Pages from a Journal with Other Papers Part 3

What is most to be envied in really religious people of the earlier type is their intellectual and moral peace. They had obtained certain convictions, a certain conception of the Universe, by which they could live. Their horizon may have been encompa.s.sed with darkness; experience sometimes contradicted their faith, but they trusted--nay, they knew-- that the opposition was not real and that the truths were not to be shaken. Their conduct was marked by a corresponding unity. They determined once for all that there were rules which had to be obeyed, and when any particular case arose it was not judged according to the caprice of the moment, but by statute.

We, on the other hand, can only doubt. So far as those subjects are concerned on which we are most anxious to be informed, we are sure of nothing. What we have to do is to accept the facts and wait. We must take care not to deny beauty and love because we are forced also to admit ugliness and hatred. Let us yield ourselves up utterly to the magnificence and tenderness of the sunrise, though the East End of London lies over the horizon. That very same Power, and it is no other, which blasts a country with the cholera or drives the best of us to madness has put the smile in a child's face and is the parent of Love.

It is curious, too, that the curse seems in no way to qualify the blessing. The sweetness and majesty of Nature are so exquisite, so pure, that when they are before us we cannot imagine they could be better if they proceeded from an omnipotently merciful Being and no pestilence had ever been known. We must not worry ourselves with attempts at reconciliation. We must be satisfied with a hint here and there, with a ray of suns.h.i.+ne at our feet, and we must do what we can to make the best of what we possess. Hints and suns.h.i.+ne will not be wanting, and science, which was once considered to be the enemy of religion, is dissolving by its later discoveries the old gross materialism, the source of so much despair.

The conduct of life is more important than speculation, but the lives of most of us are regulated by no principle whatever. We read our Bible, Thomas a Kempis, and Bunyan, and we are persuaded that our salvation lies in the perpetual struggle of the higher against the lower self, the spirit against the flesh, and that the success of the flesh is d.a.m.nation. We take down Horace and Rabelais and we admit that the body also has its claims. We have no power to dominate both sets of books, and consequently they supersede one another alternately. Perhaps life is too large for any code we can as yet frame, and the dissolution of all codes, the fluid, unstable condition of which we complain, may be a necessary antecedent of new and more lasting combinations. One thing is certain, that there is not a single code now in existence which is not false; that the graduation of the vices and virtues is wrong, and that in the future it will be altered. We must not hand ourselves over to a despotism with no Divine right, even if there be a risk of anarchy. In the determination of our own action, and in our criticism of other people, we must use the whole of ourselves and not mere fragments. If we do this we need not fear. We may suppose we are in danger because the stone tables of the Decalogue have gone to dust, but it is more dangerous to attempt to control men by fictions. Better no chart whatever than one which shows no actually existing perils, but warns us against Scylla, Charybdis, and the Cyclops. If we are perfectly honest with ourselves we shall not find it difficult to settle whether we ought to do this or that particular thing, and we may be content. The new legislation will come naturally at the appointed time, and it is not impossible to live while it is on the way.

AN APOLOGY

In these latter days of anarchy and tumult, when there is no gospel of faith or morals, when democracy seems bent on falsifying every prediction of earlier democratic enthusiasts by developing worse dangers to liberty than any which our forefathers had to encounter, and when the misery of cities is so great, it appears absurd, not to say wrong, that we should sit still and read books. I am ashamed when I go into my own little room and open Milton or Shakespeare after looking at a newspaper or walking through the streets of London. I feel that Milton and Shakespeare are luxuries, and that I really belong to the cla.s.s which builds palaces for its pleasure, although men and women may be starving on the roads.

Nevertheless, if I were placed on a platform I should be obliged to say, "My brethren, I plainly perceive the world is all wrong, but I cannot see how it is to be set right," and I should descend the steps and go home. There may be others who have a clearer perception than mine, and who may be convinced that this way or that way lies regeneration. I do not wish to discourage them; I wish them G.o.d-speed, but I cannot help them nor become their disciple. Possibly I am doing nothing better than devising excuses for lotus-eating, but here they are.

