CHAPTER XV.
The next morning my friend called, and we had a long conversation on the veranda. He said, “I was not a little surprised that you did not have the chaplain and no kind of service at the grave. Not that I personally was dissatisfied, but rather that you dared to go against the usual custom.”
I could not tell him the exact reason, which mainly was my dislike of the chaplain on account of his intimate companionship with the Hon. who had wrecked my life, so I said that I had no acquaintance with the chaplain; that according to social custom, as he had come last to the station, it was his place to call on us. If he had any interest in our religious welfare it was his duty to see us. If he was the shepherd and we the sheep, it was his place tolook us up, and not ours to run after him. As he had never cared for us, either in health or in sickness, and we could live and die without his services, it seemed to me that we could be buried without his aid.
“Believe me,” he answered, “I am not finding fault or criticising, but only referred to your not following the usual custom, and am rather pleased that you had courage to do what you thought best. For myself, I would prefer a solemn chant, or such a hymn as ‘Abide with me,’ or any hymn that would lead us to think of eternal life. I object to the service for the dead, as given in the prayer-book, being used for everybody, saint and sinner alike; not that I would be a judge of the dead, yet we cannot always restrain our thoughts and judgments.
“When I stood at the grave of a man whom everybody knew as a drunkard, and we both knew such a man, who, going home at night drunk from a party, fell from his horse and broke his collar bone, and died from his injury mainly because he was dissipated. He was worse than a drunkard, a seducer of innocence, a debauchee, most profane and vulgar in all his conversation. He was vice personified; destitute of all pure noble feelings, spending his nights in vice and his days in intrigue, whose acquaintance was fatal to a woman, and who reveled in the putridity of immorality. Every decent person loathed him while he was living, and only recognized him because he was in a prominent government position. When we stood at his grave, and the chaplain said the words:
“‘Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ,—’
“I could not help thinking, you are either a fool or a liar and I recalled the saying of Garibaldi: ‘A priest knows himself to be an imposter unless he be a fool, or have been taught to lie from boyhood.’
“Such a performance as that, and I don’t know what else to call it, is degrading a religious service, and turning itinto a falsehood, making a sham or mockery of what at such a solemn moment should be—most truthful and sacred. Everybody present at the time knew the service was a lying flattery, a religious farce. Is it any wonder that so many people lack sincerity, and lose faith not only in the church, its ministers, but in all things religious? The clergy go through their forms whether they are suitable for the occasion or not.”
I suggested that perhaps his hymns might not always be appropriate.
“Why not?” he asked. “They would not lie about God or the dead, but would be only for the living. Another thing. As this man to whom I referred was near death, they sent for the chaplain. He may have found a suitable prayer, or have said some good words, but what could he do for such a man in the awful hour of death? They say, ‘The man may repent,’ and then? Would he go to heaven? What kind of a heaven would be suitable for him? What society is he fitted to enjoy? What delight would he take in anything that is pure and holy? That is another of the false, baneful teachings of the Church, that the vilest of men may in a dying hour, by a few words of the priest, by partaking of the communion, by the anointing of oil, or the sprinkling of a few drops of so-called holy water, in an instant, be fitted to go into the presence of God and associate with angels and the pure and good. You might as well take a savage cannibal, or a wild Hottentot, suddenly into a London drawing room, among the refined and educated, and expect him to enjoy himself and be at ease, as to think of a vile, polluted man gaining admittance into Heaven, and to be happy should he get into it. Of what interest would God be to a soul in a future life, who had nothing to do with Him here?
“With me it is not a question if I shall go to Heaven, but how shall I like it when I get there? Strip many people of all that is in them that pertains wholly to this life, and there would be little left that would be worth taking over into that other life. The whole church scheme is founded on the idea that Heaven is a kind of a pen, or a big sheep-fold, and that the keeper of the gate can be cajoled orbribed to let in anybody who is vouched for by some priest; that even those so vile as to pollute the earth by their presence, who can get past the keeper through the gate, or by any hook or crook get in, will at once bloom out into saints and angels.
“Is it strange that so many live in vice and sin, when their salvation is made so easy, by getting in a priest at the last moment? How can honest men, as clergymen, bolster up such a flattering delusion? If it is criminal to deceive men about things in this life, how much more so when it is about that which affects their eternal life? If the parsons cannot keep a man from sinning, or make him lead a good life here, how can they, in the hour of death, save him from Hell or fit him for Heaven, when his body is racked with pain and his senses are benumbed? Is it not a gross deception to teach that, when a man becomes so feeble from his vices, that he can enjoy nothing more on earth, neither of its good or evil, and has nothing left but its dregs, that he can take communion, and reach Heaven?
