The Hearts of Men Part 10

It is, of course, a wild exaggeration. Pain and sickness are real things, and the empire of the mind over the body is very limited.

Still, there is an empire and it must never be forgotten. The healthy-minded--those who work, who live their lives, who love and hate, and fight, and win and lose, to whom the world is a great arena--will laugh at Mrs. Eddy. They need not this teaching which is half a truth and half a lie. They see the false half only because they need not the true half. And the others, the mental invalids, they see the true half and not the false. It is _all_ true to them, and it _must_ be all true to be of use, for power lies in the exaggeration, never in the mean.

This is the secret of "Christian Science." We have in our midst a terrible disease, growing daily worse, the disease of inutility, which breeds pessimism, and Mrs. Eddy's doctrine of the imaginary nature of evil is good for this pessimism. The sick seize it with avidity because they find it helps their symptoms, and in the relief it affords to their unhappiness they are willing to swallow all the rest of the formless mist that is offered to them as part of their religion.

I do not know that "Christian Scientists" differ greatly from believers in other religions in this point. It is an excellent instance of how one useful tenet will cause the acceptance of a whole ma.s.s of absurdities and even make them seem real and true. Christian Science has come as the quack medicine to cure a disease that is a terrible reality, and it is of use because it contains in all its melange one ingredient, morphia, that dulls the pain. But the cure of this disease lies elsewhere than in Christian Science, than, indeed, in any religion.

I have given a chapter to this "Science," not because it appears to me that it is ever likely to become a real force or of real importance, but because it ill.u.s.trates, I think, the reason of the success or otherwise of all religions. It exhibits in exaggerated form what is the nature of all religions.

They come to fulfil an emotional want, or wants that are imperative and that call for relief. And they succeed and persist exactly as they minister to these emotional wants. The emotion that requires religion is always a pessimism of some form or other, a weariness, a hopelessness. And the religion is accepted because it combats that helplessness and gives a hope. All religions are optimisms to their believers.

A great deal of foolishness may be included in a faith without injury to its success. Doctrine, theory, scientific theology, may be as empty and meaningless as it is in Christian Science, and still the faith will live. And the central idea must be exaggerated. It must be so exaggerated that to outsiders it appears only an immense falsehood. It is so in all the religions. Truth lies in the mean, power in the extreme. They are opposed as are freewill and destination, as are G.o.d and Law.

CHAPTER XVIII.

PERSONALITY.

There is one complaint that all Europeans make of the Burmese. It matters not what the European's duties may be, what his profession, or his trade, or his calling--it is always the same, "the Burmans will not stand discipline." It is, says the European, fatal to him in almost all walks of life. For instance, the British Government tried at one time in Burma to raise Burmese regiments officered by Europeans, after the pattern of the Indian troops. There seemed at first no reason why it should not succeed. The Burmans are not cowards. Although not endowed with the fury of the Pathan or the bloodthirsty valour of the Ghurka, the Burman is brave. He will do many things none but brave men can do; kill panthers with sharpened sticks, for instance, and navigate the Irrawaddy in flood in canoes, with barely two inches free board. He is, in his natural state in the villages, unaccustomed to any strict discipline. But then, so are most people; and if the levies of the Burmese kings were but a mob, why, so are most native levies. There seemed _a priori_ no reason why Burmese troops should not be fairly useful. And the attempt was made. It failed.

And so, to a greater or less extent, all attempts to discipline the Burmans in any walk of life have always failed. Amongst the police--which must, of course, be composed of natives of the country--discipline, even the light discipline sought to be enforced, is always wanting. And good men will not join the force, mostly because they dislike to be ruled. In the mills in Rangoon labour has been imported from India. Not that the Burman is not a good workman--he is physically and mentally miles above the imported Telugu--but he will not stand discipline. It is the same on the railways and on the roads, and the private servants of almost all Europeans are Indian. The Burman will not stand control, daily control, daily order, the feeling of subjection and the infliction of punishment. Especially the infliction of punishment. He resents it, even when he knows and admits he deserves it.

