CHAPTER XXII.
Rise and Progress of Bob the God-Stealer.—Omnipotence in Danger.—How the Valiant Blatherskite came to the Help of the Helpless Almighty.
Illustration: ROBERTUS ROBUSTUS - ILLUSTRATED LETTER ‘I’.
IN the latter days of the sad existence of the Society for the Protection of the Almighty, there arose most strangely from nowhere, a huge, heavy-footed dog, that ran about scattering dismay and confusion amongst the salaried barkers, by encouraging the dogs to speak disrespectfully of the various societies in general, and of the Society for the Protection of the Almighty in particular.
A very independent and fearless dog was he. He was endowed with a voice of thunder and an eye of lightning, and he had a set of great sharp teeth that seemed to have been madeespecially and particularly to tear and worry the salaried barkers, and the pious dog thumpers and clubbers.
Wherever they gathered together, there he appeared in the midst of them to spoil their counsels, to frustrate their plans, and drive them crazy. Never did they meet save to devise some new way to harass the forlorn and hungry dogs, in the name of God and to the enrichment of the fleas, and never did they meet but they had to meet the lightning of his eye, the thunder of his voice, and the cutting snap of his gleaming teeth; which, after braving and enduring a few times, they learned to respect by tucking their tails snugly away between their legs and scattering with howls of pain and rage, to the accompaniment of the laughter of the poor dogs which gratefully recognized in him a friend.
All the pious dog thumpers, the virtue compellers, the morality cobblers hated him because he boldly told them that the Tree of Virtue could only grow up out of the ground of Good Victuals and healthy bodies, which they said was a wicked and damnable heresy and subversive of the good old Gospel of the Club; and all the salaried barkers hated him because he laughed at their Almighty Fiction, and called it the ugly creation of their own diseased brains.
So, not being able to face him in a stand-up fight, they went about seeking his destruction in sly and roundabout ways.
First, they tried their most powerful weapon—a nickname. His name was Robertus Robustus, for he was of great strength. Therefore they went about amongst the poor dogs calling him “Bob,” for it was a sacred religious principle with all salaried barkers to call everyone that was obnoxious to them, by a contemptuous nickname. They had discovered through long experience that heresies amongst dogs were more easily prevented than cured; that it was more efficacious to bring any one into contempt with them, than to let them see him, hear him and judge of him for themselves.
So they called him “Bob,” and sneered over his name whenever they spoke of him; and they tried to get the dogs to have a horror of him by describing him as a beast with horns, hoofs and a long spiked tail; and bore other false witness against him; “for,” said they, “the case is urgent; the very existence of our God is imperilled, and a little false witness to save him He will surely pardon, for all is fair in love and theological war.”
But what caused these salaried barkers to hate him so intensely was the fact that “Bob” was a very good and noble dog, and showed more real kindness of heart and love for the down-trodden and afflicted dogs than they. They reasoned amongst themselves, and boldly told the dogs that all God-despisers, all belittlers of the Almighty Fiction, always had been bad, must necessarily be bad, and therefore “Bob” the God despiser and ridiculer, must necessarily be bad too; that all contempt of the ever blessed Almighty Vengeance, and his ever glorious Hell and the benign eternal tortures, did andmustproceed from a corrupt and wicked heart; that none but believers in the Unutterable Horror, were orcouldbe good; therefore, “Bob’s” heart must be rotten and his life wicked. And when a dog objected that thefactthat “Bob’s” life being good did not agree with and justify their theory, they said that was all the worse for the fact.
So they proclaimed abroad that “Bob’s” goodness was an irregular, unsanctified and wicked goodness, more wicked than immorality; a cloak “put on” to hide the devilishness of his purpose, which was to steal their God and leave the dogs Godless; which the salaried barkers all and unanimously declared was a great step to the next greatest misfortune—to leave the dogs flealess.
But “Bob” Robertus Robustus cared not. He went on showing himself and laughing at the Almighty Monstrosity, and pleading with the remaining prostrate dogs to lift up their heads, and generally making the many societies look silly.