“Colley Cibber wrote of Nell Gwynn, the notorious profligate mistress of Charles the Second: ‘She received the last consolations of religion. Her repentance in her last hours appeared in all the contrite symptoms of Christian sincerity.’
“This is only one instance of thousands of similar statements. How can a person’s death-bed be illumined by the holy consolations of religion, after a whole life spent in the meanest kind of wickedness? What sacrilegious rubbish!
“My idea of Heaven is this—that it is a condition of the soul, and is made by ourselves, with God’s help always—by conquest, the conquest of self, the subjugation of all thoughts, feelings and acts, everything that is unheavenly, and by building up the soul with pure thoughts and deeds of rightness. We make a heaven for ourselves by subduing and improving. The farmer clears the ground and destroys the weeds to give place to the seed, and then by cultivation, produces a harvest. He does not expect a crop without labor; by some chance, or prayer, or miracle. Why should we expect a spiritual crop of good without working for it? Our diseases, are in no sense, accidents or mysteries, but thenecessary and legitimate results of the violations of laws. A man who violates the laws of his physical being to his own injury is a criminal in regard to himself, just as he would be a criminal in breaking the laws of the state.
“Government does not accept the plea of ignorance of the laws, for to be ignorant is a part of the crime, so no one should be excused for not knowing or obeying the laws of his own being.
“The material view of Heaven as a place, instead of a condition of the soul, that men can be thrown into it, by some force or power, outside of themselves, that some one else has the keys and can open the place for them, is a delusion that has done great hurt to humanity. With these ideas men deceive and excuse themselves. Instead of making and building up a heaven of their souls, they depend on others. They shift the responsibility. If they sin, some one will bear their sins for them. No matter how often they sin, or how long they continue in it, if they, at the dying hour, can say they are sorry, get a priest to vouch for them, and give them the pass-word, they will be made heirs of Heaven, and be straightway carried to Abraham’s bosom. All this is contrary to common sense and reason.
“Is it fair and just, supposing heaven to be a place, to those who all their lives have striven to be good, to have these wretches who are steeped in sin and made up of vice and crime to become at a breath, inhabitants of heaven when they are not able to sin any more? This would not be human justice, nor can I believe that it is God’s plan to people heaven in that way, supposing it to be a place. O, yes, the thief on the cross! I think if Jesus could have foreseen what use would have been made of that expression he would never have uttered it. He had the Jewish notion of heaven being a city, a new Jerusalem, with many mansions, surrounded by a wall with gates. With all due respect to him as a great teacher and a pure man, I cannot but think that these words of his have kept many in sin, delayed their repentance and leading of a better life. Do I say this rashly? Have I not heard men say, ‘O, I will repent before I die;’ and when warned of their mistaken idea of repentance and the danger of delay, have answered,‘The thief repented on the cross when he was dying and was promised paradise.’ And there is the parable of the laborers. This is a Jewish story and might be told of one of their rulers who could do as he pleased. It is utterly contrary to human justice for a man who works only an hour to receive as much as the man who labors ten hours. It is a libel on God to think he would pay his laborers in that way.
“I have sometimes thought that some people are dead long before they are buried. All the spiritual life, that which makes manhood or saints, is dead, killed by their vices and transgressions against their spiritual nature, and the animal life alone remains that keeps their bodies in existence. What effect then would a prayer or a wafer or anything have upon such a thing that is only like the carcass of a dying brute? In proportion as a man sins he becomes dead to righteousness. I think no one can question this. Then we cannot help admitting that there may come a time when he, his soul, will be actually dead to all good influences. Then he will be a hell to himself, or in hell, just as you choose to have it.
“It is a horrible thought, I know, yet there are many horrible things in life that we cannot escape. The hell or the punishment is of man’s own making, not of God’s.
“If a farmer who has good soil, rain and sunshine, wastes his time in idleness, how can he blame God for not giving him a harvest? When a man wastes his life in vice and crime and becomes a hell to himself, how can he accuse God of being unjust or unmerciful? The moral laws are as exact and reasonable as those of nature.
