Maddock went out into the balcony and stood there, leaning on the rails,
reflectively smoking his cigar and looking out at the scene stretched
before him like a panorama. Alcock held quiet converse with Gildea for a
few moments, apologetically asking permission to go and write a letter,
the importance of which he would have explained at length, had not Gildea
interposed.
“By all means,” said he; and, with a word of excuse to and gesture of
acknowledgment from Maddock, took Alcock off into a room opposite, a
study, where he ensconced him at the desk and, having pointed out the
position of all the epistolatory necessities and told him to ring the
bell for Edgar who would see that the letter was posted at once, withdrew
and rejoined Maddock on the balcony.
“You will excuse Alcock,” Gildea said, lighting a cigarette, “He has a
letter of importance to write, which he does not care to leave till we
come back.”
Maddock at once acquiesced. There was a pause, both smoking with leisure.
At last:
“Well,” said Gildea, taking his cigarette from his lips, “and how did you
like the happy family? You were a very quiet member of it.”
“Yes,” said Maddock, “I refrained from mewing and sat still, purring and
pleasantly watching the others. It struck me, shortly after Alcock came
in, that we were a very representative happy family.”
“We only wanted a genial Theist to make the pile complete. Your good
Judge is a Theist. Now if we could only....”
“Ay, ay,” said Maddock with something like a chuckle, “Judge Parker is a
Theist! As your friend the _Argus_ said, he was ‘the learned gentleman
who discovered Unitarianism in the early months of 1885.’—Come now,” he
proceeded with a sudden concentration of interest, “what are you going
to say of the affirmative side of this man’s criticism, after your
remark that there was not, in modern times, one man of real intellectual
power that has believed in a personal God and not believed in a divine
Christ? Are you going to turn upon me again with your precious purely
intellectual view of things, and say: ‘The question that now arises is,
has not Theism, after all,’ et cetera, et cetera, et cetera?”
“Certainly I am,” said Gildea laughing, “but all hope of utilizing
the purely intellectual view seems lost after my unwary committal of
myself.—No,” he added more seriously, “I have of course little more left
to do than to try and get you to join me in abuse of the good Judge for
his superstition, that is to say his Theism, and that other egregious
vice of his—his ludicrously inadequate conception of what is ‘good
and ennobling.’ To take the last first, I will say, as I once heard
Hawkesbury say on a like occasion, that I would far sooner believe in
the Orthodox Christ than in the Unitarian Jesus. Indeed I might broaden
my saying, and declare to the whole Rationalistic conception of Christ
and Christianity generally, what Carlyle declared to Voltaire: ‘Cease,
my much respected Herr Von Voltaire, shut thy sweet voice; for the task
appointed thee seems finished. Sufficiently hast thou demonstrated this
proposition, considerable or otherwise: That the Mythus of the Christian
Religion looks not in the eighteenth century as it did in the eighth....
Take our thanks, then, and—thyself away.’”
“Judge Parker’s view of Our Lord,” said Maddock frowning, “is,—not to
say blasphemous,—simply _fatuous_! I do not know whether indignation at
impudence or contempt at stupidity the most possesses a man, when he is
told, by such an one as this, that ‘the Christian Theist, who regards
Jesus as man, considers, and rightly from his point of view, that it _is_
within his power to attain to the life of, and to follow the example
of, Christ.’ Imagine Judge Parker attaining to the life of anyone but a
blatantly successful lawyer in the truculent spiritual quagmires of a
colonial capital!”
“Our good Judge’s discovery and investigation of the character of Jesus,”
said Gildea, almost ready to laugh outright at Maddock’s concluding
dythramb, “are certainly not unlike those of a man who should charter a
penny steam-boat for a trip up the Nile, and proceed, on his return to
England, to give a lengthy description of certain large triangular-shaped
buildings which, he should say, bore considerable resemblance to the
common-sense conception of pyramids! And it _is_ possible perhaps to
denominate such a description as fatuous. His conception of Jesus _is_,
we are agreed—inadequate: ‘an exemplar ... who merits all praise, all
esteem, and love, and admiration for that, _being human_, he led so pure,
so blameless, so noble and unselfish a life.’ This, what this with our
good Judge _means_, is an inadequate conception of Jesus. He perceives
nothing of the real essence of Jesus. Anything that Arnold, whom he
quotes so often, may have said of ‘the mildness and sweet reasonableness’
of Jesus, or that Renan may have said of the wonderful powers of personal
attraction that are in Jesus—all this has fallen like water on the
judicial back of our duck here! It is for none of these that our good
Judge, our typical man of common-sense, goes to his New Testament.
