The Fair Haven | Page 6

deem it
perhaps the most insidious enemy which the cause of Christ has ever
encountered. But of this more hereafter.
My mother, as I said, threw her whole soul into the work of our
religious education. Whatever she believed she believed literally, and,
if I may say so, with a harshness of realisation which left very little
scope for imagination or mystery. Her plans of Heaven and solutions of
life's enigmas were direct and forcible, but they could only be
reconciled with certain obvious facts--such as the omnipotence and
all-goodness of God--by leaving many things absolutely out of sight.
And this my mother succeeded effectually in doing. She never doubted
that her opinions comprised the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth; she therefore made haste to sow the good seed in our tender
minds, and so far succeeded that when my brother was four years old
he could repeat the Apostles' Creed, the General Confession, and the
Lord's Prayer without a blunder. My mother made herself believe that
he delighted in them; but, alas! it was far otherwise; for, strange as it
may appear concerning one whose later life was a continual prayer, in
childhood he detested nothing so much as being made to pray and to
learn his Catechism. In this I am sorry to say we were both heartily of a
mind. As for Sunday, the less said the better.
I have already hinted (but as a warning to other parents I had better,

perhaps, express myself more plainly), that this aversion was probably
the result of my mother's undue eagerness to reap an artificial fruit of
lip service, which could have little meaning to the heart of one so
young. I believe that the severe check which the natural growth of faith
experienced in my brother's case was due almost entirely to this cause,
and to the school of literalism in which he had been trained; but,
however this may be, we both of us hated being made to say our
prayers--morning and evening it was our one bugbear, and we would
avoid it, as indeed children generally will, by every artifice which we
could employ. Thus we were in the habit of feigning to be asleep
shortly before prayer time, and would gratefully hear my father tell my
mother that it was a shame to wake us; whereon he would carry us up
to bed in a state apparently of the profoundest slumber when we were
really wide awake and in great fear of detection. For we knew how to
pretend to be asleep, but we did not know how we ought to wake again;
there was nothing for it therefore when we were once committed, but to
go on sleeping till we were fairly undressed and put to bed, and could
wake up safely in the dark. But deceit is never long successful, and we
were at last ignominiously exposed.
It happened one evening that my mother suspected my brother John,
and tried to open his little hands which were lying clasped in front of
him. Now my brother was as yet very crude and inconsistent in his
theories concerning sleep, and had no conception of what a real sleeper
would do under these circumstances. Fear deprived him of his powers
of reflection, and he thus unfortunately concluded that because sleepers,
so far as he had observed them, were always motionless, therefore, they
must be quite rigid and incapable of motion, and indeed that any
movement, under any circumstances (for from his earliest childhood he
liked to carry his theories to their legitimate conclusion), would be
physically impossible for one who was really sleeping; forgetful, oh!
unhappy one, of the flexibility of his own body on being carried
upstairs, and, more unhappy still, ignorant of the art of waking. He,
therefore, clenched his fingers harder and harder as he felt my mother
trying to unfold them while his head hung listless, and his eyes were
closed I as though he were sleeping sweetly. It is needless to detail the
agony of shame that followed. My mother begged my father to box his

ears, which my father flatly refused to do. Then she boxed them herself,
and there followed a scene and a day or two of disgrace for both of us.
Shortly after this there happened another misadventure. A lady came to
stay with my mother, and was to sleep in a bed that had been brought
into our nursery, for my father's fortunes had already failed, and we
were living in a humble way. We were still but four and five years old,
so the arrangement was not unnatural, and it was assumed that we
should be asleep before the lady went to bed, and be downstairs before
she would get up in