CHAPTER 14
All through the following day the priest mused over the conversation of the preceding night. The precipitation with which this new friendship had been formed, and the subsequent abrupt exchange of confidences, had scarcely impressed him as unusual. He was wholly absorbed by the radical thought which the man had voiced. He mulled over it in his wakeful hours that night. He could not prevent it from coloring the lecture which he delivered to his class in ancient history that day. And when the sun at length dropped behind La Popa, he hurried eagerly to theplaza. A few minutes later he and the ex-clergyman met in the appointed rendezvous.
“I dropped in to have a look at the remains of Pedro Claver to-day,” his new friend remarked. “The old sexton scraped and bowed with huge joy as he led me behind the altar and lighted up the grewsome thing. I suppose he believed that Pedro’s soul was up in the clouds making intercession with the Lord for him, while he, poor devil, was toting tourists around to gaze at the Saint’s ghastly bones in their glass coffin. The thing would be funny were it not for its sad side, namely, the dense and superstitious ignorance in which such as this poor sexton are held all their lives by your Church. It’s a shame to feed them with the bones of dead Saints, instead of with the bread of life! But,” he reflected, “I was myself just as bigoted at one time. And my zeal to convert the world to Protestantism was just as hot as any that ever animated the missionaries of your faith.”
He paused and looked quizzically at Josè. He seemed to be studying the length to which he could go in his criticism of the ancient faith of the house of Rincón. But Josè remained in expectant silence.
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“Speaking of missionaries,” the man resumed, “I shall never forget an experience I had in China. My wealthy and ultra-aristocratic congregation decided that I needed rest, and so sent me on a world tour. It was a member of that same congregation, by the way, a stuffy old dame whose wealth footed up to millions, who once remarked to me in all confidence that she had no doubt the aristocracy of heaven was composed of Presbyterians. Poor, old, empty-headed prig! What could I do but assure her that I held the same comforting conviction! Well, through influential friends in Pekin I was introduced to the eminent Chinese statesman, Wang Fo, of delightful memory. Our conversation turned on religion, and then I made the most inexcusablefaux pasthat a blithering Yankee could make, that of expressing regret that he was not of our faith. Good heavens! But he was the most gracious gentleman in the world, and his biting rebuke was couched in tones of silken softness.
“‘What is it that you offer me?’ he said mildly. ‘Blind opinion? Undemonstrated and undemonstrable theory? Why, may I ask, do you come over here to convert us heathen, when your own Christian land is rife with evil, with sedition, with religious hatred of man for man, with bloodshed and greed? If your religious belief is true, then you can demonstrate it––prove it beyond doubt. Do you say that the wonderful material progress which your great country manifests is due to Christianity? I answer you, no. It is due to the unfettering of the human mind, to the laying off of much of the mediaeval superstition which in the past ages has blighted mankind. It is due largely to the abandonment of much of what you are still pleased to call Christianity. The liberated human mind has expanded to a degree never before seen in the world. We Chinese are still mentally fettered by our stubborn resistance to change, to progression. Your great inventors and your great men of finance are but little hampered by religious superstition. Hence the mental flights which they so boldly undertake, and the stupendous achievements they attain. Is it not so?’
“What could I say? He had me. But he hadn’t finished me quite.
“‘I once devoted much time to the study of Chemistry,’ he went on blandly, ‘and when I tell you that there is a law to the effect that the volume of a gas is a function of its pressure I do so with the full knowledge that I can furnish you indisputable proof therefor. But when you come to me with your religious theories, and I mildly request your proofs, you wish to imprison or hang me for doubting the absurdities which you cannot establish!’
“He laughed genially, then took me kindly by the arm.104‘Proof, my zealous friend, proof,’ he said. ‘Give me proof this side of the grave for what you believe, and then you will have converted the heathen. And can your Catholic friend––or, shall I say enemy?––prove his laughable doctrine of purgatory? The dead in purgatory dependent upon the living! Why, I tell him, that smacks of Shintoism, wherein the living feed the dead! Then he points in holy indignation to the Bible. Bah! Cannot I prove anything I may wish from your Bible? What will you have? Polygamy? Incest? Murder? Graft? Hand me your Bible, and I will establish its divinity. No, my good friend. When you come to me with proofs that you really do the works of him whom you profess to follow, then will I gladly listen, for I, too, seek truth. But in the present deplorable absence of proofs I take much more comfort in the adoration of my amiable ancestors than I could in your laughable and undemonstrable religious creeds.’
“I left his presence a saddened but chastened man, and went home to do a little independent thinking. When I approached my Bible without the bias of the Westminster Confession I discovered that it did serve admirably as a wardrobe in which to hang any sort of religious prejudice. Continued study made me see that religious faith is generally mere human credulity. I discovered that in my pitying contempt for those of differing belief I much resembled the Yankee who ridiculed a Chinaman for wearing a pig-tail. ‘True,’ the Celestial replied, ‘we still wear the badge of our former slavery. But you emancipated Americans, do you not wear the badge of a present and much worse form of slavery in your domination by Tammany Hall, by your corrupt politicians, and your organizers and protectors of crime?’
“As time passed I gradually began to feel much more kindly toward Matthew Arnold, who said, ‘Orthodox theology is an immense misunderstanding of the Bible.’ And I began likewise to respect his statement that our Bible language is ‘fluid and passing’––that much of it is the purest poetry, beautiful and inspiring, but symbolical.”
