3. The excellence of simplicity.
Rank, wealth, and all kinds of ostentation should be to you
pitiable--not enviable.
IS IT SO? Do you prefer poverty, with a pure conscience, to ill-gotten
riches? Would you rather be a faithful servant of Christ or a slave of
Mammon? Give the answer to your own soul,--but give it honestly--if you
can!
If you find, on close self-examination, that you love yourself, your
own importance, your position, your money, your household goods and
clothes, your place in what you call “society,” more than the steady
working for and following of Christ,--YOU ARE NOT A CHRISTIAN. That
being the case, be brave about it! Say what you are, and do not pretend
to be what you are not!
It ought to be quite easy for you to come to a clear understanding
with yourselves. Take down the New Testament and read it. Read it as
closely and carefully as you read your cheap newspapers, and with
as much eagerness to find out “news.” For news there is in it, and
of grave import. Not news affecting the things of this world, which
pass like a breath of wind and are no more,--but news which treats of
Eternal Facts, outlasting the creation and re-creation of countless
worlds. Read this book for yourselves, I say, rather than take it in
portions on Sundays only from your clergy,--and devote your earnest
attention to the simple precepts uttered by Christ Himself. If you
are a Christian, you believe Christ was an Incarnation of God,--then
does it not behove you to listen when God speaks? Or is it a matter
of indifference to you that the Maker and Upholder of millions of
universes should have condescended to come and teach you how to live?
If it is, then stand forth and let us see you! Do not attend places of
worship merely to be noticed by your neighbours. For,--apart from such
conduct being strictly forbidden by Christ,--you insult other persons
by your presence as a liar and hypocrite. This is what you may call a
“rude” statement;--plain-speaking and truth-telling are always called
“rude.” You will find the utmost plain-speaking in the Gospels upon
which you profess to pin your faith. If you have any “fancy Ritualism”
lurking about you, you will discover that “forms” are not tolerated by
the Saviour of mankind.
“All their works they do for to be seen of men; they make broad their
phylacteries and enlarge the borders of their garments.”
“Shows” of religion are severely censured and condemned by Him whose
commands we assume to try and obey--we can scarcely find even a peg
whereon to hang an excuse for our practice of praying in public, while
“vain repetitions” of prayer are expressly prohibited. I repeat--Read
the Four Gospels; they are very much mis-read in these days, and even
in the Churches are only gabbled. See if your private and personal
lives are in keeping with the commands there set down. If not, cease to
play Humbug with the Eternities;--they will avenge themselves upon your
hypocrisy in a way you dream not of! “Whosoever excuses himself accuses
himself.”
The true Christian faith has no dogma,--no form,--no sect. It starts
with Christ as God-in-Man, in an all-embracing love for God and His
whole Creation, with an explicit and clear understanding (as symbolized
so emphatically in the Crucifixion and Resurrection), that each
individual Soul is an immortal germ of life, in process of eternal
development, to which each new “experience” of thought, whether on
this planet or others, adds larger powers, wider intelligence, and
intensified consciousness. There are no “isms” in this faith--no
bigotry, and no intolerance. It leaves no ground for discussion.
“This is my commandment,--That ye love one another as I have loved you.”
It is all there,--simple, straight and pure--no more, no less than this.
“Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what
is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility. It is,
therefore, able to undertake all things, and it completes many things
and warrants them to take effect where he who does not love would faint
and lie down. Love is watchful, and, sleeping, slumbereth not. Though
weary, it is not tired; though alarmed, it is not confounded, but, as a
lively flame and burning torch, it forces its way upwards, and securely
passes all.... Love is born of God and cannot rest but in God, above
all created things.”
Is our Gospel of modern life and society to-day one of love or of hate?
Do we help each other more readily than we kick each other down? Do we
prefer to praise or to slander our neighbours? Is it not absolutely
true that “a cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels
as they run”? Can we leave anybody alone without covert or open
detraction from his or her merits? Even in the most ordinary, every-day
life do we not see people taking a malicious, insane delight in making
their next-door neighbours as uncomfortable as possible in every petty
way they can? These persons, by the way, are generally the class who go
to Church most regularly, and are constant Communicants. Do they not by
their profane attempt to assimilate the malignity of their dispositions
with the gospel of Christ, deserve to be considered as mere blasphemers
of the Faith?
