THE EFFECT OF EASTERN TRAVEL ON BELIEF.
Ignorance is the curse of God,
Knowledge the wing whereby we fly to Heaven.—SHAKSPEARE.
The question that I find has been most frequently put to me since my
return home is—What effect travel in the East has on belief?
What the effect may be in any case will, of course, depend on what
were the ingredients and character of the belief. If, for instance, a
traveller makes the discovery that old Egypt was far grander, far more
civilized, and far more earnest than the mention of it in the Hebrew
Scriptures had led him to suppose, he will receive a shock; or if a
man finds the agricultural capabilities of the greater part of Syria
utterly unadapted to English methods of farming, and has no idea of
other methods; and if, furthermore, he is ignorant of the ways in which
commerce can maintain a large population anywhere, he will receive
another shock. We can imagine that such persons will ever afterwards
affirm that the effects are bad. They were bad in their own minds, and
they cannot see how they can be good in any other mind.
We will take these two instances first. Suppose a different kind of
traveller, one who had previously arrived at some not altogether
inadequate conceptions of the mind, and of the greatness of old Egypt.
He had also observed the fact that these things are not dwelt on in
the Hebrew Scriptures, and had formed some opinion as to the cause of
the omission. Then he will receive no shock from what he sees in the
monuments of the greatness of Egypt, and of the evidently high moral
aims of its religion. Suppose, again, that he had quite understood that
he should not see the same kind of agriculture in Syria as in Suffolk;
and that when he was among the hills he had found, often to a greater
extent than he had expected, that formerly every rood of ground had been
turned to account; it is true, in a very un-English manner, but still
in a manner well adapted to the locality; that terraces had been formed
wherever terraces could be placed; that corn, figs, olives, vines had
been grown on these terraces (on some hills the actual summit is still
a vineyard), and that, where the ground was not suitable for terracing,
it had been depastured by flocks and herds; and that there is evidence
that many hills must have been clothed from the bottom to the top with
olives. And suppose also that he was quite aware that populous cities
could have been maintained by trade and commerce in Judæa just as easily,
to say the least, as were Palmyra and Petra in the wilderness. Then he
will receive no shock from the un-English agricultural aspects of Syria.
Instead of any disagreeable sensation of that kind, he will see in the
present desolation of the country interesting and instructive evidence of
a change in the channels of commerce, and a demonstration of the sad fact
that where the Turk sets his foot, although he is a very good fellow,
grass will not grow.
But to go on with the discoveries that cause shocks. With many Jerusalem
is the great stumbling-block. If, however, we can imagine a traveller
visiting the Holy City with sufficient historical knowledge to enable
him to recall in a rough way the city of David and of Solomon, we may
be quite certain that he will, as far as that part of the subject goes,
receive no shock from the modern city. The same, too, I believe, may be
said, to a very great extent, even of the city of Herod. One who can
rightly imagine what that city was externally will not, I think, be
disappointed at the sight of modern Jerusalem. I am not now speaking of
the Greek traders, the Roman soldiers, the Pharisees, and Sadducees,
who might have been seen in the streets, but of the city itself. It
must be seen from the Mount of Olives, and I submit that the grand Mosk
of Omar, as beheld from that point, is a far more imposing structure,
architecturally, than the temple of Herod was likely to have been, which,
when seen from a distance, being in the Greek style of architecture, was,
probably, too much wanting in height to produce any very great effect.
The Mosk combines great height with variety of form, for there are the
curves of the dome as well as the perpendicular lines of the walls and
great windows. The dwelling-houses, too, of the modern city must, with
their domed stone roofs be more imposing than those of the old city.
The cupolas and towers of the churches, and the minarets of the mosks
are additional features. The walls also of the modern city are lofty,
massive, and of an excellent colour; and I can hardly think that those
of old Jerusalem could have added more to the scene. Herod’s Palace,
and the greater extent of his city are probably the only particulars in
which what has passed away was superior to what is seen now. As looked at
from the mount of Olives this day, the city does not appear to contain a
single mean building. History, then, will again save the traveller from
receiving a shock at the sight of the outward appearance of Jerusalem; or
if it must be felt, will much mitigate its force.
