© 1998 by Michael R. Phillips
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-2956-4
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Cover illustration © Erin Dertner / Exclusively represented by Applejack Licensing
To Gregory, Heidi, and Penny,
and those dear and loyal friends
who have loved and supported us
in this difficult time.
Thank you all!
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Introduction
Prologue
Stormy Tryst
Mysterious Alliance
Root of Strife
Part I: A Happy Family
1. A Mother’s Dream
2. A Father’s Vision
3. Of Tomatoes and the Future
4. Reflections and Dreams
5. A Kitchen Mêlée
6. Lofty Objectives
7. Shadowy Schemes
8. Difference of Outlook
9. A Ride
10. Encounter With a Woodcutter
11. A Family Discussion About Changing Times
12. Something Strange in the Garret
Part II: First Glances Inward
13. We Can Change the World!
14. Center of Civilization
15. Clandestine Arrangements
16. Last-Minute Reflections
17. Annoying Disturbance
18. Sir Charles Rutherford
19. Which Direction the Future?
20. A Changing World
21. Breaking of the Cocoon
22. The Beast Hand
23. Unexpected Claim of Conscience
Part III: Unexpected Change
24. A Morning Walk
25. Jermyn Street Again
26. New Hope Chapel
27. Unusual Errand
28. Where Does Conscience Come From?
29. The Proof . . . Is Within You!
30. Storm and Rainbow
31. What Am I to Do?
32. Probing Words Out of the Past
33. Old Friendship Renewed
34. A Newly Changed World
35. Purple Messenger
36. Private Sanctuary and Decision
37. God Can’t Love Me
38. Individual Marks of a Father’s Love
Part IV: All Things New
39. Silent Witness to High Things
40. A Lunch at the Cottage
41. A Conversation in the Barn
42. Paris in Spring
43. The London Rutherfords
44. Amanda and Cousin Geoffrey
45. Difference of Opinion
46. Invitation to the Country
47. The Other Side of the Door
48. The Mystery of Our Hope
49. The Keys
50. New Values, Hard Questions
51. A Prayer Garden
52. Why Must God Be Good?
53. Life—A Good Thing
54. Adventure in the Loft
55. Unsought Advice
56. A Puzzling Scripture
57. God’s Daughters
58. What Would Happen If We Trusted Men?
59. Husband and Wife
60. Wintry Surprise
61. The Sleigh Ride
Part V: Challenge and Decision
62. New Challenges, New Opportunities
63. The Boy With the Withered Leg
64. Opportunity and Adventure
65. The Place of Heather
66. Different Human Plants
67. Happy Evening
68. The Mystery of the Heather Garden
69. Exploration
70. Pinnacle of Success
71. Surprise Discovery
72. In the Stables
73. Unfamiliar Ground
74. Far-Reaching Questions
75. The Future of Liberal Leadership
76. In What Arena Change?
77. The Decision
78. What Came of It
79. Thoughts of Far Away
80. Overheard Prayers
Part VI: Crisis
81. A New Century Accelerates Progress
82. Fateful Encounter
83. Birthday Reflections
84. Surprise Caller
85. Bold Proclamation
86. Mothers and Daughters
87. Parental Concern
88. An Unwelcome Letter
89. Explosive Talk
90. Another Letter and Its Result
Part VII: Heartbreak and Hope
91. Dawn Through the Clouds
92. Deeper and Stronger
93. Brother and Sister
94. Unknown Connections
95. Privilege of the Prodigal’s Parent
96. Father and Son
97. Prayers for a Prodigal Daughter
98. Thank You!
Epilogue
The Rutherford Family Lineage
About the Author
Fiction by Michael Phillips
Introduction
Ideas and Change
My objective as a writer is more than to just tell stories. Though I certainly want my books to be enjoyable, it is important to me that they contain more than entertainment value.
I approach every new project, therefore, by asking myself what unique elements I might bring to a book or series to make it a distinctive literary experience for those who eventually read it.
“What human struggles, historical issues, and spiritual concepts can I explore,” I ask myself, “that haven’t come up in quite the same way in previous books? How might I develop a new range of characters whose lives will be fresh and interesting? What thought-provoking challenges can I cause these characters to face that will enable them to grow? How will the individuals in the story interact emotionally with those around them and within their specific historical and cultural milieu? Most important, how will they respond to God when he makes his presence felt in their hearts?”
