The next morning my friend called, and we had a long conversation on the
veranda. He said, “I was not a little surprised that you did not have
the chaplain and no kind of service at the grave. Not that I personally
was dissatisfied, but rather that you dared to go against the usual
custom.”
I could not tell him the exact reason, which mainly was my dislike of
the chaplain on account of his intimate companionship with the Hon. who
had wrecked my life, so I said that I had no acquaintance with the
chaplain; that according to social custom, as he had come last to the
station, it was his place to call on us. If he had any interest in our
religious welfare it was his duty to see us. If he was the shepherd and
we the sheep, it was his place to look us up, and not ours to run after
him. As he had never cared for us, either in health or in sickness, and
we could live and die without his services, it seemed to me that we
could be buried without his aid.
“Believe me,” he answered, “I am not finding fault or criticising, but
only referred to your not following the usual custom, and am rather
pleased that you had courage to do what you thought best. For myself, I
would prefer a solemn chant, or such a hymn as ‘Abide with me,’ or any
hymn that would lead us to think of eternal life. I object to the
service for the dead, as given in the prayer-book, being used for
everybody, saint and sinner alike; not that I would be a judge of the
dead, yet we cannot always restrain our thoughts and judgments.
“When I stood at the grave of a man whom everybody knew as a drunkard,
and we both knew such a man, who, going home at night drunk from a
party, fell from his horse and broke his collar bone, and died from his
injury mainly because he was dissipated. He was worse than a drunkard, a
seducer of innocence, a debauchee, most profane and vulgar in all his
conversation. He was vice personified; destitute of all pure noble
feelings, spending his nights in vice and his days in intrigue, whose
acquaintance was fatal to a woman, and who reveled in the putridity of
immorality. Every decent person loathed him while he was living, and
only recognized him because he was in a prominent government position.
When we stood at his grave, and the chaplain said the words:
“‘Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take
unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore
commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to
dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life
through our Lord Jesus Christ,—’
“I could not help thinking, you are either a fool or a liar and I
recalled the saying of Garibaldi: ‘A priest knows himself to be an
imposter unless he be a fool, or have been taught to lie from boyhood.’
“Such a performance as that, and I don’t know what else to call it, is
degrading a religious service, and turning it into a falsehood, making a
sham or mockery of what at such a solemn moment should be—most truthful
and sacred. Everybody present at the time knew the service was a lying
flattery, a religious farce. Is it any wonder that so many people lack
sincerity, and lose faith not only in the church, its ministers, but in
all things religious? The clergy go through their forms whether they are
suitable for the occasion or not.”
I suggested that perhaps his hymns might not always be appropriate.
“Why not?” he asked. “They would not lie about God or the dead, but
would be only for the living. Another thing. As this man to whom I
referred was near death, they sent for the chaplain. He may have found a
suitable prayer, or have said some good words, but what could he do for
such a man in the awful hour of death? They say, ‘The man may repent,’
and then? Would he go to heaven? What kind of a heaven would be suitable
for him? What society is he fitted to enjoy? What delight would he take
in anything that is pure and holy? That is another of the false, baneful
teachings of the Church, that the vilest of men may in a dying hour, by
a few words of the priest, by partaking of the communion, by the
anointing of oil, or the sprinkling of a few drops of so-called holy
water, in an instant, be fitted to go into the presence of God and
associate with angels and the pure and good. You might as well take a
savage cannibal, or a wild Hottentot, suddenly into a London drawing
room, among the refined and educated, and expect him to enjoy himself
and be at ease, as to think of a vile, polluted man gaining admittance
into Heaven, and to be happy should he get into it. Of what interest
would God be to a soul in a future life, who had nothing to do with Him
here?
“With me it is not a question if I shall go to Heaven, but how shall I
like it when I get there? Strip many people of all that is in them that
pertains wholly to this life, and there would be little left that would
be worth taking over into that other life. The whole church scheme is
founded on the idea that Heaven is a kind of a pen, or a big sheep-fold,
and that the keeper of the gate can be cajoled or bribed to let in
anybody who is vouched for by some priest; that even those so vile as to
pollute the earth by their presence, who can get past the keeper through
the gate, or by any hook or crook get in, will at once bloom out into
saints and angels.
