Jane Eyre

Good evening my dears... I am thinking of a favorite novel of mine and recent favorite film of mine: Jane Eyre. I just picked up the book the day before yesterday and began to read the preface I assumed was written by some other author by the signature of "Currer Bell." But then I read the three paragraph bio on Charlotte Brontë and found out her pseunydom was "Currer" and she married a "Bell." And upon discovering that, I just felt it important to share this section of this preface. I am not a "religious" person per say. I believe in striving to be a good person and doing right, and I do believe in God. And this preface rings just as profound in the cloister of my soul just as soundly as does the rest of this poignant novel.

"Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.

These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is - I repeat it - a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.

The world may not like to see these ideas disserved, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth - to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinize and expose, to rase the gilding and show base metal under it, to penetrate the sepulcher and reveal charnel relics; but hate as it will, is is indebted to him."

Currer Bell
December 21st, 1847

And on that note my darlings, stay true and strong in integrity.