Silas Marner | Page 6

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Silas himself, as well as by his minister and fellow-members, a wilful
self-exclusion from the spiritual significance that might lie therein.
Silas was evidently a brother selected for a peculiar discipline; and
though the effort to interpret this discipline was discouraged by the
absence, on his part, of any spiritual vision during his outward trance,
yet it was believed by himself and others that its effect was seen in an
accession of light and fervour. A less truthful man than he might have
been tempted into the subsequent creation of a vision in the form of
resurgent memory; a less sane man might have believed in such a
creation; but Silas was both sane and honest, though, as with many
honest and fervent men, culture had not defined any channels for his
sense of mystery, and so it spread itself over the proper pathway of
inquiry and knowledge. He had inherited from his mother some
acquaintance with medicinal herbs and their preparation--a little store
of wisdom which she had imparted to him as a solemn bequest--but of
late years he had had doubts about the lawfulness of applying this
knowledge, believing that herbs could have no efficacy without prayer,
and that prayer might suffice without herbs; so that the inherited delight
he had in wandering in the fields in search of foxglove and dandelion
and coltsfoot, began to wear to him the character of a temptation.
Among the members of his church there was one young man, a little
older than himself, with whom he had long lived in such close
friendship that it was the custom of their Lantern Yard brethren to call
them David and Jonathan. The real name of the friend was William
Dane, and he, too, was regarded as a shining instance of youthful piety,
though somewhat given to over-severity towards weaker brethren, and
to be so dazzled by his own light as to hold himself wiser than his
teachers. But whatever blemishes others might discern in William, to
his friend's mind he was faultless; for Marner had one of those
impressible self-doubting natures which, at an inexperienced age,
admire imperativeness and lean on contradiction. The expression of
trusting simplicity in Marner's face, heightened by that absence of
special observation, that defenceless, deer-like gaze which belongs to
large prominent eyes, was strongly contrasted by the self-complacent
suppression of inward triumph that lurked in the narrow slanting eyes
and compressed lips of William Dane. One of the most frequent topics

of conversation between the two friends was Assurance of salvation:
Silas confessed that he could never arrive at anything higher than hope
mingled with fear, and listened with longing wonder when William
declared that he had possessed unshaken assurance ever since, in the
period of his conversion, he had dreamed that he saw the words
"calling and election sure" standing by themselves on a white page in
the open Bible. Such colloquies have occupied many a pair of
pale-faced weavers, whose unnurtured souls have been like young
winged things, fluttering forsaken in the twilight.
It had seemed to the unsuspecting Silas that the friendship had suffered
no chill even from his formation of another attachment of a closer kind.
For some months he had been engaged to a young servant-woman,
waiting only for a little increase to their mutual savings in order to their
marriage; and it was a great delight to him that Sarah did not object to
William's occasional presence in their Sunday interviews. It was at this
point in their history that Silas's cataleptic fit occurred during the
prayer-meeting; and amidst the various queries and expressions of
interest addressed to him by his fellow-members, William's suggestion
alone jarred with the general sympathy towards a brother thus singled
out for special dealings. He observed that, to him, this trance looked
more like a visitation of Satan than a proof of divine favour, and
exhorted his friend to see that he hid no accursed thing within his soul.
Silas, feeling bound to accept rebuke and admonition as a brotherly
office, felt no resentment, but only pain, at his friend's doubts
concerning him; and to this was soon added some anxiety at the
perception that Sarah's manner towards him began to exhibit a strange
fluctuation between an effort at an increased manifestation of regard
and involuntary signs of shrinking and dislike. He asked her if she
wished to break off their engagement; but she denied this: their
engagement was known to the church, and had been recognized in the
prayer-meetings; it could not be broken off without strict investigation,
and Sarah could render no reason that would be sanctioned by the
feeling of the community. At this time the senior deacon was taken
dangerously ill, and, being a childless widower, he was tended night
and day by some