Yet, as a matter of fact, it is much easier to love than to hate. Love
is the natural and native air of the immortal soul. “While we fulfil
the law of love in all our thoughts and actions, we cannot fail to
grow.” Hatred, discontent, envy, and pessimism, cramp all the higher
faculties of the mind and very often actually breed disease in the
body. To love all creation is to draw the responsive health and life of
creation into one’s own immortal cognizance. “Love easily loosens all
our bonds. There is no discomfort that will not yield to its sovereign
power.” But it must not be a selfish love. It must be a Love which is
the keynote of the Christian Faith--“Love one another as I have loved
you.”
It follows very plainly that if we truly loved one another there would
be no wars, no envyings, no racial hatreds, no over-reaching of our
brethren for either wealth, place or power. There would be no such
hells as the Lancashire factories, for example, where, as Allen Clarke
graphically tells us,[2] “Amidst that sickening jerry-jumble of cheap
bricks and cheaper British industry, over a hundred thousand men,
women and children, toil and exist, sweating in the vast, hot, stuffy
mills and sweltering forges--going, when young, to the smut-surrounded
schools to improve their minds, and trying to commune with the living
God in the dreary, dead, besmirched churches and grimy puritanical
chapels; growing up stunted, breeding thoughtlessly, dying prematurely,
knowing not, nor dreaming, except for here and there a solitary one
cursed with keen sight and sensitive soul, of aught better and brighter
than this sickening, steaming sphere of slime and sorrow.” Contrast
this picture with a crowded “supper-night” at the Carlton or any other
fashionable Feeding-place of London, and then maintain, if you dare,
that the men and women who are responsible for two such differing sides
of life are “Christians”!
England is, we are told, in danger of becoming “Romanized.” Priests
and nuns of various “orders” who have been thrust out of France and
Spain for intermeddling, are seeking refuge here, in company with the
organ-grinders and other folk who have been found unnecessary in their
own countries. From Paris official news was cabled on September 11,
1902, as follows:--
“JESUIT EXODUS FROM FRANCE.
“PARIS, _Wednesday, September 11_.
“It is announced officially that by the 1st of next month
not a single Jesuit will be left in France. Most of them
are emigrating to England, and will make Canterbury their
headquarters.--DALZIEL.”
France will not have the Jesuits; may it be asked why _we_ are to have
them? It is England’s proud privilege to be an international workhouse
for all the decrepit of the world, and for this cause a happy hunting
ground is open to Rome among these same decrepit. There is no creed in
the world which is better adapted for those who are morally weak, and
frightened of themselves. All the millionaires who have gotten their
goods by fraud, can, by leaving the greater part of these goods to
Rome, secure a reserved seat in Rome’s Heaven, with a special harp and
crown. All the women with “soul-affinities” other than lawful, can,
after a considerable wallow in social mire, enter the Church of Rome,
and, after confession, be “cleansed” sufficiently to begin again a new
life, approved of the saints. All the spiritualists and faith-healers
can find support for their theories with Rome,--and the Roman hell,
full of large snakes and much brimstone, is a satisfactory place
to consign one’s enemies to, when we have quite put aside Christ’s
command, “Love one another.” Altogether Romanism is calculated to
appeal to a very large majority of persons through the sensuous and
emotional beauty of its ritual;--it is a kind of heavenly narcotic
which persuades the believer to resign his own will into the hypnotic
management of the priests. The church is made gorgeous with soft lights
and colours,--glorious music resounds through the building, and the
mind drowses gently under the influence of the Latin chanting, which
we need not follow unless we like,--we are permitted to believe that
a large number of saints and angels are specially looking after us,
and that the sweet Virgin Mary is ever ready with outstretched hands
to listen to all our little griefs and vexations. It is a beautiful
and fascinating Creed, hallowed by long antiquity, graced by deeds
of romance and chivalry, sanctified by the memories of great martyrs
and pure saints, and even in these degenerate days, glorified by
the noble-hearted men and women who follow it without bigotry or
intolerance, doing good everywhere, tending the sick, comforting the
sorrowful, and gathering up the little children into their protecting
arms, even as Jesus Himself gathered them. It would need an angel’s pen
dipped in fire, to record the true history of a faithful, self-denying
priest of the Roman Church, who gives up his own advantage for the sake
of serving others,--who walks fearlessly into squalid dens reeking
with fever, and sets the pure Host between the infected lips of the
dying,--who combats with the Demon of Drink, and drags up the almost
lost reprobate out of that horrible chasm of vice and destruction.
