_LEPERS_
iv. 13-16
Passing from the fate of the princes to that of the prophets and
priests, we come upon a vividly dramatic scene in the streets of
Jerusalem amid the terror and confusion that precede the final act of
the national tragedy. The doom of the city is attributed to the crimes
of her religious leaders, whose true characters are now laid bare. The
citizens shrink from the guilty men with the loathing felt for lepers,
and shriek to them to depart, calling them unclean, and warning them
not to touch any one by the way, because there is blood upon them.
Dreading the awful treatment measured out to the victims of lynch-law,
they stagger through the streets in a state of bewilderment, and
stumble like blind men. Fugitives and vagabonds, with the mark of Cain
upon them, driven out at the gates by the impatient mob, they can find
no refuge even in foreign lands, for none of the nations will receive
them.
We do not know whether the poet is here describing actual events, or
whether this is an imaginary picture designed to express his own
feelings with regard to the persons concerned. The situation is
perfectly natural, and what is narrated may very well have happened
just as it is described. But if it is not history it is still a
revelation of character, a representation of what the writer knows to
be the conduct of the moral lepers, and their deserts; and as such it
is most suggestive.
In the first place there is much significance in the fact that the
overthrow of Jerusalem is unhesitatingly charged to the account of the
sins of her prophets and priests. These once venerated men are not
merely no longer protected by the sanctity of their offices from the
accusations that are brought against the laity; they are singled out
for a charge of exceptionally heinous wickedness which is regarded as
the root cause of all the troubles that have fallen upon the Jews. The
second elegy had affirmed the failure of the prophets and the vanity
of their visions.[251] This new and stronger accusation reads like a
reminiscence of Jeremiah, who repeatedly speaks of the sins of the
clerical class and the mischief resulting therefrom.[252] Evidently
the terrible truth the prophet dwelt upon so much was felt by a
disciple of his school to be of the most serious consequence.
[251] ii. 9, 14.
[252] Jer. vi. 13; viii. 10; xxiii. 11, 14; xxvi. 7 ff.
The accusation is of the very gravest character. These religious
leaders are charged with murder. If the elegist is recording
historical occurrences he may be alluding to riots in which the feuds
of rival factions had issued in bloodshed; or he may have had
information of private acts of assassination. His language points to a
condition in Jerusalem similar to that which was found in Rome at the
Fifteenth Century, when popes and cardinals were the greatest
criminals. The crimes were aggravated by the fact that the victims
selected were the "righteous," perhaps men of the Jeremiah party, who
had been persecuted by the officials of the State religion. But quite
apart from these dark and tragic events, the record of which has not
been preserved, if the wicked policy of their clergy had brought down
on the heads of the citizens of Jerusalem the mass of calamities that
accompanied the siege of the city by the Babylonians, this policy was
in itself a cause of great bloodshed. The men who invited the ruin of
their city were in reality the murderers of all who perished in that
calamity. We know from Jeremiah's statements on the subject that the
false, time-serving, popular prophets were deceivers of the people,
who allayed alarm by means of lies, saying "peace, peace; when there
was no peace."[253] When the deception was discovered their angry
dupes would naturally hold them responsible for the results of their
wickedness.
[253] Jer. vi. 14; viii. 11.
The sin of these religious leaders of Israel consists essentially in
betraying a sacred trust. The priest is in charge of the
_Torah_--traditional or written; he must have been unfaithful to his
law or he could not have led his people astray. If the prophet's
claims are valid this man is the messenger of Jehovah, and therefore
he must have falsified his message in order to delude his audience;
if, however, he has not himself heard the Divine voice he is no better
than a dervish, and in pretending to speak with the authority of an
ambassador from heaven he is behaving as a miserable charlatan. In the
case now before us the motive for the practice of deceit is very
evident. It is thirst for popularity. Truth, right, God's will--these
imperial authorities count for nothing, because the favour of the
people is reckoned as everything. No doubt there are times when the
temptation to descend to untruthfulness in the discharge of a public
function is peculiarly pressing. When party feeling is roused, or when
a mad panic has taken possession of a community, it is exceedingly
difficult to resist the current and maintain what one knows to be
right in conflict with the popular movement. But in its more common
occurrence this treachery cannot plead any such excuse. That truth
should be trampled under foot and souls endangered merely to enable a
public speaker to refresh his vanity with the music of applause is
about the most despicable exhibition of selfishness imaginable. If a
man who has been set in a place of trust prostitutes his privileges
simply to win admiration for his oratory, or at most in order to avoid
the discomfort of unpopularity or the disappointment of neglect, his
sin is unpardonable.
