The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford quotes

if I could show how I had risen superior to poverty and suffering; if, in short, I were a hero of any kind whatever, I might perhaps be justified in communicating my success to mankind, and stimulating them to do as I have done.

But mine is the tale of a commonplace life, perplexed by many problems I have never solved; disturbed by many difficulties I have never surmounted; and blotted by ignoble concessions which are a constant regret.

I have decided, however, to let the manuscript remain. I will not destroy it, although I will not take the responsibility of printing it. Somebody may think it worth preserving; and there are two reasons why they may think so, if there are no others.

I have decided, however, to let the manuscript remain. I will not destroy it, although I will not take the responsibility of printing it. Somebody may think it worth preserving; and there are two reasons why they may think so, if there are no others.

In the first place it has some little historic value, for I feel increasingly that the race to which I belonged is fast passing away

, and that the Dissenting minister of the present day is a different being altogether from the Dissenting minister of forty years ago.

In all the religion of that day nothing was falser than the long prayer.

Direct appeal to God can only be justified when it is passionate.

To come maundering into His presence when we have nothing particular to say is an insult, upon which we should never presume if we had a petition to offer to any earthly personage.

But conversion, as it was understood by me and as it is now understood, is altogether unmeaning.

I knew that I had to be “a child of God,” and after a time professed myself to be one, but I cannot call to mind that I was anything else than I always had been, save that I was perhaps a little more hypocritical

; not in the sense that I professed to others what I knew I did not believe, but in the sense that I professed it to myself. I was obliged to declare myself convinced of sin; convinced of the efficacy of the atonement;

… painful processes has found yes and no alternate for so long that he is not sure which is final, is the last man in the world, if he for the present is resting in yes, to crucify another who can get no further than no.

The bigot is he to whom no such painful processes have ever been permitted.

The society amongst the students was very poor. Not a single friendship formed then has remained with me. They were mostly young men of no education, who had been taken from the counter, and their spiritual life was not very deep.

If I had been a woman, I should have spurned him for his perpetual insult of inane compliments. He was always dawdling after “the sex,” which was one of his sweet phrases, and yet he was not passionate.

Passion does not dawdle and compliment, nor is it nasty, as this fellow was.

Passion may burn like a devouring flame; and in a few moments, like flame, may bring down a temple to dust and ashes, but it is earnest as flame, and essentially pure.

Wordsworth unconsciously did for me what every religious reformer has done—he recreated my Supreme Divinity; substituting a new and living spirit for the old deity, once alive, but gradually hardened into an idol.

What days were those of the next few years before increasing age had presented preciser problems and demanded preciser answers; before all joy was darkened by the shadow of oncoming death, and when life seemed infinite!

Those were the days when through the whole long summer’s morning I wanted no companion but myself, provided only I was in the country, and when books were read with tears in the eyes.

Those were the days when through the whole long summer’s morning I wanted no companion but myself, provided only I was in the country, and when books were read with tears in the eyes.

Those were the days when mere life, apart from anything which it brings, was exquisite.

In my own college I found no sympathy, but we were in the habit of meeting occasionally the students from other colleges, and amongst them I met with one or two, especially one who had undergone experiences similar to my own.

Rutherford, you know, we never ought to get weary; an exhibition of our exceeding sinfulness; of our safety in the Rock of Ages, and there only; of the joys of the saints and the sufferings of those who do not believe.”

His words fell on me like the hand of a corpse, and I went away much depressed.

My sermon had excited me, and the man who of all men ought to have welcomed me, had not a word of warmth or encouragement for me, nothing but the coldest indifference, and even repulse.

I tried men by my standard, and if they did not come up to it I rejected them; thus I prodigally wasted a good deal of the affection which the world would have given me.

Only when I got much older did I discern the duty of accepting life as God has made it, and thankfully receiving any scrap of love offered to me, however imperfect it might be.

I don’t know any mistake which I have made which has cost me more than this; but at the same time I must record that it was a mistake for which, considering everything, I cannot much blame myself. I hope it is amended now.

