It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.

"Silas Marner was both sane and honest, and as with many honest and fervent men, culture had not defined any channels for his sense of mystery, and so it spread itself over the proper pathway of inquiry and knowledge. He had inherited from his mother some acquaintance with medicinal herbs and their preparation, a little store of wisdom which she had imparted to him as a solemn bequest but of late years he had had doubts about the lawfulness of applying this knowledge, believing that herbs could have no efficacy without prayer, and that prayer might suffice without herbs; so that the inherited delight he had in wandering in the fields in search of foxglove and dandelion and coltsfoot, began to wear to him the character of a temptation.

Among the members of his church there was one young man, a little older than himself, with whom he had long lived in such close friendship that; it was the tradition of their Lantern Yard brethren to call them David and Jonathan. The real name of the friend was William Dane, and he, too, was regarded as a shining instance of youthful piety, though somewhat given to over severity towards weaker brethren, and to be so dazzled by his own light as to hold himself wiser than his teachers. But whatever blemishes others might discern in William, to his friend's mind he was faultless; for Silas Marner had one of those impressible self doubting natures which, at an inexperienced age, admire imperativeness and lean on contradiction.

The expression of trusting simplicity in Silas Marner's face, heightened by that absence of special observation, that defenseless, deer like gaze which belongs to large prominent eyes, was strongly contrasted by the self complacent suppression of inward triumph that lurked in the narrow slanting eyes and compressed lips of William Dane.

One of the most frequent topics of conversation between the two friends was assurance of salvation: Silas Marner confessed that he could never arrive at anything higher than hope mingled with fear, and listened with longing wonder when William declared that he had possessed unshaken assurance ever since, in the period of his conversion, he had dreamed that he saw the words 'calling and election sure' standing by themselves on a white page in the open Bible.

Such colloquies have entranced many pale faced weavers, whose unnurtured souls have been like young winged things, fluttering forsaken in the twilight.

It had seemed to the unsuspecting Silas Marner that the friendship had suffered no chill even from his formation of another attachment of a closer category. For some months he had been engaged to a young servant woman, waiting only for a little increase to their mutual savings in order to marry; and it was a great delight to him that Sarah did not object to William's occasional presence in their Sunday interviews.

It was at this point in their history that Silas Marner's cataleptic fit occurred during the prayer meeting; and amidst the various queries and expressions of interest addressed to him by his fellow members, William's suggestion alone jarred with the general sympathy towards a brother thus singled out for special dealings. He observed that, to him, this trance looked more like a visitation of Satan than a proof of divine favor, and exhorted his friend to see that he hid no accursed thing within his soul.

Silas Marner, feeling bound to accept rebuke and admonition as a brotherly office, felt no resentment, but only pain, at his friend's doubts concerning him; and to this was soon added some anxiety at the perception that Sarah's manner towards him began to exhibit a strange fluctuation between an effort at an increased manifestation of regard and involuntary signs of shrinking and dislike. He asked her if she wished to break off their engagement; but she denied this: their engagement was known to the church, and had been recognized in the prayer meetings; it could not be broken off without strict investigation, and Sarah could render no reason that would be sanctioned by the feeling of the community.

At this time the senior deacon was taken dangerously ill, and, being a childless widower, he was tended night and day by some of the younger brethren or sisters. Silas Marner frequently took his turn in the night - watching with William, the one relieving the other at two in the morning. The old man, contrary to expectation, seemed to be on the way to recovery, when one night Silas Marner, sitting up by his bedside, observed that his usually audible breathing had ceased. The candle was burning low, and he had to lift it to see the patient's face distinctly. Examination convinced him that the deacon was dead - had been dead some time, for the limbs were rigid. Silas Marner asked himself if he had been asleep, and looked at the clock: it was already four in the morning. How was it that William had not come?

In much anxiety he went to seek for help, and soon there were several friends assembled in the house, the minister among them, while Silas Marner went away to his work, wishing he could have met William to know the reason of his non-appearance. But at six o'clock, as he was thinking of going to seek his friend, William came, and with him the minister. They came to summon him to Lantern Yard, to meet the church members there; and to his inquiry concerning the cause of the summons the only reply was, 'You will hear.' No thing further was said until Silas Marner was seated in the vestry, in front of the minister, with the eyes of those who to him represented God's humans fixed solemnly upon him.