The one form of unfaithfulness on the part of these religious leaders
of Israel of which we are specially informed is their refusal to warn
their reckless fellow-citizens of the approach of danger, or to bring
home to their hearer's consciences the guilt of the sin for which the
impending doom was the just punishment. They are the prototypes of
those writers and preachers who smooth over the unpleasant facts of
life. It is not easy for any one to wear the mantle of Elijah, or echo
the stern desert voice of John the Baptist. Men who covet popularity
do not care to be reckoned pessimists; and when the gloomy truth is
not flattering to their hearers they are sorely tempted to pass on to
more congenial topics. This was apparent in the Deistic optimism that
almost stifled spiritual life during the Eighteenth Century. Our age
is far from being optimistic; and yet the same temptation threatens to
smother religion to-day. In an aristocratic age the sycophant flatters
the great; in a democratic age he flatters the people--who are then
in fact the great. The peculiar danger of our own day is that the
preacher should simply echo popular cries, and voice the demands of
the majority irrespective of the question of their justice. Thrust
into the position of a social leader with more urgency than his
predecessors of any time since the age of the Hebrew prophets, it is
expected that he will lead whither the people wish to go, and if he
declines to do so he is denounced as retrograde. And yet as the
messenger of Heaven he should consider it his supreme duty to reveal
the whole counsel of God, to speak for truth and righteousness, and
therefore to condemn the sins of the democracy equally with the sins
of the aristocracy. Brave labour-leaders have fallen into disfavour
for telling working-men that their worst enemies were their own
vices--such as intemperance. The wickedness of a responsible teacher
who treasonably neglects thus to warn his brethren of danger is
powerfully expressed by Ezekiel's clear, antithetical statements
concerning the respective guilt of the watchman and his
fellow-citizen, which show conclusively that the greatest burden of
blame must rest on the unfaithful watchman.[254]
[254] Ezek. iii. 16-21.
In the hour of their exposure these wretched prophets and priests lose
all sense of dignity, even lose their self-possession, and stumble
about like blind men, helpless and bewildered. Their behaviour
suggests the idea that they must be drunk with the blood they have
shed, or overcome by the intoxication of their thirst for blood; but
the explanation is that they cannot lift up their heads to look a
neighbour in the face, because all their little devices have been torn
to shreds, all their specious lies detected, all their empty promises
falsified. This shame of dethroned popularity is the greatest
humiliation. The unhappy man who has brought himself to live on the
breath of fame cannot hide his fall in oblivion and obscurity as a
private person may do. Standing in the full blaze of the world's
observation which he has so eagerly focussed on himself, he has no
alternative but to exchange the glory of popularity for the ignominy
of notoriety.
Possibly the confusion consequent on their exposure is all that the
poet is thinking of when he depicts the blind staggering of the
prophets and priests. But it is not unreasonable to take this picture
as an illustration of their moral condition, especially after the
references to the faults of the prophets in the second elegy have
directed our attention to their spiritual darkness and the vanity of
their visions. When the refuge of lies in which they had trusted was
swept away they would necessarily find themselves lost and helpless.
They had so long worshipped falsehood, it had become so much their god
that we might say, in it they had lived, and moved, and had their
being. But now they have lost the very atmosphere of their lives. This
is the penalty of deceit. The man who begins by using it as his tool
becomes in time its victim. At first he lies with his eyes open; but
the sure effect of this conduct is that his sight becomes dim and
blurred, till, if he persist in the fatal course long enough, he is
ultimately reduced to a condition of blindness. Joy continually mixing
truth and falsehood together he loses the power of distinguishing
between them. It may be supposed that at an earlier stage of their
decline, if the religious leaders of Israel had been honest with
regard to their own convictions they must have admitted the possible
genuineness of those prophets of ruin whom they had persecuted in
deference to popular clamour. But they had rejected all such unwelcome
thoughts so persistently that in course of time they had lost the
perception of them. Therefore when the truth was flashed upon their
unwilling minds by the unquestionable revelation of events they were
as helpless as bats and owls suddenly driven out into the daylight by
an earthquake that has flung down the crumbling ruins in which they
had been sheltering themselves.
The discovery of the true character of these men was the signal for a
yell of execration on the part of the people by flattering whom they
had obtained their livelihood, or at least all that they most valued
in life. This too must have been another shock of surprise to them.
Had they believed in the essential fickleness of popular favour, they
would never have built their hopes upon so precarious a foundation,
for they might as well have set up their dwelling on the strand that
would be flooded at the next turn of the tide. History is strewn with
the wreckage of fallen popular reputations of all degrees of merit,
from that of the conscientious martyr who had always looked to higher
ends than the applause which once encircled him, to that of the
frivolous child of fortune who had known of nothing better than the
world's empty admiration. We see this both in Savonarola martyred at
the stake and in Beau Nash starved in a garret. There is no more
pathetic scene to be gathered from the story of religion in the
present century than that of Edward Irving, once the idol of society,
subsequently deserted by fashion, stationing himself at a street
corner to proclaim his message to a chance congregation of idlers; and
his mistake was that of an honest man who had been misled by a
delusion. Incomparably worse is the fate of the fallen favourite who
has no honesty of conviction with which to comfort himself when
frowned at by the heartless world that had recently fawned upon him.
