While not great literature, Yonge’s best-selling novel is nevertheless compelling in that it is suffused with faith in Jesus Christ as mediated by the institutional church. Even as the characters navigate the intricate proprieties of Victorian England and incur guilt through various sins of commission and omission, the church is there for them, making up the mostly implicit backdrop for all their activities.
While Christendom has fallen into disrepute in recent decades, there can be no doubt that something has been lost in its decline. We can no longer hold our neighbours to the standards of a gospel to which they do not adhere, except in so far as its teachings continue to exert a vestigial influence on them. Our society validates the authentic self and the personal quest to find it, irrespective of the damage it may inflict on our communities and interpersonal relationships. If Christendom has declined, it has not made our society any less religious. Instead, it remains deeply religious, with its allegiance now focussed on the socially fragmenting idol of the ego and its desires.
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