The minister, taking out a pocket-knife, showed it to Silas Marner, and asked him if he knew where he had left that knife? Silas Marner said, he did not know that he had left it anywhere out of his own pocket - but he was trembling at this strange interrogation. He was then exhorted not to hide his sin, but to confess and repent. The knife had been found in the bureau by the departed deacon's bedside - found in the place where the little bag of church money had lain, which the minister himself had seen the day before. Some hand had removed that bag; and whose hand could it be, if not that of the man to whom the knife belonged? For some time Silas Marner was mute with astonishment: then he said, 'God will clear me: I know nothing about the knife being there, or the money being gone. Search me and my dwelling: you will find nothing but three pound five of my own savings, which William Dane knows I have had these six months.'

At this William groaned, but the minister said, 'The proof is heavy against you, brother Silas Marner. The money was taken in the night last past, and no man was with our departed brother but you, for William Dane declares to us that he was hindered by sudden sickness from going to take his place as usual, and you yourself said that he had not come; and, moreover, you neglected the dead body.'

'I must have slept,' said Silas Marner. Then, after a pause, he added, 'Or I must have had another visitation like that which you have all seen me under, so that the thief must have come and gone while I was not in the body, but out of the body. But, I say again, search me and my dwelling, for I have been nowhere else'.

The search was made, and it ended - in William Dane's finding the well known bag, empty, tucked behind the chest of drawers in Silas Marner's chamber! On this William exhorted his friend to confess, and not to hide his sin any longer. Silas Marner turned a look of keen reproach on him, and said, 'William, for nine years that we have known each other, have you ever known me tell a lie? But God will clear me.'

'Brother,' said William, 'how do I know what you may have done in the secret chambers of your heart, to give Satan an advantage over you?'

Silas Marner was still looking at his friend. Suddenly a deep flush came over his face, and he was about to speak impetuously, when he seemed checked again by some inward shock, that sent the flush back and made him tremble.

But at last he spoke feebly, looking at William. 'I remember now - the knife wasn't in my pocket.'

William said, 'I know nothing of what you mean.'

The other individuals present, however, began to inquire where Silas Marner meant to say that the knife was, but he would give no further explanation: he only said, 'I am sore stricken; Ican say nothing. God will clear me.'

On their return to the vestry there was further deliberation. Any resort to legal measures for ascertaining the culprit was contrary to the principles of the Church: prosecution was held by them to be forbidden to Christians, even if it had been a case in which there was no scandal to the community. But they were bound to take other measures for finding out the truth, and they resolved on praying and drawing lots. This resolution can be a surprise to those who are unacquainted with that obscure relgious life which has gone on in the alleys of our towns. Silas Marner knelt with his brethren, relying on his own innocence being certified by immediate divine intervention, but feeling that there was sorrow for him even then that his trust in man had been cruelly bruised.

The lots declared that Silas Marner was guilty. He was solemnly suspended from church membership, and called upon to render up the stolen money: only on confession, as the sign of repentance, could he be received once more within the fold of the church.

Silas Marner listened in silence. At last, when every one rose to depart, he went towards William Dane and said, in a voice shaken by agitation - 'The last time I remember using my knife, was when I took it out to cut a strap for you. I don't remember putting it in my pocket again. You stole the money, and you have woven a plot to lay the sin at my door. As you may prosper, for all that: there is no just God that governs the earth righteously, but a God of lies, that bears witness against the innocent.' There was a general shudder at this blasphemy.

William said meekly, 'I leave our brethren to judge whether this is the voice of Satan or not. I can do nothing but pray for you, Silas Marner.'

Poor Silas Marner went out with that despair in his soul - that shaken trust in God and man, which is little short of madness to a loving nature.

In the bitterness of his wounded spirit, he said to himself, 'She will cast me off too.' And he reflected that, if she did not believe the testimony against him, her whole faith must be upset, as his was.

To humans accustomed to reason about the forms in which their relgious feeling has incorporated itself, it is difficult to enter into that simple, untaught state of mind in which the form and the feeling have never been severed by an act of reflection.