Is, then, the Burman impatient of suffering? He is the most patient, the most cheerful of mortals. I who have seen districts ruined by famine, families broken up and dissolved, farms abandoned, cattle dying by the thousand, I know this. And in the famine camps, where tens of thousands lived and worked hard for a bare subsistence, was there any inability to bear up, any despondency, any despair? There was never any. Such an example of cheerfulness, of courage under great suffering, could not be surpa.s.sed. Yet if you fine your servant a few annas out of his good pay for a fault he will admit he made, he will bitterly resent it and probably leave you. It is Authority, Personality, that the Burmans object to. And the whole social life of the people, the whole of their religion, shows how deeply this distaste to Personal Authority enters into their lives.

There is no aristocracy in Burma. There has never been so. There has, it is true, always been a King--that was a necessity; and his authority, nominally absolute, was in fact very limited. But beside him there was no one. There were no lords of manors, no feudalism, no serf.a.ge of any kind. There was a kind of slavery, the idea of which probably came into Burma with the code of Manu, as a redemption of debt. At our conquest of Upper Burma it disappeared without a sign, but it was the lightest of its kind. The slave was a domestic servant at most, more usually a member of the family; the authority exercised over him or her was of the gentlest, for with the dislike to submit to personal authority there was an equally great dislike to exercising it. The intense desire for power and authority over others which is so distinguis.h.i.+ng a mark of western people does not obtain among the Burmese. It is one of our difficulties to make our subordinate Burmese magistrates and officers exercise sufficient authority in their charges. This dislike, both to exercising and submitting to authority, is instinctive and very strong.

In western nations, more especially the Latin nations, who made Christianity, it is the very reverse. There is in us both the desire and ability to govern and the power to submit readily to those who are above us. We rejoice in aristocracies, whether of the Government or of the Church. We organise all our inst.i.tutions upon that basis. We have a rigid Government, such as no Orientals have dreamt of, least of all the Burmese. We revere rank instinctively. We like to have masters. Personal submissiveness is in our eyes an excellent quality. We know that to declare a man to be a faithful servant is a great praise. In our lives as in our religions, lord and servant express a continued relations.h.i.+p.

And from this quality, this instinct of discipline, this innate power both of governing and submitting to governance, come the forms of government and our success in trade and in many other matters.

It would, however, be quite outside the point of this chapter to discuss all the results of these differences and their effect for good and bad.

To the European the Burman, with his distaste for authority, appears to be unfitted for the greater successes of life. To the Burman the European's desire for authority appears to result in the slavery of the many to the few, in the loss of individual liberty and the contraction of happiness. Either or both, or neither, may be true. It is here immaterial, for all I wish to point out and to emphasise is that whereas the Burman, who is a Buddhist, dislikes all personal authority instinctively, the western Christians, more especially the Latin peoples, on the contrary crave after it. The Burman's ideal is to be independent of everyone, even if poor, to have no one over him and no one under him, to live among his equals. But in western countries the tendency is all to divide the world into two cla.s.ses, master and man, to organise--which means, of course, authority and submission--and to make obedience one of the greatest of virtues.

Now consider their faiths. The Christian has a personal G.o.d. He owes to that G.o.d unquestioning obedience and submission. Man may praise G.o.d and thank Him, but not do the reverse. Man owes to G.o.d reverence, one of the greatest of the virtues. And the Churches are all organised in the same way. The authority of G.o.d becomes the authority of the Pope, the Tsar, the Bishops, the priests. The amount of submission and reverence due to the priests of Christianity may vary in different countries, but it is always there, and the reverence due to G.o.d never alters.

Do you think such a system of religion would be bearable to a Burman? To him neither reverence nor submission to Personality, whether G.o.d or priest or master, is an instinctive beauty. He acknowledges neither G.o.d nor priest, and he avoids masters as much as possible. His nature does not lead him to it. He revolts against Personality. Courage under the inevitable he has to the greatest extent. If he suffer as the result of a law he has nothing but cheerful acceptance, even if he do not understand it. If he can see his suffering to be the result of his own mistakes he will bear it with resignation, and note that in future he should be more careful. But that he should be _punished_, that rouses in him resentment, revolt. He would cry to G.o.d, Why do you hurt me? You need not if you do not like; You are all-powerful. Cannot you manage otherwise than by causing so much pain to me and all the world? There are other feelings caused by a Personality, many other feelings than that of submission. There is defiance, bitterness. Did not Ajax defy the lightning? If a man or a boy looking at the world discovers in it more misery than happiness, more injustice than justice, of what sort will be his feelings to the Author of it all?

