CHAPTER XXXI.
Returning, we soon thought of setting our faces toward the east, though first to the Continent, to see which, I had said I was leaving India, but had forgotten it for something else, and yet would have obtained forgiveness of that something for this slip of my pen had I asked it. I had seen Great Britain, England, the home of my Government, yet not my home, as some Eurasians style it, or as I have heard some Europe-clad natives speak of England, as if they had been born there. The fact is, I was so badly mixed up in my make-up that I hardly knew where my home really should be. I am in somewhat of the quandary of a man who was born of an English father, a Scotch mother, on an American ship, in African waters.
I had made good use of my time in seeing England. I had studied the solid, smileless, arrogant Englishman, who acts, particularly in India, as if he felt that when God had finished making him and his set, He had but little earth from which to make the rest of mankind. He is born a grumbler and a grasper. He is ever finding faults in other people. He is always reaching out to get something, and ever kicking when others try to get a little wealth or a small share of the earth’s surface. In one of my rural tours I saw some swine—and a noble breed of hogs theywere, such as we never see in India. When they were fed, one fat old fellow stood sideways to the trough to keep the others away, and when he had got his fill, what did the brute do but lie down lengthwise in the trough to prevent the others from getting anything. Why the very hogs seemed to be characteristic of England. She has more than half of North America, the richest part of Asia, all the Antarctic continent, many islands of the ocean, and while she keeps all she has got she grasps for more. Without conscience as to her own methods of acquisition, she kicks when poor old Russia wants a few barren frozen steppes of central Asia, useless to anybody else, and unmindful that she has just absorbed Burmah, she kicks when France wants a little slice of Siam; she holds Egypt for the benefit of a lot of usurers, and took Burmah on the plea of protecting a sharp trading company. It is curious to note that all the annexations and usurpations of England have been preceded by some trading company, and yet her society folks and aristocracy have such a dislike to trade and tradespeople.
Whether it is the climate, the rain, the fog, the sticky mud, the solid, half-cooked food, and the heavy beer that has made England what she is, yet she is a great nation in her way, the power of the world, with very grand, noble impulses.
“Is not their climate foggy, raw and dull,On whom, as in despite, the sun looks pale,Killing their fruit with frowns?”
“Is not their climate foggy, raw and dull,On whom, as in despite, the sun looks pale,Killing their fruit with frowns?”
“Is not their climate foggy, raw and dull,On whom, as in despite, the sun looks pale,Killing their fruit with frowns?”
“Is not their climate foggy, raw and dull,
On whom, as in despite, the sun looks pale,
Killing their fruit with frowns?”
I am a great believer in climate and food in the making of men. A man is what he eats, and, according to the climate he lives in, robust or feeble. Go from the Arctic or colder regions, toward the equator, and every few hundred miles there can be seen a physical degeneracy of mankind, and the mental qualities must also be affected. Italy is an approach to India, and Egypt more so. The ready memorizing people of tropical Bengal are as exuberant as the vegetation around them, and like the vegetation, they are watery, without strength or firmness. How different from the sturdy hardwood forests of the north and its hardy, brave people! Take a Hindu, a Bengali, with his slenderworm-like fingers, and transplant him to Norway. What would he do with an axe trying to fell a sturdy pine? It would be a sight worth going to see. What would those rice-eaters do in stemming the stormy blasts of a northern winter? I once saw a fight in the streets of London, of men with brawny arms, and fists that came with sledgehammer force upon each other! Some day, when I can get leisure, I am going to write an article on fists, and the people who can make them. There is so much of human character in a fist.
I never saw a native of India make up a fist for a fight. When they do not attack each other with their tongues, at which they are experts, the bamboo lathi, native to the climate, is their natural weapon, and then it is not a face to face, but a behind the back attack, a sure sign of weakness and cowardice. I am an admirer of the Anglo-Saxon in the English in this, that they have such a steady, stolid pugnacity, never knowing when they are whipped, and fight for what they think is right till there are none left to fight; always keep their backs behind them and their faces toward their foes, and it never need be asked of them when they return from battle, “Have they their wounds in front?”
Take another country. Where would the grim theology, philosophy and metaphysics of the German people be without their cold, sluggish climate, the black rye bread, the beer, the rank cheese, the sauerkraut, the sausages, and everlasting pipe? It is a wonder they can think at all, so clogged and befuddled their minds must be, and the results of their thinking is just what might be expected, heavy and cloggy. We went to Germany, and it was among her people that I got this impression.
We spent most of our time, nearly a year, in France, that paradise of the world, neither too hot nor too cold, and would ever have remained there if possible; the land of bright skies, of fruit and flowers, with its happy, contented, courteous people. Better a dinner of herbs in France, with its sunshine, than roast beef in England and fog therewith. No wonder that the French think so little about heaven when they have such a beautiful country to live in on earth.
