altar breaks up, and we spread ourselves out in the fresher spaces of
the church once more, and the _pale_ singing of the black-robed choir
recommences as the conclusion of the liturgy is sung. The sixty sisters
prostrate themselves together in a billowy mass once more. Worshippers
cross themselves before the altar and go out. The Communion bread is
taken and the service is over. The waifs march out; we all come out.
It is good to have been at prayers with the sisters, just as if one had
spent a few hours in perfect mood in a garden. It took my mind back to a
morning in an immense London church when I came in late and was taken up
and put in a seat just underneath a picture of the Virgin. At the
Virgin’s feet were armfuls of lilies. I had a sense, I have it now—all
flowers are flowers at the feet of the Virgin.
Footnote 11:
The Frontispiece of this book.
VIII
THE WAY OF MARTHA
The way of Russia is more the way of Mary, and yet no people are more
given to working for their neighbours and being actively kind than the
Russians. There are many Marthas among them. They visit the poor, bring
food to the hungry, clothe the wretched. They work for the suffering
people around them. Almost every cultured Russian of grace or character
has some social or personal responsibility or care, the passion to put
right the affairs of some unhappy family, the will to raise drunkards
and law-breakers from spiritual death. It is national and natural, and
it is strange that this should be the characteristic of a people who
also have a passion for going into the desert and saving their souls.
But it is impossible for every one to go into the desert or take to a
cell, and indeed the impulse to go away does not come to every one, and
when it does come it is seldom sufficiently strong to break down the
ties of everyday life and make a road of the affections—the narrow road
that leads away from the world. Even among a mystical people the great
majority remain behind in “the world” and have the normal life, serve
man as well as God, marry, have children, work as well as pray, and live
through six everydays to one of incense and song. The Church has its two
aspects, that of Martha and of Mary, and it is with the way of Martha
that we are generally more familiar, though many may look lingeringly
towards the wilderness, feeling that perhaps after all the better part
is to be found out there.
The way of Martha has come into some discredit in the West owing to the
organisation of charity, the reliance on parliaments and philanthropical
societies and committees rather than on individual volition. As a
substitute for love towards one’s fellow-man have appeared many
things—voting for a candidate, appeals to policemen and to magistrates,
prison, sending a young man to the Colonies, trusting to the
court-missionary ... that is the way of “the world” and not the way of
the individual. However much “organisation” there may be, there will
always remain as a fundamental idea of the Church personal love towards
one’s neighbour and care for him. Such love when seen is something that
convinces in itself, like the action of the good Samaritan.
There is a family I know in Russia, the V’s. To come into touch with
them is to touch something that works miracles like the hem of the
sacred garment. Yet all in the family are Marthas, they are all of the
spirit of good deeds: there is nothing particularly contemplative about
any of them. Most interesting of all is the youngest of the children,
Lena. She is being brought up in an atmosphere of altruism. She is only
twelve years old, and is like a plant springing up in a flower-garden;
one can watch her growing more beautiful from day to day. She is gentle,
quick, and tender. She has many desires and is eager, but when Julia her
eldest sister tells her to do one thing or another, perfectly obedient
and submissive. She is slender and wistful like a girl in one of
Nesterof’s pictures. She has the intense pleasure of a child, and when
we read _Alice in Wonderland_ together I wondered at the gladness of the
little girl. Grown-up humans are often so constrained and polite when
you read a paragraph to them. You can never be quite sure that they are
not secretly bored. On her birthday Lena _gives_ presents to her sisters
instead of receiving them, and has been brought up to feel that it is a
joy and privilege to give. When distant relatives or friends from far
away come to visit the family, Lena gives them presents. One day she was
debating what was the very biggest present she could make to a lady who
was staying at the house, and she decided to give away one of her little
pet tortoises. Once Vassily Vassilitch brought her a present, a big book
with pictures. How vexed Julia seemed! “You spoil the child bringing her
presents without any special reason!” said she. She was sorry that he
should be giving, and not Lena or she herself.
Julia is so self-denying that some years she goes without a greatcoat
even for the coldest winter weather. All her money goes to other people.
