When I first knew Ideala her religious opinions were all unsettled. "I
neither believe nor disbelieve," she told me; "I am in a state of don't
know; or perhaps it would be more exact to say that I both doubt and
believe at one and the same time. I go indifferently to either church,
Protestant or Catholic, and am thankful when any note of music, or
thrill of feeling in the voice, or noble sentiment, elevates me so that
I can pray. But I am told that both Catholics and Protestants consider
me a weak waverer, and call me incorrigible. Sometimes I cannot pray
for months together, and when I do it is generally to ask for something
I want, not to praise or give thanks. But what a blank it is when one
cannot pray; when one has lost the power to conceive that there is a
something greater than man, to whom man is nevertheless all in all, and
to whom we may look for comfort in all times of our tribulation, and
for sympathy in all times of our wealth! To be able to give thanks to
God when one is happy is the most rapturous, and to be able to call
upon Him in the day of trouble is the most blessed, state of mind I
know. Yet I believe we should only pray for the possible. The leafless
tree may pray for the time of buds and blossoms; will the time come the
sooner? Perhaps not, but it will come."
"I must confess," she said on another occasion, "that I do have moments
of pure scepticism; but when I cannot believe in the existence of a
God, and a Beyond, I feel as if the sky were nearer, and weighed upon
me, so that I could not lift my head."
She thought religion consisted much more in doing right than in
believing right, and set morality above faith; but I think she had a
leaning towards the Roman Catholic religion nevertheless.
"It is a grand old faith," she said, "only it has certain ramifications
with which I should always quarrel, notably that of the Sacred Heart
with which Catholics deface their lovely Lady in the churches. I always
feel that such bad art cannot be good religion. When the Roman Catholic
religion commanded respect it expressed itself better--as in the days
when it carved itself in harmonies of solid stone, and wrote itself in
tint and tone on glowing canvases, and learnt to speak in thundering
mass and mighty hymns of praise! There are people who think these new
shoots good as a sign of life in the tree, and this consideration might
perhaps make their appearance welcome; but a great deal of strength is
expended on their production, and it would be just as well to lop them
off again. The old tree wants pruning and cutting back occasionally,
and it is a false sentiment that is letting it fall to decay for the
sake of these struggling branches.
"There is another thing, too, for which we should all quarrel with the
Catholic religion. I think the fact his already been noticed by some
writer; at all events, it is evident enough to have occurred to any
one. I mean the fact that the Church, by its narrow views about
education, and its most unspiritual ambition for itself, has retarded
the world's progress for centuries by interfering with the law of
natural selection. As a matter of course for ages all the best men went
into the Church; it was the only career open to them; and so they left
no descendants."
At our house, on another occasion, when the Roman Catholic religion
happened to be under discussion, she launched forth some observations
in her usual emphatic way. There were only two strangers present, a
lady and her husband. Ideala asked the lady, who was sitting next to
her, if she were a Catholic, to which the lady answered "No;" and
Ideala, satisfied, proceeded to remark: "It may be the true religion,
but it certainly is not the religion of truth. The doctrine of
expediency, or the latitude they allow themselves on the score of
expediency--I don't quite know how they put it--but it has much to
answer for. I never find that my Roman Catholic friends are true, as
my Protestant friends are. There is always a something kept back, a
reservation; a want of straightforwardness, even when there is no
positive deception--I can't describe the thing I mean, but it is quite
perceptible, and causes an uneasy feeling of distrust, which is all
the more tormenting from its vagueness and want of definition. The
low-class Roman Catholics, I find, never hesitate if a lie will serve
their purpose; and Roman Catholic servants are notoriously
untrustworthy. That, of course, proves nothing, for one knows that
low-class people of any religion are not to be depended on--still,
there is no doubt that one finds deception more rife among Catholics
than among Protestants, and one wonders why, if the religion is not to
blame."
My sister, Claudia, had tried to catch Ideala's eye, and stop her, but
in vain; and the lady next her broke out the moment she paused:
"Indeed, you are quite wrong. You cannot have known many Catholics.
They are not untrue."
"O yes, I have known numbers," Ideala answered; "I speak from
experience. Yet it always seems to me that the Roman Catholic religion
is good for individuals. There is pleasure in it, and help and comfort
for them. But then it is death to the progress of nations, and the
question is: Would an individual be justified in adding a unit more for
his own benefit to a system which would ruin his country? I think not."
