orphosis, as that of every
fervid nature must be when it has fled, or been condemned, to solitude.
His life, before he came to Raveloe, had been filled with the movement,
the mental activity, and the close fellowship, which, in that day as in
this, marked the life of an artisan early incorporated in a narrow
religious sect, where the poorest layman has the chance of
distinguishing himself by gifts of speech, and has, at the very least,
the weight of a silent voter in the government of his community.
Marner was highly thought of in that little hidden world, known to
itself as the church assembling in Lantern Yard; he was believed to be
a young man of exemplary life and ardent faith; and a peculiar interest
had been centred in him ever since he had fallen, at a prayer-meeting,
into a mysterious rigidity and suspension of consciousness, which,
lasting for an hour or more, had been mistaken for death. To have
sought a medical explanation for this phenomenon would have been held
by 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 h