“The mistake is, I think, in leading people to believe that the church by some supernatural power given to it, or by a sudden belief, hope or regret of the man himself, can change this inexorable, inevitable law of God so as to make the vilest sinner become a saint. The soul that sinneth shall die, and my belief is that God will not frustrate the execution of His own laws. There are no miracles in nature or anywhere else. It is inconsistent to suppose that the Creator of the universe would permit or give power to a few poor mortals anywhere to interfere withor change the working of His laws. In the revolution of the spheres there has not been for ages the slightest variation or shadow of a change. It is impossible to suppose that there could be such a variation in the orbit of a planet so slight as to be beyond the power of man to detect it with his most delicate instruments, without believing that chaos would be the result sooner or later. There is as much harmony and equilibrium in a globule of water as in the largest planet. The dazzling glory in a dew-drop is but the exact reflection of some greater and higher glory. Everything in nature is according to the strictest kind of inerrant, unchangeable law. Why then should we expect or believe that in the spiritual or moral life its laws are errant or changeable? Why should cause and effect be different in the one than in the other? When water can be produced by any power of God or man without the exact proportions of oxygen and hydrogen, then I will attempt to believe that a vile man, dead in trespasses and sins can suddenly be changed into an angel and be fit to enjoy the society of the pure and the good.
“The mercy of God! It is blasphemy to make such a plea to ward off and escape the consequences that are the result of the deliberate violations of God’s moral laws. Earthquakes and cyclones are in harmony with nature’s laws that God has made. Why not demand that the mercy of God shall suddenly interfere and prevent these from engulfing cities and destroying thousands of innocent women and children, as to believe that the mercy of God will interfere with His spiritual laws and save a soul that is dead in sin or has never wished for salvation.”
“But,” I inquired, “do you not believe in the forgiveness of God?”
“Most emphatically I do,” he exclaimed. “When a man longs for it in his soul with heartfelt repentance. You know what I mean; not a sham repentance or asking for forgiveness when he is at the end of his tether and is too weak and impotent to sin again. But suppose that full pardon is given, what then? Does it restore the sinner and reinstate him in his former innocent state or place him where he might have been had he not sinned? Not at all,for I say it with loyalty and reverence to God that there are things He cannot do. He cannot do away with the results of the cyclone of last year. He cannot blot out the occurrences of the past and make the history of the world a blank. He cannot violate His own laws which His own omniscience and wisdom have established. This is inconceivable.
“There are so many who misinterpret the forgiveness and mercy of God that they transform Him from a being of infinite perfectness into a thing of whims and caprices.
“To illustrate my meaning. Suppose a young man, well educated and trained, a model young man in every respect, leaves home like the prodigal son and goes to some city and yields to temptation and vice, as so many do where they think they are unknown and have a chance to see life. His money all spent, his strength all gone so that he can dissipate no more, he goes home. The father and mother receive him with tears of gladness; not a word of reproach is uttered. He sits at the family table, kneels again at the family altar and apparently all is as if nothing had happened. He is fully forgiven but does that forgiveness restore to him the innocence he lost? Never! That is lost forever. He may never sin again, but he cannot obliterate the wounds and scars he made upon his own soul by his sinning. Neither the forgiveness of his father nor the prayers of his loving mother can ever make him what he would have been had he not sinned. Nor can God do away with the violation of His laws. A man’s deeds become a part or all of himself. Destroy the remembrance of those deeds and so far you annihilate the man himself. The only thing for a sinner to do is to sin no more and make the most of the rest of his life.
“Suppose I take an illustration from nature. We go into your garden, and as we pass along, you with your pruning knife in your hand make a cut in one of the trees. Ten years from now we meet again, and as we pass the tree you remark: ‘Why, Mr. Jasper, here is the very tree I cut ten years ago, and there is not a sign or scar of the knife. It is as if it never had been hurt!’ ‘Hold! I cry. Let us cut the tree down and open it.’ There is theinevitable wound made by your knife. It could not be otherwise. Nature always retains its scars and why not men? So the immortal soul never forgets or loses anything of good or evil. It is fearful, awful, I know, and makes one dread to live. Everybody has to carry through life the scars they received in their youth. It is nonsense to say that a life tainted with sin may come out all right in the end.
“The acts of men when once performed are indestructible and eternal, whether they are good or evil. Could they be annihilated, then the good might go as well as the evil, and nothing would be settled, all would be chaos.