The traveller, however, might be one who had never rambled so far as the
field of history, and was only expecting to find in the Christians of
Jerusalem, that is, in the specimens of the Greek and Latin communions
there, living embodiments of the Sermon on the Mount; but instead of
this, finds littlenesses, frauds, formalism, animosities, dirt. Of
course, he receives a shock; and this is, perhaps, the commonest shock of
all. But the fault was in himself: he ought to have known better than to
have allowed himself to indulge in such unlikely anticipations.
Every one, then, of these shocks was unnecessary and avoidable.
And now let us look at another order of suppositions. Suppose the
traveller is desirous of understanding something about the efforts that
have been made to interpret, and to shape man’s moral and spiritual
nature under a great, and, on the whole, progressive variety of
circumstances, out of which has arisen, from time to time, a necessity
for enlarging and recasting former conclusions, so as to include the
results of the new light, and to adapt ideas and practices to new
circumstances: then what he sees of the East, and of its people, will
help him mightily in understanding what he wishes to understand. We are
supposing that he has limited his expectations to certain clearly-defined
objects, such, for instance, as the observation of what now can be seen,
that will throw light on the history of the people, whose record is in
the Sacred volume, on what kind of people they were, and how it came to
pass that they became what they were; and on what it was in the natural
order that made their minds the seed-bed for the ideas, with which,
through their Scriptures, we are all more or less familiar; and on what
there was in the people that made the moral element more prominent and
active in their civilization than in that of Greece and Rome: that is to
say, if his objects are strictly limited to what can be investigated and
understood by what one sees in the East, because it is the investigation
and understanding of what may be seen in the Eastern man, and in Eastern
nature; then I think that travel in Egypt and Syria will not cause any
shocks or disappointments. On the contrary, I think the traveller will
feel, on his return home, that he has brought back with him some light,
and some food for thought, he could not have obtained elsewhere.
As to myself: for of course I can only give my own experience; and
equally, of course, it is only that that can be of value, should it
happen to possess any, in what I may have to say on this question: I now
feel, as I read the sacred page, that I understand it in a way I never
did before. It is not merely that I can, sometimes, fit the scene to the
transactions—that is something; but that, which is more, I am better able
to fit the people to the thoughts, and even to understand the thoughts
themselves. The interest, therefore, and possibly the utility, too, of
what I read is increased for me. I have seen the greater simplicity of
mind of these oriental people. I have seen that the moral element in
them is stronger, either relatively to their intellect, or absolutely in
itself—I know not which—and obtains more dominion over them than over
our beef-eating, beer-drinking, and indoor-living people; that the idea
of God is more present to them than to us, and has a more constant, and
sometimes a deeper, power over them.
Observations of this kind enable one to see and feel more clearly what
was in the minds and hearts of the old Orientals. This is true of the
whole of Scripture, from the first page to the last; but in an especial
manner is it true of the Psalms and of the Gospels. Before I visited
the East I saw their meaning through the, to a certain extent, false
medium of modern English thought. Elements of feeling and meaning, which
before were unobserved and unknown, now stand out clear and distinct. I
seem to be conscious of and to understand, in a manner that would have
been impossible before, the depth and the exaltation of feeling of the
Psalms, and their wonderful didactic beauty, the result, clearly, of
the feelings that prompted them, rather than of the amount and variety
of knowledge they deal with. The simplicity, the single-mindedness, the
self-forgetting heartiness of the morality of the Gospel, also, I think,
gains much from the same cause. I think, too, that I understand now,
better than I did before, the fierce tone in which the Prophets denounced
existing wrongs, and their unfaltering confidence in a better future.
And as it is in great matters and on the whole, so is it in small
particulars. For instance, I heard a tall bony half-grey Syrian Arab,
in whose mind I had but little doubt that the thought of God was ever
present, cursing the God of the Christians. It had never crossed his mind
that the God of the Christians was the same as the God of the Mahomedans.
Here was the persistence to our own day of the old exclusive idea.
A poor native Christian at Jerusalem told me that he believed the holy
places were not known now, because, in these days, men were not worthy of
such blessed knowledge. The old idea again of the superior holiness of
past times. And so one might go on with a multitude of similar instances.
I will here give a tangible and distinct example of the change in one’s
way of looking at things, and of the consequent change in feeling, which
travel in the East actually brought about in one’s mind, naturally
and without any effort, just by allowing the trains of thought that
spontaneously arose to take their own courses, and, in combination with
pre-existing material, to work themselves out to their own conclusions.
