“Let me tell you a story.” Is there any age of mankind which does not respond to the invitation and give audience? A story stilled the tumult of the nursery in our earliest days, when heavy storms shook the windows and the tedium of a long, wet afternoon had turned play into fretfulness. A story beguiled us into interest when our History lesson had seemed an arid futility in Fourth Form days, and our magisterial enemies began to show themselves human after all when they bade us read The Last of the Barons as we were painfully plodding in the Plantagenet period, and found the War of the Roses a very thorny waste.

It is strange to turn over the pages of eminent evangelical sermons of the early Victorian days and to notice how “Novel reading” is denounced. Probably the worthy divines who fulminated against fiction were thinking of their own boyhood, and the mischief which came to them from Fielding and Richardson and Smollett surreptitiously perused. Sir Anthony Absolute’s detestation of the circulating library survived in some provincial circles even when Sir Walter Scott had come to his own. The last forty years have altered things considerably, and though some men may pretend to despise novels, now-a-days they must take them into account. Wise and learned persons began to prescribe them, not only as a vehicle for the exhibition of wholesome but unattractive information, but as having a remedial value of their own. “The intellectual anodyne of the nineteenth century,” I remember that somebody called them – perhaps it was Sir Arthur Helps. It came about that those who had a secret and timid predilection for the story-book, but blushed a little if at Mudie’s counter they ventured to ask for a novel, found that their ordinary reading of Biography and Memoirs revealed some unsuspected sympathies of the illustrious and wise. Who would have thought that Darwin devoured novels and Dean Church did not disdain them, and that Mr. Gladstone sat up all night to finish John Inglesant? The respectable pater-familias has long ceased to proscribe novel reading, and the most austere biographer no longer hides as a revelation of weakness his hero’s literary divertisements. Finally, in this year of Grace 1906 we are boldly told that Archbishop Temple could stand an examination in Miss Yonge’s novels, and on one occasion was heard keenly discussing with Lord Rosebery the careers of the May family in the Daisy Chain as though they were living acquaintances. From being recognized as a recreation the novel has developed into a power, and Charles Dickens was a pioneer in its progress. It is the custom amongst certain “superior persons” to sneer at the novel with a purpose, and to suggest that authors attained remunerative results by taking some subject which was already ripe for discussion and weaving round it a web of fiction.

Undoubtedly there is danger to-day of such artifice, but I maintain that the great reforms of the past century owed much to writers whose purpose was perfectly innocent. Cardinal Newman has told us of the literary influence of Sir Walter Scott, who turned men’s minds in the direction of the Middle Ages.

“The general need,” he said, “of something deeper and more attractive than what had offered itself elsewhere, may be said to have led to his popularity; and by means of his popularity he reacted on his readers, stimulating their mental thirst, feeding their hopes, setting before them visions, which when once seen are not easily forgotten, and silently indoctrinating them with nobler ideas, which might afterwards be appealed to as first principles.”

If Cardinal Newman could thus maintain the value of Fiction in the great ecclesiastical movement which has regenerated the Church of England, I may claim without apology that the reform in Poor Law Administration gained the attention of the public when Dickens made “Bumbledom” ridiculous, and that the Court of Chancery was swept cleaner by the breezes which were blowing from Bleak House. Let any man run over in his mind the undoubted improvements in social matters during the last fifty years, and it will be seen how Fiction has assisted in their promotion. Did Charles Reade’s Hard Cash do nothing to arouse the attention of the public to the condition of the insane? Did Sir Walter Besant’s novels turn no light on the sins of the sweater, or Charles Kingsley’s Alton Locke show no reason for legalizing the Trade Union and the reform of the Law of Conspiracy? Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe may to-day be forgotten, but the southern states of North America would not dispute the influence of Fiction upon the public mind.

The fact is that men, who generally read nothing else but newspapers, will read a good novel, and if the book brings before them principles which they have hitherto neglected, they will very often consider those principles again. It is necessary, however, that the novel shall appeal to them as being a fair record of the present or the past. They may as they read it be unable to pronounce on the thesis which is at the back of the book, but they will be led to consider and discuss it if the story, as a story, holds them. And it is here that the story which has a genuine religious motive often fails. Most of the great artists in fiction, when they have taken in hand a subject which is of religious interest, have written in a spirit of detachment. George Eliot’s Romola is an example, and the result is that men are more interested in Tito Melema than in Savonarola. Novels in which religion is necessarily much in evidence have been written either by literary artists who have studiously endeavoured to lay aside their own personal convictions, or if the books have been written with a distinctly religious purpose the hero and heroine have been unconvincing, the people in the story have not been alive.

When Cardinal Newman had abandoned prematurely his hope of maintaining the Catholic character of the Church of England, he did not disdain to employ his pen in the production of a novel with a religious purpose; but we are amazed to find that the exquisite grace of style which is one of the charms of the Apologia could not render Charles Riding interesting, or the novel Loss and Gain, of which he is the hero, readable.