Their house was one of the sweetest which I ever entered. The moment I found myself inside it, I became conscious of perfect repose. Everything was at rest; books, pictures, furniture, all breathed the same peace.

Nothing in the house was new, but everything had been preserved with such care that nothing looked old.

Yet the owners were not what is called old-maidish; that is to say, they were not superstitious worshippers of order and neatness.

“It is Snale’s.

He is a contemptible cur and yet it is not his fault. He has heard sermons about all sorts of supernatural subjects for thirty years, and he has never once been warned against meanness, so of course he supposes that supernatural subjects are everything and meanness is nothing.

But I will not detain you any longer now, for you are busy. Good night, sir.”

The hold which He has upon us is easily explained, apart from the dignity of His recorded sayings and the purity of His life.

There is no Saviour for us like the hero who has passed triumphantly through the distress which troubles us.

Salvation is the spectacle of a victory by another over foes like our own. The story of Jesus is the story of the poor and forgotten. He is not the Saviour for the rich and prosperous, for they want no Saviour.

… sort of effort or strain in anything she said, no attempt by emphasis of words to make up for the weakness of thought, and no compliance with that vulgar and most disagreeable habit of using intense language to describe what is not intense in itself.

Her yea was yea, and her no, no.

I observed also that she spoke without disguise, although she was not rude.

As I got older I became aware of the folly of this perpetual reaching after the future, and of drawing from tomorrow, and from tomorrow only, a reason for the joyfulness of today.

I learned, when, alas! it was almost too late, to live in each moment as it passed over my head, believing that the sun as it is now rising is as good as it will ever be, and blinding myself as much as possible to what may follow.

But when I was young I was the victim of that illusion, implanted for some purpose or other in us by Nature, which causes us, on the brightest morning in June, to think immediately of a brighter morning which is to come in July.

I have at my command any number of maxims, all of them good, but I am powerless to select the one which ought to be applied.

A general principle, a fine saying, is nothing but a tool, and the wit of man is shown not in possession of a well-furnished tool-chest, but in the ability to pick out the proper instrument and use it.

I remained in this miserable condition for days, not venturing to answer Ellen’s letter, until at last I turned out for a walk. I have often found that motion and change will bring light and resolution when thinking will not.

I remained in this miserable condition for days, not venturing to answer Ellen’s letter, until at last I turned out for a walk.

I have often found that motion and change will bring light and resolution when thinking will not.

I started off in the morning down by the river, and towards the sea, my favourite stroll.

“I was astonished to see such rage develop itself so suddenly in him, and yet afterwards, when I came to reflect, I saw there was no reason for surprise.

Self, self was his god, and the thought of the damage which would be done to him and his reputation was what roused him.

I was still silent, and he went on—

Without hesitation, write to this girl and tell her the exact truth. Anything, any obloquy, anything friends or enemies may say of you must be faced even joyfully rather than what I had to endure.

Better die the death of the Saviour on the cross than live such a life as mine.

”

Never mind the future. The one thing you have to do is the thing that lies next to you, divinely ordained for you. What does the 119th Psalm say?—‘Thy word is a lamp unto my feet.’

We have no light promised us to show us our road a hundred miles away, but we have a light for the next footstep, and if we take that, we shall have a light for the one which is to follow.

The inspiration of the Almighty could not make clearer to me the message I deliver to you. Forgive me—you are a minister, I know, and perhaps I ought not to speak so to you, but I am an old woman.

Now

Mr. Snale was a coward, but with a peculiarity which I have marked in animals of the rat tribe.

He would double and evade as long as possible, but if he found there was no escape, he would turn and tear and fight to the last extremity.

When I got home I bitterly regretted what had happened.

I never regret anything more than the loss of self-mastery.

I had been betrayed, and yet I could not for the life of me see how the betrayal could have been prevented. It was upon me so suddenly, that before a moment had been given me for reflection, the words were out of my mouth.