All this no doubt stems from what I as a reader look for in a novel. When I read, I want to grow and be changed from the experience. I enjoy finding myself intellectually and spiritually challenged. I want to think and learn. I want to feel that I’ve met real people whose experiences will stay with me. I want to know that I’ve genuinely experienced some place on the globe or some period in history about which I was unfamiliar before. When I finish a book, I hope I will be a little different than when I began. I want to feel that I’ve enjoyed a full-course literary meal rather than just a snack. When I took to writing myself, therefore, it was with the hope of producing the sorts of books that I personally like to read, with the kinds of characters and issues that I myself find intriguing. After
all, if I’m not fascinated by the lives of my characters, how can I expect readers to be?
It is the qualities I have described above that make the Scottish novelist George MacDonald my favorite author. Some complain that these complexities cause my books, like MacDonald’s, to be too long and involved, that every title is really two books in one. I take such comments as great compliments, signs that readers are getting their money’s worth. For I happen to enjoy best those books that take weeks to read, that are journeys rather than two-hour television programs. One of my favorite MacDonalds is 786 pages! That book is not just a story. It is an experience!
The era in which I chose to set THE SECRETS OF HEATHERSLEIGH HALL is a historical period I find especially fascinating from several different perspectives. I would sum it up by calling it an era of ideas and of change. Both play significant roles in this first book of the series.
In most historical novels, a strong sense of historical events (war, revolution, social change, and so on) is intrinsic to the story. The particular setting of this book, however, is one of relative tranquility. The late Victorian period in England was an era characterized by a free flow of new ideas rather than by events. Some of these ideas would later be proved to be fallacious (communism). Some would stand the test of time (universal suffrage). About others (evolution, universal reconciliation), debate rages on a hundred years later.
At the outset of this project, I found myself intrigued by the question of what stresses would come to a thoroughly “modern” family in this pivotal age, one with little prior spiritual inclination or background, if suddenly confronted by the Gospel in a new and personal way. What would be the ideas they would wrestle through? What changes would result? What would be the impact on each family member, on the relationships of husband and wife, on the family as a whole, on their views, on their world outlook?
This was something I had not done in a book before. The more I considered it, the more fascinated I became. Especially, I became curious to consider how a man and woman confronting God personally for the first time might wrestle through issues of spirituality as the intellectualism of the times worked in combination with the deep emotional tugging of the Holy Spirit on their hearts. I am extremely intrigued by this interplay between the rational and the emotional. It is a component of the spiritual life often overlooked in today’s occasionally pietistic spiritual climate.
Furthermore, I found myself wondering what tension such a fundamental change as conversion might bring to a family in that age. What if the husband and wife were not in agreement in all things? How would the children in such a family react? What if the change were not welcomed by some family members? (These questions, of course, could apply just as easily to our own time.)
The thought of such potential familial stresses led to another question I thought it important to explore—that is, why do people without religious background become Christians, and what happens to them afterward?
I think too often we base evangelism on what God can do for us—Accept the Lord and he will give you a happy life. That’s backward to my way of thinking. If salvation is not based on the truth of God’s character, on his inherent goodness and love for us, and on our obedience as we respond to give back that love, then I think its foundation will always be faulty. Happy lives, sunny skies, abundance, blessing, and ideal circumstances do not necessarily follow giving one’s heart to the Lord. We live as God’s children because he is our Father, not because he lavishes us with blessings. Some lives are hard. Some questions are not answered in this life. But that does not change who God is and how we are called to respond to him.
For all these reasons, I felt it important that everything not necessarily go smoothly and rosily because the characters in this story encounter God. Real life doesn’t usually work that way. Neither do the lives of the family Rutherford, whom you are about to meet.
With these comments about my objectives as foundational, I would also like to tell you a little more about the time in which the Rutherfords lived and why I find it such an intriguing period of English history. As I said, it was a time of ideas and change—and that’s putting it mildly. Late nineteenth-century Great Britain was a positive intellectual greenhouse for new concepts. In every field, from politics to science to theology, thinkers and policy makers were pushing past boundaries in ways that would have been inconceivable a hundred years before. Societal concerns gave rise to socialism. On its heels, communism was born in England during the final two decades of the nineteenth century. Scientific advances were changing the way people viewed the natural world. Darwin had already proposed an evolutionary foundation for the animal kingdom. Within the first decade of the twentieth century, Einstein would propose his theory of special relativity.
This surge of new ideas brought with it rapid and enormous societal change. Industrialism had already revolutionized both commerce and daily life. Electricity was changing the way people lived. Telephones were revolutionizing communication. Motorized engines were moving people faster and more conveniently than ever before. Cities were doubling in size every few years as life became increasingly urban.
