Charles and Emma by Deborah Heiligman

after his marriage to Emma. He wrote, “These deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty.”
    Emma knew Charles really thought things through and that he struggled with his doubts about faith. She knew that belief in God was not something he was just tossing out the way the maids at Maer tossed out the dirty water. So she prayed for him just as Jesus prayed for his disciples in John 17:3: “And this is life eternal, that they might know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou has sent.” She loved Charles and was about to tie herself to him. But how could she give her all to him as she wanted to do, so that they belonged completely to each other, bound in love, if she couldn’t be sure that they would be together in heaven, as she would be with Fanny and, she hoped, as she would be one day with all her loved ones? Emma’s mother was slipping away, too. Once brilliant and vibrant, Bessy was spending more and more time in a fog. Emma knew she soon would lose her completely. She could let her go without too much pain since she knew she would see her again in heaven. But what about Charles?
    Emma was not asking Charles to believe in everything as it was written in the Bible. She did not believe that every part of the Bible was literally true either. She was just asking Charles to accept the love of Jesus, whom she saw as the kind, sweet, loving son of God.
    Charles apparently did as she wished: He read Jesus’ farewell discourse. But the letter he wrote to her afterward is lost. Her reply survived: “I am sitting with Mamma instead of going to church. I shall find it much pleasanter to have a little talk with you than to listen to Allen’s temperance sermon.” (John Allen Wedgwood was Emma’s cousin on her mother’s side, and the vicar of Maer.) She continued, “Thank you dear Charles for complying with my fancy. To see you are in earnest on the subject will be my greatest comfort & that I am sure you are. I believe I agree with every word you say, & it pleased me that you shd have felt inclined to enter a little more on the subject.”
    So what did he say? How did he reassure her? He had friends who were deeply religious. His old mentor Henslow, for one. Charles himself had not given up on God entirely. He remembered standing in the Brazilian rain forest while on his voyage and being stirred by its beauty, moved to think of a higher power. He had written in his
Journal of Researches,
the account of his voyage, which he was preparing to be published, that “it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion which fill and elevate the mind.”
    But that feeling of devotion would not be enough to satisfy most people. Most people around Charles believed that God had not only created all the species of animals at once, but that he had also created the social structure of their world. The church was an integral part of British society, and it dictated the rules of the class-ordered society that they all lived in. Some people did see the problems with the British class system, and many people knew that something did have to be done to help the poor, but the upper classes wanted desperately to hold on to their position at the top of the society.And they felt that the people in the lower classes, the servants who cooked the meals, scrubbed the floors, washed the clothes, and emptied the chamber pots at Maer and the Mount were doing what they were meant to be doing. With God at the top, British society was neat and ordered. Everyone knew his (or her) place.
    For Charles to go against God and religion was to go against the established social