Formerly I never read the account of the deception Jacob practised on
his father at the instigation of his mother, and at the expense of his
brother; or the imprecations of the 109th Psalm; or the account of the
way in which David, for the purpose of appeasing God (Who was supposed
to be terribly afflicting an innocent people for the mistaken zeal on
His behalf of a deceased king), gave up seven innocent men, sons and
grandsons of Saul, to be hanged by those whom Saul had sought to injure;
without wishing, as I believe almost everybody does, every time he
hears these passages read, that, by some process of beneficent magic,
they could be made to vanish from the Sacred Volume, and be heard of
and remembered no more for ever. But now they appear to me in quite a
different light, and I regard them with quite different sentiments. Now I
am very far indeed from wishing that they could be made to vanish away.
I have been among people who are, at this moment, thinking, feeling, and
acting precisely in the way described in those passages; and so I have
come to regard them as containing genuine, primitive, historical phases
of morality and religion, and as giving to the record, and just for this
very reason, no small part of its value. This primitive morality, which
has been kept alive all along, or to which men have again reverted,
in the East, belongs to the stage in which subtilty, although it may,
as in the instance before us, palpably mean deception, has not yet
been distinguished from wisdom; when men think they are serving God by
being ready to inflict any and every form of suffering, and even, if
it were possible, annihilation itself, on the man who rejects, or who
does not support, their ideas of morality and religion; and when the
current conception of responsibility is made to include the family and
descendants of the evil-doer. These very misconceptions and aberrations
are in conformity to the existing sentiments and daily practice of the
modern Oriental. With him deception is a perfectly legitimate means for
obtaining his ends; nor, in his way of thinking, is any infliction too
severe for misbelievers and blasphemers of the Faith; and in the custom
of blood-feuds the innocent descendants of the man who shed blood are
answerable for the misdeed of their forefather. These, then, and similar
mistakes, the contemplation of which is so painful to us, were honestly
made, and were even consequences of deliberate and careful efforts to
act up to moral ideas under the conditions and in conformity with the
knowledge of the times.
I have thus come to see that morality and religion,—and this includes my
own morality and religion—are, in no sense, an arbitrary creation, but a
world-old growth. Thousands of years ago they were forming themselves,
in some stages of their growth, on the hill of Zion, as they had been
previously in earlier stages on the banks of the Nile, and as they did
subsequently in the grove of the Academy, on the seven hills of Rome, and
in the forests of Germany. This has been brought home to me by actual
acquaintance with people whose morality and religion are different from
my own—the difference very much consisting in the fact that they are
still in the early stage to which the ideas in the passages referred to
belong. To associate and to deal with people who are mentally in the
state, which the old historic peoples were in, is to have the old history
translated for you into a language you can understand. What I now find in
myself was once, in its earlier days, just what I find described in those
passages. My morality and religion, which are my true self, have passed
through that stage; that is to say they were once in the stage of the
Patriarch and of the Psalmist. Virtually, I was in them. My more perfect
condition, therefore, must share the blame which mistakenly appears—this
is a mistake into which unhistorical minds fall—to belong only to their
more imperfect condition. Both are equally parts of the same growth. I
now look upon these earlier stages of my moral being as I do upon my own
childhood. To speak of the ideas, or of the acts of the Patriarch, or of
the Psalmist as, perhaps, I might have been disposed to speak of them
formerly would, I now feel, be to blaspheme my own parentage. I look with
a kind of awe on the failure—so shocking and so intelligible—of their
efforts to find the right path upon which, through a long series of such
efforts, I, their moral offspring, and heir, have at last been brought.
Now I link myself to the past, and I feel the power and the value of
the bond. Now I know that my religion and morality are not a something
or other of recent ascertainable date; a something or other that has
come hap-hazard; even that might, conceivably, never have been. They are
something, I know, that appertains to man; that came into being with him,
indeed that is of his very being; that has grown with his growth, and
strengthened with his strength; and which accumulating experience and
enlarging knowledge have, all along, ever been purifying, broadening,
deepening. I see distinctly, now, that they rest on foundations in man
himself, which nothing can overthrow or shake. A conviction is brought
home to me that I am standing on an everlasting rock. Formerly there
might have been some lurking germ of suspicion or misgiving that I was
standing on ground that was not quite defensible. Universal history,
rightly understood, dissipates these enfeebling misgivings, and generates
that invaluable conviction. It is a conviction which nothing can touch,
for it rests on incontrovertible facts and unassailable reasonings; and
which are such as will justify a man in expending his own life, and in
calling upon others to do the same, for the maintenance and advancement
of morality and religion.