“But,” broke in Josè, “you must admit that there is something awfully wrong with the world, with––”
“Well,” interrupted Hitt, “and what is it? As historical fact, that story about Adam and Eve eating an apple and thereby bringing down God’s curse upon the whole innocent human race is but a figment of little minds, and an insult to divine intelligence. But, as symbolizing the dire penalty we pay for a belief in the reality of both good and evil––ah, that is a note just beginning to be sounded in the world at large. And it may account for the presence of the world’s evil.”
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“Yet, our experience certainly shows that evil is just as real and just as immanent as good! And, indeed, more powerful in this life.”
“If so,” replied the explorer gravely, “then God created or instituted it. And in that case I must break with God.”
“Then you think it is all a question of our own individual idea of God?”
“Entirely. And human concepts of Him have been many and varied. But that worst of Old Testament interpreters of the first century, Philo, came terribly close to the truth, I think, when, in a burst of inspiration, he one day wrote: ‘Heaven is mind, and earth is sensation.’ Matthew Arnold, I think, likewise came very close to the truth when he said that the only God we can recognize is ‘that something not ourselves that makes for righteousness.’ And, as for evil, up in the United States there are some who are now lumping it all under the head of ‘mortal mind,’ considering it all but the ‘one lie’ which Jesus so often referred to, and regarding it as the ‘suppositional opposite’ of the mind that is God, and so, powerless. Not a bad idea, I think. But whether the money-loving Yankee will ever leave his mad chase for gold long enough to live this premise and so demonstrate it, is a question. I’m watching its development with intense interest. We in the States have wonderful, exceptional opportunities for study and research. We ought to uncover the truth, if any people should.”
He fell into thoughtfulness again. Josè drew a long sigh. “I wish––I wish,” he murmured, “that I might go there––that I might live and work and search up there.”
The explorer roused up. “And why not?” he asked abruptly. “Look here, come with me and spend a year or so digging around for buried Inca towns. Then we will go back to the States. Why, man! it would make you over. I’ll take you as interpreter. And in the States I’ll find a place for you. Come. Will you?”
For a moment the doors of imagination swung wide, and in the burst of light from within Josè saw the dreams of a lifetime fulfilled. Emancipation lay that way. Freedom, soul-expansion, truth. It was his God-given privilege. Who had the right to lay a detaining hand upon him? Was not his soul his own, and his God’s?
Then a dark hand stole out from the surrounding shadows and closed the doors. From the blackness there seemed to rise a hollow voice, uttering the single word,Honor. He thrust out an arm, as if to ward off the assaults of temptation. “No, no,” he said aloud, “I am bound to the Church!”
“But why remain longer in an institution with which you are quite out of sympathy?” the explorer urged.
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“First, to help the Church. Who will uplift her if we desert her? And, second, to help this, my ancestral country,” replied Josè in deep earnestness.
“Worthy aims, both,” assented Hitt. “But, my friend, what will you accomplish here, unless you can educate these people to think? I have learned much about conditions in this country. I find that the priest in Colombia is even more intolerant than in Ireland, for here he has a monopoly, no competition. He is absolute. The Colombian is the logical product of the doctrines of Holy Church. It is so in Mexico. It is so wherever the curse of a fixed mentality is imposed upon a people. For that engenders determined opposition to mobility. It quenches responsiveness to new concepts and new ideas. It throttles a nation. The bane of mental progress is theSemper Idemof your Church.”
“Christianity will remove the curse.”
“I have no doubt whatever of that. It probably is the future cure for all social ills and evils of every sort. But if so, it must be the Christianity which Jesus taught and demonstrated––not the theological chaff now disseminated in his name. Do not forget that we no longer know what Christianity is. It is a lost science.”
“It can and will be recovered!” cried Josè warmly.
“I have said that is foreshadowed. But we must have the whole garment of the Christ, without humanaddenda. He is reported as having said, ‘The works that I do bear witness of me.’ Now the works of the Christian Church bear ample witness that she has not the true understanding of the Christ. Nor has that eminent Protestant divine, now teaching in a theological seminary in the States, who recently said that, although Jesus ministered miraculously to the physical man, yet it was not his intention that his disciples should continue that sort of ministry; that the healing which Jesus did was wholly incidental, and was not an example to be permanently imitated. Good heavens! how these poor theologians hide their inability to do the works of the Master by taking refuge in such ridiculously unwarranted assertions. To them the rule seems to be that, if you can’t do a thing you must deny the possibility of its being done. Great logic, isn’t it?
“And yet,” he went on, “the Church has had nearly two thousand years in which to learn to do the works of the Master. Pretty dull pupil, I think. And we’ve had nearly two thousand years of theology from this slow pupil. Would that she would from now on give us a little real Christianity! Heavens! the world needs it. And yet, do you know, sectarian feeling is still so bitter in the so-called Church of God that if a Bishop of107the Anglican Church should admit Presbyterians, Methodists, or members of other denominations to his communion table a scream of rage would go up all over England, and a mighty demand would be raised to impeach the Bishop for heresy! Think of it! God above! the puny human mind. Do you wonder that the dogma of the Church has lost force? That, despite its thunders, thinking men laugh? I freely admit that our great need is to find an adequate substitute for the authority which others would like to impose upon us. But where shall we find such authority, if not in those who demonstrate their ability to do the works of the Master? Show me your works, and I’ll show you my faith. This is my perpetual challenge.