What shall I say of the lively, entertaining, vivacious, polite people? They were another kind of human animal, altogether different from any that I had met. They are native to their own climate, light and airy. We were constantly reminded that we were in a land of epicures, among a people of good taste, for whom exquisite cooking was a necessity as well as a pleasure. I could well understand the remark of a Frenchman about England, as a country of a hundred religions and not one good soup.
It may be heathenish in me, but I have always had a liking for good food, probably because there was such a fearful lack of it to me as a child. In the first part of our lives we are mostly growing animals, and think more of provender than we do of piety, or many other good things. I might have swallowed the Athanasian creed, and all like it at school, if only our grub had been a little more palatable. I recall Mr. Jasper’s remark that the boys in his father’s family were more obedient, and so more religious, because of the good Sunday dinners the mother gave them. I also remember that my villagers were very indifferent about the improvements I suggested, or to anything I told them, until they got enough to eat, and then I could have led them with a hair. But I am wandering again.
I do not wonder that the sea-girt isle envies France the richness of her possessions and the prosperity and happiness of her people, yet I cannot understand why she should antagonize her and carp at everything she does, except it is in the nature of an Englishman to do so. He tries to speak French but fails egregiously. The attempt of a grumpy Englishman who speaks his own language as if he was afflicted with chronic catarrh trying to use that sprightly spirited tongue, is as grotesque as it would be to see an elephant trying a sword dance. Some one has said that if he spoke to God it would be in Spanish, to his mistress in Italian, to angels in French, to butchers in English and to hogs in German. I am not scholar enough to discuss this statement, yet I think he is correct in regard to French and English.
Not only in their cookery, but in their homes, the French have fine taste. They are great admirers of the beautifulin art, and cultivate it in nature, even among the poor. As to their dress, especially of the women, even the servant girls, however cheap the material, had their clothing fitted with such grace that they might have stood as fashion models for the rest of the world. But as I am only an outside barbarian I may be mistaken. I can only tell of the way it appeared to me.
I was struck with the extreme courtesy and kindness of the French. Once in London I wished to ask the direction to some place and stepped into a counting-house and with all the politeness I possessed, made my request. The pompous little god of the establishment, with no more expression in his face than in that of a marble statue, looked at me as it seemed for some minutes and then blurted out, “Do you take this for an intelligence office?” I was so completely whipped that I had not a word to reply and got out of the door as quickly as possible. In France, whether from the blue blouses or the exquisites, I never received anything but the most delightful courtesy. They not only directed me, but more frequently offered to go and show me the way. Manners make the man, and as the men, so will the nation be.
While in Europe we went everywhere with our guides and guide books until we were weary and surfeited with sight-seeing. I am no artist, still I do not like to be considered quite a muff in regard to art works. Some artists are so conceited as to think that manufacturers of art alone are capable judges of it. A man can have an excellent idea of a well-fitting suit though he never touched a pair of scissors or a needle, why not of painting, though he never smelled paint or handled a brush?
I know this, however, that we saw enough of the old masters to last us for this world and the next, flaming daubs of color, plump madonnas, fat babies and gorgeous fleshy angels with wings. I never could understand why angels should be provided with wings, unless their excursions are confined to our atmosphere, and they never get beyond our earthly region. Christians attack materialists for their lack of the spiritual, but if there is anything more materialistic than is found in the Christian religious descriptionsof heaven and heavenly beings, then I have been too much of a heathen to discover it. There is, however, this difference in the two kinds. The one is solid and real, based on facts, the other is fluorescent, fantastic, built of dreams.
Another thing we had enough of and that was church museums, and my wife begged of me not to mention church this, or church that, to her again. We were constantly asked, “Have you been to such a church, seen such a painting or piece of sculpture? Did you hear the music in such a church?” Not a word about the worship. Some ancient writer has said that the churches were first adorned so as to attract the heathen. That may be the case still, as probably many Christian heathen now go to them, but as I am only a Barbarian heathen I certainly was not attracted or pleased. Why the house of God, the place of prayer and spiritual worship, should be turned into a curiosity shop, art gallery, a museum for relics, or as a charnel house be profaned with dead men’s bones, is something I am too ignorant to explain. There seems to be a blasphemous incongruity in all this to my untrained mind. Religious worship seemed to be but a showy performance and the churches, places of amusement, all to please the senses. Frequently as we entered a church a priest would be having some service before an altar, paid to mumble by the hour, with a few old women or crippled men in front or rather at his back. These seemed to be the only people in church except on gala days. Our guide, also a priest, would take us from chapel to alcove and point out all the curious things, and passing within a few feet of the performer chatted as gaily as if he was chief showman expecting a pour boire, as he was. It all went on as a matter of business and reminded me of a Hindu temple where the priest is muttering prayers before an idol, while the people are chattering, buying and selling around him. The only difference, the one was in Europe and the other in India; the one more grand and beautiful than the other. The spirit and show of idolatry was the same. Is it any wonder that men become irreligious, infidels, when they see all this insincerity, hypocrisy, the heartless form and ceremoniesin pretense of worshiping the Almighty? It is impossible for thinking men to be such fools as to suppose that God is pleased with all this parade and show.