But she is not at all proud of her good works. She is just simple and
cheerful, a quiet though impulsive woman. You never hear her laugh
loudly, but there is always a sort of kind warmth and cheerfulness in
her face. She will give up a book, her time, her means of making a
living, her pleasure, to whatever appeals to her; and the whole house in
which she lives is founded on altruism. Occasionally there comes to
visit them a friend who is also extremely unselfish and altruistic. Then
sometimes there are some amusing, even absurd scenes—contests in
altruism.
The family is vegetarian, for no one in it would cause any animal pain.
They have even scruples about killing flies and troublesome insects, and
rather catch them and put them out of the window than destroy them. One
day Julia showed me with horror an article from the _Russian Word_ on
the fate of lost dogs. The State voted a certain amount of money for
poison to destroy ownerless dogs, but the police, instead of killing
them with poison in a humane way as intended, hired the worst type of
criminals in the town gaols to beat them to death for a few copecks in
order that they might peculate the greater part of the money voted.
“Such ugly things are part of the background of our everyday life,” said
I. “They are hidden from us, but they are always there, none the less.”
Julia could not believe it.
One summer I spent some days with the family in a big country-house in
the province of Kaluga. The estate was an island in a loop of a little
river. I spent one morning watching the fish which swarmed in the water
of the river, and I longed for a rod and a line. Not that I ever caught
many fish in that way. But when I was seven years old some one gave me
Izaak Walton and a fishing-rod, and I slept with _The Compleat Angler_
under my pillow. I had visions of great captures of fish. The one thing
wanting was a grasshopper. Izaak was always talking of grasshoppers, and
I had lost faith in worms and paste. But though I heard grasshoppers in
many country banks I could never find one. Here at Dietchino were both
grasshoppers and fish in manifest abundance.
In the little river were perch and gudgeon and chub, minnows, pike. I
watched the sinister shadows of the pike. They moved about like sharks,
and every now and then there would be a splash as if a branch had
dropped into the water, and I would see six or seven little fish jumping
bodily out of the water as a murderous pike rushed at them, and they
fled in terror. The fish seemed pretty hungry. I caught several
grasshoppers and rather cruelly threw them on to the surface of the lake
and watched the perch snatch them away. A sad end for the grasshoppers,
but a better luncheon for the fish. Lena and her next sister, Olya, were
much horrified at my action, though they were too kind and well-trained
to say more than “Oh!” when I mentioned it. Later Olya told me how one
evening she had seen that on one of the lines left by the village boys a
fish was caught and struggling, and how she came next morning and the
fish was still on the hook and not taken in, and she thought it so
cruel, and wrote a letter to the boy and pinned it on a tree near by.
Some time after that we went out one day and watched the fish. Little
Lena had three biscuits in her coat pocket in case she should be hungry.
But she broke up two of them and threw the bits to the fish, and we saw
them come and eat the fragments with as much avidity as they had taken
the grasshoppers I provided. We were out for a walk; Lena and I went on,
and she kept one remaining biscuit in case she should be hungry.
Presently along the road came a familiar dog and fawned around us
ingratiatingly. “Poor dog!” said Lena, “it’s just had puppies, it is
very hungry,” and she took out her last biscuit and gave it to the dog.
The little girl has an almost perfect character, and the fact that she
will never do or think anything unkind has a constraining effect on
elders in her presence; and yet she is an open-air little girl, and rows
and bathes and plays games and goes long walks, as any boy might wish
his sister to do.
Each of the four sisters has inherited consumption, and though not
actually in consumption they have all a certain fragility and
slenderness. Their only brother died of consumption, a clever boy, who
never for a moment permitted grief to enter the hearts of those who were
tending him. All was mirth and laughter at his death-bed. Joke after
joke, idea after idea put forward. All agreed that it would be absurd to
wear black for such a one. And the sisters and near friends went to the
funeral in bright summer dresses. They were of those who hope all
things, believe all things.