“But, now,” he said, “returning to the subject so near your heart: the condition of this country is that of a large part of South America, where the population is unsettled, even turbulent, and where a priesthood, fanatical, intolerant, often unscrupulous, pursue their devious means to extend and perpetuate unhindered the sway of your Church. Colombia is struggling to remove the blight which Spain laid upon her, namely, mediaeval religion. It is this same blighting religion, coupled with her remorseless greed, which has brought Spain to her present decrepit, empty state. And how she did strive to force that religion upon the world! Whole nations, like the Incas, for example, ruthlessly slaughtered by the papal-benisoned riffraff of Spain in her attempts to foist herself into world prestige and to bolster up the monstrous assumptions of Holy Church! The Incas were a grand nation, with a splendid mental viewpoint. But it withered under the touch of the mediaeval narrowness fastened upon it. Whole nations wasted in support of papal assumptions––and do you think that the end is yet? Far from it! War is coming here in Colombia. It may come in other parts of this Western Hemisphere, certainly in Mexico, certainly in Peru and Bolivia and Chili, rocked in the cradle of Holy Church for ages, but now at last awaking to a sense of their backward condition and its cause. If ever the Church had a chance to show what she could do when given a free hand, she has had it in these countries, particularly in Mexico. In all the nearly four centuries of her unmolested control in that fair land, oppressed by sword and crucifix, did she ever make an attempt worth the name to uplift and emancipate the common man? Not one. She took his few, hard-earnedpesosto get his weary soul out of an imagined purgatory––but she left him to rot in peonage while on earth! But, friend, I repeat, the struggle is coming here in Colombia. And look you well to your own escape when it arrives!”
“And can I do nothing to help avert it?” cried the distressed Josè.
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“Well,” returned the explorer meditatively, “such bondage is removable either through education or war. But in Colombia I fear the latter will overtake the former by many decades.”
“Then rest assured that I shall in the meantime do what in me lies to instruct my fellow-countrymen, and to avoid such a catastrophe!”
“Good luck to you, friend. And––by the way, here is a little book that may help you in your work. I’m quite sure you’ve never read it. Under the ban, you know. Renan’sVie de Jésus. It can do you no harm, and may be useful.”
Josè reached out and took the little volume. It wasanathema, he knew, but he could not refuse to accept it.
“And there is another book that I strongly recommend to you. I’m sorry I haven’t a copy here. It once created quite a sensation. It is called, ‘Confessions of a Roman Catholic Priest.’ Published anonymously, in Vienna, but unquestionably bearing the earmarks of authenticity. It mentions this country––”
Without speaking, Josè had slowly risen and started down the musty corridor, his thought aflame with the single desire to get away. Down past the empty barracks and gaping cells he went, without stopping to peer into their tenebrous depths––on and on, skirting the grim walls that typified the mediaevalism surrounding and fettering his restless thought––on to the long incline which led up to the broad esplanade on the summit. Must he forever flee this pursuing Nemesis? Or should he hurl himself from the wall, once he gained the top? At the upper end of the incline he heard the low sound of voices. A priest and a young girl who sat there on the parapet rose as he approached. He stopped abruptly in front of them. “Wenceslas!” he exclaimed. “And Maria!”
“Ah,amigo, a quiet stroll before retiring? It is a sultry night.”
“Yes,” slowly replied Josè, looking at the girl, who drew back into the shadow cast by the body of her companion. Then, bowing, he passed on down the wall and disappeared in the darkness that shrouded the distance.
A few minutes later the long form of the explorer appeared above the incline. Wenceslas and the girl had departed. Seeing no one, the American turned and descended to the ground, shaking his head in deep perplexity.
109CHAPTER 15
The next day was one of the Church’s innumerable feast-days, and Josè was free to utilize it as he might. He determined on a visit to the suburb of Turbaco, some eight miles from Cartagena, and once the site of Don Ignacio’s magnificent country home. Although he had been some months in Cartagena, he had never before felt any desire to pass beyond its walls. Now it seemed to him that he must break the limitation which those encircling walls typified, that his restless thought might expand ere it formulated into definite concepts and plans for future work. This morning he wanted to be alone. The old injury done to his sensitive spirit by the publication of his journal had been unwittingly opened anew. The old slowness had crept again into his gait since the evening before. Over night his countenance had resumed its wonted heaviness; and his slender shoulders bent again beneath their former burden.
When Josè arrived in Cartagena he had found it a city of vivid contrasts. There mediaevalism still strove with the spirit of modern progress; and so it suited well as an environment for the dilation of his shrunken soul-arteries. The lethal influence of the monastery long lay over him, beneath which he continued to manifest those eccentric habits which his prolonged state of loneliness had engendered. He looked askance at the amenities which his associates tentatively held out to him. He sank himself deep in study, and for weeks, even months, he shunned the world of people and things. He found no stimulus to a search for his ancestral palace within the city, nor for a study of the Rincón records which lay moldering in the ancient city’s archives.
But, as the sunlit days drifted dreamily past with peaceful, unvarying monotony, Josè’s faculties, which had always been alert until he had been declared insane, gradually awakened. His violently disturbed balance began to right itself; his equilibrium became in a measure restored. The deadening thought that he had accomplished nothing in his vitiated life yielded to a hopeful determination to yet retrieve past failure. The pride and fear which had balked the thought of self-destruction now served to fan the flame of fresh resolve. He dared not do any writing, it was true. But he could delve and study. And a thousand avenues opened to him through which he could serve his fellow-men. The papal instructions which his traveling companion, the Apostolic Delegate, had brought to the Bishop110of Cartagena, evidently had sufficed for his credentials; and the latter had made no occasion to refer to the priest’s past. An order from the Vatican was law; and the Bishop obeyed it with no other thought than its inerrancy and inexorability. And with the lapse of the several months which had slipped rapidly away while he sought to forget and to clear from his mind the dark clouds of melancholia which had settled over it, Josè became convinced that the Bishop knew nothing of his career prior to his arrival in Colombia.