I fear that if the Burman accepted a Personal All-powerful G.o.d and then looked at the state of the world, his att.i.tude towards that Personality would not be all admiration and reverence. Indeed, they have often told me so.

But before Law, before Necessity. You cannot revolt against the inevitable. Pa.s.sion is useless. The suffering which would be resented from a Personality is borne with courage as an inevitable result. You may be of good courage and say, "It is my fault, my ignorance; I will learn not to put my hands in the fire and so not be burnt." But if you suppose a G.o.d burnt you without telling you why, without giving you a chance, what then? Is this hard to understand? I do not know, but to me it is not so. For I can remember a boy, who was much as these Burmans are, who found authority hard to bear, punishment very difficult to accept; who remembered always that the punishment might have been omitted, who thought it was often mistaken and vindictive. For if you are almost always ill, and find for days and weeks and months that very little mental exertion is as much as you are capable of, how much do you accept the justice of being called "idle," "lazy," "indolent," and being kept in to waste what little mental strength you have left in writing meaningless impositions? There is more. It is a Christian teaching, a lesson that is frequently enforced in children, that all their acts are watched by G.o.d. "He sees me now." "G.o.d is watching me." How often are not these written in large words on nursery walls? And do you think that there are not some natures who revolt from this? To be watched--always watched. Cannot you imagine the intense oppression, the irritation and revulsion, such a doctrine may occasion? "Cannot I be left alone?" And when he learns that there is another belief--that he is not being watched, that he is not a child in a nursery, but a man acting under laws he can learn--cannot you imagine the endless relief, the joy as of emanc.i.p.ation from a prison? That it is so to many people I know, the feeling that law means freedom, but I also know that to others it is not. "Law, this rigid law," said the French missionary priest with a sigh when we were discussing the matter, "it makes me shudder. It seems to me like an iron chain, like a terrible destiny binding us in. Ah, I never could believe that. But a G.o.d who watches over us, who protects us, who is our Father, that is to me true and beautiful. Who will help you if not G.o.d? Under Law you must face the world alone. No!" and he shuddered, "let us not think of it. I cannot abide the idea." And how many are like him?

Do you think that such feelings can be changed? Do you think that he who thinks Law to be freedom will ever be argued or converted into Theism?

It can never be. Such beliefs are innate, they are instincts far beyond reason or discussion, to be understood only by those who have felt them.

There is the instinct for G.o.d which rules almost all the West and India.

There is the instinct against G.o.d and for Law which rules the far East.

You cannot get away from either, you cannot prove either or disprove it.

They are instincts, and they influence not only the religious beliefs but the whole lives of the peoples.

It is easy to see how in Europe the instinct for Personality has influenced all history. In moderation its effects have been all for good; it binds people into nations, it enables the weaker and more ignorant to accept willingly the leaders.h.i.+p of the better. It has manifested itself with us even to-day in the respect and reverence and affection we have all felt for our Queen, who has so lately left us. And in its excess it has been wholly evil. It has led us to irresponsible monarchs, to the terrible tyranny of the French aristocracy, that required the whirlwind of a Revolution to efface. In the blind wors.h.i.+p for Napoleon in his later days it drove the nation to terrible suffering. This desire for Personality has writ its effects large upon the history of the West, more especially in Latin nations.

And in Burma the want of this instinct is also written deeply in the history. There has been with them no enthusiasm for persons, no idealisation of individuals. There is no inborn desire for rulers and masters, for obedience and submission.