Here, however, she stopped, seeing at last that something was wrong.
"What dreadful mistake did I make this evening?" she asked me
afterwards. "Mrs. Jervois declared she wasn't a Catholic."
"But her husband is," I answered; "and he heard every word."
Ideala groaned.
Not long afterwards Mrs. Jervois wrote and told us she had entered the
Catholic Church. "I had, in fact, been received before I went to you,"
she confessed.
"There!" Ideala exclaimed. "It is just what I said. A want of common
honesty is a part of the religion; and you see she had begun to
practise it while she was here."
"What an eternal lie it is they preach when they tell us life is not
worth having," she said to me once, speaking of preachers generally. "I
have heard an oleosaccharine priest preach for an hour on this subject,
detailing the worthlessness of all earthly pleasures, with which he
seemed to be intimately acquainted--his appearance making one suspect
that he had not even yet exhausted them all himself--and giving a
florid account of the glories of the life to come, about which he
appeared to know as much but to care less; just as if heaven might not
begin on earth if only men would let it."
One day I had to warn her about acting so often on impulse. She heard
what I had to say very good-naturedly, and, after thinking about it for
a while, she said: "What a pity it is one never sees an impulse coming.
It is impossible to know whether they arise from below, or descend from
above. I always find if I act on one that it has arisen; and as surely
if I leave it alone it proves to have been a good opportunity lost. And
how curiously our thoughts go on, often so irrespective of ourselves. I
was in a Roman Catholic church the other day, and the priest--a friend
of mine, who looks like the last of the Mohicans minus the feathers in
his hair; but a good man, with nice, soft, velvety brown eyes--preached
most impressively. He told us that the Lord was there--there on that
very altar, ready to answer our prayers; and, oh dear! when I came to
think of it, there were so many of my prayers waiting to be answered! I
'felt like' presenting them all over again, it seemed such a good
opportunity. And then they sang the _O salutaris Hostia_ divinely--
so divinely that I thought if the Lord really had been there He would
certainly have made them sing it again--and I could not pray any more
after that. You call this rank irreverence, do you not? _I_ do.
And I wish I had not thought it. Yet it was one of those involuntary
tricks of the mind for which I cannot believe that we are to be held
responsible. Theologians would say it was a temptation of the devil,
but they are wrong. The first cause of these mental lapses is to be
found in some habit of levity, acquired young, and not easily got rid
of, but still not hopeless. But prevention is better than cure, and
children should be taught right-mindedness early. I wish I had been.
Happy is the child who is started in life with a set of fixed
principles, and the power to respect."
I used to wish that there might be a universal religion, but Ideala did
not share my feeling on this subject. "I suppose it is a fine idea,"
she said; "but while minds run in so many different grooves, it seems
to me far finer for one system of morality to have found expressions
enough to satisfy nearly everybody."
She had very decided views about what heaven ought to be.
"The mere material notion of abundance of gold and precious stones,
which appealed to the early churchmen, has no charm for us," she
declared. "We must have new powers of perception, and new pleasures
provided for us, such, for instance, as Mr. Andrew Lang suggests in an
exquisite little poem about the Homeric Phæacia--the land whose
inhabitants were friends of the gods, a sort of heaven upon earth." And
then she quoted:
The languid sunset, mother of roses,
Lingers, a light on the magic seas;
The wide fire flames as a flower uncloses;
Heavy with odour and loose to the breeze.
* * * * *
The strange flowers' perfume turns to singing,
Heard afar over moonlit seas;
The siren's song, grown faint with winging,
Falls in scent on the cedar trees.