And it is possible that the young priest’s secret would have died with him––that he would have lived out his life amid the peaceful scenes of this old, romantic town, and gone to his long rest at last with the consciousness of having accomplished his mite in the service of his fellow-beings; it is possible that Rome would have forgotten him; and that his uncle’s ambitions, to which he knew that he had been regarded as in some way useful, would have flagged and perished over the watery waste which separated the New World from the Old, but for the intervention of one man, who crossed Josè’s path early in his new life, found him inimical to his own worldly projects, and removed him, therefore, as sincerely in the name of Christ as the ancientConquistadores, with priestly blessing, hewed from their paths of conquest the simple and harmless aborigines.
That man was Wenceslas Ortiz, trusted servant of Holy Church, who had established himself in Cartagena to keep a watchful eye on anticlerical proceedings. That he was able to do this, and at the same time turn them greatly to his own advantage, marks him as a man of more than usually keen and resourceful mentality. He was a native son, born of prosperous parents in the riverine town of Mompox, which, until the erratic Magdalena sought for itself a new channel, was the chief port between Barranquilla and the distant Honda. There had been neither family custom nor parental hopes to consider among the motives which had directed him into the Church. He was a born worldling, but with unmistakable talents for and keen appreciation of the art of politics. His love of money was subordinate only to his love of power. To both, his talents made access easy. In the contemplation of a career in his early years he had hesitated long between the Church and the Army; but had finally thrown his lot with the former, as offering not only equal possibilities of worldly preferment and riches, but far greater stability in those periodic revolutions to which his country was so addicted. The Army was frequently overthrown; the Church, never. The Government changed with every successful political revolution; the Church remained immovable. And so with the art of a trained politician he cultivated111his chosen field with such intensity that even the Holy See felt the glow of his ardor, and in recognition of his marked abilities, his pious fervor and great influence, was constrained to place him just where he wished to be, at the right hand of the Bishop of Cartagena, and probable successor to that aged incumbent, who had grown to lean heavily and confidingly upon him.
As coadjutor, or suffragan to the Bishop of Cartagena, Wenceslas Ortiz had at length gathered unto himself sufficient influence of divers nature as, in his opinion, to ensure him the See in case the bishopric should, as was contemplated, be raised eventually to the status of a Metropolitan. It was he, rather than the Bishop, who distributed parishes to ambitious pastors and emoluments to greedy politicians. His irons in ecclesiastical, political, social and commercial fires were innumerable. The doctrine of the indivisibility of Church and State had in him an able champion––but only because he thereby found a sure means of increasing his prestige and augmenting his power and wealth. His methods of work manifested keenness, subtlety, shrewdness and skill. His rewards were lavish. His punishments, terrible. The latter smacked of the Inquisition: he preferred torture to quick despatch.
It had not taken Wenceslas long to estimate the character of the newcomer, Josè. Nor was he slow to perceive that this liberal pietist was cast in an unusual mold. Polity necessitated the cultivation of Josè, as it required the friendship––or, in any event, the thorough appraisement––of every one with whom Wenceslas might be associated. But the blandishments, artifice, diplomacy and hints of advancements which he poured out in profusion upon Josè he early saw would fail utterly to penetrate the armor of moral reserve with which the priest was clad, or effect in the slightest degree the impression which they were calculated to make.
In the course of time the priest became irritating; later, annoying; and finally, positively dangerous to the ambitions of Wenceslas. For, to illustrate, Josè had once discovered him, in the absence of the Bishop, celebrating Mass in a state of inebriation. This irritated. Wenceslas had only been careless. Again, Josè had several times shown himself suspicious of his fast-and-loose methods with the rival political factions of Cartagena. This was annoying. Finally, he had come upon Josè in the market place a few weeks prior, in earnest conference with Marcelena and the girl, Maria; and subsequent conversation with him developed the fact that the priest had other dark suspicions which were but too well founded. This was dangerous. It was high time to prepare for possible contingencies.
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And so, in due time, carefully wording his hint that Padre Josè de Rincón might be a Radical spy in the ecclesiastical camp, Wenceslas found means to obtain from Rome a fairly comprehensive account of the priest’s past history. He mused over this until an idea suddenly occurred to him, namely, the similarity of this account with many of the passages which he had found in a certain book, “The Confessions of a Roman Catholic Priest”––a book which had cast the shadow of distrust upon Wenceslas himself in relation to certain matters of ecclesiastical politics in Colombia nearly three years before, and at a most unfortunate time. Indeed, this sudden, unheralded exposure had forced him to a hurried recasting of certain cherished plans, and drawn from him a burning, unquenchable desire to lay his pious hands upon the writer.
His influence with Rome at length revealed the secret of the wretched book’s authorship. And from the moment that he learned it, Josè’s fate was sealed. The crafty politician laughed aloud as he read the priest’s history. Then he drew his plans and waited. But in the interim he made further investigations; and these he extended far back into the ancestral history of this unfortunate scion of the once powerful house of Rincón.
Meantime, a few carefully chosen words to the Bishop aroused a dull interest in that quarter. Josè had been seen mingling freely with men of very liberal political views. It would be well to warn him. Again, weeks later, Wenceslas was certain, from inquiries made among the students, that Josè’s work in the classroom bordered a trifle too closely on radicalism. It were well to admonish him. And, still later, happening to call at Josè’s quarters just above his own in the ecclesiastical dormitory, and not finding him in, he had been struck by the absence of crucifix or other religious symbol in the room. Was the young priest becoming careless of his example?
