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Soul of a Bishop-Part2_H. G. WELLS (1866-1946)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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doubter. Whatever questionings had marked his intellectual



adolescence had either been very slight or had been too

adequately answered to leave any serious scars upon his



convictions.

And even now he felt that he was afflicted physically rather



than mentally, that some protective padding of nerve-sheath or

brain-case had worn thin and weak, and left him a prey to strange



disturbances, rather than that any new process of thought was

eating into his mind. These doubts in his mind were still not



really doubts; they were rather alien and, for the first time,

uncontrolled movements of his intelligence. He had had a



sheltered upbringing; he was the well-connected son of a

comfortable rectory, the only son and sole survivor of a family



of three; he had been carefully instructed and he had been a

willing learner; it had been easy and natural to take many things



for granted. It had been very easy and pleasant for him to take

the world as he found it and God as he found Him. Indeed for all



his years up to manhood he had been able to take life exactly as

in his infancy he took his carefully warmed and prepared bottle



--unquestioningly and beneficially.

And indeed that has been the way with most bishops since



bishops began.

It is a busy continuous process that turns boys into bishops,



and it will stand few jars or discords. The student of

ecclesiastical biography will find that an early vocation has in



every age been almost universal among them; few are there among

these lives that do not display the incipient bishop from the



tenderest years. Bishop How of Wakefield composed hymns before he

was eleven, and Archbishop Benson when scarcely older possessed a



little oratory in which he conducted services and--a pleasant

touch of the more secular boy--which he protected from a too



inquisitive sister by means of a booby trap. It is rare that

those marked for episcopal dignities go so far into the outer



world as Archbishop Lang of York, who began as a barrister. This

early predestination has always been the common episcopal



experience. Archbishop Benson's early attempts at religious

services remind one both of St. Thomas a Becket, the "boy



bishop," and those early ceremonies of St. Athanasius which were

observed and inquired upon by the good bishop Alexander. (For



though still a tender infant, St. Athanasius with perfect

correctness and validity was baptizing a number of his innocent



playmates, and the bishop who "had paused to contemplate the

sports of the child remained to confirm the zeal of the



missionary.") And as with the bishop of the past, so with the

bishop of the future; the Rev. H. J. Campbell, in his story of



his soul's pilgrimage, has given us a pleasant picture of himself

as a child stealing out into the woods to build himself a little



altar.

Such minds as these, settled as it were from the outset, are



either incapable of real scepticism or become sceptical only

after catastrophic changes. They understand the sceptical mind



with difficulty, and their beliefs are regarded by the sceptical

mind with incredulity. They have determined their forms of belief



before their years of discretion, and once those forms are

determined they are not very easily changed. Within the shell it



has adopted the intelligence may be active and lively enough, may

indeed be extraordinarily active and lively, but only within the



shell.

There is an entire difference in the mental quality of those



who are converts to a faith and those who are brought up in it.

The former know it from outside as well as from within. They know



not only that it is, but also that it is not. The latter have a

confidence in their creed that is one with their apprehension of



sky or air or gravitation. It is a primarymentalstructure, and

they not only do not doubt but they doubt the good faith of those



who do. They think that the Atheist and Agnostic really believe

but are impelled by a mysteriousobstinacy to deny. So it had



been with the Bishop of Princhester; not of cunning or design but

in simple good faith he had accepted all the inherited assurances



of his native rectory, and held by Church, Crown, Empire,

decorum, respectability, solvency--and compulsory Greek at the



Little Go--as his father had done before him. If in his




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