This winter Julia was chiefly engaged arranging popular lectures on the
Oriental religions—“in order to give an interest in religion to those
who had fallen away from Orthodoxy and had now no religion at all.” She
had set a room apart for meetings and given it the atmosphere of a
church, and there was a library of several hundred volumes to which
visitors referred frequently. She kept open house, and I have often been
there in the evening when there were more than a dozen visitors sitting
at the long table of the dining-room having tea. There would be all
sorts of people, some real seekers, others of a friendly gossipy type.
Many of them were really foreign to Julia’s nature and temperament,
wrapped up in themselves and consequently not able to realise what a
sweet and wise and wonderful woman their hostess was. But all were
welcome.
Julia’s grandmother, a very gentle and simple old lady of eighty, always
presided on these occasions, and if she were not drinking tea, a space
would be cleared on the tablecloth and _patience_ would be laid out. She
is always in black, has large eyes and fine brow and a magnificent Roman
nose, regards the cards intently, and puts them one upon another
deliberately and solemnly as if she knew all their secrets and were the
Queen of Spades herself. But she listens to all that is said, and can
repeat almost the whole of the conversation after the people are gone.
She is of the old Orthodox Russian type and dwells under the ikons. No
meal is ever begun without her grace being said. And she also has the
gentle spirit of altruism. Every other Sunday night a rather obstinate
old lady who belongs to the Evangelical Christians comes and sits beside
her and reads in a loud distinct voice a volume of Spurgeon’s sermons in
translation. And the old lady asks no questions, always seems to be
pleased, and goes on putting out her cards and making up her patience
pack in sympathetic silence.
* * * * *
Julia has lived in France and England, and she especially likes the
English. “They have learned to be so kind,” she would say. “They take
care not to injure people’s feelings when they talk. They are gentle,
and they are not unjust, they are fair. They are centuries in front of
us Russians in that way.”
That observation struck me very forcibly when I heard it; for Julia has
herself an English manner. She is like an English lady of quality of the
best type. She has that something which she admires in us expressed in
herself.
It is good that the standard notion of an Englishman which one finds in
Russia is something which corresponds to this praise which Julia gave
us. The Russians see us at our best, that is, as we really are, and they
admire us. They like our quiet kindness and fairness. They admire our
passion for social reform and “putting the world right.”
Julia also is “helping to build the kingdom of heaven upon earth,”
helping to make the world really ready for the Master when He comes
again. She is an _Eager-Heart_, who would even give up her chance of
sheltering the heavenly Babe and wondrous Mother in order to take in a
human babe and earthly mother homeless in the snow.
That is the way of Martha, the finding of Christ in the suffering human
being in the world, the realisation of “Inasmuch as ye did it unto the
least of these ye did it unto Me” as contrasted with the way of Mary—the
denial of the world and of the reality of the suffering in it, the
pouring of the ointment on the feet of Christ instead of selling it and
giving the proceeds to the poor.
The way of Martha implies a great number of workers and the consequent
necessary organisation—a church. It has its priests, its temples and
buildings, its ceremonies and sermons. The hermit needs no church, no
temple or priest, but the worker in the world needs everything.
Hence the pomp and splendour of the Church is associated with the way of
Martha. Its faith is carried like a great banner wherein is depicted a
world set free, a kingdom of heaven upon earth. The ranks of the world
are understood as grades of authority in the great business of
well-doing, and kings and men are consecrated with solemn rites to the
service of God. We are enrolled as soldiers of the heavenly King and
need a religious music which is military, and appeals of sound and
colour which stir the heart.
So in Nesterof’s picture of Martha and Mary,[12] Martha is painted in
resplendent rose and is in the forefront, whilst the mystical-faced Mary
is darkly robed and stands behind her sister. So in Christianity all
that is visibly and obviously splendid is associated with the way of
Martha—the wonderful cathedrals, the soul-stirring processions, holy
wars, solemn rites and pageants. Martha is always to the fore and
splendid, and goes to meet Christ, whilst her sister Mary remains in the
background at home in faith.
Footnote 12:
The frontispiece of this book.