And this connexion with the past appears to give a prospective as well as
retrospective extension to my being. If I am in the past, then, by parity
of reason, I am equally in the future. As my moral and intellectual
being was, in this way, forming itself before I was in the flesh, it
will continue, in the same way, the same process after I shall have put
off the flesh. The dissolution of the body will not affect what existed
before the assumption of the body.
These thoughts I did not take with me to the East, or, if I did, they had
at that time only a potential existence in my mind as unquickened germs.
It was what I saw and felt in the East that gave them life and shape. At
all events, I brought them back with me as recognized and active elements
of my mental being.
I am aware that there are some on whom the sight of the diversities
observable among different peoples in moral and religious ideas has an
effect the very contrary to that which I have been describing. Instead
of helping them to bring their knowledge on these subjects into order,
and giving them solid foundations to rest the structure upon, it appears
in them only to make confusion worse confounded, and to render more
incapable of support what had in them little enough support before. But
may not this arise from the fact that the true idea of history does not
exist in the minds of these persons? For I suppose that just as true
science infallibly generates the craving, and, as far as it reaches, the
successful effort, to harmonize all nature, so does true history the
craving, and, as far as it reaches, the successful effort, to harmonize
all that is known of man. One man observes differences in moral ideas,
and thence infers that it is impossible to arrive at any fixed and
certain conclusions on such subjects. Another man observes the same
differences, but observing at the same time that they are those of growth
and development, thence infers that the principle of which they are the
growth and development must be as real and certain as anything in the
earth beneath, or in the heaven above.
There is no difficulty in understanding the prepotency these ideas
must have in modifying and forming a man’s conceptions of duty and of
happiness.
* * * * *
I have, then, no commiseration for those who receive the kind of shocks
we spoke of at the beginning of this chapter. If a man goes to the East
with anti-historical and unreasonable expectations, there is nothing in
the East, or the wide world, that can, so far as his expectations go,
be of any use to him. Wherever he comes upon truth it will shock him.
Nor do I think that travel in the East will be of advantage to the man
whose minute apprehension is incapable of taking in anything higher than
points of Zulu criticism. This is the criticism of people who, like those
kraal-inhabiting, skinclad philosophers, are all for small particulars,
and who appear to labour under a congenital incapacity for large views,
and for general ideas. According to their logic, the best established
general proposition in contingent matter is not only utterly false, but
even inconceivable, if they can adduce a single case, or point even, in
which it fails. If one of this sort were to find a burr on your clothes,
he would be unable to see your clothes for the burr; or if he were to
go so far beyond the burr as to form any opinion about your clothes, it
would be that they were bad clothes, because of the burr. I have known
a person of this kind so perverse, that if you had told him that his
wife and children had been burnt to death on the first-floor of a house,
the intelligence would have had no effect upon him, if he chanced to
suppose that you were inaccurate, and were calling the ground-floor the
first-floor. He would be incapable of attending to the intelligence you
had brought him, till this had been rightly understood, and set right.
Till that had been done, he would be unable to think of anything else,
or talk of anything else. Such is the mind of the Zulu critic. Still,
however, there is a place for him, and he is of use in the general scheme.
But my late excursion to the East not only led to the question which
stands at the head of this chapter having frequently been put me, and
which may be regarded as illustrative of the mental condition of an
educated stratum of society amongst us, but it also led to my obtaining
the following illustration of the mental condition of the uneducated
class amongst us.
Shortly after my return I had the following conversation with one I knew
to be a good specimen of that class—an honest, conscientious, religious
soul.
‘They tell me, sir, you have been a long away off.’
‘Yes, neighbour, I have been to Jerusalem.’
I thought Jerusalem might touch a chord, but was not sure that Egypt
would.
‘What! Jerusalem, sir?’ with great surprise.
‘Yes: Jerusalem.’
‘Now, sir, you have surprised me. I did not know that there was such a
place as Jerusalem in the world. I had always thought that Jerusalem was
only a Bible word.’