It is perhaps dangerous to give another example from contemporary fiction, but those who justly admire Mrs. Humphry Ward’s subtle discernment of character and great and increasing mastery of form and style, will not be inclined to dispute the opinion that when, in Robert Elsmere, she undertook the defence of the modern Unitarian position, her hero was hardly a “Man’s man.”

The reason is not far to seek. The average man knows too much of the darker side of life; and the necessary effort made by the author of religious novels to depict that of which they, fortunately for their own souls, have had no experience, is not successful. Charles Kingsley’s undergraduate days were perhaps not without knowledge of the shadows, but he is happier in the Schools of Alexandria, or in the spacious days of Great Elizabeth, than in a tale of modern life such as Two Years Ago. His Broad Church Catholic teaching does not always find its way to the man in the street, and Henry Kingsley, whose life was so different from that of his illustrious clerical brother, has more of human interest in his stories.

The novel with a purpose, and especially with a religious purpose, fails only, when it does fail, because the author’s knowledge of the average man in his sins and his temptations to sin, is altogether incommensurate with his familiarity with the great religious and social problems of which his story would suggest a solution.

It is often supposed that the men do not care to find the subject of religion introduced in fiction, that they resent religion in a novel, as children resent the administration of a medicinal powder in a spoonful of jam; but the expert witness of publishers demolishes this opinion. After all, the religious claim is insistent, and life is untruly depicted when men and women are described in a story as uninfluenced by it. There is something unreal in a book which has no Sundays in it. Critical opinion as expressed in the notices of books in the daily papers, and in more weighty reviews, is very misleading, simply because the reviewers are generally very young men or women who know more or less of literature but very little of life. The wrath of the young man fresh from the University at the success of those books which do not ignore the spiritual needs of men and women amuses the experienced author.

“Faugh!” cries Mr. Jones of Balliol; “another batch of sin and sentiment!” “The Christian creed and the conjugal copula! Religion and Patchouli!” Yet the critic forgets that those who would reach the minds and hearts of men must deal with the problems of creed and character which men have to solve, each one for himself.

Our censors, dilettante, delicate-handed, with their canons of criticism might do worse than reckon up the number of English novels which have lived on into the twentieth century. They will be surprised to find that they are nearly all novels with a purpose and a religious purpose for their “motif.” Charles Reade when he wrote Never too late to mend, not only helped forward the humane and intelligent treatment of criminals, he showed how the Divine Image was stamped indelibly on human nature, and where it seemed to be obliterated could be restored. But Charles Reade drew real men and women. His characters are not puppets of the play-house but are alive. And Thackeray —Clarum et venerabile nomen– making hypocrites his quarry, and raining his quiver full of satiric shafts upon the hateful crew, never scoffed for a moment at reverent things, but with bowed head and hushed footsteps passed by the sanctuary. Therefore, these men are still living forces. Men will read other novels of the past as women look at old-fashion plates, and amuse themselves with the differences and contrasts of succeeding generations, but the novels which men buy in their hundreds of thousands, the novels which are reprinted again and again, the novels for which the publishers wait as their copyright is expiring, like heirs expecting a rich man’s death, that each may endeavour to be first in the field with an edition which pays no royalty to the author; these novels are those which truly represented life as it seemed in other days, life seeking ever to be reassured that One has come who offers to those who walk in darkness the light of life.

It is exasperating to some minds to discover that the man of the world is not altogether worldly, and that he finds in books which recognize religion as a considerable part of man’s life, something which gives to them reality and truth. Immature minds and inexperienced penmen are not impressed by the things which really matter, and in the interval between the University and man’s settlement in life much nonsense is written and spoken.

I speak from personal experience; and when I look back upon the reviews I wrote ten years ago, it is with invariable consternation, and sometimes a real sense of shame.

Nevertheless, there is some criticism of the religious novel which must be taken seriously. I have maintained that men generally in England are in a state of theological confusion, but that they are interested in religion if they can be induced to consider it. There is, as the great African Presbyter wrote seventeen hundred years ago, a natural response in the hearts of men to the chief articles of the Christian Faith. There is a Testimonium animæ naturaliter christianæ. But there are some who can only be described by a quotation: “They are the enemies of the cross of Christ.” They are determined that the Catholic creed shall have no place in the counsels and considerations of social legislation. Of Jesus Christ they have said, “We will not have this man to reign over us;” and if there be any chance that a man’s books may catch the eye of the public and rouse people to think whether opportunism is really statesmanship, and empiricism in politics really prudent, if, in a word, the principles of Christianity are offered as a solution of social problems, then the author is attacked on every side. It is suggested that his intention is insincere, that his knowledge is inadequate. The things which have been part of his painful discipline and development are described as his accepted environment. If a Bishop happens to find an illustration for a sermon in his pages, or a prominent Nonconformist divine recognizes that the laity like to read them, and says so; if any of those true hearts who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity have been ready to see that men who have been rescued de profundis, men who have had experience of [Greek: ta bathea tou satana] are not thereby disqualified for duty in the field of Faith; if, in a word, books which claim for Christianity the first place in the thought of the time are successful, a very malignant hostility is aroused.