And now, on this important feast-day, where was Padre Josè? On the preceding evening, as Wenceslas leaned over the parapet of the wall after his surprise by Josè, he had noted in the dim light the salient features of a foreigner who, he had just learned, was registered at the Hotel Mariano from the United States. Moreover, Wenceslas had just come from Josè’s room, whither he had gone in search of him, and––may the Saints pardon his excess of holy zeal which impelled him to examine the absent priest’s effects!––he had returned now to the Bishop bearing a copy of Renan’sVie de Jésus, with the American’s name on the flyleaf. It certainly were well to admonish Padre Josè again, and severely!
The Bishop, hardly to the surprise of his crafty coadjutor,113flew into a towering rage. He was a man of irascible temper, bitterly intolerant, and unreasoningly violent against all unbelievers, especially Americans whose affairs brought them to Colombia. In this respect he was the epitome of the ecclesiastical anti-foreign sentiment which obtained in that country. His intolerance of heretics was such that he would gladly have bound his own kin to the stake had he believed their opinions unorthodox. Yet he was thoroughly conscientious, a devout churchman, and saturated with the beliefs of papal infallibility and the divine origin of the Church. In the observance of church rites and ceremonies he was unremitting. In the soul-burning desire to witness the conversion of the world, and especially to see the lost children of Europe either coaxed or beaten back into the embrace of Holy Church, his zeal amounted to fanaticism. In the present case––
“Your Eminence,” suggested the suave Wenceslas to his exasperated superior, “may I propose that you defer action until I can discover the exact status of this American?”
And the Bishop forthwith placed the whole matter in his trusted assistant’s helpful hands.
Meantime, Josè and the American explorer sat in the shade of a magnificent palm on a high hill in beautiful Turbaco, looking out over the shimmering sea beyond. For Hitt had wandered into thePlaza de Cochesjust as Josè was taking a carriage, and the latter could not well refuse his proffered companionship for the day. Yet Josè feared to be seen in broad daylight with this stranger, and he involuntarily murmured aLoado sea Dios! when they reached Turbaco, as he believed, unobserved. He did not know that a sharp-eyed young novitiate, whom Wenceslas had detailed to keep the priest under surveillance, had hurried back to his superior with the report of Josè’s departure with theAmericanoon this innocent pleasure jaunt.
“Say no more, my friend, in apology for your abrupt departure last evening,” the explorer urged. “But tell me, rather, about your illustrious grandfather who had his country seat in this delightful spot. Why, man! this is paradise. I’ve a notion to come here to live some day.”
Josè cast his apprehensions upon the soft ocean breeze, and gave himself up to the inspiriting influence of his charming environment. He dwelt at length upon the Rincón greatness of mediaeval days, and expressed the resolve sometime to delve into the family records which he knew must be hidden away in the moldering old city of Cartagena. “But now,” he concluded, after another reference to the Church, “is Colombia to witness again the horror of those days of carnage? And over the human mind’s interpretation of the Christ? God forbid!”
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The American shook his head dubiously. “There is but one remedy––education. Not sectarian, partisan, worldly education––not instruction in relative truths and the chaff of materialistic speculation––but that sort of education whereby the selfish human mind is lifted in a measure out of itself, out of its petty jealousies and envyings, out of sneaking graft and touting for worldly emolument, and into a sense of the eternal truth that real prosperity and soundness of states and institutions are to be realized only when the Christ-principle, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ is made the measure of conduct. There is a tremendous truth which has long since been demonstrated, and yet which the world is most woefully slow to grasp, namely, that the surest, quickest means of realizing one’s own prosperity and happiness is in that of others––not in a world to come, but right here and now.”
“But that means the inauguration of the millennium,” protested Josè.
“Well, and why not so?” returned the explorer calmly. “Has not that been the ultimate aim of Christianity, and of all serious effort for reform for the past two thousand years? And, do you know, the millennium could be ushered in to-morrow, if men only thought so? Within an incredibly short time evil, even to death itself, could be completely wiped off the earth. But this wiping-off process must take place in the minds and thoughts of men. Of that I am thoroughly convinced. But, tell me, have you ever expressed to the Bishop your views regarding the condition of this country?”
Josè flushed. “Yes,” he replied in embarrassment. “Only a week ago I tried again to convince him of the inevitable trend of events here unless drastic measures were interposed by the Church. I had even lectured on it in my classes.”
“Well, what did he say?”
“The Bishop is a man of very narrow vision,” replied Josè. “He rebuked me severely and truculantly bade me confine my attention to the particular work assigned me and let affairs of politics alone. Of course, that meant leaving them to his assistant, Wenceslas. Mr. Hitt, Colombia needs a Luther!”
“Just so,” returned the explorer gravely. “Priestcraft from the very earliest times has been one of the greatest curses of mankind. Its abuses date far back to Egyptian times, when even prostitution was countenanced by the priests, and when they practiced all sorts of impostures upon the ignorant masses. In the Middle Ages they turned Christianity, the richest of blessings, into a snare, a delusion, a rank farce. They arrogated to themselves all learning, all science. In Peru it was even illicit for any one not belonging to the nobility to attempt115to acquire learning. That was the sole privilege of priests and kings. In all nations, from the remotest antiquity, and whether civilized or not, learning has been claimed by the priests as the unique privilege of their caste––a privilege bestowed upon them by the special favor of the ruling deity. That’s why they always sought to surround their intellectual treasures with a veil of mystery. Roger Bacon, the English monk, once said that it was necessary to keep the discoveries of the philosophers from those unworthy of knowing them. How did he expect a realization of ‘Thy kingdom come,’ I wonder?”
“They didn’t expect it to come––on earth,” said Josè.
