England -- Fiction; Imaginary wars and battles -- Fiction
The personal tie between my father and those among whom he lived and
worked was not a very close or intimate bond. His contribution to the
Cambridge History was greatly appreciated by scholars, and his
archaeological research won him the respect and esteem of his peers in
that branch of study. But I cannot pretend that his loss was keenly felt
by his parishioners, with most of whom his relations had been strictly
professional rather than personal. A good man and true, without a trace
of anything sordid or self-seeking in his nature, my father was yet
singularly indifferent to everything connected with the daily lives and
welfare of his fellow creatures.
In this he was typical of a considerable section of the country clergy
of the time. I knew colleagues of his who were more pronounced examples
of the type. One in particular I call to mind (whose living was in the
gift of a Cambridge college, like my father's), who, though a good
fellow and a clean-lived gentleman, was no more a Christian than he was
a Buddhist--less, upon the whole. Among scholarly folk he made not the
slightest pretence of regarding the fundamental tenets of the Christian
faith in the light of anything more serious than interesting historical
myths, notable sections in the mosaic of folk-lore, which it was his
pride and delight to study and understand.
Such men as A---- R---- and my father (and there were many like them,
and more who shared their aloofness while lacking half their virtues)
lived hard-working, studious lives, in which the common kinds of
self-indulgence played but a very small part. Honourable, kindly at
heart, gentle, rarely consciously selfish, these worthy men never gave a
thought to the current affairs of their country, to their own part as
citizens, or to the daily lives of their fellow countrymen. Indeed, they
exhibited a kind of gentle intolerance and contempt in all topical
concerns; and though they preached religion and drew stipends as
expounders of Christianity, they no more thought of "prying" or
"interfering," as they would have said, into the actual lives and hearts
and minds of those about them, than of thrusting their hands into their
parishioners' pockets.
Stated in this bald way the thing may sound incredible, but those whose
recollections carry them back to the opening years of the century will
bear me out in saying that this was far from being either the most
distressing or the most remarkable among the outworkings of what was
then extolled as a broad spirit of tolerance. Our "tolerance," our
vaunted "cosmopolitanism," were far more dangerous factors of our
national life, had we but known it, than either the insularity of our
sturdy forbears or the strength of our enemies had ever been.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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