nd her
girlish faith reeled under the shock. It is one of the most grievous
tragedies of the spiritual realm that conscience often finds the sunny
climate of an ardent evangelism singularly enervating. The _emotional_
side of one's nature luxuriates in an atmosphere in which the _ethical_
side becomes languid and relaxed. A man must be very careful, as Mr.
Gladstone once incisively observed, to prevent his religion from
damaging his morality. The simpleminded people with whom this
sharp-witted and fresh-spirited young Englishwoman met had not fortified
themselves against that insidious peril. One woman told a lie and the
offense was sheeted home to her. '_Ah, well_,' she replied, in a
nonchalant and easy way, '_I do not feel that I have grieved the Spirit
much!_' George Eliot was horrified. She saw, to her disgust, that strong
religious feeling could consist with flagrant dishonor. Her finely
poised and sensitive soul experienced a revolt and a rebound. She
changed none of her opinions, yet she changed the entire attitude of her
mind; and, with the passage of time, the new attitude produced new
ideas. She had not quarreled with the faith of her childhood; she simply
lost her love for it. Her anchor relinquished its hold, and, almost
imperceptibly, she drifted. 'She glided out of the faith,' as Principal
Fairbairn so expressively puts it, 'as easily and as softly as if she
had been a ship obeying wind and tide, and her faith a sea that opened
silently before and closed noiselessly behind her.'

Wherefore let all those who name the name of Christ depart from
iniquity! For if, through any glaring inconsistency between my faith and
my behavior, I offend one of these little ones that believe in Him, it
were better, so the Master Himself declared, that a millstone were
hanged about my neck and that I were cast into the depths of the sea.

II

Now, in the story that lies open on the garden-seat beside me, all the
characters are very religious people. Yet they are divided sharply into
two classes. There are the very religious people who are all the worse
for their religion, and there are the very religious people who are all
the better for it. Mr. Dempster is a very religious man. In the opening
sentence of the story, the first sentence in the book, he acknowledges
his indebtedness to his Creator. He is a very religious man--and a
drunkard! Mr. Budd is also a very religious man. Indeed, he is warden at
the Parish Church. '