It is most probable that this hatred of Christianity will grow and increase. The world has never before been as it is to-day. The system of party politics has placed power in the hands of the democracy. The “working man” has at last discovered what he can do. He must make his choice between the secular and the religious principle. Hitherto the Christian pastors of the people have appealed to his emotions, and not without success. The emotions will always be the chief guides in conduct for many; but the leaders of the working men are hard-headed, well read in social science and politics; and, owing to the insufficient training of the clergy in these subjects, the politicians of the proletariat have conceived a sort of contempt for the parson and the minister and the priest. The small body of Unitarians, wealthy from their constant intermarriage with the great Jewish families, and opposed to an aristocracy which has only in the last forty years been willing to receive them, has been quick to see that the working man must be alienated from the Catholic creed, and his vote secured at any cost. On the railway bookstalls we may note the activity of the Unitarian propaganda committee. Fifty years ago it was not necessary to consider the opinions of the man in the street: the Unitarian minister and his congregation were comfortable in the assurance of their own intellectual culture and their kindly interest for the poorer classes. In politics they were Liberals, for an Established Church interfered with their sense of superiority, and the landed proprietors and the hereditary aristocracy socially ignored them. But they had no notion of calling into existence an electorate which should endanger the supremacy of the capitalist, and, like Frankenstein, they are afraid of their own creations, now that the working man has become the dispenser of Parliamentary power. It is vital to their interests that he should be diverted from further attacks upon capital, and encouraged to believe that it is the priest who is his true foe. “Le cléricalisme voilà l’ennemi” is a convenient cry. A vague Deism is not dangerous to wealthy manufacturers; but if the clergy are going to take up Christian Socialism it is time to be up and doing. So every weapon against the creed of Christendom is being taken down and examined, and many an old fallacy is refurbished and employed once more. Celsus is disinterred from the tomb in which Origen had buried him, and his filthy slander of the Blessed Virgin is printed as though it were a new discovery of historical research. Collins is called into court again as though Bentley had never exposed his ignorance, and Hume’s a priori method is revived as though it had never been discredited; whilst Strauss and Renan are quoted as authorities, as if Westcott and Lightfoot had never been known. Shunt the working classes on a new line of rails. Set them shrieking against sacramentalists, and swearing at sacerdotalists, and we may quietly arrange our commercial combinations and protect our manufacturing interests!

I want to see the seats under the dome of St. Paul’s filled not by only the middle-aged middle classes, who for the most part are Christian in creed, but by the young artisans and craftsmen, and the strong politicians who fill the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, and crowd the great Assembly Rooms of Birmingham and Liverpool when an election is drawing near. The timid members of the Episcopate who may be reminded that “He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap,” are not our only Bishops. Occasionally a Prime Minister offers for election and consecration a man who can reach the minds and consciences of men. Is it too great an ambition for a storyteller to try to arouse in people’s minds a suspicion that after all something may be said for the Catholic Faith, and so to bring them to listen to those who know and can teach it? Each man must do his work with such tools as have come in his way. The Mission preacher will use his magnetic power, the artist whose skill it is to build or to paint, will make his appeal to the love of order and beauty, the musicians will meet the heart through the ear. May not the writer of fiction use his psychological training and his knowledge of many sides of human life to create a story which shall set men thinking about the old doctrines which he believes to have lost none of their regenerating power?

There is danger lest men with good intentions should go blindly to work to redress and diminish social grievances. Individualism with its hateful cry, “Each man for himself and the devil take the hindmost,” is now at a discount, but it may be replaced by a despotism of State regulation which will destroy the family and the home. There is, I believe, only one creed which can make the capitalist unselfish and the sons of labour satisfied, which will tell men that wealth means responsibility and that there is dignity in toil, which will teach the rich man to order himself lowly and reverently to those who are his betters and to hurt nobody by word or deed, which will teach the labourer that his chief need is not other men’s wealth, but the “carrière ouverte aux talents” and the determination to do his duty in that state of life, whatever it may be, unto which God shall call him.

It is the Holy Catholic Faith which makes equality of opportunity for all men its earthly ambition, and offers refreshment and hope to those who are not strong enough to strive with the rest. The old men saw visions and we have found that they were prophecies, a young man may dream dreams. My dream is that the men who are doing the work of the world to-day may be taught that Christ is their best teacher and the Incarnate God their refuge and strength.

There is a tale of an acrobat and juggler who knew well that his tricks were the outcome of years of concentrated effort and constant exercise, and being moved by the Grace of God, he desired to offer the best thing he had to give to the Lord of Life. His best was his skill. He lived by it. Shown in the streets and the play places, it won for him his daily bread. His work was to give men amusement in their hours of recreation by an exhibition of his feats of strength and nimbleness. Could this, his one talent, be consecrated and devoted to God? So he considered, and humbly sought the sanctuary, and there before the Presence he performed his fantastic tricks which had cost him years of endeavour. The story is a parable which men have not been slow to read, and it has become the theme of the musician and artist.

Shall I offend my fellow-writers if I repeat it here in this connection?