We are apt to think it inevitable that a man in Silas Marner's position should have begun to question the validity of an appeal to the divine judgement by drawing lots; but to him this would have been an effort of independent thought such as he had never known; and he must have made the effort at a moment when all his energies were turned into the anguish of disappointed faith. If there is an angel who records the sorrows of men as well as their sins, he desire how many and deep are the sorrows that spring from false ideas for which no man is culpable.

Silas Marner went home, and for a whole day sat alone, stunned by despair, without any impulse to go to Sarah and attempt to win her belief in his innocence. The second day he took refuge from benumbing unbelief, by getting into his loom and working away as usual; and before many hours were past, the minister and one of the deacons came to him with the message from Sarah, that she held her engagement to him at an end. Silas Marner received the message mutely, and then turned away from the messengers to work at his loom again. In little more than a month from that time, Sarah was married to William Dane; and not long afterwards it was known to the brethren in Lantern Yard that Silas Marner had departed from the village."

"So, year after year, Silas Marner had lived in this solitude, his guineas rising in the iron pot, and his life narrowing and hardening itself more and more into a mere pulsation of desire and satisfaction that had no relation to any other being. His life had reduced itself to the mere functions of weaving and hoarding, without any contemplation of an end towards which the functions tended. The same sort of process has perhaps been under gone by wiser men, when they have been cut off from faith and compassion only, instead of a loom and a heap of guineas, they have had some erudite research, some ingenious project, or some well-knit theory."

"'Where is the money?' now took such entire possession of Dunstan as to make him quite forget that the weaver's death was not a certainty. A dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters an unnatural desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was clothes problematic. And Dunstan's mind was as dull as the mind of a possible felon usually is. There were only three hiding places where he had ever heard of cottagers' hoards being found: the thatch, the bed, and a hole in the floor. Silas Marner's cottage had no thatch; and Dunstan's first act, after a train of thought made rapid by the stimulus of cupidity, was to go up to the bed; but while he did so, his eyes traveled eagerly over the floor, where the bricks, distinct in the fire light, were discernible under the sprinkling of sand.

But not everywhere; for there was one spot, and one only, which was quite covered with sand, and sand showing the marks of fingers which had apparently been careful to spread it over a given space. It was near the treddles of the loom. In an instant Dunstan darted to that spot, swept away the sand with his whip, and, inserting the thin end of the hook between the bricks, found that they were loose. In haste he lifted up two bricks, and saw what he had no doubt was the object of his search; for what could there be but money in those two leathern bags? And, from their weight, they must be filled with guineas. Dunstan felt round the hole, to be certain that it held no more; then hastily replaced the bricks, and spread the sand over them."

"There was pauper's burial that week and it was known that the dark haired woman with the fair child, who had lately come to lodge there, was gone away again. That was all the note taken that Molly had disappeared from the eyes of men. But the unwept death which, to the general lot, seemed as trivial as the summer shed leaf, was charged with the force of destiny to certain human lives that we know of, shaping their joys and sorrows even to the end."

"Silas Marner's determination to keep the 'tramp's child' was matter of hardly less surprising and iterated talk in the village than the robbery of his money. That softening of feeling towards him which dated from his misfortune, that merging of suspicion and dislike in a rather contemptuous pity for him as lone and crazy, was now accompanied with a more active sympathy, especially among the women."

"Notwithstanding the difficulty of carrying her and his yam or linen at the time, Silas Marner took Eppie with him on most of his journeys to the farm houses, unwilling to leave her behind at Dolly Winthrop's, who was always ready to take care of her; and little curly headed Eppie, the weaver's child, became an object of interest at several out lying homesteads, as well as in the village. "

"Hitherto he had been treated very much as if he had been a useful gnome or brownie - a queer and unaccountable creature, who must necessarily be looked at with wondering curiosity and repulsion, and with whom one would be glad to make all greetings and bargains as brief as possible, but who must be dealt with in a propitiatory way, and occasionally have a present of pork or garden stuff to carry home with him, seeing that without him there was no getting the yarn woven.

