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ATMÂ.
A ROMANCE
BY
A.C.F.
(CAROLINE AUGUSTA FRAZER)
"When âtman (nom. sing. Atmâ) occurs in philosophical treatises ...
it has generally been translated by soul, mind, or spirit. I tried
myself to use one or other of these words, but the oftener I
employed them the more I felt their inadequacy, and was driven at
last to adopt ... Self as the least liable to misunderstanding."
_Max Muller, in North American Review for June_, 1879.
MONTREAL:
JOHN LOVELL & SON,
23 ST. NICHOLAS STREET.
Entered according to Act of Parliament in the year 1891, by JOHN LOVELL
& SON, in the office of the Minister of Agriculture and Statistics at
Ottawa.
ATMÂ
CHAPTER I.
O that Decay were always beautiful!
How soft the exit of the dying day,
The dying season too, its disarray
Is gold and scarlet, hues of gay misrule,
So it in festive cheer may pass away;
Fading is excellent in earth or air,
With it no budding April may compare,
Nor fragrant June with long love-laden hours;
Sweet is decadence in the quiet bowers
Where summer songs and mirth are fallen asleep,
And sweet the woe when fading violets weep.
O that among things dearer in their wane
Our fallen faiths might numbered be, that so
Religions cherished in their hour of woe
Might linger round the god-deserted fane,
And worshippers be loath to leave and pray
That old-time power return, until there may
Issue a virtue, and the faith revive
And holiness be there, and all the sphere
Be filled with happy altars where shall thrive
The mystic plants of faith and hope to bear
Immortal fruitage of sweet charity;
For I believe that every piety,
And every thirst for truth is gift divine,
The gifts of God are not to me unclean
Though strangely honoured at an unknown shrine.
In temples of the past my spirit fain
For old-time strength and vigour would implore
As in a ruined abbey, fairer for
"The unimaginable touch of time"
We long for the sincerity of yore.
But this is not man's mood, in his regime
Sweet "calm decay" becomes mischance unmeet,
And dying creeds sink to extinction,
Hooted, and scorned, and sepultured in hate,
Denied their rosary of good deeds and boon
Of reverence and holy unction--
First in the list of crimes man writes defeat.
These purest dreams of this our low estate,
White-robed vestals, fond and vain designs,
I lay a wreath at your forgotten shrines.
Nearly four hundred years ago, Nanuk, a man of a gentle spirit, lived
in the Punjaub, and taught that God is a spirit. He enunciated the
solemn truth that no soul shall find God until it be first found of Him.
This is true religion. The soul that apprehends it readjusts its
affairs, looks unto God, and quietly waits for Him. The existence of an
Omnipresent Holiness was alike the beginning and the burden of his
theology, and in the light of that truth all the earth became holy to
him. His followers abjured idolatry and sought to know only the
invisible things of the spirit. He did not seek to establish a church;
the truths which he knew, in their essence discountenance a visible
semblance of divine authority, and Nanuk simply spoke them to him who
would hear,--emperor or beggar,--until in 1540 he went into that
spiritual world, which even here had been for him the real one.
And then an oft-told story was repeated; a band of followers elected a
successor, laws were necessary as their number increased, and a choice
of particular assembling places became expedient. And as
"the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple's self,"
so the laws passed into dogmas having equal weight with the truths that
Nanuk had delivered, and the places became sacred.
Nanuk's successors were ten, fulfilling a prophecy which thus limited
their number. The compilation of their sayings and doings to form a book
which as years went on was venerated more and more, and the founding of
Oomritsur, chief of their holy places, were the principal things that
transpired in the history of the Khalsa during a century and a half,
save that the brotherhood was greatly strengthened by Moslem
persecution, occurring at intervals.
But with the death of the ninth gooroo, by Moslem violence, and the
accession of his son Govind, the worldly fortunes of the Khalsa changed.
Under the leadership of Govind, a young man of genius and enthusiasm,
who comes before us in the two-fold character of religionist and
military hero, the Sikhs moved on to a national greatness not dreamed of
by Nanuk. Govind, who bestowed on himself and his followers the title of
Singh, or lion-hearted, hitherto an epithet appropriated in this
connection by the Rajpoot nobility, devoted the strong energies of his
vigourous and daring nature to the purpose of establishing the faith of
Nanuk by force of arms. To this end he constituted the sword a religious
symbol, and instituted a sort of worship of steel. The Khalsa became an
aggressive force bent on the salvation of surrounding nations by
violence, and succeeded so well, that, eighty-five years after Govind's
death, the Sikhs, still retaining their character of a religious
fellowship, were consolidated into a powerful nation under Runjeet
Singh. The dream of her tenth and last gooroo was realized, the Khalsa
was at her height of worldly prosperity, but her life was no longer the
spirit life which had been revealed to her first founder.
And so under Asiatic skies as well as amid European civilization, man
laboured to redeem the world, making frantic war on the lying creeds of
past ages and proclaiming the merits of his latest discovery.
It is a strange development of human nature this animosity to creeds no
longer our own. Why, if I suffer the loss of faith and hope, must I
hasten to introduce my brother to my sad plight? I may do so, and
perhaps enjoy good conscience in the act by vaunting that I shed light
on his spiritual vision. God help my brother if his light be from me.
And God help me also, if I have attained so high rank among the blessed
before I have learned that the human soul is beyond human aid; that in
its eternal relations each soul travels in an orbit of its own and holds
correspondence only with its Sun.