The Midway Inn.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3377, 18 October 1879, Page 1

The Midway Inn.

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When I was a schoolboy, I had a long journey to take between home and school. Exactly midway there was a hill with an inn upon it, at which we changed horses. It was a point to which I looked forward with very different feelings when going ' and returning. The innkeeper rewired ug with equal hospitality on both occasions, and it was qnite evident did not care one farthing in which direction we wero tending; bo would watch us depart with equal serenity, whether we went east or west. I thought him at one.time the most genial of Bonifaces, and at another a mere mocker 6f human woe. When I grew up, I perceired that he was a - philosopher. * And. now I keep the Midway Inn myself, and watch from the hill-top the passengers come and go—some loth, some j willing, like myself of old—and listen to their talk in the coffee-room; or sometimes in a prirate parlour, where, though they speak low and gravely, their converse is still unrestrained, because, you see, I am the*, landlord. Sometimes they speak of Death and the Hereafter, of which the child they buried yesterday knows more than the wisest of them, and more than Shakespeare knew. The being totally ignorant of the subject does not indeed (as you may perhaps have observed in other matters) deter them from speaking of it with. great confidence; out the views of a minority would surprise you, and this minority is growing—coming to majority. ' Every day I see an increase of; the doubtera. It is not a question of the Orthodox and tbe Infidel, you must understand, at all, though that is assuming great proportions; but there is every day more uncertainty among them, and, what is much more noteworthy, more dissatisfaction. Years ago, when a hardy Cambridge scholar dared to publish his doubts of an eternal punishment overtaking the - wicked, an- orthodox professor of the same college took him (theologically) by the throat, "You are destroying," he cried, " the hope of the Christian." But this is not the hope I speak of (as losing its hold upon men's minds); I mean the real hope, the hope of Heaven. When I used to go to church—for my Inn is too far removed from it to admit of my attendance there now-a-days—matters were very different. Heaven and, Hell were, in the eyes not only of our congregation, but of those who hung about the doors in the Hummer sun, or even played leap-frog over the grave-stones, as distinct alternatives as the east and west highways on each side of my Inn. If you did not go one way you must go the other; and not only so, but an immense | desire was felt by very many to go in the right direction. Now I perceive it is not 1 so. A considerable number of highway passengers, though even they aro less numerous than of old, are still studious— . that it is in their aspirations—to avoid taking (shall* I say delicately) 'the lower road ; but only a few comparatively, are ! solicitous to reach the goal of the upper. Let ■me once more observe that I am speaking of the ordinary passengers— those who travel by the mail. Of the persons who are convinced that there never was an Architect of the Universe, and that man sprang from the Mollusc I know little or nothing: they mostly; travel two and two, in gigs, and have : quarrelled so dreadfully on the way, that, at the Inn, they don't speak to one another. The commonalty, I repeat, are losing their hopes of heaven, just as the grown-up schoolboy finds his paradise no moro in home. I can remember when divines were never tired of painting the lily, of indulging in the most* glowing descriptions of the Elysian Fields, A popular artist once drew a, picture of them: MThe Plains of Heaven""it was called, and the painter's name was Martin. If he was to do so now, tho public (who are vulgar) would exclaim. .."Betty Martin." ISot that they disbelieved in it, but that tho attractions of the place, like those of Bath and Cheltenham, are dying out. Of course some blame attaches to the divines themselves, that things have come to such a pass. " I protest," says a great philosopher, " that I. never enter a church, Continued in Fourth Page, i(- .. .'.