He is a small, sleek-headed bachelor of five and
forty, whose scandalous life has long furnished his more moral neighbors
with an afterdinner joke.' But a very religious man is Mr. Budd! Mrs.
Linnett is a very religious woman. She dotes on religious biography. 'On
taking up the biography of a celebrated preacher, she immediately turns
to the end to see what he died of,' and she likes the book all the
better if a sinister element enters into its composition. Mrs. Linnett
is a very religious woman--and a gossip! We are introduced to a whole
group of such characters--men and women who are very religious, but who
are none the better for their religion.

And, side by side with these unamiable figures, are a set of people,
equally religious, whose characters are immeasurably sweetened and
strengthened by their religion. It is not that they profess another
faith, attend another church, or spend lives remote from the affairs
with which the others have to do. As George Eliot herself pointed out,
when the publisher hesitated to commit himself to this manuscript, it
was not a case of one religion against another, or of one creed against
another, or of one church against another, or even of one minister
against another. The members of this second group move in the same
environment as do the members of the first; Sunday by Sunday they make
their way to the self-same sanctuaries; yet every day they grow in
gentleness, in thoughtfulness, in kindness, and in all those graces of
behavior that constitute the charm of lovable and helpful lives. In this
attractive group we find Mr. Jerome, Mr. Tryan, and little Mrs.
Pettifer.

It is, of course, an old story, vividly and startlingly retold. The same
cause will produce diametrically opposite effects. The sun that softens
the wax hardens the clay. The benefit that I derive from my religion,
and the enjoyment that it affords me, must depend upon the response that
I make to it. The rays of light that fade my coat add a warmer blush to
the petals of the rose. Why? My coat does not want the light and makes
no response to it; the rose cannot bloom without the light and drinks in
the soft rays as the source of all its beauty. Under the influence of
the sunshine, the violets in the vase droop and become noisome; the
living lilies under my window unfold and assume an even statelier grace.
It is all a matter of response. Religion was always beating upon the
lives of Mr. Dempster and Mr. Budd and Mrs.