That the world is divided into two groups of men; the first, those
whose God is their God, and whose glory is their glory, who mind
heavenly things; and the second, men whose God is their belly, and
whose glory is in their shame, [110] who mind earthly things. That is
just as demonstrable a scientific fact as the separation of land from
water. There may be any quantity of intermediate mind, in various
conditions of bog;—some, wholesome Scotch peat,—some, Pontine
marsh,—some, sulphurous slime, like what people call water in English
manufacturing towns; but the elements of Croyance and Mescroyance are
always chemically separable out of the putrescent mess: by the faith
that is in it, what life or good it can still keep, or do, is possible;
by the miscreance in it, what mischief it can do, or annihilation it
can suffer, is appointed for its work and fate. All strong character
curdles itself out of the scum into its own place and power, or
impotence: and they that sow to the Flesh do of the Flesh reap
corruption; and they that sow to the Spirit, do of the Spirit reap
Life.
I pause, without writing ‘everlasting,’ as perhaps you expected.
Neither Carpaccio nor I know anything about Duration of life, or what
the word translated ‘everlasting’ means. Nay, the first sign of noble
trust in God and man, is to be able to act without any such hope. All
the heroic deeds, all the purely unselfish passions of our existence,
depend on our being able to live, if need be, through the Shadow of
Death: and the daily heroism of simply brave men consists in fronting
and accepting Death as such, trusting that what their Maker decrees for
them shall be well.
But what Carpaccio knows, and what I know also, are precisely the
things which your wiseacre apothecaries, and their apprentices, and too
often your wiseacre rectors and vicars, and their apprentices, tell you
that you can’t know, because “eye hath not seen nor ear heard them,”
the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God has
revealed them to us,—to Carpaccio, and Angelico, and Dante, and Giotto,
and Filippo Lippi, and Sandro Botticelli, and me, and to every child
that has been taught to know its Father in heaven,—by the Spirit:
because we have minded, or do mind, the things of the Spirit in some
measure, and in such measure have entered into our rest.
“The things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” Hereafter,
and up there, above the clouds, you have been taught to think;—until
you were informed by your land-surveyors that there was neither up nor
down; but only an axis of x and an axis of y; and by aspiring aeronauts
that there was nothing in the blue but damp and azote. And now you
don’t believe these things are prepared anywhere? They are prepared
just as much as ever, when and where they used to be: just now, and
here, close at your hand. All things are prepared,—come ye to the
marriage. Up and down on the old highways which your fathers trod, and
under the hedges of virgin’s bower and wild rose which your fathers
planted, there are the messengers crying to you to come. Nay, at your
very doors, though one is just like the other in your model lodging
houses,—there is One knocking, if you would open, with something better
than tracts in His basket;—supper, and very material supper, if you
will only condescend to eat of angel’s food first. There are meats for
the belly, and the belly for meats; doth not your Father know that ye
have need of these things? But if you make your belly your only love,
and your meats your only masters, God shall destroy both it and them.
Truly it is hard for you to hear the low knocking in the hubbub of your
Vanity Fair. You are living in the midst of the most perfectly
miscreant crowd that ever blasphemed creation. Not with the old
snap-finger blasphemy of the wantonly profane, but the deliberate
blasphemy of Adam Smith: ‘Thou shalt hate the Lord thy God, damn His
laws, and covet thy neighbour’s goods.’ Here’s one of my own boys
getting up that lesson beside me for his next Oxford examination. For
Adam Smith is accepted as the outcome of Practical Philosophy, at our
universities; and their youth urged to come out high in competitive
blasphemy. Not the old snap-finger sort, [111] I repeat, but that
momentary sentiment, deliberately adopted for a national law. I must
turn aside for a minute or two to explain this to you.
The eighth circle of Dante’s Hell (compare Fors of December, 1872, p.
