Thy beams encompass all lands, which thou hast made.
Thou art our sun.
Thou bindest us with thy love.
Thou art on high, but the day passes with thy going!
Even so, your kindly heart has shone upon our life, and made us
feel the springs of life within us. May the Great Master of all
things for ever bless you and yours!”
After this poetical effusion,[4] it is difficult to believe that
this same “Christian” minister, in order to gratify the private
jealousy, spite and malice of a few common persons whom he fancied
might be useful to him on account of their “local” influence, wrote
and published a scurrilous lampoon on the very friend who had tried
to benefit him and his wife and family, and to whom he had expressed
himself in the above terms of unmeasured gratitude! But such,
nevertheless, was the case. Report says that he was handsomely paid
for his trouble, which may perhaps serve as his excuse,--for in many
cases, as we know, money outweighs principle, even with a disciple of
Christ. It did so in the case of Judas Iscariot, who, however, “went
out and hanged himself” promptly. Perhaps the “very mediocre” cleric
who owed to the woman he afterwards insulted, “a recognition after many
long struggles,” will do the same morally and socially in due course.
For it would be as great a wrong to the Church to call such a man a
“Christian” as it would be to canonize Judas. Even the untutored savage
will not injure one with whom he has broken bread. And to bite the hand
that has supplied a need, is scarcely the act of a mongrel cur,--let us
hope it is a sufficiently rare performance among mongrel clerics.
Among other such “trifling” instances of the _un_-Christianity of
Christian ministers may be quoted a recent instance of a letter
addressed to a country newspaper by a clergyman who complained of
the small fees allowed him for the burial of paupers! “The game,” so
he expressed it, “was not worth the candle.” Christian charity was
no part of the business. Unless one can make a margin of profit, by
committing paupers to the hope of a joyful resurrection, why do it
at all? Such appeared to be the sum and substance of the reverend
gentleman’s argument. Another case in point is the following: A poor
man of seventy-five years old, getting the impression that Death was
too long in coming to fetch him, committed suicide by hanging himself
in a coal-shed. His widow, nearly as aged as he was, went tottering
feebly along to the clergyman of the parish, to relate the disaster and
seek for help. The first thing the good minister told her was, that
her husband, by committing suicide, had gone to hell. He then relaxed
his sternness somewhat, and kindly said that, considering her age,
infirmity and trouble, she “might call at the rectory every afternoon
for the tea-leaves.” This gracious invitation meant that the bereaved
old creature could have, for her consolation, the refuse of the
afternoon tea-pot after it had been well drained by this “Christian”
gentleman, his wife and family! Of other help she got none, and life
having become too hard for her to manage alone, despite the assistance
of the clergyman’s tea-leaves, she very soon, fortunately for herself,
died of grief and starvation. “He that giveth to the poor” in this
fashion, truly “lendeth to the Lord.”
“Christianity” and “Christian” are beautiful words, emblematic of
beautiful thoughts and beautiful deeds. The men who profess to teach
the value of those thoughts, the influence of those deeds, should
be capable in themselves of practically illustrating what they mean
by their faith, in their own lives and actions. Inspired by the
purest Creed that was ever taught to mankind for its better hope and
enlightenment, they should express in their attitude to the world, a
confident and constant joy and belief in God’s goodness, and should
remember that if He, their divine Master “so loved us,” equally should
they, His ordained ministers, love us, ay, even the worst of us, in
their turn. When, on the contrary, they do things for which the poorest
peasant or dockyard labourer would have the right, and the honest
right too, to despise them,--when they commit base actions for money
or advancement,--when they are harsh, unyielding, discourteous and
obstinate to the degree of even declining to aid a good cause or assist
in some benefit to the nation at large, merely because _they_ have not
been consulted as to ways and methods, they do not deserve to be called
“Christian” at all. They are of that class, unhappily increasing in
number, who cry out: “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name?”
to whom will be given the answer: “I never knew you; depart from Me,
ye that work iniquity!” Great and noble beyond all praise are true
“Christian” ministers,--and thousands of them are to be found in all
parts of the world, working silently and bravely for the rescue of
bodies as well as souls, giving practical as well as spiritual help and
sympathy to their fellow-men in trouble. But just because their labours
are so valuable, one resents all the more deeply the conduct of certain
members of the clergy who cast dishonour upon their whole calling,--and
just because the vocation of “priest” is so high, we intensely deplore
every action that tends to debase it. The un-Christian cleric belongs
to no spiritual form of faith whatsoever, and should not be allowed
to pretend that he does. He has but one religion,--Self. And from the
professor of Self, no man need ask either help or instruction.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] As some doubt has been expressed as to whether this incident is a
true one, the author wishes it to be known that she holds the original
letter written and signed by the reverend lampooner in question.
