The Stark Munro Letters IX - The Parade, Bradfield, 23rd April, 1882

Arthur Conan Doyle (0:02)

CHAPTER IX.

THE PARADE. BRADFIELD. APRIL 23, 1882

I have some recollection, my dear Bertie, that when I wrote you a rambling disconnected sort of letter about three weeks ago, I wound up by saying that I might have something more interesting to tell you next time. Well, so it has turned out. The whole game is up here, and I am off upon a fresh line of rails altogether. Cullingworth is to go one way and I another, and yet I am glad to say that there has not been any quarrel between us. As usual, I have begun my letter at the end. But I'll work up to it more deliberately now, and let you know exactly how it came about. And first of all, a thousand thanks for your two long letters which lie before me as I write. There is little enough personal news in them, but I can quite understand that the quiet happy routine of your life reels off very smoothly from week to week. On the other hand, you give me plenty of proof of that inner life which is to me so very much more interesting. After all, we may very well agree to differ. You think something's approved, which I don't believe in. You think something's edifying, which do not appear to me to be so.

Well, I know that you are perfectly honest in your belief, I am sure you give me credit for being the same. The future will decide which of us is right. The survival of the truest is a constant law, I fancy, though it must be acknowledged that it is very slow in action.

You make a mistake, however, in assuming that those who think as I do are such a miserable minority. The whole essence of our thought is independence and individual judgment, so that we don't get welded into single bodies as the churches do, and we have no opportunity of testing our own strength. There are no doubt all shades of opinion among us, but if you merely include those who in their private hearts disbelieve the doctrines usually accepted, and think that sectarian churches tend to evil rather than good, I fancy that the figures would be rather surprising. When I read your letter, I made a list of all those men with whom I ever had intimate talk upon such matters.

I got seventeen names with four orthodox. Cullingworth tried and got twelve names with one orthodox. From all sides, one hears that every church complains of the absence of men in the congregations. The women predominate three to one. Is it that women are more earnest than men? I think it is quite the other way. But the men are following their reason, and the women their emotion. It is the women only who keep orthodoxy alive.

No, you mustn't be too sure of that majority of yours. Taking the scientific, the medical, the professional classes, I question whether it exists at all.

The clergy, busy in their own limited circles, and coming in contact only with those who agree with them, have not realized how largely the rising generation has outgrown them, and with exceptions like yourself. It is not the most lax but the best of the younger men, the larger brained and the larger hearted, who have shaken themselves most clear of the old theology. They cannot abide its want of charity, its limitations of God's favors, its claims for a special providence, its dogmatism about what seems to be false, its conflict with what we know to be true. We know that man has ascended, not descended, so what is the value of a scheme of thought which depends upon the supposition of his fall? We know that the world was not made in six days, that the sun could never be stopped since it was never moving, and that no man ever lived three days in a fish. So what becomes of the inspiration of a book which contains such statements? Truth, though it crushed me.

There, now you see what comes of waving the red rag. Let me make a concession to appease you. I do believe that Christianity in its different forms has been the very best thing for the world during all this long barbarous epoch. Of course it has been the best thing, else Providence would not have permitted it. The engineer knows best what tools to use in strengthening his own machine. But when you say that this is the best and last tool which will be used, you are laying down the law a little too much. Now first of all, I want to tell you how the practice has been going on. The week after I wrote last showed a slight relapse. I only took two pounds. But on the next I took a sudden jump up to three pounds seven shillings. And this last week I took three pounds ten. So it was steadily creeping up. And I really thought that I saw my road clear in front of me. When the boat suddenly fell from the blue. There were reasons however which prevented my being very disappointed when it did come down. And these I must make clear to you.