Rev Henry Tilney

During the winter, I helped pass the long nights reading Austen’s Northanger Abbey. One of the characters, Henry Tilney, seems to be the ideal young clergyman: intelligent, witty, handsome, urbane and wise. He also comes from good stock, which always helps in a nineteenth-century novel. It is he with whom Catherine Morland, the tale’s heroine, falls in love. He is a stark contrast with John Thorp, the dim-witted loudmouth who loves no-one more than himself, but wishes to marry Catherine nonetheless.

Reverend Tilney, had he been a real personage, would have doubtless climbed the ecclesiastic ladder, becoming archdeacon, bishop and who-knows-what-else. The question I always ask, of both fictional and non-fictional clerics, is: "but are they saved?" A poor pastor may still be a forgiven sinner; an erudite, educated and ethical clergyman may still have refused Christ’s simple offer of sin’s forgiveness. How tragic.