Now Silas Marner met with open smiling faces and cheerful questioning, as a individual whose satisfactions and difficulties could be understood. Even here he must sit a little and talk about the child, and words of interest were always ready for him: 'Ah, Master Silas Marner, you'll be lucky if she takes the measles soon and easy!' - or, 'Why, there isn't many lone men 'ud ha' been wishing to take up with a little un like that: but I reckon the weaving makes you handier than men as do outdoor work - you're partly as handy as a woman, for weaving comes next to spinning.' "

"Elderly masters and mistresses, seated observantly in large kitchen armchairs, shook their heads over the difficulties attendant on rearing children, felt Eppie's round arms and legs, and pronounced them remarkably firm, and told Silas Marner that, if she turned out well (which, however, there was no telling), it would be a fine thing for him to have a steady lass to do for him when he got helpless.

Servant maidens were fond of carrying her out to look at the hens and chickens, or to see if any cherries could be shaken down in the orchard; and the small boys and girls approached her slowly, with cautious motion and steady gaze, like little dogs face to face with one of their own category, till attraction had reached the point at which the soft lips were put out for a kiss.

No child was afraid of approaching Silas Marner when Eppie was near him: there was no repulsion around him now, either for young or old; for the little child had come to link him once more with the whole Earth. There was compassion between him and the child that blent them into one, and there was compassion between the child and the Earth - from men and women with parental looks and tones, to the red lady-birds and the round pebbles."

"Silas Marner began now to think of life entirely in relation to Eppie: she must have every thing that was good; and he listened docilely, that he might come to understand better what this life was, from which, for fifteen years, he had stood aloof as from a strange thing, with which he could have no communion: as some man who has a precious plant to which he would give a nurturing home in a new soil, thinks of the rain and sunshine, and all influences, in relation to his nursling, and asks industriously for all knowledge that will help him to satisfy the wants of the searching roots, or to guard leaf and bud from invading harm. "

"The disposition to hoard had been utterly crushed at the very first by the loss of his long stored gold: the coins he earned afterwards seemed as irrelevant as stones brought to complete a house suddenly buried by an earthquake; the sense of bereavement was too heavy upon him for the old thrill of satisfaction to arise again at the touch of the newly earned coin.

And now something had come to replace his hoard which gave a growing purpose to the earnings, drawing his hope and joy continually onward beyond the money. In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright earth, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's."

"It is impossible to mistake Silas Marner. His large brown eyes appear to have gathered a longer vision, as is the way with eyes that have been short-sighted in early life, and they have a less vague, a more answering look; but in everything else one sees signs of a frame much enfeebled by the lapse of the sixteen years. The weaver's bent shoulders and white hair give him almost the look of advanced age, though he is not more than five-and-fifty; but there is the freshest blossom of youth close by his side.

A blonde dimpled girl of eighteen, who has vainly tried to chastise her curly auburn hair into smoothness under her brown bonnet: the hair ripples as obstinately as a brooklet under the March breeze, and the little ringlets burst away from the restraining comb behind and show themselves below the bonnet-crown."

"Since the time the child was sent to me and I have come to compassion her as myself, I have had light enough to trust in God; and, now she says she'll never leave me, I think I shall trust in God until I die.' said Silas Marner."

-From Silas Marner - George Eliot or Mary Ann Evans, English author and philospher

never to late to be what you might have been

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This website defines a new perspective with which to engage reality to which its author adheres. The author feels that the falsification of reality outside personal experience has created a populace unable to discern propaganda from reality and that this has been done purposefully by an international corporate cartel through their agents who wish to foist a corrupt version of reality on the human race. Religious intolerance occurs when any group refuses to tolerate religious practices, religious beliefs or persons due to their religious ideology. This web site marks the founding of a system of philosophy named The Truth of the Way of Life - a rational gnostic mystery religion based on reason which requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme leader, no church buildings and in which each and every individual is encouraged to develop a personal relation with the Creator and Sustainer through the pursuit of the knowledge of reality in the hope of curing the spiritual corruption that has enveloped the human spirit. The tenets of The Truth of the Way of Life are spelled out in detail on this web site by the author. Violent acts against individuals due to their religious beliefs in America is considered a "hate crime."

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