“Is it strange that so many live in vice and sin, when their salvation
is made so easy, by getting in a priest at the last moment? How can
honest men, as clergymen, bolster up such a flattering delusion? If it
is criminal to deceive men about things in this life, how much more so
when it is about that which affects their eternal life? If the parsons
cannot keep a man from sinning, or make him lead a good life here, how
can they, in the hour of death, save him from Hell or fit him for
Heaven, when his body is racked with pain and his senses are benumbed?
Is it not a gross deception to teach that, when a man becomes so feeble
from his vices, that he can enjoy nothing more on earth, neither of its
good or evil, and has nothing left but its dregs, that he can take
communion, and reach Heaven?
“Colley Cibber wrote of Nell Gwynn, the notorious profligate mistress of
Charles the Second: ‘She received the last consolations of religion. Her
repentance in her last hours appeared in all the contrite symptoms of
Christian sincerity.’
“This is only one instance of thousands of similar statements. How can a
person’s death-bed be illumined by the holy consolations of religion,
after a whole life spent in the meanest kind of wickedness? What
sacrilegious rubbish!
“My idea of Heaven is this—that it is a condition of the soul, and is
made by ourselves, with God’s help always—by conquest, the conquest of
self, the subjugation of all thoughts, feelings and acts, everything
that is unheavenly, and by building up the soul with pure thoughts and
deeds of rightness. We make a heaven for ourselves by subduing and
improving. The farmer clears the ground and destroys the weeds to give
place to the seed, and then by cultivation, produces a harvest. He does
not expect a crop without labor; by some chance, or prayer, or miracle.
Why should we expect a spiritual crop of good without working for it?
Our diseases, are in no sense, accidents or mysteries, but the necessary
and legitimate results of the violations of laws. A man who violates the
laws of his physical being to his own injury is a criminal in regard to
himself, just as he would be a criminal in breaking the laws of the
state.
“Government does not accept the plea of ignorance of the laws, for to be
ignorant is a part of the crime, so no one should be excused for not
knowing or obeying the laws of his own being.
“The material view of Heaven as a place, instead of a condition of the
soul, that men can be thrown into it, by some force or power, outside of
themselves, that some one else has the keys and can open the place for
them, is a delusion that has done great hurt to humanity. With these
ideas men deceive and excuse themselves. Instead of making and building
up a heaven of their souls, they depend on others. They shift the
responsibility. If they sin, some one will bear their sins for them. No
matter how often they sin, or how long they continue in it, if they, at
the dying hour, can say they are sorry, get a priest to vouch for them,
and give them the pass-word, they will be made heirs of Heaven, and be
straightway carried to Abraham’s bosom. All this is contrary to common
sense and reason.
“Is it fair and just, supposing heaven to be a place, to those who all
their lives have striven to be good, to have these wretches who are
steeped in sin and made up of vice and crime to become at a breath,
inhabitants of heaven when they are not able to sin any more? This would
not be human justice, nor can I believe that it is God’s plan to people
heaven in that way, supposing it to be a place. O, yes, the thief on the
cross! I think if Jesus could have foreseen what use would have been
made of that expression he would never have uttered it. He had the
Jewish notion of heaven being a city, a new Jerusalem, with many
mansions, surrounded by a wall with gates. With all due respect to him
as a great teacher and a pure man, I cannot but think that these words
of his have kept many in sin, delayed their repentance and leading of a
better life. Do I say this rashly? Have I not heard men say, ‘O, I will
repent before I die;’ and when warned of their mistaken idea of
repentance and the danger of delay, have answered, ‘The thief repented
on the cross when he was dying and was promised paradise.’ And there is
the parable of the laborers. This is a Jewish story and might be told of
one of their rulers who could do as he pleased. It is utterly contrary
to human justice for a man who works only an hour to receive as much as
the man who labors ten hours. It is a libel on God to think he would pay
his laborers in that way.