The atheist was dreaming of shadowless light, a contradiction in terms. Mankind may be improved, and the improvement may be infinite, and yet good and evil must exist. So with death and life.

Life without death is not life, and death without life is equally impossible.

But though all this came to me, and was not only a great comfort to me, but prevented any shallow prating like that to which I listened from this lecturer, it could not be said that it was a gospel from which to derive apostolic …

It appears to be of less importance than it really is, because I do not think that even you ever empty the universe of intellect.

I believe that mind never worships anything but mind, and that you worship it when you admire the level bars of cloud over the setting sun.

You think you eject mind, but you do not. I can only half imagine a belief which looks upon the world as a mindless blank, and if I could imagine it, it would be depressing in the last degree to me.

“

Ah, you are now getting into the region of sentiment, and I am unable to accompany you. When my friends go into the clouds, I never try to follow them.

”

I hardly knew what to do, I could not feel any enthusiasm at the prospect of the engagement, but, on the other hand, there was nothing else before me.

There is no more helpless person in this world than a minister who is thrown out of work.

At any rate, I should be doing no harm if I went.

There was no such tendency now. I thought I chose Mary, but there was no choice.

The feeblest steel filing which is drawn to a magnet, would think, if it had consciousness, that it went to the magnet of its own free will.

My soul rushed to hers as if dragged by the force of a loadstone.

Suffice to say, that for some ten years or more my thoughts were almost entirely occupied with death and our future state.

There is a strange fascination about these topics to many people, because they are topics which permit a great deal of dreaming, but very little thinking

: in fact, true thinking, in the proper sense of the word, is impossible in dealing with them. There is no rigorous advance from one position to another, which is really all that makes thinking worth the name.

I have been repulsed into self-reliance and reserve, having learned wisdom by experience; but still I know that the desire has not died, as so many other desires have died, by the natural evolution of age. It has been forcibly suppressed, and that is all.

If anybody who reads these words of mine should be offered by any young dreamer such a devotion as I once had to offer, and had to take back again refused so often, let him in the name of all that is sacred accept it. It is simply the most precious thing in existence.

Had I found anybody who would have thought so, my life would have been redeemed into something which I have often imagined, but now shall never know.

I know the causelessness of a good deal of all those panic fears and all that suffering, but

I tremble to think how thin is the floor on which we stand which separates us from the bottomless abyss.

The next morning I went down into the schoolroom, and after I had been there for some little time, the proprietor of the school made his appearance.

There was no holy of holies in him, into which one or two of the elect could occasionally be admitted and feel God to be there.

He was no temple, but rather a comfortable, hospitable house open to all friends, well furnished with books and pictures, and free to every guest from garret to cellar.

He had “liberal” notions about the relationship between the sexes. Not that he was a libertine, but he disbelieved in marriage, excepting for so long as husband and wife are a necessity to one another.

This mode of treatment was the outcome of one of her theories. She disbelieved altogether in punishment, except when it was likely to do good, either to the person punished or to others.

“A good deal of punishment,” she used to say, “is mere useless pain.”

Both Theresa and her uncle were kind and human, and I endeavoured to my utmost to repay them by working my hardest. My few hours of leisure were sweet, and when I spent them with Wollaston and Theresa, were interesting.

I thought that if I was incapable of getting to the bottom of such a very shallow complication as this, of what value were any of my thinkings on more difficult subjects, and I fell a prey to self-contempt and scepticism.

Contempt from those about us is hard to bear, but God help the poor wretch who contemns himself.

How well I recollect the early walk on the following morning in Kensington Gardens, the feeling of my own utter worthlessness, and the longing for death as the cancellation of the blunder of my existence!

I should like to add one more beatitude to those of the gospels and to say,

Blessed are they who heal us of self-despisings. Of all services which can be done to man, I know of none more precious.

When I went back to my work I worshipped Theresa, and was entirely overcome with unhesitating, absorbing love for her. I saw nothing more of her that day nor the next day.