“No. They relegated that to the imagined realm which was to be entered through the gateway of death. It’s mighty convenient to be able to relegate your proofs to that mysterious realm beyond the grave. That has always been a tremendous power in the hands of priests of all times and lands. By the way, did you know that the story of Abel’s assassination was one of many handed down, in one form or another, by the priests of India and Egypt?”
“Do you mean it?” inquired Josè eagerly.
“Certainly. The story doubtless comes from the ancient Egyptian tale which the priests of that time used to relate regarding the murder of Osiris by his brother, Set. It was a deed of jealousy. The story later became incorporated into the sacred books of India and Egypt, and was afterward taken over by the Hebrews, when they were captives in Egypt. The Hebrews learned much of Egyptian theology, and their own religion was greatly tinctured by it subsequently. The legend of the deluge, for example, is another tradition of those primitive days, and credited by the nations of antiquity. But here there is the likelihood of a connection with the great cataclysm of antiquity, the disappearance of the island of Atlantis in consequence of a violent earthquake and volcanic action. This alleged island, supposed to be a portion of the strip at one time connecting South America with Africa, is thought to have sunk beneath the waters of the present Atlantic ocean some nine thousand years before Solon visited Egypt, and hence, some eleven thousand years ago. Anyway, the story of this awful catastrophe got into the Egyptian records in the earliest times, and was handed down to the Hebrews, who probably based their story of the flood upon it. You see, there is a foundation of some sort for all those legends in the book of Genesis. The difficulty has been that humanity has for centuries childishly accepted them as historical fact. For example, the serpent story. Now in very primitive times the serpent was the special emblem of Kneph, the creator of the world, and116was regarded as a sort of good genius. It is still so regarded by the Chinese, who make of it one of their most beautiful symbols, the dragon. Later it became the emblem of Set, the slayer of Osiris; and after that it was looked upon with horror as the enemy of mankind, the destroyer, the evil principle. Hence, in Egypt, the Hebrew captives adopted the serpent as emblematical of evil, and later used it in their scriptural records as the evil genius that tempted Eve and brought about the fall of man. And so all people whose religious beliefs are founded upon the Hebrew Bible now look upon the serpent as the symbol of evil. Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans thus regard it.”
Josè gazed at the man with rapt interest. “Don’t stop!” he urged. “Go on! go on!”
Hitt laughed. “Well,” he resumed, “the tree and the serpent were worshiped all through eastern countries, from Scandinavia to the Asiatic peninsula and down into Egypt. And, do you know, we even find vestiges of such worship in America? Down in Adams county, Ohio, on the banks of Brush creek, there is a great mound, called the serpent mound. It is seven hundred feet long, and greatly resembles the one in Glen Feechan, Argyleshire, Scotland. It also resembles the one I found in the ancient city of Tiahuanuco, whose ruins lie at an elevation of some thirteen thousand feet above the Pacific ocean, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, near the Bolivian frontier. This ancient city ages ago sent out colonists all over North and South America. These primitive people believed that a serpent emitted an egg from its mouth, and that the earth was born of that egg. Now the serpent mound in Ohio has an egg in its mouth. What is the logical inference?”
“You don’t mean it!” exclaimed Josè, his eyes wide with astonishment.
Hitt laughed again in evident enjoyment of the priest’s wonder. Then he resumed: “It has been established to my entire satisfaction that the ancient Egyptians and the Mayas of Central and South America used almost identical symbols. And from all antiquity, and by all nations, the symbols of the tree and serpent and their worship have been so closely identified as to render it certain that their origin is the same. What, then, are the serpent and tree of knowledge in the Hebrew Bible but an outgrowth of this? The tree of life, of civilization, of knowledge, was placed in the middle of the land, of the ‘garden,’ of the primitive country of the race, Mayax. And the empire of the Mayas was situated between the two great continents of North and South America. These people spread out in all directions. They populated the then existing island of Atlantis. And when the terrible earthquake117occurred, whereby this island was sunk beneath the waves of the Atlantic ocean, why, to these people the world had been drowned! The story got to Egypt, to Chaldea, and to India. Hence the deluge record of Genesis.”
“But, these primitive people, how ancient are they?” queried Josè.
“No one can form any adequate estimate,” said Hitt in reply. “The wonderful city of Tiahuanuco was in ruins when Manco Capac laid the foundations of the Inca empire, which was later devastated by the Spaniards. And the Indians told the Spaniards that it had been constructed by giants before the sun shone in heaven.”
“Astonishing!” exclaimed Josè. “Such facts as these––if facts they be––relegate much of the Scriptural authority to the realm of legend and myth!”
“Quite so,” returned the explorer. “When the human mind of this century forces itself to approach a subject without prejudice or bias, and without the desire to erect or maintain a purely human institution at whatever cost to world-progress, then it finds that much of the hampering, fettering dogma of mediaevalism now laid upon it by the Church becomes pure fiction, without justifiable warrant or basis. Remember, the Hebrew people gave us the Old Testament, in which they had recorded for ages their tribal and national history, their poetry, their beliefs and hopes, as well as their legends, gathered from all sources. We have likewise the historical records of other nations. But the Hebrew possessed one characteristic which differentiated him from all other people. He was a monotheist, and he saw his God in every thing, every event, every place. His concept of God was his life-motif. This concept evolved slowly, painfully, throughout the centuries. The ancient Hebrew patriarchs saw it as a variable God, changeful, fickle, now violently angry, now humbly repentant, now making contracts with mankind, now petulantly destroying His own handiwork. He was a God who could order the slaughter of innocent babes, as in the book of Samuel; or He was a tender, merciful Father, as in the Psalms. He could harden hearts, wage bloody wars, walk with men ‘in the cool of the day,’ create a universe with His fist, or spend long days designing and devising the material utensils and furniture of sacrifice to be used in His own worship. In short, men saw in Him just what they saw in themselves. They saw but their mental concept. The Bible records humanity’s changing, evolving concept of God, of that ‘something not ourselves which makes for righteousness.’ And this concept gradually changed from the magnified God-man of the Old Testament, a creature of human118whims and passions, down to that held by the man of Nazareth, a new and beautiful concept of God as love. This new concept Jesus joyously gave to a sin-weary world that had utterly missed the mark. But it cost him his earthly life to do it. And the dark record of the so-called Christian Church, both Protestant and Catholic, contains the name of many a one who has paid the same penalty for a similar service of love.