“I have sometimes thought that some people are dead long before they are
buried. All the spiritual life, that which makes manhood or saints, is
dead, killed by their vices and transgressions against their spiritual
nature, and the animal life alone remains that keeps their bodies in
existence. What effect then would a prayer or a wafer or anything have
upon such a thing that is only like the carcass of a dying brute? In
proportion as a man sins he becomes dead to righteousness. I think no
one can question this. Then we cannot help admitting that there may come
a time when he, his soul, will be actually dead to all good influences.
Then he will be a hell to himself, or in hell, just as you choose to
have it.
“It is a horrible thought, I know, yet there are many horrible things in
life that we cannot escape. The hell or the punishment is of man’s own
making, not of God’s.
“If a farmer who has good soil, rain and sunshine, wastes his time in
idleness, how can he blame God for not giving him a harvest? When a man
wastes his life in vice and crime and becomes a hell to himself, how can
he accuse God of being unjust or unmerciful? The moral laws are as exact
and reasonable as those of nature.
“The mistake is, I think, in leading people to believe that the church
by some supernatural power given to it, or by a sudden belief, hope or
regret of the man himself, can change this inexorable, inevitable law of
God so as to make the vilest sinner become a saint. The soul that
sinneth shall die, and my belief is that God will not frustrate the
execution of His own laws. There are no miracles in nature or anywhere
else. It is inconsistent to suppose that the Creator of the universe
would permit or give power to a few poor mortals anywhere to interfere
with or change the working of His laws. In the revolution of the spheres
there has not been for ages the slightest variation or shadow of a
change. It is impossible to suppose that there could be such a variation
in the orbit of a planet so slight as to be beyond the power of man to
detect it with his most delicate instruments, without believing that
chaos would be the result sooner or later. There is as much harmony and
equilibrium in a globule of water as in the largest planet. The dazzling
glory in a dew-drop is but the exact reflection of some greater and
higher glory. Everything in nature is according to the strictest kind of
inerrant, unchangeable law. Why then should we expect or believe that in
the spiritual or moral life its laws are errant or changeable? Why
should cause and effect be different in the one than in the other? When
water can be produced by any power of God or man without the exact
proportions of oxygen and hydrogen, then I will attempt to believe that
a vile man, dead in trespasses and sins can suddenly be changed into an
angel and be fit to enjoy the society of the pure and the good.
“The mercy of God! It is blasphemy to make such a plea to ward off and
escape the consequences that are the result of the deliberate violations
of God’s moral laws. Earthquakes and cyclones are in harmony with
nature’s laws that God has made. Why not demand that the mercy of God
shall suddenly interfere and prevent these from engulfing cities and
destroying thousands of innocent women and children, as to believe that
the mercy of God will interfere with His spiritual laws and save a soul
that is dead in sin or has never wished for salvation.”
“But,” I inquired, “do you not believe in the forgiveness of God?”
“Most emphatically I do,” he exclaimed. “When a man longs for it in his
soul with heartfelt repentance. You know what I mean; not a sham
repentance or asking for forgiveness when he is at the end of his tether
and is too weak and impotent to sin again. But suppose that full pardon
is given, what then? Does it restore the sinner and reinstate him in his
former innocent state or place him where he might have been had he not
sinned? Not at all, for I say it with loyalty and reverence to God that
there are things He cannot do. He cannot do away with the results of the
cyclone of last year. He cannot blot out the occurrences of the past and
make the history of the world a blank. He cannot violate His own laws
which His own omniscience and wisdom have established. This is
inconceivable.
“There are so many who misinterpret the forgiveness and mercy of God
that they transform Him from a being of infinite perfectness into a
thing of whims and caprices.
“To illustrate my meaning. Suppose a young man, well educated and
trained, a model young man in every respect, leaves home like the
prodigal son and goes to some city and yields to temptation and vice, as
so many do where they think they are unknown and have a chance to see
life. His money all spent, his strength all gone so that he can
dissipate no more, he goes home. The father and mother receive him with
tears of gladness; not a word of reproach is uttered. He sits at the
family table, kneels again at the family altar and apparently all is as
if nothing had happened. He is fully forgiven but does that forgiveness
restore to him the innocence he lost? Never! That is lost forever. He
may never sin again, but he cannot obliterate the wounds and scars he
made upon his own soul by his sinning. Neither the forgiveness of his
father nor the prayers of his loving mother can ever make him what he
would have been had he not sinned. Nor can God do away with the
violation of His laws. A man’s deeds become a part or all of himself.