No one could ever give sufficient honour to such a man for all the
immense amount of good he does, unostentatiously and without hope of
reward. But many men like himself exist equally in the English Church
as the Roman,--in the Presbyterian Church, in the Greek Church, in the
Buddhist temples, among the Quakers, “Plymouth Brethren,” and other
sects--among the followers of Mahomet or of Confucius. For there are
good men and good women in every Church, faithful to the SPIRIT OF
CHRIST, and, therefore, “Christians,” even if called Jews or Hindoos.
Personally, I have no more objection or dislike to Romanism than I
have to any other “ism” ever formulated. From a student’s point of
view I admire the Roman Catholic priesthood, because they understand
their business, and thoroughly know the material with which they have
to deal. Wise as their Egyptian prototypes of old, they decline to
unveil “mysteries” to the uninitiated vulgar--therefore the laity are
not expected to read the Bible for themselves. Knowing the terrors
of a guilty conscience, they are able to intimidate the uneducated
ruffian of both sexes more successfully than all the majesty of the
law. Thoroughly aware of the popular delight in “shows,” they organize
public processions on feast days, just as the “Masters of the Stars”
used to do in Memphis, where, by the way (as those who take the
trouble to study ancient Egyptian records will discover), our latest
inventions, such as the electric light, the telephone, the phonograph,
and many other modern conveniences, were used by the priests for
“miraculous” effects. From the Egyptian priesthood we derive the
beginnings of scientific discovery;--to the early Roman Catholic
priesthood we owe the preservation of much history and learning. The
one is, intellectually speaking, a lineal descendant of the other, and
both deserve the utmost respect for their immense capacity as Rulers of
the Ignorant.
The greater majority of persons have no force of will and no decided
opinions, but only an under-sense of coward fear or vexation at the
possible unsuccessful or damaging result of their own ill-doings. Hence
the power of the Roman Catholic dogma. It is not Christianity; it has
not the delicate subtlety of Greek mythology; it is simply pagan Rome
engrafted on the conversion and repentance of the Jew, Peter, who, in
the time of trial, “knew not the Man.” Curiously enough, it is just the
“Man,” the real typical Christ, the pure, strong God-in-humanity who
is still “not known” in the Roman Catholic ritual. There are prayers
to the “Sacred Heart” and to other physical attributes of Jesus,--just
as in old Rome there were prayers to the physical attributes of
the various deities, but of the perfect “Man,” as seen in Christ’s
dauntless love of truth and exposure of shams, His scourging of the
thieves out of the holy temple, His grand indifference to the world’s
malice and hatred, and His conquest over death and the grave,--of
these things we are given no clear or helpful image. Nevertheless, it
is the “Man” we most need,--the “Man” who came to us to teach us how
to live;--the brother, the friend, the close sympathizer,--the great
Creator of all life mingling Himself with His human creation in a
beautiful, tender, loving, wise and all-pitiful Spirit, wherein is no
hate, no revenge, and no intolerance! This is the Christ;--this is His
Christianity. Romanism, on the contrary, allows plenty of space for
those who want to hate as well as to love, and it is as helpful or as
useless as any of the thousand and one dogmas built up around Christ,
dogmas which include bad passions as well as divine aspirations. The
danger of such a creed gaining too much ground in England, the land
where our forefathers fought against it and trampled it out with
their own blood and tears, is not because it is a particular form of
religious Faith, but because it is an intolerant system of secret
Government. This has been proved over and over again throughout
history. Its leaders have not shown themselves as gentle pagans by any
means, either now or in the past;--and intolerance in any form, from
any sect, is no part of the Constitution of a free country.
