The Zeit-Geist

The Zeit-Geist

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Zeit-Geist, by Lily Dougall This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Zeit-Geist
Author: Lily Dougall
Release Date: March 26, 2006 [EBook #18054]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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The Zeit-Geist
[Illustration: Zeit-geist logo]

THE Zeit-Geist Library of COMPLETE NOVELS in One Volume. Paper, 1s. 6d.; cloth, 2s.
Early Volumes. By L. DOUGALL. THE ZEIT-GEIST. With Frontispiece.
By GYP. CHIFFON'S MARRIAGE. With Portrait of Author.
By FRANKFORT MOORE. THE SALE OF A SOUL. With Frontispiece.
By the Author of "A Yellow Aster." A NEW NOVEL. With Frontispiece.
Other volumes to follow.
Each volume with designed Title-page.
LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO., PATERNOSTER ROW.
[Illustration: Bust]
[Illustration: Title page]

The Zeit-Geist
L. DOUGALL
Author of Beggars All, What Necessity Knows, etc.
LONDON HUTCHINSON & CO PATERNOSTER ROW
"I ... create evil. I am the Lord." Isa. xlv. 6, 7.
"Where will God be absent? In His face Is light, but in His shadow there is healing too: Let Guido touch the shadow and be healed!" The Ring and the Book.
"If Nature is the garment of God, it is woven without seam throughout." The Ascent of Man.

OXFORD, January 1895.
_When travelling in Canada, in the region north of Lake Ontario, I came upon traces of the somewhat remarkable life which is the subject of the following sketch.
Having applied to the school-master in the town where Bartholomew Toyner lived, I received an account the graphic detail and imaginative insight of which attest the writer's personal affection. This account, with only such condensation as is necessary, I now give to the world. I do not believe that it belongs to the novel to teach theology; but I do believe that religious sentiments and opinions are a legitimate subject of its art, and that perhaps its highest function is to promote understanding by bringing into contact minds that habitually misinterpret one another._

THE ZEIT-GEIST.
CHAPTER I.
PROLOGUE.
To-day I am at home in the little town of the fens, where the Ahwewee River falls some thirty feet from one level of land to another. Both broad levels were covered with forest of ash and maple, spruce and tamarack; but long ago, some time in the thirties, impious hands built dams on the impetuous Ahwewee, and wide marshes and drowned wood-lands are the result. Yet just immediately at Fentown there is neither marsh nor dead tree; the river dashes over its ledge of rock in a foaming flood, runs shallow and rapid between green woods, and all about the town there are breezy pastures where the stumps are still standing, and arable lands well cleared. The little town itself has a thriving look. Its public buildings and its villas have risen, as by the sweep of an enchanter's wand, in these backwoods to the south of the Ottawa valley.
There was a day when I came a stranger to Fentown. The occasion of my coming was a meeting concerning the opening of new schools for the town--schools on a large and ambitious plan for so small a place. When the meeting was over, I came out into the street on a mild September afternoon. The other members of the School Council were with me. There were two clergymen of the party. One of them, a young man with thin, eager face, happened to be at my side.
"This Mr. Toyner, whose opinion has been so much consulted, was not here to-day?" I said this interrogatively.
"No, ah--but you'll see him now. He has invited you all to a garden party, or something of that sort. He's in delicate health. Ah--of course, you know, it is natural for me to wish his influence with the Council were much less than it is."
"Indeed! He was spoken of as a philanthropist."
"It's a very poor love to one's fellow-man that gives him all that his vanity desires in the way of knowledge without leading him into the Church, where he would be taught to set the value of everything in its right proportion."
I was rather struck with this view of the function of the Church. "Certainly," I replied, "to see all things in right proportion is wisdom; but I heard this Toyner mentioned as a religious man."
"He has some imaginations of his own, I believe, which he mistakes for religion. I do not know him intimately; I do not wish to. I believe he has some sort of desire to do what is right; but that, you know, is a house built upon the sand, unless it is