To take up something merely because I am idle is useless. The message must come to me, and with such urgency that I cannot help delivering it.

Nor is it of any use to attempt to give my natural thoughts a force which is not inherent in them.

The disease is often obvious, but the remedies are doubtful. The acc.u.mulation of wealth in a few hands, generally by swindling, is shocking, but if it were distributed to-morrow we should gain nothing.

The working man objects to the millionaire, but would gladly become a millionaire himself, even if his million could be piled up in no other way than by sweating thousands of his fellows. The usurpation of government by the ignorant will bring disaster, but how in these days could a wise man reign any longer than ignorance permitted him? The everlasting veerings of the majority, without any reason meanwhile for the change, show that, except on rare occasions of excitement, the opinion of the voters is of no significance. But when we are asked what subst.i.tute for elections can be proposed, none can be found. So with the relations.h.i.+p between man and woman, the marriage laws and divorce.

The calculus has not been invented which can deal with such complexities. We are in the same position as that in which Leverrier and Adams would have been, if, observing the irregularities of Ura.n.u.s, which led to the discovery of Neptune, they had known nothing but the first six books of Euclid and a little algebra.

There has never been any reformation as yet without dogma and supernaturalism. Ordinary people acknowledge no real reasons for virtue except heaven and h.e.l.l-fire. When heaven and h.e.l.l-fire cease to persuade, custom for a while is partly efficacious, but its strength soon decays. Some good men, knowing the uselessness of rational means to convert or to sustain their fellows, have clung to dogma with hysterical energy, but without any genuine faith in it. They have failed, for dogma cannot be successful unless it be the INEVITABLE expression of the inward conviction.

The voices now are so many and so contradictory that it is impossible to hear any one of them distinctly, no matter what its claim on our attention may be. The newspaper, the circulating library, the free library, and the magazine are doing their best to prevent unity of direction and the din and confusion of tongues beget a doubt whether literature and the printing press have actually been such a blessing to the race as enlightenment universally proclaims them to be.

The great currents of human destiny seem more than ever to move by forces which tend to no particular point. There is a drift, tremendous and overpowering, due to n.o.body in particular, but to hundreds of millions of small impulses. Achilles is dead, and the turn of the Myrmidons has come.

"Myrmdons, race feconde Myrmidons, Enfin nous commandons:

Jupiter livre le monde Aux Myrmidons, aux Myrmidons.

Voyant qu' Achille succombe, Ses Myrmidons, hors des rangs, Disent: Dansons sur sa tombe Ses pet.i.ts vont etre grands."

My last defence is that the Universe is an organic unity, and so subtle and far-reaching are the invisible threads which pa.s.s from one part of it to another that it is impossible to limit the effect which even an insignificant life may have. "Were a single dust-atom destroyed, the universe would collapse."

" . . . who of men can tell That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail, The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale, The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones, The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones, Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet If human souls did never kiss and greet?"

BELIEF, UNBELIEF, AND SUPERSt.i.tION

True belief is rare and difficult. There is no security that the fict.i.tious beliefs which have been obtained by no genuine mental process, that is to say, are not vitally held, may not be discarded for those which are exactly contrary. We flatter ourselves that we have secured a method and freedom of thought which will not permit us to be the victims of the absurdities of the Middle Ages, but, in fact, there is no solid obstacle to our conversion to some new grotesque religion more miraculous than Roman Catholicism. Modern scepticism, distinguis.h.i.+ng it from scholarly scepticism, is nothing but stupidity or weakness. Few people like to confess outright that they do not believe in a G.o.d, although the belief in a personal devil is considered to be a sign of imbecility. Nevertheless, men, as a rule, have no ground for believing in G.o.d a whit more respectable than for disbelief in a devil.

The devil is not seen nor is G.o.d seen. The work of the devil is as obvious as that of G.o.d. Nay, as the devil is a limited personality, belief in him is not enc.u.mbered with the perplexities which arise when we attempt to apprehend the infinite Being. Belief may often be tested; that is to say, we may be able to discover whether it is an active belief or not by inquiring what disbelief it involves. So also the test of disbelief is its correspondent belief.