Hence the real cause of the objection which has been entertained by
millions of persons in the Empire to the suggested alteration of
the King’s Coronation oath. The British King is a Constitutional
monarch,--and the words “Defender of the Faith” imply that he is
equally Defender of the Constitution. He agrees, when he is crowned
King of England, to uphold that Constitution,--he therefore tacitly
rejects all that might tend to undermine it,--all secret methods of
tampering with political, governmental or financial matters relating
to the State. The wording of the Coronation Oath is, and must be
distinctly offensive to thousands of excellent persons who are Roman
Catholics,--nevertheless, in the times when it was so worded, the
offending terms were made necessary by the conduct of the Roman
Catholics themselves. Those times, we are assured, are past. We have
made progress in education,--we are now broad-minded enough to be
fair to foes, as well as to friends. We should, therefore, in common
courtesy to a rival Church, consent to have this irritating formula
altered. Perhaps we should,--but is it too much to ask our Roman
Catholic brethren that they also should, if they wish for tolerance,
exhibit it on their own side? When Queen Victoria died, was it not
quite as offensive on the part of Pope Leo to publicly state that he
“could not be represented at the funeral of a Protestant Queen”--as it
may be for our King to publicly repudiate the service of the Mass?
Nothing could have been more calculated to gratuitously wound the
feelings of a great People than that most unnecessary announcement
made from an historical religious centre like the Vatican, at a time
of universal grief for the death of a good Monarch. If the Pope’s act
was according to the rule of his Church, the King’s oath is according
to the rule of the British Constitution. No one could accuse the Pope
of any particularly “Christian” feeling in declining to be represented
at the last obsequies of the best Queen that ever reigned--no one can
or would ever conscientiously accuse an English King of “religious
intolerance” when he takes the oath as it is set down for him. Both
acts are matters of policy. We have seen the foremost peer of England,
the Duke of Norfolk, forgetting himself so far on one occasion as
to drag his religious creed into the political arena, and publicly
expressing the hope on behalf of all English Catholics that the Pope
may soon regain temporal power (which means, to put it quite plainly,
that the British Constitution should be disintegrated and laid under
subjection to Rome): the natural consequence of such conduct is that
an enormous majority of perfectly sensible broad-minded people doubt
whether it is wise to leave an entirely loose rein on the neck of
the papal Pegasus. Tolerance and equity on the one side must be met
by tolerance and equity on the other, if a fair understanding is to
be arrived at. And when the professors of any religious Creed still
persecute heroism and intellect, or refuse reverence to the last
rite of a noble Queen, whose long reign was a blessing to the whole
world, one may be permitted to question their fitness for the task
of elevating and refining the minds and morals of those whom their
teachings help to influence. And having, as a man of intellectual
and keen perception, the full consciousness that such unuttered
“questioning” was burning the hearts and minds of thousands, the late
Cardinal Vaughan showed himself a master of the art of Roman Catholic
diplomacy in his speech at Newcastle-on-Tyne on September 9, 1902.
Speaking of the inrush of Roman Catholic priests into England, he
said:--
“A statement from a London paper has been running through the
provincial Press to the effect that I have deliberately outraged
public feeling by inviting to England certain French religieux, some
of those _confrères_ who have made themselves particularly obnoxious
by their constant attacks upon this country. The fact is that, upon
the passing of the iniquitous law against the religious congregations,
I gave a general invitation to any religieux who might wish, to come
to my diocese until they could return to France. Among those who
applied were three or four fathers, some of those _confrères_ who do
not love England. My invitation being general, I was not, and am not
going to make distinctions. None will come who do not intend to obey
the laws and follow my direction. And if there be any who have not
been sufficiently enlightened to appreciate this country while living
in France, they are the very people who had best come and make our
acquaintance. This is the surest way to change their views. But while
England boasts of her generous hospitality to every kind of refugee, I
shall certainly offer whatever hospitality I can to the men and women
who have suffered for Christ’s sake. _I am too broad an Englishman to
know any other policy._”
“Broad Englishman” as the Cardinal professed to be, he had no pity on
the aged Dr. St. George Mivart, the circumstances of whose treatment
are not yet forgotten.