“The Chaldeans and Egyptians,” he went on, after a moment’s reflective pause, “gave the Hebrews their account of the creation of the universe, the fall of man, the flood, and many other bits of mythical lore. And into these stories the Hebrews read the activity of their God, and drew from them deep moral lessons. Egypt gave the Hebrews at least a part of the story of Joseph, as embodied in the hieroglyphics which may be read on the banks of the Nile to-day. They probably also gave the Hebrews the account of the creation found in the second chapter of Genesis, for to this day you can see in some of the oldest Egyptian temples pictures of the gods making men out of lumps of clay. The discovery of the remains of the ‘Neanderthal man’ and the ‘Ape-man of Java’ now places the dawn of human reason at a period some three to five hundred thousand years prior to our present century, and, combined with the development of the science of geology, which shows that the total age of the earth’s stratified rocks alone cannot be much less than fifty-five millions of years, serves to cast additional ridicule upon the Church’s present attitude of stubborn adherence to these prehistoric scriptural legends as literal, God-given fact. But, to make the right use of these legends––well, that is another thing.”
“And that?”
The explorer hesitated. “I find it difficult to explain,” he said at length. “But, remember what I have already said, there is, theremustbe, a foundation beneath all these legends which admonish mankind to turn from evil to good. And, as I also said, that foundation must be very broad. I have said that I was in search of a religion. Why not, you may ask, accept the religious standard which Jesus set? That was the new concept of God as love. Very good. I am quite convinced that love isthereligion,thetie which binds all things together and to a common source and cause. And I am equally convinced that Jesus is the only person recorded in history who ever lived a life of pure reflection of the love which he called God. And so you see why I am chipping and hewing away at the theological conception of the Christ, and trying to get at the reality buried deep beneath in the theological misconceptions of the centuries. I am quite convinced that if men loved one another,119as Jesus bade them do, all war, strife, disease, poverty, and discord of every sort would vanish from human experience. But––and here is a serious question––did Jesus ask the impossible? Did he command us to love the sinful, erring mortal whom we see in our daily walk––or did he––did he have a new thought, namely, that by loving the real man, for which, perhaps, this human concept stands in the human mind,that this very act would change that distorted concept and cause it to yield its place to the real one? I believe Jesus to have been the wisest man who ever trod this earth. But I likewise believe that no man has ever been more deplorably misunderstood, misquoted, and misinterpreted than he. And so I am delving down, down beneath the mass of human conjecture and ridiculous hypothesis which the Church Fathers and our own theologians have heaped up over this unique character, if perchance I may some day discover just what he was, just what he really said, and just what the message which he sought to convey to mankind.”
He leaned over and laid a hand on Josè’s arm. “My young friend,” he said earnestly, “I believe there are meanings in the life and words of Jesus of which the Church in its astounding self-sufficiency has never even dreamed. Did he walk on the water? Did he feed the multitude with a few loaves? Did he raise Lazarus? Did he himself issue from the tomb? No more momentous questions were ever asked than these. For, if so,then the message of Jesus has a bearing on the material universe, on the human mind, and the whole realm of thought that is utterly revolutionary! What was that message? Did the man’s own apostles and immediate followers understand it? Did Paul? Certain we are, however, that the theology which Rome gave to her barbarian conquerors was wholly different from that taught by Jesus and his disciples. And we know that the history of Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire down to the Franco-Prussian war is largely a recital of the development of the religious beliefs which Rome handed down to her conquerors, and their influence upon the human mind. These beliefs constitute the working hypothesis of that institution known to-day as the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and its separated offshoots, the Greek Catholic and the Protestant Churches, including the numberless ramifications and divisions of the latter. The question as to whether eternal salvation is a function of complete immersion of the human body, or only a gentle sprinkling, appears most lamentably puerile in the face of the tremendous revolutionary truths hinted by the deeds of Jesus, assuming that he has been correctly reported in the Gospels. No; Renan, in hisVie de Jésus, which I gave you last120night, missed it. Before him, Voltaire and countless other critics of man-made theology missed it. The writings of these men do serve, however, to mow down the theological stubble in the world’s field of thought. What is it, this gigantic truth which Jesus brought? I do not know. But he himself is reported to have said, ‘If ye keep my commands, ye shall know of the doctrine.’ And his chief command was,that we love God and our fellow-men. I have no doubt whatever that, when we follow this command, we shall know of the doctrine which he came to establish in the hearts of men.”
“But his message was the brotherhood of man,” said Josè.