The effect of the instinct is writ largely in their history. They have no aristocracy, they have no feudality, there are neither masters nor men. They cannot organise or combine. The central Government was incredibly weak. There is nothing that strikes the Burman with such surprise as the unvaried obedience of all officials to a faraway government. But I am now concerned with effects, only causes. I have wished to show why a Burman believes in Law and not in G.o.d, that it arises from an instinct against overpowering Personality, an innate dislike to the idea. It is never to him Truth. It makes him unhappy even to hear of it. He could never accept it as a truth, for truth is that which is in accord with our hearts.

Yet the Burman whose ideal is Law is not quite without the instinct of Personality. He also prays sometimes, and you cannot pray to nothing.

Far down in his heart there is also the same instinct that rules the West, but it is weak. It finds its vent now and then despite his faith.

And in the West the idea of Law is rising. It is new, but not less true for that. It rises steadily hand in hand with science, and it, too, will find its vent despite the faith.

When the scientific theologian declares that G.o.d is not variable, that He has no pa.s.sions, no anger, no vengeance, that He is bound by immovable righteousness and is not affected by prayer, cannot you see the idea of Law? No one would have said this a hundred years ago. It is growing in him; it is there, even if he do not recognise it as such, and sore havoc it makes with the old theologies.

The instinct of generalisation made many G.o.ds into one G.o.d; the instinct of atonement obliged the sub-division of G.o.d; to be explained only by an incomprehensible formula. And now there is arising a third instinct--that of Law. It is weak yet, but it is there. When it becomes stronger either Personality must disappear or else a still more incomprehensible creed must be formulated to reconcile the three ideas.

But what is truth? Are they all true?

CHAPTER XIX.

G.o.d THE SACRIFICE.

It is Sunday to-day in the little Italian town, and they have been holding a procession. I do not know quite what was the reason of the procession; it is the feast day of the patron of the Church, and it is connected in some way with him, but quite how no one could tell me. It was the custom, and that sufficed. It was not a very grand procession, for the town is small, but there was the town band playing at the head, and there were girls in twos singing and priests, also in pairs, singing, and there were banners and a crucifix. This last was just like any other crucifix you may see; there was the pale body of Christ upon the cross, with His wounds red with blood, there was the tinsel crown over the head, there was upon the face the look of suffering. It was like any other crucifix in a Catholic country, not a work of art at all.

It was gruesome, and to the unbeliever repulsive and unpleasant. But all the people uncovered as it pa.s.sed, and many looked to it with reverence and wors.h.i.+p.

But indeed Catholic countries are full of such crucifixes. They are upon the hills, they are beside the roadsides, they are in all the churches, they are in every Catholic household, there is very often one worn upon the person.

Throughout Italy, throughout all Catholic countries, there are only two representations of Christ--as a babe with the Virgin Mary and crucified upon the cross. It was in Italy that Western Christianity arose and grew, it was in Italy that it became a living power, it was in Italy that it acquired consistency, that it was bound together by dogmas and crystallised in creeds. And still, after nineteen hundred years, it is Italy that remains the centre of the Christian world. There is no Christian church so great, so venerable, so imposing as the Church of Rome. It lasts unchanged amid the cataclasms of worlds. And this people whose genius made Christianity, whose genius still rules the greater part of it, what are their conceptions of Christ? What part of His life is it that has caught their reverence and adoration, what side is it of His character that appeals to them, what is the emotion that the name of Christ awakens in these believers?

Of the Virgin Mary and the infant Christ I have written in another chapter. It is of the crucifix I wish to write here. Why is it that of the life of Christ this end of His is considered the most worthy to be in continual remembrance?

I confess that when I climb the hill and see the dead Christs upon their crosses s.h.i.+ning white against the olive gardens, when I see His agony depicted in the churches, when I see the people gaze upon Him sacrificed, my memory is taken back to other scenes.

There is a scene that I can remember in a village far away against the frontier in our farthest East. It was a little village that was once a city, but decayed; it was walled with huge walls of brick, but they are fallen into mounds; it had gateways, but they are now but gaps; and a few huts are huddled in a corner where once a palace stood.

It is the custom in this village that every year at a certain season white c.o.c.ks are to be sacrificed at the gates. There is as may be some legend to explain the custom, but it is forgotten. And yet are the c.o.c.ks sacrificed each year.

