The Stark Munro Letters V - Merton on the Moors, 5th March, 1882

Arthur Conan Doyle (0:00)

CHAPTER V of The Stark Munro Letters This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit librivox.org. Recording by Beth Thomas. The Stark Munro Letters by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Chapter 5

Merton on the Moors, 5th March, 1882

I was so delighted, my dear chap, to have your assurance that nothing that I have said or could say upon the subject of religion could offend you. It is difficult to tell you how pleased and relieved I was at your cordial letter. I have no one to whom I can talk upon such matters. I am all driven inwards, and thought turns sour when one lets it stagnate like that. It is a grand thing to be able to tell it all to a sympathetic listener. And the more so, perhaps, when he looks at it all from another standpoint, it steadies and sobers one.

Those whom I love best are those who have least sympathy with my struggles. They talk about having faith as if it could be done by an act of volition. They might as well tell me to have black hair instead of red. I might simulate it, perhaps, by refusing to use my reason at all in religious matters. But I will never be traitor to the highest thing that God has given me. I will use it. It is more moral to use it and go wrong than to forego it and be right. It is only a little foot rule, and I have to measure Mount Everest with it, but it's all I have, and I'll never give it up while there's breath between my lips. With all respect to you, Bertie, it is very easy to be orthodox. A man who wanted mental peace and material advancement in this world would certainly choose to be so. As Smiles says, a dead fish can float with the stream, but it takes a man to swim against it.

What could be more noble than the start and the starter of Christianity? How beautiful the upward struggle of an idea like some sweet flower blossoming out amongst rubble and cinders. But, alas, to say that this idea was a final idea, that this scheme of thought was above the reason, that this gentle philosopher was that supreme intelligence to which we cannot even imagine a personality without irreverence, all this will come to rank with the strangest delusions of mankind. And then how clouded has become that fine daybreak of Christianity. Its representatives have risen from the manger to the palace, from the fishing-smack to the House of Lords. Nor is that other old potentate in the Vatican, with his art treasures, his guards, and his cellars of wine, in a more logical position. They are all good and talented men, and in the market of brains are worth perhaps as much as they get. But how can they bring themselves to pose as the representatives of a creed, which as they themselves expounded, is based upon humility, poverty, and self-denial?

Not one of them who would not quote with approval the parable of the wedding guest. But try putting one of them out of their due precedence at the next court reception. It happened some little time ago with the cardinal, and England rang with his protests. How blind not to see how they would spring at one leap into the real first place, if they would but resolutely claim the last as the special badge of their master. What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts. But surely all will be well with us. If not, then he who made us as evil, which is not to be thought, surely then all must go very well with us.

I feel ashamed when I read this over. My mind fills in all the trains of thought of which you have the rude ends peeping out from this tangle. Make what you can of it, dear Bertie, and believe that it all comes from my inmost heart. Above all, may I be kept from becoming a partisan and tempering with truth in order to sustain a case.

Let me but get a hand on her skirt, and she may drag me where she will, if she will but turn her face from time to time that I may know her. You'll see from the address of this letter, Bertie, that I have left Scotland and am in Yorkshire. I have been here three months, and am now on the eve of leaving under the strangest circumstances and with the queerest prospects. Good old Cullingworth has turned out a Trump, as I always knew he would. But, as usual, I am beginning at the wrong end, so here goes to give you an idea of what has been happening.