1.14.2016

Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'urbervilles

  
    


FATHER AND SON
 
"Old Mr.Clare was a clergyman of a type which, within the last twenty years, has wellnigh dropped out of contemporary life.
 
A spiritual descendant in the direct line from Wycliff, Huss, Luther, Calvin;
 
an Evangelical of the Evangelicals, a Conversionist, a man of Apostolic simplicity in life and thought, ...
 
 The New Testament was less a Christiad than a Pauliad to his intelligence.
 
His creed of determinism was such that it almost amounted to a vice...
 
Once upon a time Angel had lately been so unlucky as to say to his father, in a moment of irritation,
 
that it might have resulted far better for mankind if Greece had been the source
 
of the religion of modern civilization, and not Palestine..." (p.186).