Superst.i.tion is a name generally given to a few only of those beliefs for which it is imagined that there is no sufficient support, such as the belief in ghosts, witches, and, if we are Protestants, in miracles performed after a certain date. Why these particular beliefs have been selected as solely deserving to be called superst.i.tious it is not easy to discover. If the name is to be extended to all beliefs which we have not attempted to verify, it must include the largest part of those we possess. We vote at elections as we are told to vote by the newspaper which we happen to read, and our opinions upon a particular policy are based upon no surer foundation than those of the Papist on the authenticity of the lives of the Saints.

Superst.i.tion is a matter of RELATIVE evidence. A thousand years ago it was not so easy as it is now to obtain rigid demonstration in any department except mathematics. Much that was necessarily the basis of action was as incapable of proof as the story of St. George and the Dragon, and consequently it is hardly fair to say that the dark ages were more superst.i.tious than our own. Nor does every belief, even in supernatural objects, deserve the name of superst.i.tion. Suppose that the light which struck down St. Paul on his journey to Damascus was due to his own imagination, the belief that it came from Jesus enthroned in the heavens was a sign of strength and not of weakness. Beliefs of this kind, in so far as they exalt man, prove greatness and generosity, and may be truer than the scepticism which is formally justified in rejecting them. If Christ never rose from the dead, the women who waited at the sepulchre were nearer to reality than the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection.

There is a half-belief, which we find in Virgil that is not superst.i.tion, nor inconstancy, nor cowardice. A child-like faith in the old creed is no longer possible, but it is equally impossible to surrender it. I refer now not to those who select from it what they think to be in accordance with their reason, and throw overboard the remainder with no remorse, but rather to those who cannot endure to touch with sacrilegious hands the ancient histories and doctrines which have been the depositaries of so much that is eternal, and who dread lest with the destruction of a story something precious should also be destroyed. The so-called superst.i.tious ages were not merely transitionary. Our regret that they have departed is to be explained not by a mere idealisation of the past, but by a conviction that truths have been lost, or at least have been submerged. Perhaps some day they may be recovered, and in some other form may again become our religion.

JUDAS ISCARIOT--WHAT CAN BE SAID FOR HIM?

Judas Iscariot has become to Christian people an object of horror more loathsome than even the devil himself. The devil rebelled because he could not brook subjection to the Son of G.o.d, a failing which was n.o.ble compared with treachery to the Son of man. The hatred of Judas is not altogether virtuous. We compound thereby for our neglect of Jesus and His precepts: it is easier to establish our Christianity by cursing the wretched servant than by following his Master. The heinousness also of the crime in Gethsemane has been aggravated by the exaltation of Jesus to the Redeemers.h.i.+p of the world. All that can be known of Judas is soon collected. He was chosen one of the twelve apostles, and received their high commission to preach the kingdom of heaven, to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out devils. He was appointed treasurer to the community. John in telling the story of the anointing at Bethany says that he was a thief, but John also makes him the sole objector to the waste of the ointment. According to the other evangelists all the disciples objected. Since he remained in office it could hardly have been known at the time of the visit to Bethany that he was dishonest, nor could it have been known at any time to Matthew and Mark, for they would not have lost the opportunity of adding such a touch to the portrait. The probability, therefore, is that the robbery of the bag is unhistorical. When the chief priests and scribes sought how they might apprehend Jesus they made a bargain with Judas to deliver Him to them for thirty pieces of silver. He was present at the Last Supper but went and betrayed his Lord. A few hours afterwards, when he found out that condemnation to death followed, he repented himself and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to his employers, declared that he had sinned in betraying innocent blood, cast down the money at their feet, and went and hanged himself.

