Michael Fairless by William Scott Palmer

‘Hilarius' (as we have always called the book) was written first as a shorter story, a mere sketch, and later filled in and amplified. It was meant to be a parable, a lesson delicately conveyed to a young painter of high artistic promise and sincere religious feeling, but prone to rigid judgements and the use of an inflexible and all too simple moral standard-in fact, Hilarius himself.

So, in her story, Michael Fairless sends this young man-boy indeed he was, even in years-forth from an arranged and sheltered life in the cloister, and from a benumbing established scheme of thought and things, to the rude world, the many-coloured, confused, everchanging world of men and women and children, of transforming values, of sin that is not sinful and condemnation that does not condemn-a real world where God is and works, joins in the strife of men, treads with them the dust of the highway, is known by them who seek him not, and in fashions very strange to those righteous who need neither repentance nor redeeming love.