‘Mildness and sweet reasonableness,’ the yearning of a consuming personal
love, are not clear solid spiritual qualities which his mind can see and
touch and handle. They have no place in the copy-books of the soul, nor
yet in the sum-books thereof, and you shall search its ‘Little Arthur’s
History’ from beginning to end and find no mention of them. Their only
place is in the thoughts, words, and actions of the men and women who
have moved thousands and millions of their fellows, in the radiant days
of high civilizations, in the agonies of the travail or the destruction
of peoples and races. ‘It is apparent,’ says he, ‘that we can collect
from the Christian Bible, a purer, more beautiful, and more advanced
ethical code, than is to be obtained from any other book or books.’
O good Judge, O belovèd Judge, if all that is to be got out of the
Christian Bible is an ‘ethical code,’ then the sooner Martin Tupper and
Mr. Harrison are deified, the sooner will the human soul have reached its
apogee!”
“That is well,” said Maddock, “but, at the same time, there are few
things that disgust me more than the man of the opposite sort—he who,
like so many of these Socialists of yours, will sing the love of Christ
with passion, and then go out and commit a hundred of the grossest sins.
Christ is morality.”
“Ah no,” said Gildea, “he is something better; he is religion! It is
immoral to commit adultery: it is moral to punish it: (‘Infinitely better
that they should atone for it, than lose a step towards a higher life’):
it is religious, not to condemn it, but to bid go and sin no more. It is
immoral to take your share in your father’s substance and waste it in
violent living: it is moral to punish this prodigal, to whom repentance
has only come with a belly that was fain to fill itself with the husks of
the swine: it is religious to kill the fatted calf for such a penitent,
and rejoice and make glad. Jesus’ sole criticism on practical morality,
on the realization of an ethical code in everyday life, is, that ‘it was
not so from the beginning.’”
“Just so; but this is precisely the difference of the ethical code of the
Old and of the New Dispensation.”
“Will you let me say, that it has nothing to do with any ethical code
at all? For, surely, the essence of ethical codes is justice, and the
essence of the religious code, of the code of Jesus, is love. The Amazon
may be a big river, but you shall compass all time in trying to put into
it the unspeakable ocean.—No, it is just here that, as Fitzgerald would
say, all these good people are superstitious. They believe that the
spiritual progress of humanity is synonymous with the progress of one
portion of the spirit of humanity, namely the ethical portion; and this,
being a belief in a thing not worthy of that belief, may justly, as it
seems to me, be denominated a superstition. It is superstition without
religion.”
“And what, then,” asked Maddock, “do you call the belief of men like your
friend Hawkesbury?”
“Those who are immoral? men and women who, as most of these Socialists,
work in the spirit of Jesus and act (as a polemist would say) in the
manner of Bradlaugh?—what is _their_ belief?”
“Yes,” said Maddock.
“Why, clearly,” answered Gildea smiling, “religion _with_ superstition!
The men of enthusiasm like Hawkesbury, and the men of morality like Judge
Parker, are surely both of them right, and surely both of them wrong:
right in their appreciation of the truth of one portion of the spiritual
life, wrong in their ignorance of another portion. They both possess
truth, and they both possess superstition.”
“And what of a man like our friend Alcock here, who is ignorant of
religion and more or less lax as regards morality?”
“He too,” answered Gildea, “as Fitzgerald clearly demonstrated, is
a victim of superstition. But he is not, for all that, without his
belief, without his appreciation of truth. He believes in that portion
of the spiritual life which we call intellect. Men like him have their
enthusiasm, for which they are ready to suffer and do suffer all things;
and that enthusiasm is the enthusiasm for that portion of truth which we
call Science.”
“And your Fitzgerald—is he too both right and wrong?”
“Of course he is; for has he not both belief and negation? All belief is
truth, not _the whole_ truth, but _a part_ of the truth. There is but one
thing that is the whole truth.”
“God?”
“No, not God, for God does not include Nature, from which He is the
outcome—not God, not Nature, but that which contains them both,
Everything, the All!”
“Pooh,” said Maddock, “flat Pantheism!”
“_And suppose_,” cried Gildea, “_it were_ Pot-_theism, if the thing is
true_!” (He laughed outright.) “—That answer of Carlyle’s,” he said, “is
immortal.”
