Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 097.djvu/134

124 up their own doctrinal system, and shattering their own intellectual constitution. Not that they loved to see the desire of their eyes taken away with a stroke, and that the stroke of their own restless arm; not that they exulted in the ruins of a conflagration lit by their own torch; for these dissolutions of creed and credit cost them many a bitter pang, and out of these divisions came great searchings and sorrowings of heart. But inquirers of Walker's type came of a gentler and more tender sort, and felt more keenly the penalties of a sceptical tendency, and struggled more earnestly against its withering influence, and had less disposition to subject every suspected tenet, every antilegomenon, to the ordeal of touch. They were more patient, hopeful, loving. While the others, passed judgment in hot haste on every dogma which to them seemed Darren, demanding that it should be cut down, and no longer cumber the ground—these, at least, pleaded for a respite, for farther trial, when, if the doomed tree should bear fruit—well; but if not, then, after that, let it be cut down. If sceptics they must be, it was not because they loved to have it so; and to them there was anguish in the self-communing cry, "What wilt thou do in the end thereof!"Designed, for the most part, for the ministry of the Church, their difficulties had a special and exigeant penalty. What were they to do? "This surely was a miserable man," says Nathaniel Hawthorne, of a clergyman, who, yielding to the speculative tendency of the age, had gone astray from the firm foundation of an ancient faith, and wandered into a cloud region, where everything was misty and deceptive, ever mocking him with a semblance of reality, but still dissolving when he flung himself upon it for support and rest "His instinct and early training demanded something steadfast; but, looking forward, he beheld vapours piled on vapours, and behind him an impassable gulf between the man of yesterday and to-day; on the borders of which he paced to and fro, sometimes wringing his hands in agony, and often making his own woe a theme of scornful merriment." Could such a prospect be endurable by one of Sidney Walker's sensitive conscientiousness? And yet, on the other hand, a common prescription by grave and experienced doctors of the Church, as the panacea, or, at any rate, the only medicament, in such abnormal cases was this—to take orders in spite of scepticism, and by dint of active parochial duty work off its mischievous humours. "Why stand all day idle in the market-place? Why not go work forthwith in the vineyard?" Surely that would dispel the crotchets of hours of idleness. Such was the advice of some good men; and by some troubled consciences it was adopted. John Sterling adopted it—we know with what results. Hundreds of others have adopted it—sometimes with seeming success, sometimes with notorious failure. Sidney Walker did not adopt it; and he, we think, was wise in his resolve. For, although there are situations where the advice is unquestionably sound, cases of "embarrassed thought" when the only cure must be