incorporated in a narrow religious sect, where the poorest layman
has the chance of distinguishing himself by gifts of speech, and
has, at the very least, the weight of a silent voter in the
government of his community. Marner was highly thought of in that
little hidden world, known to itself as the church assembling in
Lantern Yard; he was believed to be a young man of exemplary life
and ardent faith; and a peculiar interest had been centred in him
ever since he had fallen, at a prayer-meeting, into a mysterious
rigidity and suspension of consciousness, which, lasting for an hour
or more, had been mistaken for death. To have sought a medical
explanation for this phenomenon would have been held by Silas
himself, as well as by his minister and fellow-members, a wilful
self-exclusion from the spiritual significance that might lie
therein. Silas was evidently a brother selected for a peculiar
discipline; and though the effort to interpret this discipline was
discouraged by the absence, on his part, of any spiritual vision
during his outward trance, yet it was believed by himself and others
that its effect was seen in an accession of light and fervour.
A less truthful man than he might have been tempted into the
subsequent creation of a vision in the form of resurgent memory; a
less sane man might have believed in such a creation; but Silas was
both sane and honest, though, as with many honest and fervent men,
culture had not defined any channels for his sense of mystery, and
so it spread itself over the proper pathway of inquiry and
knowledge. He had inherited from his mother some acquaintance with
medicinal herbs and their preparation--a little store of wisdom
which she had imparted to him as a solemn bequest--but of late
years he had had doubts about the lawfulness of applying this
knowledge, believing that herbs could have no efficacy without
prayer, and that prayer might suffice without herbs; so that the