This is all that is discoverable about Judas, and it has been considered sufficient for a d.a.m.nation deeper than any allotted to the worst of the sons of Adam. Dante places him in the lowest round of the ninth or last of the h.e.l.lish circles, where he is eternally "champed" by Satan, "bruised as with ponderous engine," his head within the diabolic jaws and "plying the feet without." In the absence of a biography with details, it is impossible to make out with accuracy what the real Judas was. We can, however, by dispa.s.sionate examination of the facts determine their sole import, and if we indulge in inferences we can deduce those which are fairly probable. As Judas was treasurer, he must have been trusted. He could hardly have been naturally covetous, for he had given up in common with the other disciples much, if not all, to follow Jesus. The thirty pieces of silver--some four or five pounds of our money--could not have been considered by him as a sufficient bribe for the ignominy of a treason which was to end in legal murder. He ought perhaps to have been able to measure the ferocity of an established ecclesiastical order and to have known what would have been the consequence of handing over to it perfect, and therefore heretical, sincerity and purity, but there is no evidence that he did know: nay, we are distinctly informed, as we have just seen, that when he became aware what was going to happen his sorrow for his wicked deed took a very practical shape.

We cannot allege with confidence that it was any permanent loss of personal attachment to Jesus which brought about his defection. It came when the belief in a theocracy near at hand filled the minds of the disciples. These ignorant Galilean fishermen expected that in a very short time they would sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. The custodian of the bag, gifted with more common sense than his colleagues, probably foresaw the danger of a collision with Rome, and may have desired by a timely arrest to prevent an open revolt, which would have meant immediate destruction of the whole band with women and children. Can any position be imagined more irritating that that of a careful man of business who is keeper of the purse for a company of heedless enthusiasts professing complete indifference to the value of money, misunderstanding the genius of their chief, and looking out every morning for some sign in the clouds, a prophecy of their immediate appointment as vicegerents of a power that would supersede the awful majesty of the Imperial city? He may have been heated by a long series of petty annoyances to such a degree that at last they may have ended in rage and a sudden flinging loose of himself from the society. It is the impulsive man who frequently suffers what appears to be inversion, and Judas was impulsive exceedingly. Matthew, and Matthew only, says that Judas asked for money from the chief priests. "What will ye give me, and I will deliver Him unto you?" According to Mark, whose account of the transaction is the same as Luke's, "Judas . . . went unto the chief priests to betray Him unto them. And when they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him money." If the priests were the tempters, a slight difference is established in favour of Judas, but this we will neglect. The sin of taking money and joining in that last meal in any case is black enough, although, as we have before pointed out, Judas did not at the time know what the other side of the bargain was. Admitting, however, everything that can fairly be urged against him, all that can be affirmed with certainty is that we are in the presence of strange and unaccountable inconsistency, and that an apostle who had abandoned his home, who had followed Jesus for three years amidst contempt and persecution, and who at last slew himself in self- reproach, could be capable of committing the meanest of sins. Is the co-existence of irreconcilable opposites in human nature anything new?

The story of Judas may be of some value if it reminds us that man is incalculable, and that, although in theory, and no doubt in reality, he is a unity, the point from which the divergent forces in him rise is often infinitely beyond our exploration; a lesson not merely in psychology but for our own guidance, a warning that side by side with heroic virtues there may sleep in us not only detestable vices, but vices by which those virtues are contradicted and even for the time annihilated. The mode of betrayal, with a kiss, has justly excited loathing, but it is totally unintelligible. Why should he have taken the trouble to be so base when the movement of a finger would have sufficed? Why was any sign necessary to indicate one who was so well known? The supposition that the devil compelled him to superfluous villainy in order that he might be secured with greater certainty and tortured with greater subtlety is one that can hardly be entertained except by theologians. It is equally difficult to understand why Jesus submitted to such an insult, and why Peter should not have smitten down its perpetrator. Peter was able to draw his sword, and it would have been safer and more natural to kill Judas than to cut off the ear of the high priest's servant. John, who shows a special dislike to Judas, knows nothing of the kiss. According to John, Jesus asked the soldiers whom they sought, and then stepped boldly forward and declared Himself.

"Judas," adds John, "was standing with them." As John took such particular notice of what happened, the absence of the kiss in his account can hardly have been accidental. It is a sound maxim in criticism that what is simply difficult of explanation is likely to be authentic. An awkward reading in a ma.n.u.script is to be preferred to one which is easier. But an historical improbability, especially if no corroboration of it is to be found in a better authority, may be set aside, and in this case we are justified in neglecting the kiss.

