By all the
principles of "poetic justice," Mr Tryan ought to have recovered and
married Janet; under the influence of her larger nature to have shaken
off his narrownesses; to have lived down all contempt and opposition, and
become the respected influential incumbent of the town; and in due time
to have toned down from his "enthusiasm of humanity" into the simply
earnest, hard-working, and rather commonplace town rector. Better,
because truer, as it is. Only in the earlier dawn of this higher life of
the soul, either in the race or in the individual man; only in the days
of the Isaacs and Jacobs of our young humanity, though not with the
Abrahams, the Moses', or the Joshuas even then; only when the soul first
begins to apprehend that its true relation to God is to be realised only
through the Cross--is there conscience and habitual "respect unto the
recompense" of _any_ reward.
In 'Adam Bede,' the first of George Eliot's more elaborate works, the
illustrations of the great moral purpose we have assigned to her are so
numerous and varied, that it is not easy to select from among them.
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