down there for an hour or more. M'Kay had a passionate desire to
reform the world. The spectacle of the misery of London, and of the
distracted swaying hither and thither of the multitudes who inhabit it,
tormented him incessantly. He always chafed at it, and he never seemed
sure that he had a right to the enjoyment of the simplest pleasures so
long as London was before him. What a farce, he would cry, is all this
poetry, philosophy, art, and culture, when millions of wretched mortals
are doomed to the eternal darkness and crime of the city! Here are the
educated classes occupying themselves with exquisite emotions, with
speculations upon the Infinite, with addresses to flowers, with the
worship of waterfalls and flying clouds, and with the incessant
portraiture of a thousand moods and variations of love, while their
neighbours lie grovelling in the mire, and never know anything more of
life or its duties than is afforded them by a police report in a bit of

newspaper picked out of the kennel. We went one evening to hear a
great violin-player, who played such music, and so exquisitely, that the
limits of life were removed. But we had to walk up the Haymarket
home, between eleven and twelve o'clock, and the violin-playing
became the merest trifling. M'Kay had been brought up upon the Bible.
He had before him, not only there, but in the history of all great
religious movements, a record of the improvement of the human race,
or of large portions of it, not merely by gradual civilisation, but by
inspiration spreading itself suddenly. He could not get it out of his head
that something of this kind is possible again in our time. He longed to
try for himself in his own poor way in one of the slums about Drury
Lane. I sympathised with him, but I asked him what he had to say. I
remember telling him that I had been into St. Paul's Cathedral, and that
I pictured to myself the cathedral full, and myself in the pulpit. I was
excited while imagining the opportunity offered me of delivering some
message to three or four thousand persons in such a building, but in a
minute or two I discovered that my sermon would be very nearly as
follows: "Dear friends, I know no more than you know; we had better
go home." I admitted to him that if he could believe in hell-fire, or if he
could proclaim the Second Advent, as Paul did to the Thessalonians,
and get people to believe, he might change their manners, but otherwise
he could do nothing but resort to a much slower process. With the
departure of a belief in the supernatural departs once and for ever the
chance of regenerating the race except by the school and by science. {2}
However, M'Kay thought he would try. His earnestness was rather a
hindrance than a help to him, for it prevented his putting certain
important questions to himself, or at any rate it prevented his waiting
for distinct answers. He recurred to the apostles and Bunyan, and was
convinced that it was possible even now to touch depraved men and
women with an idea which should recast their lives. So it is that the
main obstacle to our success is a success which has preceded us. We
instinctively follow the antecedent form, and consequently we either
pass by, or deny altogether, the life of our own time, because its
expression has changed. We never do practically believe that the
Messiah is not incarnated twice in the same