THE SOCIAL BLIGHT
People who live in the country know what is meant by a “blight”--a
thing which is neither mist nor storm, neither cloud nor rain,--a
fever of the atmosphere, without any freshening or cleansing force
in its composition. Like a dull stretch of smoky fog, it hangs for
hours and often for days over the face of the landscape, poisoning
the wholesome fruit and grain in the orchards and fields, and leaving
trails of noxious insect pests behind it upon trees and flowers,
withering their foliage, and blackening all buds of promise with a
destroying canker to their very core. It is a suffocating, malodorous
miasma, clinging to the air, for which there is no remedy but a
strong, ay, even a tempestuous wind,--a wind which vigorously pierces
through the humid vapour and disperses it, tearing it to shreds, and
finally working up such a storm as shall drown it out of existence in
torrents of purifying rain. Then all nature is relieved,--the air is
cleared,--health and gladness re-assert their beneficent influences,
and the land lies open to renewed life and easy breathing once more.
Even as “blight” is known in things natural, so is it known and easily
recognizable in things moral and social. It occurs periodically and
with more or less regularity, between certain changing, and not always
progressive phases or epochs of human civilization. It visited Sodom
and Gomorrah, Tyre and Sidon; it loomed over Nineveh and Babylon,--and
in our day it is steadily spreading its pall over Europe and America.
Its gloom is heavy and pronounced,--it would seem to be darkening
into the true sable or death colour, for there is no light of faith
to illumine it. It is the outcome of the infected breath of peoples
who are deliberately setting God aside out of their countings, and
living for Self and the Hour alone. So-called “scientists,” scraping
at the crust-covering of the mine of knowledge, and learning of its
hidden treasure about as much as might be measured with a finger-nail,
have boldly asserted that there is no God, no Supreme Intelligent
Force back of the universe,--no future life,--nothing but death and
destruction for the aspiring, fighting, working human soul,--and that,
therefore, having been created out of caprice, a “sport” of chance
and the elements, and having nothing to exist for but to make chance
and the elements as agreeable as possible during his brief conscious
experience of them, the best thing for man to do is to “eat, drink,
and be merry all the days of his life,” though even this, according to
Solomon, is “also vanity.” For of eating comes indigestion, of drink
stupefaction, and of merriment satiety. Strange it is that if there
is no higher destiny for man than this world and its uses, he should
always be thrown back upon himself dissatisfied! Give him millions of
money, and when he has them, he cares little for what they can bring;
grant him unlimited power and a few years suffice to weary him of its
use. And stranger still it is to realize, that while those who do not
admit God’s existence, strut forth like bantams on a dunghill, crowing
their little opinions about the sun-rise, we are all held fast and
guided, not only in our physical, but in our moral lives by immutable
laws, invisible in their working, but sooner or later made openly
manifest. Crime meets with punishment as surely as night follows day.
If the retribution is not of man’s making,--if human law, often so
vicious and one-sided in itself, fails to give justice to the innocent,
then Something or Someone steps in to supply man’s lack of truth and
courage, and executes a judgment from which there is no appeal. What
it is or Who it is, we may not presume to declare,--the Romans called
it Jove or Jupiter;--we call it God, while denying, with precisely the
same easy flippancy as the Romans did just before their downfall, that
such a Force exists. It is convenient and satisfying to Mammonites
and sensualists generally, to believe in nothing but themselves, and
the present day. It would be very unpleasant for them to have to
contemplate with any certainty a future life where neither Money nor
Sex prevail. And because it would be unpleasant, they naturally do not
admit its possibility. Nevertheless, without belief in the Creator and
Ruler of all things,--without faith in the higher spiritual destiny of
man as an immortal and individual soul, capable of progressing ever
onwards to wider and grander spheres of action, life in this world
appears but a poor and farcical futility.
Yet it is precisely the poor, farcical and futile view of life that
is taken by thousands of European and American people in our present
period. Both press and pulpit reflect it; it is openly shown in the
decadence of the drama, of art, of literature, of politics, and of
social conduct. The “blight” is over all. The blight of atheism,
infidelity, callousness and indifference to honourable principle,--the
blight of moral cowardice, self-indulgence, vanity and want of heart.