The Jews show their disgust and horror for their former leaders by
pelting them with the leper call. According to the law the leper must
go with rent clothes and flowing hair, and his face partly covered,
crying, "Unclean, unclean."[255] It is evident that the poet has this
familiar mournful cry in his mind when he describes the treatment of
the prophets and priests. And yet there is a difference. The leper is
to utter the humiliating word himself; but in the case now before us
it is flung after the outcast leaders by their pitiless
fellow-citizens. The alteration is not without significance. The
miserable victim of bodily disease could not hope to disguise his
condition. "White as snow," his well-known complaint was patent to
every eye. But it is otherwise with the spiritual leprosy, sin. For a
time it may be disguised, a hidden fire in the breast. When it is
evident to others, too often the last man to perceive it is the
offender himself; and when he himself is inwardly conscious of guilt
he is tempted to wear a cloak of denial before the world. More
especially is this the case with one who has been accustomed to make a
profession of religion, and most of all with a religious leader. While
the publican who has no character to sustain will smite his breast
with self-reproaches and cry for mercy, the professional saint is
blind to his own sins, partly no doubt because to admit their
existence would be to shatter his profession.
[255] Lev. xiii. 45.
But if the religious leader is slow to confess or even perceive his
guilt, the world is keen to detect it and swift to cast it in his
teeth. There is nothing that excites so much loathing; and justly so,
for there is nothing that does so much harm. Such conduct is the chief
provocative of practical scepticism. It matters not that the logic is
unsound; men will draw rough and ready conclusions. If the leaders are
corrupt the hasty inference is that the cause which is identified with
their names must also be corrupt. Religion suffers more from the
hypocrisy of some of her avowed champions than from the attacks of all
the hosts of her pronounced foes. Accordingly a righteous indignation
assails those who work such deadly mischief. But less commendable
motives urge men in the same direction. Evil itself steals a triumph
over good in the downfall of its counterfeit. If they knew themselves
there must have been some hypocrisy on the side of the persecutors in
the demonstrative zeal with which they hounded to death the once
pampered children of fortune the moment they had fallen from the
pedestal of respectability; for could these indignant champions of
virtue deny that they had been willing accomplices in the deeds they
so loudly denounced? or at least that they had not been reluctant to
be pleasantly deceived, had not enquired too nicely into the
credentials of the flatterers who had spoken smooth things to them?
Considering what their own conduct had been, their eagerness in
execrating the wickedness of their leaders was almost indecent. There
is a Pecksniffian air about it. It suggests a sly hope that by thus
placing themselves on the side of outraged virtue they were putting
their own characters beyond the suspicion of criticism. They seem to
have been too eager to make scapegoats of their clergy. Their action
appears to show that they had some idea that even at the eleventh hour
the city might be spared if it were rid of this plague of the
blood-stained prophets and priests. And yet however various and
questionable the motives of the assailants may have been, there is no
escape from the conclusion that the wickedness they denounced so
eagerly richly deserved the most severe condemnation. Wherever we meet
with it, this is the leprosy of society. Disguised for a time, a
secret canker in the breast of unsuspected men, it is certain to break
out at length; and when it is discovered it merits a measure of
indignation proportionate to the previous deception.
Exile is the doom of these guilty prophets and priests. But even in
their banishment they can find no place of rest. They wander from one
foreign nation to another; they are permitted to stay with none of
them. Unlike our English pretenders who were allowed to take up their
abode among the enemies of their country, these Jews were suspected
and disliked wherever they went. They had been unfaithful to Jehovah;
yet they could not proclaim themselves devotees of Baal. The heathen
were not prepared to draw fine distinctions between the various
factions in the Israelite camp. The world only scoffs at the quarrels
of the sects. Moreover, these false, worthless leaders had been the
zealots of national feeling in the old boastful days when Jeremiah had
been denounced by their party as a traitor. Then they had been the
most exclusive of the Jews. As they had made their bed so must they
lie on it. The poet suggests no term to this melancholy fate. Perhaps
while he was writing his elegy the wretched men were to his own
knowledge still journeying wearily from place to place. Thus like the
fratricide Cain, like the wandering Jew of mediæval legend, the
fallen leaders of the religion of Israel find their punishment in a
doom of perpetual homelessness. Is it too severe a penalty for the
fatal deceit that wrought death, and so was equivalent to murder of
the worst sort, cold-blooded, deliberate murder? There is a perfectly
Dantesque appropriateness in it. The Inferno of the popularity-mongers
is a homeless desert of unpopularity. Quiet, retiring souls and dreamy
lovers of nature might derive rest and refreshment from a hermit life
in the wilderness. Not so these slaves of society. Deprived of the
support of their surrounding element--like jelly-fish flung on to the
beach to shrivel up and perish--in banishment from city life such men
must experience a total collapse. Just in proportion to the hollowness
and unreality with which a man has made the pursuit of the world's
applause the chief object of his life, is the dismal fate he will have
to endure when, having sown the wind of vanity, he reaps the whirlwind
of indignation. The ill-will of his fellow-men is hard to bear; but
behind it is the far more terrible wrath of God, whose judgment the
miserable time-server has totally ignored while sedulously cultivating
the favour of the world.