He was solemnly
suspended from church-membership, and called upon to render up the
stolen money: only on confession, as the sign of repentance, could
he be received once more within the fold of the church. Marner
listened in silence. At last, when everyone rose to depart, he went
towards William Dane and said, in a voice shaken by agitation-
'The last time I remember using my knife, was when I took it out to
cut a strap for you. I don't remember putting it in my pocket again.
You stole the money, and you have woven a plot to lay the sin at my
door. But you may prosper, for all that: there is no just God that
governs the earth righteously, but a God of lies, that bears witness
against the innocent.'
There was a general shudder at this blasphemy.
William said meekly, 'I leave our brethren to judge whether this is
the voice of Satan or not. I can do nothing but pray for you, Silas.'
Poor Marner went out with that despair in his soul- that shaken
trust in God and man, which is little short of madness to a loving
nature. In the bitterness of his wounded spirit, he said to himself,
'She will cast me off too.' And he reflected that, if she did not
believe the testimony against him, her whole faith must be upset, as
his was. To people accustomed to reason about the forms in which their
religious feeling has incorporated itself, it is difficult to enter
into that simple, untaught state of mind in which the form and the
feeling have never been severed by an act of reflection.
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