Without mincing matters, it can be fairly stated that the aristocratic
Jezebel is the fashionable woman of the hour, while the men vie with
one another as to who shall best screen her from her amours with
themselves. And so far as the sterner sex are personally concerned,
the moneyed man is the one most sought after, most tolerated, most
appreciated and flattered in that swarm of drones called “society”
where each buzzing insect tries to sting the other, or crawl over it
in such wise as to be the first to steal whatever honey may be within
reach. And worst of all things is the selfish apathy which pervades
the majority of the well-to-do classes. As little sympathy is shown
among them for the living, as regret for the dead. The misfortunes of
friends are far more often made subject for ill-natured mockery than
for compassion,--the deaths of parents and relations are accepted
with a kind of dull pleasure, as making way for the inheritance of
money or estates. No real delight is shown in the arts which foster
peace, progress and wisdom; and equally little enthusiasm is stirred
for such considerations of diplomacy or government which help to
keep nations secure. A great man dies one day, and is forgotten the
next,--unless some clumsy and scandalous “biography” which rakes up
all his faults and mistakes in life, and publishes private letters of
the most intimate and sacred character, can be hawked to the front
by certain literary vultures who get their living by tearing out the
heart of a corpse. Say that a dire tragedy is enacted,--such as the
assassination of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, or the atrocious
murder of the late King and Queen of Servia,--or, what is to many minds
almost as bad,--the heartless and un-Christian conduct of Leopold,
King of the Belgians, to his unhappy daughter Stéphanie,--and though
each event may be as painful and terrible as any that ever occupied
the attention of the historian, they appear to excite no more human
emotion than a few cold expressions of civil surprise or indifference.
Feeling,--warm, honest, active, passionate feeling for any cause, is
more difficult to rouse than the Sloth from its slumbers. It would,
in truth, seem to be dead. The Church cannot move it. The Drama fails
to stir it. Patriotism,--National Honour,--have no power to lift it
from the quagmire of inertia. But let there be a sudden panic on the
Stock Exchange,--let the Paris Bourse be shaken,--let Wall Street be
ablaze with sinister rumour--and then hey and halloo for a reckless,
degrading, humiliating, miserable human stampede! Like infuriated
maniacs men shriek and stamp and wrestle;--with brains on fire,
they forget that they were born to be reasoning creatures capable
of self-control;--their much boasted-of “education” avails them
nothing,--and they offer to the gods a spectacle of frantic fear and
ignominy of which even an untaught savage might well be ashamed.
But perhaps the most noxious sign of the blight in the social
atmosphere is the openly increasing laxity of morals, and the frankly
disgraceful disregard of the marriage tie. Herein the British
aristocracy take the lead as the choicest examples of the age. Whatever
Europe or America may show in the way of godless and dissolute living,
we are unhappily forced to realize that there are men in Great Britain,
renowned for their historic names and exclusive positions, who are
content to stand by, the tame witnesses of their own marital dishonour,
accepting, with a cowardice too contemptible for horsewhipping,
other men’s children as their own, all the time knowing them to be
bastards. We have heard of a certain “nobleman” who,--to quote Holy
Writ,--“neighed after” another man’s wife to such an extent, that to
stop the noise, the obliging husband accepted £60,000, a trifling sum,
which was duly handed over. Whether the gentleman who neighed, or the
gentleman who paid, was the worst rascal, must be left to others to
determine. It was all hushed up quite nicely,--and both parties are
received “in the best society,” with even more attention than would be
shown to them if they were clean and honest, instead of being soiled
and disreputable. The portrait of the lady whose damaged virtue was
plastered up for £60,000 is often seen in pictorials, with appended
letterpress suitably describing her as a lily-white dove of sweet
purity and peace. One blames the sinners in this sordid comedy less
than the “fashionable” folk who tolerate and excuse their conduct.
Sinners there are, and sinners there always will be,--modern Davids
will always exist who seek after Bathsheba, and do their level best to
get Uriah the Hittite comfortably out of the way,--but that they should
be encouraged in their sins and commended for them, is quite another
story. Apart from the pernicious influence they exercise on their own
particular “set,” the example of conduct they give to the nation at
large, not only arouses national contempt, but in some cases, where
certain notable politicians are concerned, may breed national disaster.
With looseness of morals naturally comes looseness of conversation.
The conversation of many of the Upper Ten, in England at least, shows
a remarkable tendency towards repulsive subjects and objectionable
details. It is becoming quite a common thing to hear men and women
talking about their “Little Marys,” a phrase which, though invented
by Mr. J. M. Barrie, is not without considerable vulgarity and
offence. Before the brilliant Scottish novelist chose this title
for a play dealing with the digestive apparatus, it would have done
him no harm to pause and reflect that with a very large portion of
the Christian world, namely the Roman Catholic, the name of Mary is
held to be the most sacred of all names, second to none save that of
the Divine Founder of the Faith. I am told on good authority that
Americans,--especially the best of the American women,--have been
amazed and more or less scandalized at the idea that any portion of the
“cultured” British public should be found willing to attend a dramatic
representation dealing with matters pertaining to the human stomach.