“Oh, it was Carlyle said it?” said Maddock, “I had forgotten.—And so,” he
proceeded, “the secret is out, and Sir Horace Gildea ‘stands confessed a
Pantheist in all his charms!’”
“Two of the happy family still remain unaccounted for,” Gildea said,
“although they too have not probably attained to perfect truth.”
“Oh, that is you and I. As for me, I can describe myself without your
aid. I believe in morality and religion, with a touch of superstition in
both.”
“Worse,” said Gildea, “worse!”
“What, then?”
“You believe in theology which is as bad a superstition as, what Judge
Parker calls, ‘the calm blissful sea of pure _theistic_ belief.’ (You
notice how emphatic he is about his superstition and casual about his
truth?)”
“Stop a moment now, my bright Apollo, and explain to me, what you have
not yet attempted to, what the superstition of Theism is?”
“_What is Theism?_—‘It is a faith,’ answers our good Judge, ‘which is
_the_ faith of all others’ (that is to say the faith of Judge Parker and
all the ‘celebrated unitarian ministers’), ‘to be clung to, cherished
and maintained as long as man exists—belief, trust in, and love for
the All-loving, All-righteous, All-wise Universal Spirit of God.’ Now
observe that this faith, this unique faith of faiths, is ‘refreshing,
and invigorating in its simplicity’—(as, we might add, is also its
formulator, if we did not shun flippancy as we would the pest)—‘warm and
glowing in its absolute unclouded devotion to, love for, and perfect
trust in God alone—_proclaimed by_ NATURE!’ O wise Judge, O upright
Judge, O Judge much more elder than thy looks, where, when, and how,
in the name of all observers of Nature from Darwin through Haeckel to
Tennyson, did you discover therein either this love or righteousness of
which you make such mention? ‘The struggle for existence and survival of
the fittest,’ the parent of theistic righteousness and love! ‘_Proclaimed
by_ NATURE!’—and Nature in italics! O immemorial phrase that eats up
all the others even as Aaron’s rod swallowed up all the rods of the
magicians!—Who, after this, would care to trouble himself with all the
other potent items of this faith of faiths? The idea of God, God ‘the
All-loving, All-righteous, All-wise Universal Spirit’ ‘originated in
instinct,’ and is not the slow and painful growth of time? Think of the
love of Jehovah! the righteousness of Baal! the wisdom of Moloch!—The
beauty and sympathy and warmth of the theistic form of belief,” he
added, “are recognizable as a half-hearted mixture of the clap-trap of
Religion and Science—Superstition, which knows that it is naked, and sews
fig-leaves together, and make itself an apron!”
Maddock, however, could have no confidence in the expressed views of this
man, from whose face the light of amusement, amusement at others and
himself, seemed never to be absent long. There had, indeed, been moments
when it required all Maddock’s intuition to prevent his perception rising
in absolute revolt against what seemed Gildea’s flagrant insincerity:
then his perception had said to him that this was but a youth, endowed
with brilliant abilities, the mere exercise of which was a pleasure
and satisfaction to him, caring too little for any one thing to owe it
loyalty. Whereto his intuition had replied that this was not a youth but
a man, and a man whose secret could not thus be read. And the feeling
that Maddock had, once before that day, felt towards Gildea returned
now with an intensity and strangeness that seemed to Maddock, when
he afterwards considered it, as little short of wonderful. Maddock’s
profundity was often beyond the average, and herein indeed lay his
secret, herein nestled “the heart of his mystery.”
“And yet,” said Gildea, “here, as in the other case, the common-sense
view of belief has, of course, its excellence. ‘To take nothing else,’
says the Judge, ‘the very idea of “space” and “distance” that astronomy
has given us fills the mind with wonder and with awe, clothing nature
with a sublimity, a majesty, and a beauty which, otherwise, we had never
known.’ For observe that _Space_ and _Time_, these two inexhaustible
ideas, are not, to our average intelligent secular view of things,
the mere words that they are to the orthodox: they are realities thus
far, that they help us to perceive that ‘there exists throughout
space,—throughout the vast limitless universe,—motion, order, beauty;
that there is behind all motion, all order, all beauty, a force that
produces the motion, the order, and the beauty.’ And further. They are
realities thus far, that they help us to be (whatever Dr. Maddock, in
a polemico-theological spirit, may declare) earnest in our life and
earnest in our wish to bring home to others the truth of that life, a
‘most serious and difficult task!’ They help us to all this, and an
unrecognized intuitional belief in the essence which, in other forms
and other men whom we fail to appreciate, not to say understand, we
condemn—our intuitional belief, I say, in the Faith, Hope, and Love,
which are the great movers of the progress of Humanity both upward and
onward, will not let the forms that portions of this belief may take in
us make the whole grow cold, lifeless, petrified, but the beauty and
melody of our acts will often be found to contradict the deformity and
discord of our words.”
