Title:  None Other Gods

Author:  Robert Hugh Benson

Release Date:  January 29, 2006 [EBook #17627]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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NONE OTHER GODS

BY

ROBERT HUGH BENSON

Author of “The CONVENTIONALISTS,” “The necromancers,” “A WINNOWING,”
Etc.

NONE OTHER GODS

DEDICATORY LETTER

MY DEAR JACK KIRKBY,

To whom can I dedicate this book but to you who were, not only the best friend of the man I have written about, but one without whom the book could not have been written?  It is to you that I owe practically all the materials necessary for the work:  it was to you that Frank left the greater part of his diary, such as it was (and I hope I have observed your instructions properly as regards the use I have made of it); it was you who took such trouble to identify the places he passed through; and it was you, above all, who gave me so keen an impression of Frank himself, that it seems to me I must myself have somehow known him intimately, in spite of the fact that we never met.

I think I should say that it is this sense of intimacy, this extraordinary interior accessibility (so to speak) of Frank, that made him (as you and I both think) about the most lovable person we have ever known.  They were very extraordinary changes that passed over him, of course—­(and I suppose we cannot improve, even with all our modern psychology, upon the old mystical names for such changes—­Purgation, Illumination and Union)—­but, as theologians themselves tell us, that mysterious thing which Catholics call the Grace of God does not obliterate, but rather emphasizes and transfigures the natural characteristics of every man upon whom it comes with power.  It was the same element in Frank, as it seems to me—­the same root-principle, at least—­that made him do those preposterous things connected with bread and butter and a railway train, that drove him from Cambridge in defiance of all common-sense and sweet reasonableness; that held him still to that deplorable and lamentable journey with his two traveling companions, and that ultimately led him to his death.  I mean, it was the same kind of unreasonable daring and purpose throughout, though it issued in very different kinds of actions, and was inspired by very different motives.