A Frenchman summed up the matter thus: “The people, that is the masses, need some serious amusement and there is nothing so innocent and harmless as religion, so let them enjoy it.” An Italian said: “If you want to find real religious life in the Catholic church, Rome is the last place in which to seek for it. Religious faith has died out of the Italian mind.” The French as a people have thrown away their religious performance, not faith, as they probably never had any faith in it, and could not have done otherwise as thinking beings with the spurious article offered them, but the Italians are head over ears in their religious galas and carnivals as a pleasant pastime. There is not a more idolatrous, religiously frivolous nation on earth than the Italian.
They prove the truth of the statement that where religious ceremonials predominate there is an absence of morality and the highest spiritual life.
Newman in 1832 wrote: “Rome, the mightiest monster, has as yet escaped on easier terms than Babylon. Surely, it has not yet drunk out the Lord’s cup of fury nor expiated the curse. And then again this fearful Apocalypse occurs to my mind. Amid the obscurities of that Holy Book one doctrine is clear enough, the ungodliness of Rome, and further its destined destruction. That destruction has not yet overtaken it; therefore it is in store. I am approaching a doomed city.” Did he tell the truth, or did he afterward fall into error when he became a cardinal of that same Rome?
The Roman church is but a huge excrescence, an abnormal fungus, supported perhaps by an unseen slender stem of truth. Its greatness compels our wonder and astonishment. Strip this church of its grand architecture, its fine art, its beautiful music, its gorgeous ceremonies, and there would be little left of it, and that little, its creed and outrageous assumption, would command scant respect from a rational intelligence.
I could not help asking myself frequently: What wouldJesus say if he were to visit these churches? If he drove the changers of money and the sellers of doves from the ancient temple, what would he not do in these modern places of luxury, show and tips?
He never built a church or gave a hint about one. He had nothing to do with reliquaries, feretories, calices, crosiers, crosses, pyxes, monstrances, chasubles, capes, embroidered stoles, altar antependiums or silk banners. As a philanthropist, a lover of men, he went about doing good among the poor and needy. What would he say to the vast expenditure of money on immense structures, receptacles for statues, idols, paintings, ornaments, relics, when the poor all around them are starving, not only for the bread of life but for crusts for the body? What about the high salaried church officials, from the Pope and archbishops down, when Jesus had not where to lay his head? Are all these followers of Jesus? They may be, but a long way behind.
The best of the sermons Jesus ever preached was from a fisherman’s boat at the water’s edge to a multitude seated on the ground of the shore. He had no vestry into which to retire, no clerical garments, no ornamented pulpit, no pompous processions, no trained choir, no incense or perfumery, but an abundance of good things for the souls of men. He evidently was not a caterer to the sight or senses of the people, but aimed to reach their hearts with the truth.
Let any one read the advertisements of what is to occur in some of the big churches. No mention is made of the religious part, but of the selections from some famous operas, the performance of a brilliant mass, the presence of some noted opera singers, who, from the play houses on week days, take their parts in the churches on Sundays—are the main objects of attraction. The worship of God seems to be a secondary affair, as entirely unworthy of notice. The church busies itself with architecture, painted windows, vestments, surpliced choirs, splendid and impressive services, which appeal to the senses of the flesh, while it becomes dulled to the great pressing sins of the individual and the great wrongs of society.
Let there be museums, art galleries, opera houses and music halls, but there should be no mixing up of the services of God with the pleasures of the world, so that when a heathen like myself happens to go to church, he need not become confused and have to ask the guide if he has not come to the wrong place.
The inconsistency is not all, but the outrageous, sinful incongruity to an honest man, of all these forms and shows, is that the people taking part in them appear as if they were playing a sharp trick on the Almighty in trying to make Him believe they are worshiping Him, when all they are doing is to please themselves. This reminds me of the Romish priests in southern India substituting an image of the virgin for that of Krishna. When remonstrated with, the priests replied that the people did not know the difference, and the virgin would get all the worship. I cannot help thinking that there is no necessity for a man to be a trickster or a hypocrite, even if he be a Christian.