IX
MARTHA’S TRUE WAY
The view I take of the miracles is this, that no one _met_ Jesus or
_saw_ Him who was not miraculously affected in some way or other. The
deaf began to hear, those who had never spoken in their lives had their
lips unsealed, the cripples found out that they had the souls of men,
the sick were as if they were well, scales fell from the eyes of the
blind, and he who never saw anything in his life was suddenly awake to
beauty. The outcast and the vile learned to believe in themselves; even
the dead became alive. When John asked, “Art thou He who should come, or
do we look for another?” it was sufficient to answer, “The blind see,
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are
raised, to the poor the gospel is preached.”
And the miracles never cease. As they happened two thousand years ago,
so they happen to-day. We have the vision, and our infirmities fall
away: we see, we hear, we praise. Christ is ...
The subtle alchemist who in a trice
Life’s barren metal into gold transmutes.
There is much of the Gospel written by men who had not the vision, or by
politic priests. Many ecclesiastics of the early Church could not
understand the mystic story, and misunderstanding it they yet strove to
defend by every means in their power the authenticity of their
misreadings. Explanations, local colour, even absolute inventions were
interpolated in the sacred writings in order to prove that certain
dogmas were right, in order to prove that other dogmas were wrong. They
actually raised Lazarus materially from death, instead of leaving what
was probably the original story, the fact that Jesus convinced Martha
and Mary that Lazarus was still alive in the presence of God. Not that
the Gospels are the worse, or that we would have them otherwise. There
is an added poetry in the marks which time and life make on any living
thing. And the Gospels have been crucified as He of whom the Gospels
were written was crucified before them.
Most explanations of the miracles are true, but inadequate. They often
lead to confusion of thought and the emphasis on the material facts and
outward manifestation rather than on the spiritual facts and inner
reality. It is true that Christ “went about the world doing good,” and
that He is to us “an ensample of godly life,” but the good that He did
was spiritual good.
The works of our Marthas get a great deal of their inspiration from the
healing of the sick and the ministry to the suffering. Progress itself,
the whole modern reform movement as far as it associates itself
consciously and verbally with Christianity, identifies its inspiration
with that touching of Christ’s soul which did not permit Him to pass one
suffering man without healing him.
But it is often forgotten that the good which He did was spiritual good.
The true way of Martha is not so much giving money to the penniless,
clothes to the ragged, medicine to the sick, homes to the houseless,
decent dwellings to those who live in slums, as it is to make the poor
know that all these things are nothing and of no account; as it is to
touch their hearts and give them a new outlook upon life. Martha has
also to make the blind see, make the deaf hear, the mute speak, and to
raise the dead. As it is, it frequently happens that the poor, receiving
“charity,” are left angry, and so become poorer thereby, and the blind
find themselves in a greater darkness, and the deaf in a more deathly
silence.
We look on our fellow-creatures with dull eyes, and our personal
character and spiritual beauty is not sufficient to lighten up the
landscape and the faces of the people around us. There is no light about
our heads, and people touching the hem of our garments feel no contact
with mystery. So we do not reveal Christ to men. Though all is within
our power. Martha’s ordeal is as great a one as Mary’s, her consecration
as vital. We cannot go out carelessly and minister to the poor, for if
we do, we perform no miracles. And without miracles the poor are not
satisfied.
The true Martha has the wishing heart, and her fingers are full of
virtue. She is an argument in herself, and her presence without words
works true miracles, revealing the mystic meaning of Christ in herself,
and causing every one who _meets_ or _sees_ her to be miraculously
affected in some way or other.
* * * * *
Obviously the service of Martha is always personal. Therefore nothing
anonymous is Christian, and philanthropical societies, parliaments,
reform movements, and the like are doomed to failure unless they are
served by men and women with Christ-faces.
X
MAKING WEST EAST
... who made West East
And gave to Man
A new heaven and a new earth,
As Holy John hath prophesied of Me.