“Nay,” replied the explorer, “it was thefatherhoodof God, rather. For that includes the brotherhood of man. But, while we agree thus far, who can say what the fatherhood of God implies? Who, realizing that this was Jesus’ message, knows how to make it practical, as he did? To him it meant––ah, what did it not mean! It meant a consciousness that heldnot one trace of evil. It meant a consciousness of God as omnipotent power, the irresistible power of good, which, in the form of spirit, or mind, as some will have it, is ever present. Is it not so? Well, then, who is there to-day, within the Church or without, who understands the divine message of the fatherhood of God sufficiently to acquire such a consciousness, and to make the intensely practical application of the message to every problem of mind, or body, or environment? Who to-day in your Church or mine, for example, realizes that Jesus must have seen something in matter far different from the solid, indestructible thing that we think we see, and that this was due to his understanding of the immanence of his Father as spirit––an understanding which enabled him to walk on the waves, and to treat material things as if they were not? No, my friend, the Christ-message of the fatherhood of God is hardly apprehended in the world to-day in the slightest degree by priest or prelate, church or sect. And yet, the influence of Jesus is tremendous!”
Josè’s brow knit in perplexity. “I––I don’t believe I follow you, quite,” he said.
“I am not surprised,” replied the explorer gently. “I sometimes wonder if I understand myself just what it is that I am trying to express. My belief is still in a state of transition. I am still searching. The field has been cleared. And now––now I am waiting for the new seed. I have abandoned forever the sterile, non-productive religious beliefs of current theology. I have abandoned such belittling views of God as the Presbyterian sublapsarian view of election. I have turned wearily from the puerile dogma of your Church as unworthy of the Father121of Jesus. From delving into the mysteries of the Brahminism of India, of ancestor-worship in Japan, of Confucianism in China, of Islamism in the far East, I have come back to the wonderful man of Nazareth. And now I am trying to see what Christianity would be if purged of its adulterations––purged of the Greek philosophy of the early Fathers; of the forgeries of the Middle Ages; of the pagan ceremonialism and priestly rites and assumptions of power to save or damn in this present century. And what do I find, after all this rubbish has been filtered out? Love, friend––love; the unfathomable love of the Father of Jesus, who knows no evil, no sin, no sickness, no death, no hell, no material heaven, but whose kingdom is the harmonious realm of spirit, or mind, wherein the individual consciousness knows no discord of any name or nature.”
The afternoon haze had been long gathering when Josè roused the sleepingcocheroand prepared to return to the stifling ecclesiastical atmosphere from which for a brief day he had been so happily free. A cold chill swept over him when he took his seat in the carriage, and he shuddered as if with an evil presentiment.
“And you still adhere to your determination to remain in the Church?” his friend asked, as they turned from the green hills and nodding palms of Turbaco, and set their course, toward the distant mediaeval city.
“Yes,” came the scarcely audible reply. But as Josè spoke, he knew that his mind had that day been stripped of its last remaining vestige of the old theology, leaving it bare, exposed––and receptive.
A week passed. The explorer had gone, as silently and unannounced as he had come. The evening before his departure he and Josè had sat again in the thick shadows of the old wall. The next morning he was on the mighty river; and the priest was left with a great void in his heart.
One noon, as Josè was returning from his classes, he pondered deeply the last words of the explorer, “Remember, nothing that has been invented by mankind or evolved by the human mind can stand, or remain. We might just as well accept that great fact now as later, and adjust ourselves to it. But the things of the spirit remain. And Paul has told us what they are.”
As he passed slowly along the winding little street toward the dormitory, a messenger approached him with a summons from the Bishop. He turned and started wonderingly toward the Cathedral. He had been reprimanded once, twice, for the liberal views which he had expressed to his classes. Was he122to receive another rebuke now? He had tried to be more careful of late. Had he been seen with the explorer?
An hour later, his eyes set and unseeing, and his thin lips trembling, Josè dragged himself up the stone steps to his little room and threw himself upon the bed. The bonds which had been slowly, imperceptibly tightening during these few months of precious liberty had been drawn suddenly taut. The Bishop, in therôleofInquisitor Natus, had just revealed a full knowledge of his dismal past, and had summarily dismissed him from the University faculty. Josè, bewildered and stunned, had tried vainly to defend himself. Then, realizing his impotence before the uncompromising bigotry of this choleric ecclesiastic, he had burst suddenly into a torrent of frenzied declarations of his undeserved wrongs, of his resolve now to renounce his oath, to leave the Church, to abandon honor, family, everything that held or claimed him, and to flee into unknown and unknowing parts, where his harassed soul might find a few years of rest before its final flight! The Bishop became bitterly and implacably infuriated, and remanded the excited priest to his room to reflect upon his wild words, and to await the final disposition of his case––unless he should have determined already to try the devious route of apostasy.
Rising the next morning at dawn from the chill floor where he had spent the torturing hours of an interminable night, and still clinging forlornly to his battered sense of honor and family pride, Josè again received the Bishop’s summons; and, after the events of the morning already related, faced the angry churchman’s furious tirade, and with it, what he could not have imagined before, a charge of hideous immorality. Then had been set before him a choice between apostasy and acceptance of the assignment to the parish of far-off Simití.
“And now, unpitying Fate,” he murmured, as the door of the Bishop’ssanctumclosed behind him, and he wandered down through the gloom of the quiet Cathedral, “receive your victim. You have chosen well your carnal instruments––pride––ecclesiasticism––lust! My crimes? Aye, the very lowest; for I have loved liberty of thought and conscience; I have loved virtue and honor; the pursuits of intellect; the fair; the noble; yea, the better things of life. I have loved my fellow-men; and I have sought their emancipation from the thraldom of ignorance. I have loved truth, and the Christ who revealed it to the dull minds of mortals. Enough! I stand convicted! And––I accept the sentence––I have no desire to resist it. For the end is now not distant!”