Destroy the remembrance of those deeds and so far you annihilate the man
himself. The only thing for a sinner to do is to sin no more and make
the most of the rest of his life.
“Suppose I take an illustration from nature. We go into your garden, and
as we pass along, you with your pruning knife in your hand make a cut in
one of the trees. Ten years from now we meet again, and as we pass the
tree you remark: ‘Why, Mr. Jasper, here is the very tree I cut ten years
ago, and there is not a sign or scar of the knife. It is as if it never
had been hurt!’ ‘Hold! I cry. Let us cut the tree down and open it.’
There is the inevitable wound made by your knife. It could not be
otherwise. Nature always retains its scars and why not men? So the
immortal soul never forgets or loses anything of good or evil. It is
fearful, awful, I know, and makes one dread to live. Everybody has to
carry through life the scars they received in their youth. It is
nonsense to say that a life tainted with sin may come out all right in
the end.
“The acts of men when once performed are indestructible and eternal,
whether they are good or evil. Could they be annihilated, then the good
might go as well as the evil, and nothing would be settled, all would be
chaos.
“‘According to law,’ is an expression of the justice of an action among
men, so we can say that God does everything according to law. Neither
will He, or can He, by miracles or any special providence, change or
interfere with the execution of His established laws. Why should He? In
answer to prayer? What a mess this world would be in, if God answered
everybody’s prayers! Two Christian people are at war. Both claim to be
right, and each prays to God for help to conquer the other. The one is
conquered, but does it acknowledge that its defeat was because God was
not with it?
“A farmer went to his minister and asked him to pray for rain, as his
corn was drying up. Another farmer objected as he had just cut his grass
and rain would ruin it. What would be for the benefit of one might be
loss or death to many. Who can interfere with the government of the
Almighty?
“Who knows the laws so well as He that made them? Nine-tenths of the
suggestions and directions to God, as to how He should manage the
affairs of the world, would be insults and sins, were it not for the
incapacity and ignorance of those who make them. It is no crime or sin
for a donkey to bray at the moon.
“Suppose that one who has spent years in study and experiment produces a
large and intricate machine. He knows the purposes for which it was
built and all the details and manner of using it. Is such a man to
receive directions how to manage his machine from any passer-by, from
persons who know nothing of mechanical laws, and of but little else, and
never gave an hour’s thought to the simplest mechanical appliance? If
any one knows more about the machine than its maker, it might be well
for him to give suggestions. So if any one knows more about the world
and knows how to take care of it better than its Creator, let him step
up, and give his advice and orders.”
I interjected, “If a man makes his own destiny, what is the use of the
church or parsons?”
“Use! Why to help make it better, for good, not by any delusions,
deceptions, false hopes, jugglery of ordinances or soft sayings.
‘Believe, have faith in this or that and you will be saved.’ Let the
priests and all religious teachers warn the people of sin, show them the
fearful and inevitable consequences of the violation of the spiritual
and moral laws; that as a man lives so he dies, and as he dies so will
be his eternal condition. Give him no chance for an excuse, of dodging,
of trying to escape through somebody’s influence. Educate him, threaten
him, frighten him by the awful present and eternal consequences of sin,
into a better life. Make no apologies for sinning. Give him to
understand that he is making his own heaven or hell. As the Persian poet
puts it:
‘I sent my soul through the invisible,
Some letter of that after life to spell,
And bye and bye my soul returned to me,
And answered, I, myself, am heaven or hell!’
“There is nothing truer than the saying of Kant. ‘Every action carries
with it its own punishment, and its own reward.’
‘It matters not how straight the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the Captain of my soul.’
‘Our acts our angels are, for good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.’