The West seems to have the tradition of the way of Martha, England
especially. Our Victorian era, of which the popular teachers were
Kingsley, Carlyle, Ruskin, was essentially an era of work and deeds
rather than of faith. As children, we in our prime to-day were brought
up on the gospel of work. Thoughts about one’s soul were considered
rather ignoble: they were smoke that we had to consume ourselves. We
were urged to forget the question of our souls and _work_. The whole
world was working, all the factories of England sang together. Every man
in England, from the highest to the lowest, knew when he wakened each
morning that he had that day some real and indispensable work to do. The
child must learn his lesson in that light. “If I hear of an artist of
promise,” says Ruskin, “the first question I ask is, ‘Does he work?’”
Ruskin dismissed Whistler, who painted rather in the way of Mary,
because he obviously did not work. All great men whatsoever worked.
The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.
If you want to be a Knox or a Luther or a Cromwell or a Frederick or a
Bismarck you must work.
The spirit of industry seemed to be Christianity itself. In reading
Froude’s history one seemed to gain the idea that the Reformation meant
getting rid of idleness and monks and abbeys, and substituting noble
labour, honest craftsmen, and factories. It is a modern misapprehension.
There was a time when we used to sing a hymn extravagantly opposed to
the gospel of work—
Doing is a deadly thing,
Doing ends in death.
We have a reputation for work. Most Russians would be incredulous if
told that Englishmen had ever sung such words. Yet they have, and we
know that we are not like the ants who have always been working and
always will work. We have been out of love with work before and will be
again.
During the Victorian era every Englishman had his coat off and was
working for all he was worth, perspiration on his brow, grime on his
body, the clangour of machinery in his ear. Carlyle found his generation
working, and gave it his blessing in effective phrase, and was so
obsessed by his own message that he gave up his own quest, his own
seeking, and lived in the British Museum, pondering, grubbing,
scratching, and turning forth volume after volume of dull Frederick, and
he forgot his own soul and the man who wrote _Sartor Resartus_ and _The
Heroes_.
And although this work, work for work’s sake, is not a Christian thing,
it is associated in the mind with what I call the “way of Martha.” It is
an exaggeration of her sweet serviceableness, a supposition that she had
gone crazy and had not only become cumbered about with many things, but
was so cumbered that she could never in all her life spare a moment to
come to the Master. Be that as it may, England had a fairly clear and
simple notion of her creed. Work pleased her. Popular opinion was on the
side, not of the parson who did nought, but of the old farmer “who
stubbed Thornaby Waaste.” Tennyson sang work and the goal of work—“All
diseases cured by science,” “the Parliament of the World,” “the rule of
the meek upon earth.” We gave our shoulders and our hearts and our lips
to the work, though indeed not much of the last, for in those days
silence was golden.
Now silence is golden only for those who do not know what to say. A
change has come about, is coming about. Work has ceased to be holy.
“To labour is to pray.” “Do the duty which lies nearest to you, that
which is doablest.” “Do noble things, not dream them, all day long ...”
such was the message of Victorian literature. And yet in that literature
there was a note of discord, and that was the voice of Browning, the
first of the moderns, and he wrote:
Not on the vulgar mass
Called “work,” must sentence pass.
And again:
Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.
And again:
He fixed thee midst this dance
Of plastic circumstance,
This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.
The way of Martha had given place to the way of Mary. My elders read
_Rabbi Ben Ezra_ to comfort one another:
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made;
and they read it because of a secret sense of failure. But the poem, and
the message of Browning in general, came to those of my generation with
a different force. When I was twenty I lived with the poem, as did those
I loved; I carried it with me wherever I went; it burned, it blazed in
my mind. It was a triumphant song. All the beauty of the time seemed to
radiate from it, and as I recall it to-day and write the old words down,
it brings back to me the fields, the hills, the roads, lime blossoms,
roses, faces of the summer when its meaning was first absolutely and
clearly mine. What was it in the poem? It was the modern movement. It
was good b’ye to the old. It was a sight of one’s own immortality and
Psyche herself, the ever-lovely one.
But necessarily I cannot write down what it meant. Suffice it that I can
remember how a boy of this time reacted to the touch of Browning.
Browning was a wonderful turn in English thought.