"Those lines were the first to make me grasp the possibility of having
new faculties added to our old ones in another state of existence,"
she said, "faculties which should give us a deeper insight into the
nature of things, and enable us to discover new pleasures in the unity
which may be expected to underlie beauty and excellence in all their
manifestations, as Mr. Norman Pearson puts it. Did you ever read that
paper of his, 'After Death,' in the _Nineteenth Century_? It embodies
what I had long felt, but could never grasp before I found his
admirable expression of it. 'I can see no reason,' he says, in one
passage in particular which I remember word for word, I think, it
gives me such pleasure to recall it--'I can see no reason for
supposing that _some such_ insight would be impossible to the
quickened faculties of a higher development. With a nature material so
far as the existence of those faculties might require, but spiritual
to the highest degree in their exercise and enjoyment: under physical
conditions which might render us _practically_ independent of space,
and _actually_ free from the host of physical evils to which we are
now exposed, we might well attain a consummation of happiness,
_generally_ akin to that for which we now strive, but idealised into
something like perfection. The faculties which would enable us to
obtain a deeper and truer view of all the manifestations of cosmic
energy would at the same time reveal to us new forms of beauty, new
possibilities of pleasure on every side: and--to take a single
instance--the emotions to which the sight of Niagara now appeals might
then be gratified by a contemplation of the fierce grandeur of some
sun's chromosphere or the calmer glories of its corona.' That
satisfies, does it not?" she added, with a sigh. "It suggests such
infinite possibilities."
* * * * *
One day, when she was making herself miserable for want of a religion,
I tried to comfort her by talking of the different people whose lives
had been good and pure and noble, although they had had no faith.
"I suppose my principles are right," she said; "but if they are, they
have come right by accident. The children of the people are sent to
Sunday-schools, and taught the difference between right and wrong;
_we_ seem to be expected to know it instinctively. I think if I had
learnt I might have profited, because I cling so fondly to the one
principle I ever heard clearly enunciated. It was on the sin of
shooting foxes; and I cannot tell you the horror I have of the crime,
even down to the present day. But, now I think of it, I did receive
two other scraps of religious training. My governess taught me the Ten
Commandments by making me say them after her when I was eating bread
and sugar for breakfast before going to church on Sunday. The thought
of them always brings back the flavour of bread and sugar. And the
other scrap I got from a clergyman to whom I was sent on a single
occasion when I was thought old enough to be confirmed. He asked me
which was the commandment with promise, and I didn't know, so he told
me; and then I made him laugh about a horse of mine that used to have
great fun trying to break my neck, and after that he said I should do.
I did not agree with him, however, and I positively refused to be
confirmed until I knew more about it. My mother said I was the most
disagreeable child she had ever known, which was probably true, but as
an argument it failed to convince. It was her last remark on the
subject, happily, and after that the thing was allowed to drop."
Ideala was fourteen when she refused to be confirmed for conscientious
scruples, and although she made light of it in this way, she had
suffered a good deal and been severely punished at the time for her
refusal, but vainly, for she never gave in.
In after-life she held, of course, that Christianity was the highest
moral revelation the world had ever known; but when she saw that legal
right was not always moral right, I think she began to look for a
higher.
By baptism she belonged to the Church of England, but she seems to have
thought of the Sacrament always with the idea of transubstantiation in
her mind. She spoke of it reverently, but had never been able to take
it, and for a curious reason: she said the idea of it nauseated her.
She felt that the elements were unnatural food, and therefore she could
not touch them--and this feeling never left her but once, when she was
dangerously ill, and yearned, as she told me, for the Sacrament more
than for life and health. Day and night the longing never left her;
but, not having been confirmed, she did not like to ask for it, and as
she recovered the old feeling gradually returned.
Religious difficulties always tormented her more or less. As she grew
older she felt with Shelley that belief is involuntary, and a man is
neither to be praised nor blamed for it; and she was always ready to
acknowledge with Sir Philip Sidney that "Reason cannot show itself more
reasonable than to leave reasoning on things above reason," but
nevertheless her mind did not rest.
I have also heard her quote, "Credulity is the man's weakness, but the
child's strength," and add that in matters of faith and religion we are
all children, and I have thought at times that she had been able to
leave it so; but something always fell from her sooner or later which
showed that the old trouble was rankling still--as when she told me
once: "I have never heard the Divine voice which has called you and all
my friends. I listen for it, but it does not speak. I call, but there
is no reply. I wait, but it does not come. The heaven of heavens is
dark to me, and the yearning of my soul meets no response. Will it be
so for ever?"
No, not for ever--but she was led by tortuous ways, and left to work
out her own salvation in very fear and trembling, till the dear human
love was given to her in pity to help her to know something of that
which is Divine. And then, I hope, above the trouble of her senses, and
the turmoil of the world, the Divine voice did call her, and she was
able at last to hear.