Whatever may have been the exact shade of darkness in the crime of Judas, it was avenged with singular swiftness, and he himself was the avenger. He did not slink away quietly and poison himself in a ditch.

He boldly encountered the sacred college, confessed his sin and the innocence of the man they were about to crucify. Compared with these pious miscreants who had no scruples about corrupting one of the disciples, but shuddered at the thought of putting back into the treasury the money they had taken from it, Judas becomes n.o.ble. His remorse is so unendurable that it drives him to suicide.

If a record could be kept of those who have abjured Jesus through love of gold, through fear of the world or of the scribes and Pharisees, we should find many who are considered quite respectable, or have even been canonised, and who, nevertheless, much more worthily than Iscariot, are ent.i.tled to "champing" by the jaws of Sathanas. Not a single sc.r.a.p from Judas himself has reached us. He underwent no trial, and is condemned without plea or excuse on his own behalf, and with no cross-examination of the evidence. No witnesses have been called to his character. What would his friends at Kerioth have said for him? What would Jesus have said? If He had met Judas with the halter in his hand would He not have stopped him? Ah! I can see the Divine touch on the shoulder, the pa.s.sionate prostration of the repentant in the dust, the hands gently lifting him, the forgiveness because he knew not what he did, and the seal of a kiss indeed from the sacred lips.

SIR WALTER SCOTT'S USE OF THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE "BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR"

The supernatural machinery in Sir Walter Scott's Monastery is generally and, no doubt, correctly, set down as a mistake. Sir Walter fails, not because the White Lady of Avenel is a miracle, but because being miraculous, she is made to do what sometimes is not worthy of her.

This, however, is not always true, for nothing can be finer than the change in Halbert Glendinning after he has seen the spirit, and the great master himself has never drawn a n.o.bler stroke than that in which he describes the effect which intercourse with her has had upon Mary.

Halbert, on the morning of the duel between himself and Sir Piercie Shafton, is trying to persuade her that he intends no harm, and that he and Sir Piercie are going on a hunting expedition. "Say not thus," said the maiden, interrupting him, "say not thus to me. Others thou may'st deceive, but me thou can'st not. There has been that in me from the earliest youth which fraud flies from, and which imposture cannot deceive." The transforming influence of the Lady is here just what it should be, and the consequence is that she becomes a reality.

But it is in the Bride of Lammermoor more particularly that the use of the supernatural is not only blameless but indispensable. We begin to rise to it in that scene in which the Master of Ravenswood meets Alice.

"Begone from among them," she says, "and if G.o.d has destined vengeance on the oppressor's house, do not you be the instrument. . . . If you remain here, her destruction or yours, or that of both, will be the inevitable consequence of her misplaced attachment." A little further on, with great art, Scott having duly prepared us by what has preceded, adds intensity and colour. He apologises for the "tinge of superst.i.tion," but, not believing, he evidently believes, and we justly surrender ourselves to him. The Master of Ravenswood after the insult received from Lady Ashton wanders round the Mermaiden's Well on his way to Wolf's Crag and sees the wraith of Alice. Scott makes horse as well as man afraid so that we may not immediately dismiss the apparition as a mere ordinary product of excitement. Alice at that moment was dying, and had "prayed powerfully that she might see her master's son and renew her warning." Observe the difference between this and any vulgar ghost story. From the very first we feel that the Superior Powers are against this match, and that it will be cursed. The beginning of the curse lies far back in the hereditary temper of the Ravenswoods, in the intrigues of the Ashtons, and in the feuds of the times. When Love intervenes we discover in an instant that he is not sent by the G.o.ds to bring peace, but that he is the awful instrument of destruction. The spectral appearance of Alice at the hour of her departure, on the very spot "on which Lucy Ashton had reclined listening to the fatal tale of woe . . .

holding up her shrivelled hand as if to prevent his coming more near,"

is necessary in order to intimate that the interdict is p.r.o.nounced not by a mortal human being but by a dread, supernal authority.

SEPTEMBER, 1798. "THE LYRICAL BALLADS."