Speaking of the Coronation oath, the Cardinal said: “I entirely and
frankly accept the decision of the country that the King must be a
Protestant. They believe that this is in some way bound up with the
welfare of the Empire. WITHOUT GOING THIS LENGTH, I am convinced that
in the present condition of the English people, HAUNTED AS THEY ARE
BY FEARS AND SUSPICIONS, it is expedient that the King should be of
the religion of the overwhelming majority. Besides, the King being, in
virtue of Royal supremacy, head of the State Church, it is impossible
that he should be other than a Protestant. Catholics have no difficulty
in paying most loyal allegiance to a Protestant Sovereign. In this
they seem to be of more liberal and confiding temper than those who
would refuse allegiance to a King unless he professed their creed. The
Catholic has no difficulty, because he gives his allegiance and his
life, when needed, primarily to the civil power ordained of God.”
(The Cardinal did not pause here to try and explain why God has thus
“ordained” a Protestant sovereign instead of a Roman Catholic one! Yet
no doubt he will admit that God knows best.)
“The Sovereign REPRESENTS THIS POWER, whatever be his religion. Was
it not Catholic Belgium that placed the Protestant King Leopold upon
the Throne, and gave to him at least as hearty a devotion as ever has
been shown to his Catholic successor? Other Catholic States are ruled
by Protestant Sovereigns. And who can say that the 16,000,000 of German
Catholics are a whit less loyal to their German Protestant Emperor
than the millions who are of the Protestant or of no religion? There
are people, I believe, pursued by the conviction that we Catholics
would do anything in the world to get a Catholic King upon the Throne;
that the Pope would give us leave to tell lies, commit perjury, plot,
scheme, and kill to any extent for such a purpose; that there is no
crime we should stick at if the certainty, or even the probability
of accomplishing such an end were in view. Now let me put it to our
Protestant friends in this way. If the King of England were an absolute
Monarch, the dictator of the laws to be enacted, and his own executive,
there might be something of vital importance to our interests and
to those of religion to excite in us an intense desire to have a
Catholic King. Though even then the end could never, even remotely,
justify the means suggested. But how do matters really stand? We have
a Constitutional Monarch who is subject to the laws, and in practice
bound to follow the advice of his Ministers. A Catholic King, under
present circumstances, would be a cause of weakness, of perpetual
difficulty, and of untold anxiety. We are far better off as we are. Our
dangers and grievances, our hopes and our happiness, LIE IN THE WORKING
OF THE CONSTITUTION, not in the favour or power of any Sovereign. IT
IS THE PARLIAMENT, THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, THAT WE MUST CONVERT, or at
least strive to retain within the influence of Christianity. For the
well-being of this country and the salvation of its people depend,
above all other human things, UPON THE VIEW THAT THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
CAN BE GOT TO TAKE OF ITS DUTY--to respect and obey the law of Christ.
What we want is to get the House of Commons to maintain the Christian
laws of marriage as the basis of society, and to secure to parents and
their children a true and proper liberty in the matter of Christian
education. And in this, remember well, THAT THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
DEPENDS NOT UPON THE KING, WHATEVER HIS RELIGION, BUT UPON OURSELVES.
The people of this country must work out their own salvation. And
here let me point out to you, in passing, that the next Session of
Parliament may settle for ever the position of Christianity in this
country. Secondary and middle-class education will be thrown into the
melting-pot. In the process of the devolution of educational authority
upon county councils, Christianity will run the risk of losing rights
which it seems to have almost secured under the working of the
Education Department. The adoption of a single clause or principle
will have far-reaching and most vital results. There will be another
educational struggle. Struggles will be inevitable until the Christian
cause which is becoming more and more openly the cause of the majority
has permanently triumphed.”
Here we have four distinct “moves” on the plan of campaign.