“The great mistake is, that salvation from sin is made so easy; is
considered so cheap a thing, that few pay any attention to it. Make men
understand that their eternal destiny is of their own making—with the
help of God always—that no mediation, intercession of others can
possibly change their evil nature, or do away with the fearful
consequences of the violation of God’s law. I would not smooth over
anything. I would show them that the most difficult thing in life is to
be good, and yet that every difficulty can be overcome and the way
become delightfully pleasant if the mind and strength of the heart and
soul are inclined to it. When a man has wasted his life, sucked the
sweets from every flower to gratify his pampered appetite, and the fires
of his passions have gone out, he becomes devout, builds a church,
endows a hospital, says his prayers, and is cock sure of heaven, as if
the eyes of justice were blind and the record of his misspent life could
be erased by a few donations of money or the mumbling of a few prayers!
“Away with all such cant and hypocrisy! Money can do a great deal on
earth, for all on it, even immortal men are purchasable, but it would be
blasphemy to think that the justice of Heaven could be thwarted by
bribes, or the records of wrong-doing be washed away by a few tardy
tears.
‘Yet here’s a spot,
Out damned spot! Out I say,
What! will these hands never be clean!
Here’s the smell of blood still;
All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.’
“It is not by any creed or prayer, or ordinance, or mediation that a man
is to be saved, but by noble thinking, and brave doing every moment of
his life. He may get all the information and assistance he can, but he
alone can and must do the work.
“It is awful to reflect that not a thought, or word, or deed is ever
forgotten, and that each one makes his own doomsday book, in which all
is written with such exactness that there are no erasures or
corrections, and to be forever carried as a part of the soul, a
perpetual, eternal witness for or against himself. The soul, disrobed,
naked, and seeing itself in that fearful light where there can be no
deception or the least concealment—what need of any judge or any record
but the memory of the soul? The memory keeps an everlasting account of
all that ever comes to it,—‘Where I do see the very book indeed where
all my sins are writ, and that’s myself.’
“The great mistake is, I think, in making religion wholly a supernatural
thing, something to be accepted by faith only, in somebody’s statement,
and clothing it with mystery, and placing it before our reason. True
religion is as much a science as mental philosophy, or chemistry, and
should be investigated by the same methods.
“Says Webster: ‘Science is the understanding of truth or facts; it is an
investigation of truth for its own sake, and a pursuit of pure
knowledge.’
“Sir William Thompson says: ‘Science is bound by the everlasting law of
honor to face fearlessly every problem which can fairly be presented to
it.’
“‘Conviction,’ says Bacon, ‘comes not through arguments, but through
experiments.’
“Says a French philosopher: ‘I have consumed forty years of my
pilgrimage seeking the philosopher’s stone called truth. I have
consulted all the adepts of antiquity, and still remain in ignorance.
All that I have been able to obtain is this: chance, is a word void of
sense. The world is arranged according to mathematical laws.’
“The relation of cause with effect, heat with cold, light with darkness,
sweet with sour, positive with negative, is not more or less definite in
the natural sciences than that of good with evil, vice with virtue, pure
with foul, or rewards with punishments in moral or religious science.
Why invent a devil to be the author of evil any more than to imagine
some demon to be the creator of darkness, or another as the devil of
cold in the arctic regions, or another as the devil of heat here in
India?
“Once, conversing with a Roman Catholic priest, he said, ‘Your theory
may do very well for you, but for the masses of ignorant people, sunken
in vice and sin, a literal hell of fire and a devil are an actual
necessity.’
“Bobby Burns says:
‘The fear of hell’s a hangman’s whip,
To haud the wretch in order,’
but I prefer his other sentiment,
‘Just where ye feel your honor grip,
Let that aye be your border.
Its slightest touches instant pause,
Debar a’ side pretenses,
And resolutely keep its laws,
Uncaring consequences.’”
Said he, as he arose to go, “I hope I have not tired you. I have talked
enough, so I will practice a little by seeing my poor families, for
wishing the poor to be fed without giving them bread, would not be
satisfactory to them now, nor to me hereafter.”
Such was Mr. Jasper. I liked him for his honesty and sincerity. I doubt
if he ever uttered a word but what he believed, and what he said he
felt, as if it was a part of himself.