I hope this report is true. My admiration for some American women is
considerable, but it would go up several points higher if I were made
quite sure that their objection to this form of theatrical enterprise
was genuine, permanent, and unconquerable. I like Mr. Barrie very much,
and his Scottish stories delight me as they delight everybody, but I
want him to draw the line at the unbeautiful details of dyspepsia.
People are already too fond of talking about the various diseases
afflicting various parts of their bodies to need any spur in that way
from the romantic drama. One of the most notorious women of the day has
attained her doubtful celebrity partially by conversing about her own
inner mechanism and other people’s inner mechanisms in a style which
is not only “free,” but frankly disgusting. But,--“she is so amusing!”
say the Smart Set,--“One cannot repeat her stories, of course--they go
_rather_ far!--but--but--you really ought to hear her tell them!” This
kind of thing is on a par with certain lewd fiction lately advertised
by certain enterprising publishers who announce--“You must have this
book! The booksellers will not show it on their bookstalls. They say
you ought NOT to read it. GET IT!”
All homage to the booksellers who draw the line at printed garbage! One
must needs admire and respect them for refusing to take percentages
on the sale of corrupt matter. For business is always business,--and
when business men see that the tendency of a certain portion of the
reading public is towards prurient literature, they might, were they
less honourable and conscientious than they are, avail themselves
financially of this morbid and depraved taste. Especially as there are
a large number of self-called “stylists” who can always be relied
upon to praise the indecent in literature. They call it “strong,” or
“virile,” and reck nothing of the fact that the “strong” stench of it
may poison previously healthy minds, and corrupt otherwise innocent
souls. Prurient literature is always a never-failing accompaniment
of social “blight.” The fancy for it arises when wholesome literary
fare has become too simple for the diseased and capricious mental
appetite, and when the ideal conceptions of great imaginative minds,
such as the romances of Scott and Dickens, are voted “too long and
boresome!--there’s really no time to read such stories nowadays!”
No,--there is no time! There’s plenty of time to play Bridge though!
Poetry--the greatest of the arts--is neglected at the present day,
because nobody will read it. Among the most highly “educated” persons,
many can be met with who prattle glibly about Shakespeare, but who
neither know the names of his plays nor have read a line of his work.
With the decline of Poesy comes as a matter of course the decline of
Sculpture, Painting, Architecture and Music. For Poesy is the parent
stem from which all these arts have sprung. The proofs of their decline
are visible enough amongst us to-day. Neither Great Britain, nor
Europe, nor America, can show a really great Poet. England’s last great
poet was Tennyson,--since his death we have had no other. Similarly
there is no great sculptor, no great painter, no great novelist,
no great architect, no great musician. I use the word “great,” of
course, in its largest sense, in the sense wherein we speak of Michael
Angelo, Raffaelle, or Beethoven. There are plenty of clever “sketchy”
artists,--“impressionist” painters and fictionists, “rococo” sculptors,
and melodious drawing-room song-writers,--but we wait in vain for a new
“grand” opera, a nobly-inspired statue, a novel like “Guy Mannering,”
or a Cathedral, such as the devout old monks designed in the intervals
between prayer and praise. The beautiful and poetic ideals that made
such work possible are, if not quite dead, slowly dying, under the
influence of the “blight” which infects the social atmosphere,--the
blight which is thick with Self and Sensuality,--which looms between
man and his Maker, shutting out every hopeful glimpse of the sun of
faith, whose life-giving rays invigorate the soul. And those who see
it slowly darkening--those who have been and are students of history,
and are thereby able to recognize its appearance, its meaning, and its
mission, and who know the mischief wrought by the poison it exhales,
will pray for a Storm!
“Come but the direst storm and stress that Fate
Can bring upon us in its darkest hour,
Then will the realm awake, however late,
From the warm sloth in which we yawn and cower,
And pass our sordid lives in greed, or mate
With animal delights in luxury’s bower;
Then will the ancient virtues bloom anew,
And love of country quench the love of gold;
Then will the mocking spirits that imbue
Our daily converse fade like misty cold
When the clear sunshine permeates the blue;
Men will be manly as in days of old,
And scorn the base delights that sink them down
Into the languid waters where they drown!”
THE DEATH OF HOSPITALITY