“‘According to law,’ is an expression of the justice of an action among men, so we can say that God does everything according to law. Neither will He, or can He, by miracles or any special providence, change or interfere with the execution of His established laws. Why should He? In answer to prayer? What a mess this world would be in, if God answered everybody’s prayers! Two Christian people are at war. Both claim to be right, and each prays to God for help to conquer the other. The one is conquered, but does it acknowledge that its defeat was because God was not with it?
“A farmer went to his minister and asked him to pray for rain, as his corn was drying up. Another farmer objected as he had just cut his grass and rain would ruin it. What would be for the benefit of one might be loss or death to many. Who can interfere with the government of the Almighty?
“Who knows the laws so well as He that made them? Nine-tenths of the suggestions and directions to God, as to how He should manage the affairs of the world, would be insults and sins, were it not for the incapacity and ignorance of those who make them. It is no crime or sin for a donkey to bray at the moon.
“Suppose that one who has spent years in study and experiment produces a large and intricate machine. He knows the purposes for which it was built and all the detailsand manner of using it. Is such a man to receive directions how to manage his machine from any passer-by, from persons who know nothing of mechanical laws, and of but little else, and never gave an hour’s thought to the simplest mechanical appliance? If any one knows more about the machine than its maker, it might be well for him to give suggestions. So if any one knows more about the world and knows how to take care of it better than its Creator, let him step up, and give his advice and orders.”
I interjected, “If a man makes his own destiny, what is the use of the church or parsons?”
“Use! Why to help make it better, for good, not by any delusions, deceptions, false hopes, jugglery of ordinances or soft sayings. ‘Believe, have faith in this or that and you will be saved.’ Let the priests and all religious teachers warn the people of sin, show them the fearful and inevitable consequences of the violation of the spiritual and moral laws; that as a man lives so he dies, and as he dies so will be his eternal condition. Give him no chance for an excuse, of dodging, of trying to escape through somebody’s influence. Educate him, threaten him, frighten him by the awful present and eternal consequences of sin, into a better life. Make no apologies for sinning. Give him to understand that he is making his own heaven or hell. As the Persian poet puts it:
‘I sent my soul through the invisible,Some letter of that after life to spell,And bye and bye my soul returned to me,And answered, I, myself, am heaven or hell!’
‘I sent my soul through the invisible,Some letter of that after life to spell,And bye and bye my soul returned to me,And answered, I, myself, am heaven or hell!’
‘I sent my soul through the invisible,Some letter of that after life to spell,And bye and bye my soul returned to me,And answered, I, myself, am heaven or hell!’
‘I sent my soul through the invisible,
Some letter of that after life to spell,
And bye and bye my soul returned to me,
And answered, I, myself, am heaven or hell!’
“There is nothing truer than the saying of Kant. ‘Every action carries with it its own punishment, and its own reward.’
‘It matters not how straight the gate,How charged with punishment the scroll,I am the master of my fate,I am the Captain of my soul.’‘Our acts our angels are, for good or ill,Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.’
‘It matters not how straight the gate,How charged with punishment the scroll,I am the master of my fate,I am the Captain of my soul.’‘Our acts our angels are, for good or ill,Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.’
‘It matters not how straight the gate,How charged with punishment the scroll,I am the master of my fate,I am the Captain of my soul.’
‘It matters not how straight the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the Captain of my soul.’
‘Our acts our angels are, for good or ill,Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.’
‘Our acts our angels are, for good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.’
“The great mistake is, that salvation from sin is made so easy; is considered so cheap a thing, that few pay any attention to it. Make men understand that their eternal destiny is of their own making—with the help of God always—that no mediation, intercession of others can possibly change their evil nature, or do away with the fearful consequences of the violation of God’s law. I would not smooth over anything. I would show them that the most difficult thing in life is to be good, and yet that every difficulty can be overcome and the way become delightfully pleasant if the mind and strength of the heart and soul are inclined to it. When a man has wasted his life, sucked the sweets from every flower to gratify his pampered appetite, and the fires of his passions have gone out, he becomes devout, builds a church, endows a hospital, says his prayers, and is cock sure of heaven, as if the eyes of justice were blind and the record of his misspent life could be erased by a few donations of money or the mumbling of a few prayers!