13,) is the circle of Fraud, divided into ten gulphs; in the seventh of
these gulphs are the Thieves, by Fraud,—brilliantly now represented by
the men who covet their neighbours’ goods and take them in any way they
think safe, by high finance, sham companies, cheap goods, or any other
of our popular modern ways.
Now there is not in all the Inferno quite so studied a piece of
descriptive work as Dante’s relation of the infection of one cursed
soul of this crew by another. They change alternately into the forms of
men and serpents, each biting the other into this change—
“Ivy ne’er clasped
A doddered oak, as round the other’s limbs
The hideous monster intertwined his own;
Then, as they both had been of burning wax,
Each melted into other.”
Read the story of the three transformations for yourself (Cantos xxiv.,
xxv.), and then note the main point of all, that the spirit of such
theft is especially indicated by its intense and direct manner of
blasphemy:—
“I did not mark,
Through all the gloomy circle of the abyss,
Spirit that swelled so proudly ’gainst its God,
Not him who headlong fell from Thebes.”
The soul is Vanni Fucci’s, who rifled the sacristy of St. James of
Pistoja, and charged Vanni della Nona with the sacrilege, whereupon the
latter suffered death. For in those days, death was still the reward of
sacrilege by the Law of State; whereas, while I write this Fors, I
receive notice of the conjunction of the sacred and profane civic
powers of London to de-consecrate, and restore to the definitely
pronounced ‘unholy’ spaces of this world, the church of All-Hallows,
wherein Milton was christened.
A Bishop was there to read, as it were, the Lord’s Prayer backwards, or
at least address it to the Devil instead of to God, to pray that over
this portion of British Metropolitan territory His Kingdom might again
come.
A notable sign of the times,—completed, in the mythical detail of it,
by the defiance of the sacred name of the Church, and the desecration
of good men’s graves, [112] lest, perchance, the St. Ursulas of other
lands should ever come on pilgrimage, rejoicing, over the sea, hopeful
to see such holy graves among the sights of London.
Infinitely ridiculous, such travelling as St. Ursula’s, you think,—to
see dead bodies, forsooth, and ask, with every poor, bewildered,
Campagna peasant, “Dov’ è San Paolo?” Not at all such the object of
modern English and American tourists!—nay, sagacious Mr. Spurgeon came
home from his foreign tour, and who more proud than he to have scorned,
in a rational manner, all relics and old bones? I have some notes by
me, ready for February, concerning the unrejoicing manner of travel
adopted by the sagacious modern tourist, and his objects of
contemplation, for due comparison with St. Ursula’s; but must to-day
bring her lesson close home to your own thoughts.
Look back to the seventh page, and the twenty-fourth, of the Fors of
January, for this year. The first tells you, what this last sign of
Church desecration now confirms, that you are in the midst of men who,
if there be truth in Christianity at all, must be punished for their
open defiance of Heaven by the withdrawal of the Holy Spirit, and the
triumph of the Evil One. And you are told in the last page that by the
service of God only you can recover the presence of the Holy Ghost of
Life and Health—the Comforter.
This—vaguely and imperfectly, during the last six years, proclaimed to
you, as it was granted me—in this coming seventh year I trust to make
more simply manifest; and to show you how every earthly good and
possession will be given you, if you seek first the Kingdom of God and
His Justice. If, in the assurance of Faith, you can ask and strive that
such kingdom may be with you, though it is not meat and drink, but
Justice, Peace, and Joy in the Holy Ghost,—if, in the first terms I put
to you for oath, [113] you will do good work, whether you live or die,
and so lie down at night, whether hungry or weary, at least in peace of
heart and surety of honour;—then, you shall rejoice, in your native
land, and on your nursing sea, in all fulness of temporal
possession;—then, for you the earth shall bring forth her increase, and
for you the floods clap their hands;—throughout your sacred pilgrimage,
strangers here and sojourners with God, yet His word shall be with
you,—“the land shall not be sold for ever, for the land is Mine,” and
after your numbered days of happy loyalty, you shall go to rejoice in
His Fatherland, and with His people.