The changes in British politics were just as rapid and as powerful. The British monarchy was losing power and influence while Parliament, once a bastion of conservatism and the aristocracy, was witnessing the birth of the Labour party. The middle class was rising in influence. All men, not just nobles, could now vote. That right would soon come to women as well.
Clearly, some of this change was for the better, some was not. Few will quarrel with the wisdom behind giving working men and women the vote and protecting children from grueling factory labor. The wisdom behind evolutionary and communist theory, however, might be more open to question. (It could be conjectured that most of the social change proved generally beneficial to people and culture, while many of the new philosophical ideas of the times produced a deviation from traditional and biblical truth.)
Absolutely central to this historical milieu was a climate of vigorous rationalism, which was applied not only to scientific matters, but to religious ones as well. Generalizations are always dangerous, of course, for they are never entirely true. But it seems nevertheless to be a valid observation that churchgoers of a century ago, in Great Britain especially, were more comfortable with intellectual dialogue as an integral component of spiritual life than are many of our own time.
People a century ago discussed and analyzed and thought issues out for themselves—far more, I believe, than many in Christian circles today. People attended public lectures as a pastime. Intellectual debate was a standard drawing-room activity. Such discussions often formed the evening’s entertainment. There was no radio or television. Instead, people sat in parlors and drawing rooms and discussed the current ideas being circulated in church and society and in the day’s magazines and newspapers.
This climate of discussion and debate shows itself quite clearly in this series. Not only are the ideas you will encounter here historical in themselves, so too are the dialogues in which these ideas are prominent. Readers accustomed to today’s “quick read” fiction may find this surprising and even, at times, a bit uncomfortable. Yet this style of writing and interaction is deliberate and, I hope, ultimately rewarding. My goal is to help you not just read about these times, but fully to experience them. Thus I hope you will be drawn into these discussions with the characters and feel a little what it was like to be a Christian in turn-of-the-century England.
So for those readers who occasionally desire more “action,” I would simply offer a reminder that 1890s England was not, in general, a fast-moving time. It was, however, a fascinating time, and one that was critical in shaping the world we live in today. If you can allow yourself to settle into the pace of the book and “live” it as intended, I believe you will find it fascinating as well.
The specific topics that people were debating at the turn of the century will be familiar to you, for many of today’s hot issues were born at approximately
that time. Traditional norms in every discipline and walk of life—science, society, business, politics, industry, art, music, and religion—were being questioned. The debate between God and science, evolution and creation, was at the forefront of everyone’s thinking. Everything from women’s rights to Darwin’s ideas about natural selection was vigorously and heatedly debated—as they are in the book you are about to read.
Three topics in particular which come in for their share of discussion in this volume may perhaps raise red flags in your thinking. To this day Christians feel heated about all three—evolution, the roles of men and women, and universalism.
In those days, the idea of evolution was seen as one of the most serious threats to Christianity itself. If evolution was true, many people assumed, then God simply could not exist. For a thinking person of the times, therefore, the idea of evolution was one of the serious stumbling blocks to faith and belief. This issue arises in the book as rationalist Charles Rutherford wrestles through the foundational truths of the Christian faith and attempts to reconcile them with his evolutionist assumptions.
Later in the story, a lengthy discussion arises concerning the roles of women and men and the seeming disparity between what modern society was saying about equality and what the Bible appeared to indicate. When working on this book, I found myself intrigued by the situation that might develop if a relatively “liberated” and modern woman—and these were the days when the seeds of today’s feminism were being planted—encountered a more traditional, conservative viewpoint concerning the wife’s role in marriage and a woman’s place in society. I therefore attempted to frame the sort of dialogue that might well have taken place in England at the time.
It might help as you read to know that my wife helped me write this particular section! We attempted together to envision the kind of discussion two women of the time might actually have had in sorting through such a complex issue. Judy’s help was invaluable toward this end because she has approached these issues from both vantage points represented.
Whereas the debate over evolution was for the most part between the conservative church and the scientific community, and the issue of the roles of women was largely between the conservative church and a societal movement, another equally heated controversy existed within the church itself. No more divisive point of contention existed in the church of those days than the theological controversy over “universalism,” or, more properly, universal reconciliation. It was a conflict that furiously raged in all denominations and seminaries, split churches, spawned countless books and pamphlets, and sparked thousands of parlor debates throughout England and Scotland. As today, a belief in universal reconciliation was considered heresy in some circles, enlightened thinking in others.