Adam Bede

en the village and the Hall Farm. Dinah had taken off her little Quaker bonnet again, and was holding it in her hands that she might have a freer enjoyment of the

elt this dimly; he said to himself, “She’s too good and holy for any man, let alone me,” and the words he had been summoning rushed back again before they had reached his lips. But another thought gave him courage: “There’s no man could love her better and leave her freer to follow the Lord’s work.” They ha

r mind to go back to Snow

n hand and beckoning to me. And this morning when I opened the Bible for direction, the first words my eyes fell on were, ‘And after we had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured to go into Macedonia.’ If it wasn’t for that clear showing of the Lor

I might win you after seven years was over. I know you think a husband ’ud be taking up too much o’ your thoughts, because St. Paul says, ‘She that’s married careth for the things of the world how she may please her husband’; and may happen you’ll think me overbold to speak to you about it again, after what you told me o’ your mind last Saturday. But I’ve been thinking it over again by night and by day, and I’ve prayed not to be blinded by my own desires, to think what’s only good for me must be good for you too. And it seems to me there’s more texts for your marrying than ever you can find against it. For St. Paul says as plain as can be in another plac

as called me to minister to others, not to have any joys or sorrows of my own, but to rejoice with them that do rejoice, and to weep with those that weep. He has called me to speak his word, and he has greatly owned my work. It could only be on a very clear showing that I could leave the brethren and sisters at Snowfield, who are favoured with very little of this world’s good; where the trees are few, so that a child might count them, and there’s very hard living for the poor in the winter. It has been given me to help, to comfort, and strengthen the little flock there and to call in many wanderers; and my soul is filled with these things from my rising up till my lying down. My life is too short, and God’s work is too great for me to think of making a home for myself in this world. I’ve not turned a deaf ear to your words, Seth, for when I saw as your love was given to me, I thought it might be

t seems as if, when you are gone, I could never joy in anything any more. I think it’s something passing the love of women as I feel for you, for I could be content without your marrying me if I could go and live at Snowfield and be near you. I tru

shades if

ning i

ul’s bright

my ris

wouldn’t be displeased with me if things turned out so as

nothing without the Lord’s clear bidding. It’s a bleak and barren country there, not like this land of Gos

letter, Dinah, if there was

u’re in any trouble. You’ll b

He paused and hesitated after she had given him her hand, and then said, “There’s no k

as I’ve read in one of Mr. Wesley’s books. It isn’t for you and me

an gives to a woman whom he feels to be greater and better than himself. Love of this sort is hardly distinguishable from religious feeling. What deep and worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or art or music. Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or Beethoven symphonies all bring with them the consciousness that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty; our emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression

udimentary culture, which linked their thoughts with the past, lifted their imagination above the sordid details of their own narrow lives, and suffused their souls with the sense of a pitying, loving, infinite Presence, sweet as summer to the houseless needy. It is t

y opening the Bible at hazard; having a literal way of interpreting the Scriptures, which is not at all sanctioned by approved commentators; and it is impossibie for me to represent their diction as correct, or their instruction as liberal. Still — if I have read religious history aright — faith, hope, and charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a sensibility to the three c

tomed as we may be to weep over the loftier sorrows of heroines in satin boots and crino

im to “hold on tight”; and instead of bursting out into wild accusing apostrophes to God and destiny, he is resolving, as he now walks homew