“I confess, Sir Horace,” said Maddock, “that you are a puzzle to me. I
really should not be surprised to see you some day walking side by side
with the Judge, the best friends in the world!”
“And perhaps,” said Gildea, “the Judge would not subsequently be
surprised to see me doing the same with yourself! For that indeed is the
only use of such poor creatures as I: we see the good in opponents and
serve as links in the spiritual bridge of Humanity.”
“I should very much like,” said Maddock, “to hear how you would abuse me
to him. I think I see the urbane expression with which you would delight
him by shewing how, in this ecclesiastical, metaphysical, theological
polemist here, habemus confitentem asinum; and then turn upon him and
say: ‘The question that now arises, my dear Judge, is, has this man
nothing but faults—has he no excellencies? does there remain, after the
attack on him of so eminent a biblical critic as Judge Parker is, no
residuum of real and vital truth? Let us see.’”
“Doctor, Doctor,” said Gildea, “to make me laugh so, is cruel!”
“You do not consider me,” said Maddock, “in the least.”
They both laughed heartily.
“And now,” said Maddock, “in order to complete the matter, tell me, what
is _your_ superstition? Here are Alcock and Parker with their respective
superstitions of Atheism and Theism, of purely scientific and purely
ethical progress. Here is Hawkesbury with his superstition about the
unselfishness of the People and the practical neglect of Morality. Here
is Fitzgerald with his superstitious belief in a Church whose splendid
logical consistency will prove its ruin. Here am I, a member of a sect
that more nearly approaches ideal Christianity than any other sect in
existence, and is a logical absurdity—blessed with the superstition of
theology and, worse, of polemical theology, with.... But I cannot express
all my superstitions: they seem more in number than the hairs of my head!”
“Let us say broadly, then, that Alcock and the Judge are those who have
superstition _without_, and Fitzgerald, you, and to a certain degree
Hawkesbury, those who have superstition _with_, Religion.”
“And that you?”
“And that _I_ am he who unites in my proper person the superstitions of
all with the actualities of none.”
There was a pause. Then:
“Sir Horace,” said Maddock, “I take you seriously. And I will confess
that I would sooner, far sooner, be any one of us than you.—Verily and
indeed,” he added, solemnly, “I cannot see why you should care to live.”
“Nor yet,” said Gildea, “why I should care to die?”
Maddock was possessed by sadness. The absolute, inevitable hopelessness
of this man made him again turn faint and sick at heart.
“Nor yet,” he said, “why you should care to die.”
There was a long pause. Never again could Maddock be illuded into
momentary misunderstanding of this man: he had now not only seen this
strange soul laid bare before him and felt the influence of that sight,
but had felt as if he had, as it were, almost received it into his own,
almost made it a part of himself.
At last:
“I asked you to believe,” he said with a touch of wistfulness in face
and tone, “that I was your true friend. You will perhaps, forgive me if
I ... if I offer you the one token of it that seems left to me to offer.
Some day—I cannot tell, but so I trust—you may care to think that, each
night you close your eyes in sleep, there is one whose prayers for you
are rising, as he believes, to the God and Father of us all, to bless and
keep you, to lift up the light of his countenance upon you, and to give
you peace.”
The two men stood facing each other for a few moments in silence: then
their hands met in a close, long clasp, and parted; and they turned,
standing almost touching each other, looking out over the lovely scene of
earth and water and sky.
At last:
“Those clouds,” said Gildea softly, “they have a peerless radiancy. One
seems to understand how the men of the past days saw a spirit therein,
and held converse with it with wonder and delight and awe. Those were
days of a music and beauty and sweetness such as we shall never know
again.”
“_If not_,” said Maddock as softly,
“_if not the calm_
_of its early mountainous shore,_
_yet a solemn peace of its own._”
A footstep was heard behind them. It was Edgar, come to say that Mrs. and
Miss Medwin had arrived and were up in the drawing-room with Mr. Alcock.
Gildea stepped out onto the lawn.
“Let us go up by the balcony,” he said to Maddock.