The Ethics of George Eliots Works | Page 5

in a moment, swift and sure as the lightning,
moral and spiritual death swoops down, and we see the lost one no
more.
Many other illustrations might be given from our noblest and truest
poetry--from the works of the Brownings, the "Saints' Tragedy" of
Charles Kingsley, the dramatic poems of Henry Taylor--of the extent to
which it is vitally, even where not formally Christian; the extent to
which the truth of the Cross has transfused it, and become one chief
source of its depth and power. But we must hasten on to our more
immediate object in these remarks.
Those who read works of fiction merely for amusement, may be
surprised that it should be thought possible they could be vehicles for
conveying to us the deepest practical truth of Christianity,--that the
highest life of man only begins when he begins to accept and to bear
the Cross; and that the conscious pursuit of happiness as his highest
aim tends inevitably to degrade and enslave him. Even those who read
novels more thoughtfully, who recognise in them a great moral force
acting for good or evil on the age, may be startled to find George Eliot
put forward as the representative of this higher-toned fiction, and as

entitled to take place beside any of those we have named for the depth
and force, the consistency and persistence, with which she has laboured
to set before us the Christian, and therefore the only exhaustively true,
ideal of life.
Yet a careful examination will, we are satisfied, show that from her
first appearance before the public, this thought, and the specific
purpose of this teaching, have never been absent from the writer's mind;
that it may be defined as the central aim of all her works: and that it
gathers in force, condensation, and power throughout the series. Other
qualities George Eliot has, that would of themselves entitle her to a
very high place among the teachers of the time. In largeness of
Christian charity, in breadth of human sympathy, in tenderness toward
all human frailty that is not vitally base and self-seeking, in subtle
power of finding "a soul of goodness even in things apparently evil,"
she has not many equals, certainly no superior, among the writers of the
day. Throughout all her works we shall look in vain for one trace of the
fierce self-opinionative arrogance of Carlyle, or the narrow dogmatic
intolerance of Ruskin: though we shall look as vainly for one word or
sign that shall, on the mere ground of intellectual power, energy, and
ultimate success, condone the unprincipled ambition of a Frederick, so-
called the Great, and exalt him into a hero; or find in the cold heart and
mean sordid soul of a Turner an ideal, because one of those strange
physiological freaks that now and then startle the world, the artist's
temperament and artist's skill, were his beyond those of any man of his
age. But as our object here is to attempt placing her before the reader as
asserting and illustrating the highest life of humanity, as a true preacher
of the doctrine of the Cross, even when least formally so, we leave
these features, as well as her position as an artist, untouched on, the
rather that they have all been already discussed by previous critics.
The 'Scenes of Clerical Life,' delicately outlined as they are, still
profess to be but sketches. In them, however, what we have assumed to
be the great moral aim of the writer comes distinctly out; and even
within the series itself gathers in clearness and power. Self-sacrifice as
the Divine law of life, and its only true fulfilment; self-sacrifice, not in
some ideal sphere sought out for ourselves in the vain spirit of self-

pleasing, but wherever God has placed us, amid homely, petty anxieties,
loves, and sorrows; the aiming at the highest attainable good in our
own place, irrespective of all results of joy or sorrow, of apparent
success or failure,--such is the lesson that begins to be conveyed to us
in these "Scenes."
The lesson comes to us in the quiet unselfish love, the sweet hourly
self- devotion of the "Milly" of Amos Barton, so touchingly free and
full that it never recognises itself as self-devotion at all. In "Mr Gilfil's
Love- Story" we have it taught affirmatively through the deep
unselfishness of Mr Gilfil's love to Tina, and his willingness to offer up
even this, the one hope and joy of his life, upon the altar of duty;
negatively, through the hard, cold, callous, self-pleasing of Captain
Wybrow--a type of character which, never repeated, is reproduced with
endless variations and modifications in nearly all the author's
subsequent works. It is, however, in "Janet's Repentance" that the
power of the author is put most strongly forth,