“Away with all such cant and hypocrisy! Money can do a great deal on earth, for all on it, even immortal men are purchasable, but it would be blasphemy to think that the justice of Heaven could be thwarted by bribes, or the records of wrong-doing be washed away by a few tardy tears.
‘Yet here’s a spot,Out damned spot! Out I say,What! will these hands never be clean!Here’s the smell of blood still;All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.’
‘Yet here’s a spot,Out damned spot! Out I say,What! will these hands never be clean!Here’s the smell of blood still;All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.’
‘Yet here’s a spot,Out damned spot! Out I say,What! will these hands never be clean!Here’s the smell of blood still;All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.’
‘Yet here’s a spot,
Out damned spot! Out I say,
What! will these hands never be clean!
Here’s the smell of blood still;
All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.’
“It is not by any creed or prayer, or ordinance, or mediation that a man is to be saved, but by noble thinking, and brave doing every moment of his life. He may get all the information and assistance he can, but he alone can and must do the work.
“It is awful to reflect that not a thought, or word, or deed is ever forgotten, and that each one makes his own doomsday book, in which all is written with such exactness thatthere are no erasures or corrections, and to be forever carried as a part of the soul, a perpetual, eternal witness for or against himself. The soul, disrobed, naked, and seeing itself in that fearful light where there can be no deception or the least concealment—what need of any judge or any record but the memory of the soul? The memory keeps an everlasting account of all that ever comes to it,—‘Where I do see the very book indeed where all my sins are writ, and that’s myself.’
“The great mistake is, I think, in making religion wholly a supernatural thing, something to be accepted by faith only, in somebody’s statement, and clothing it with mystery, and placing it before our reason. True religion is as much a science as mental philosophy, or chemistry, and should be investigated by the same methods.
“Says Webster: ‘Science is the understanding of truth or facts; it is an investigation of truth for its own sake, and a pursuit of pure knowledge.’
“Sir William Thompson says: ‘Science is bound by the everlasting law of honor to face fearlessly every problem which can fairly be presented to it.’
“‘Conviction,’ says Bacon, ‘comes not through arguments, but through experiments.’
“Says a French philosopher: ‘I have consumed forty years of my pilgrimage seeking the philosopher’s stone called truth. I have consulted all the adepts of antiquity, and still remain in ignorance. All that I have been able to obtain is this: chance, is a word void of sense. The world is arranged according to mathematical laws.’
“The relation of cause with effect, heat with cold, light with darkness, sweet with sour, positive with negative, is not more or less definite in the natural sciences than that of good with evil, vice with virtue, pure with foul, or rewards with punishments in moral or religious science. Why invent a devil to be the author of evil any more than to imagine some demon to be the creator of darkness, or another as the devil of cold in the arctic regions, or another as the devil of heat here in India?
“Once, conversing with a Roman Catholic priest, he said, ‘Your theory may do very well for you, but for themasses of ignorant people, sunken in vice and sin, a literal hell of fire and a devil are an actual necessity.’
“Bobby Burns says:
‘The fear of hell’s a hangman’s whip,To haud the wretch in order,’
‘The fear of hell’s a hangman’s whip,To haud the wretch in order,’
‘The fear of hell’s a hangman’s whip,To haud the wretch in order,’
‘The fear of hell’s a hangman’s whip,
To haud the wretch in order,’
but I prefer his other sentiment,
‘Just where ye feel your honor grip,Let that aye be your border.Its slightest touches instant pause,Debar a’ side pretenses,And resolutely keep its laws,Uncaring consequences.’”
‘Just where ye feel your honor grip,Let that aye be your border.Its slightest touches instant pause,Debar a’ side pretenses,And resolutely keep its laws,Uncaring consequences.’”
‘Just where ye feel your honor grip,Let that aye be your border.Its slightest touches instant pause,Debar a’ side pretenses,And resolutely keep its laws,Uncaring consequences.’”
‘Just where ye feel your honor grip,
Let that aye be your border.
Its slightest touches instant pause,
Debar a’ side pretenses,
And resolutely keep its laws,
Uncaring consequences.’”
Said he, as he arose to go, “I hope I have not tired you. I have talked enough, so I will practice a little by seeing my poor families, for wishing the poor to be fed without giving them bread, would not be satisfactory to them now, nor to me hereafter.”
Such was Mr. Jasper. I liked him for his honesty and sincerity. I doubt if he ever uttered a word but what he believed, and what he said he felt, as if it was a part of himself.