There is the memory, too, of the goat I saw killed in India years ago as I have described. And there are other memories--memories of what I have seen, of what I have read. For this ceremony of sacrifice is the very oldest of all the beginnings of religion. It is akin to prayer, it is at the root of all faiths; we can go no further back than sacrifice. Where it began religion had commenced. Far older than any creed, arising from the dumb instincts of human kind, it is one of the roots of faiths.

Therefore, when I see this image of G.o.d, the Son sacrificed to G.o.d the Father, I seem to behold the highest development of this long story.

Sacrifice, it has always been sacrifice. It has been small animals--goats and fowls and pigeons; it has been greater and more valuable beasts--cattle and horses. It has been man. How often indeed has it been man: Abraham leading Isaac to the sacrifice, the Aztecs sacrificing in Mexico, the Druids in Britain, the followers of Odin, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the early Hindus, can you find a faith that has not sacrificed? Sometimes it has been single victims, sometimes hecatombs of slaughtered slaves. It has been sacrifice by priests, it has been self-sacrifice, as Curtius or as those who threw themselves before the car of Juggernauth. Everywhere there has been sacrifice; it is one of the roots of faiths, it arouses the emotion that has helped to make all religions. And in Christianity it has reached its zenith, for it is no longer an animal, no longer even a man--it is a G.o.d, the Son of G.o.d who is self-sacrificed to G.o.d. In what manner this awakens the emotions of man the following extract will show. It is from "The Gospel of the Atonement," by the Venerable J. Wilson.

"The law that suffering is divine, [Greek: to kalon pathein], is verified in the experience of the soul. Now Christ's death is the supreme instance of that law. The power of Gethsemane and Calvary, in the light of such a law, needs no explanation. They open the heart as nothing else ever did. We know that whatever reservations we make for ourselves, whatever our own shrinking from utter self-sacrifice, Christ, living in perfect accordance with the laws of spiritual health and perfection, could not do other than die. Thus without any thought of payment or expiation, with no vestige of separation of the Son from the Father, we see that the death on the Cross demonstrated that the human and divine know but one and the same law of life and being. Thus it is that the death of Christ, the shedding of His blood, has been, and ever will be, regarded by theologians, as well as by the simple believers, as the way of the atonement. Via crucis via salutis."

The scientific theologians tell me when I ask that this parade of the sacrifice of Christ is to recall to men how much they should love Christ. That He so loved them that He gave Himself a victim for their salvation. The crucifix, the incessant preaching of the death of Christ, the sacrament of the Communion, is to cause us to love Him as to do what He taught us. That it does have some such effect no one can doubt--on Latin people. But on others?

To some it seems that if you try to reason at all about it, the emotion awakened might be, nay should be, otherwise. In those not instinct with one emotion the first impression awakened is disgust at the parade of death and blood; the second, horror at the G.o.d who could demand such a sacrifice, who could not be pacified but by the execution in circ.u.mstances of shame of His own Son. They shrink from it. It is no matter of reason. Do you think one who felt so could be argued out of his horror or a Christian out of his devotion? They are instinctive feelings which nothing will change. And yet in a very small way even the Buddhist has the instinct of sacrifice. For I remember that when the fowls were killed inside the city gate and their blood ran upon the ground the people looked just as these Italian people looked. The emotion was the same in kind, and it was not either love for the fowls or wonder at the demand of the spirits that moved them. And so when the slaves were sacrificed beneath the oaks, was it grat.i.tude to the slaves that was evoked? And in the self-sacrifice at the car of Juggernauth?

It may be sometimes that grat.i.tude may be added, but this is not the root emotion. The instinct of sacrifice has its roots much deeper than this, quite apart from this; and, with perhaps only one exception--Buddhism--all religions have practised it. Christianity performs no more sacrifices now, but all its churches, in all their varieties weekly at the great sacrament of the Communion, commemorate--nay, it is claimed in a measure recreate--this sacrifice of the Son to the Father. Sacrifice is of the very root of this religion.

It is far older than any creed. The Jews knew of sacrifice two thousand years before the day of Christ, the Celts sacrificed slaves ages before that.