The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford | Page 8

although I cannot
tell them what I do not believe, I hanker sometimes after the old
prohibitions and penalties. Physiological penalties are too remote, and
the subtler penalties--the degradation, the growth of callousness to finer
pleasures, the loss of sensitiveness to all that is most nobly attractive in
woman--are too feeble to withstand temptation when it lies in ambush
like a garrotter, and has the reason stunned in a moment.
The only thing that can be done is to make the conscience of a boy
generally tender, so that he shrinks instinctively from the monstrous
injustice of contributing for the sake of his own pleasure to the ruin of

another. As soon as manhood dawns, he must also have his attention
absorbed on some object which will divert his thoughts intellectually or
ideally; and by slight yet constant pressure, exercised not by fits and
starts, but day after day, directly and indirectly, his father must form an
antipathy in him to brutish, selfish sensuality. Above all, there must be
no toying with passion, and no books permitted, without condemnation
and warning, which are not of a heroic turn. When the boy becomes a
man he may read Byron without danger. To a youth he is fatal.
Before leaving this subject I may observe, that parents greatly err by
not telling their children a good many things which they ought to know.
Had I been taught when I was young a few facts about myself, which I
only learned accidentally long afterwards, a good deal of misery might
have been spared me.
Nothing particular happened to me till I was about fourteen, when I was
told it was time I became converted. Conversion, amongst the
Independents and other Puritan sects, is supposed to be a kind of
miracle wrought in the heart by the influence of the Holy Spirit, by
which the man becomes something altogether different to what he was
previously. It affects, or should affect, his character; that is to say, he
ought after conversion to be better in every way than he was before; but
this is not considered as its main consequence. In its essence it is a
change in the emotions and increased vividness of belief. It is now
altogether untrue. Yet it is an undoubted fact that in earlier days, and,
indeed, in rare cases, as late as the time of my childhood, it was
occasionally a reality.
It is possible to imagine that under the preaching of Paul sudden
conviction of a life misspent may have been produced with sudden
personal attachment to the Galilean who, until then, had been despised.
There may have been prompt release of unsuspected powers, and as
prompt an imprisonment for ever of meaner weaknesses and tendencies;
the result being literally a putting off of the old, and a putting on of the
new man. Love has always been potent to produce such a
transformation, and the exact counterpart of conversion, as it was
understood by the apostles, may be seen whenever a man is redeemed
from vice by attachment to some woman whom he worships, or when a
girl is reclaimed from idleness and vanity by becoming a mother.
But conversion, as it was understood by me and as it is now understood,

is altogether unmeaning. I knew that I had to be "a child of God," and
after a time professed myself to be one, but I cannot call to mind that I
was anything else than I always had been, save that I was perhaps a
little more hypocritical; not in the sense that I professed to others what
I knew I did not believe, but in the sense that I professed it to myself. I
was obliged to declare myself convinced of sin; convinced of the
efficacy of the atonement; convinced that I was forgiven; convinced
that the Holy Ghost was shed abroad in my heart; and convinced of a
great many other things which were the merest phrases.
However, the end of it was, that I was proposed for acceptance, and
two deacons were deputed, in accordance with the usual custom, to
wait upon me and ascertain my fitness for membership. What they said
and what I said has now altogether vanished; but I remember with
perfect distinctness the day on which I was admitted. It was the custom
to demand of each candidate a statement of his or her experience. I had
no experience to give; and I was excused on the grounds that I had been
the child of pious parents, and consequently had not undergone that
convulsion which those, not favoured like myself, necessarily
underwent when they were called.
I was now expected to attend all those extra services which were
specially for the church. I stayed to the late prayer-meeting on Sunday;