So the salaried barkers, perceiving that this big dog had grown very dangerous, and that dogs everywhere were growingirreverent, and that instead of receiving with meekness and with the wide open mouth of Simple Faith, the large chunks of ancient and mouldy dogmas of Orthodox Religion, with which the barkers daily fed them, were falling into the wicked habit of shutting the mouth of Simple Faith, and opening the eye of Reason, and smelling, with an inquiring smeller, of the ancient and mouldy dogmas, and poking the nose of irreverence into the “why” and “wherefore” of all the sacred humbugs, resolved to call a conference to devise ways and means to stay the ravages this dangerous dog was working.
All the little and lesser salaried barkers came to the conference with fear and trembling, for their little souls were weighed down with the conviction that if something were not done soon to this irreverent dog, it was all up with them; but when they saw that the Reverend Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite was there, they took heart of hope, for they all knew him to be a most valiant defender of Simple Faith and enemy of Reason.
One of them therefore arose and said: “Brethren and fellow barkers; we to whom has been committed the care of the ever holy dogmas, upon which, up to the present, we have been enabled to preserve the blessed hoary mould and the ancient musty smell, are gathered here to-day by a common sense of a common peril. Ye know that there hath arisen amongst the dogs a fierce and wicked dog of large dimensions and great strength, who is teaching them to laugh at sacred things and bringusinto contempt. Now, it follows that if we are brought into contempt, not only will our living be gone (which is the thing of greatest moment), but the divinely ordained relations between the dogs and our patrons and masters, the fleas, will be disrupted, and go to the dogs; and we, the divinely appointed guardians of those sacred relations, shall draw upon our heads the wrath of the Monstrous Fleas, who will regard us as unfaithful stewards of their interests.
“In this perilous hour, then, we need some one who will point a way out of our trouble. I am happy to say I see with us ourvaliant friend, the Reverend Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite.” (Immense and prolonged barking by the whole assembly.) “I need not say he is our champion. Ye all intuitively perceive that there is none so fit as he to grapple with this newly arisen terror of a dog.
“I propose, therefore, that he be appointed our standard bearer, our sword wielder, our lightning discharger, our thunderer against our enemy.” (Immense and prolonged acclaim.) “Is he not most fit, I say, to be our champion? Is he not most valorous of mouth? Pours there not therefrom the most undammed torrent of eloquence that ever tumbled from the lips of mortal barker? Is he not the tried and proven champion Reason destroyer? Yea, verily, brethren. How many times has my soul been exalted with pride, as I have seen him in battle with Reason, belt him over the head, give it him in the neck, upper and under cut him, roast him in the ribs, cross buttock him, overthrow him, kick him, kill him.” (Great barking.) “Yea, verily, brethren, there never was, in all this world, a barker so contrary to Reason, so deadly a foe to it as he. He is worthy to be our leader.” (Loud and prolonged acclaim, and cries of, “He is; he is; he is;” and calls of “Blatherskite,Blatherskite,Blatherskite.”)
Whereupon the great Reverend Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite arose and opened his mouth and spake:
“Brethren of the Most Holy Order of Divine Barkers: I feel proud of the high honor ye have conferred upon me in calling me to be your champion against this Goliath, who so impudently cometh forth to defy the armies of the living Almighty. Who is this dog that imagineth, with his great spear of Reason, to smite and slay our ancient Simple Faith? With my little sling and stone will I smite him, and he shall be no more. My brother, who proposed me to be your leader, was right in his generous eulogy of me; I do despise and hate Reason with all my soul. I hate it as a deadly snake and trample it under foot every time I get the chance—which is every time I speak. Thiswielder of the spear of Reason, this Bob, this God-stealer, is an infidel and a blasphemer, and will go straight down to Hell, like that friend of his, that dirty dog, that Tom who wrote the ‘Age of Reason,’ and was tormented of our God for it. Oh, my brethren, he suffered untold agonies in his conscience, and served him right, too. At least we barkers have always said he did, because he ought to have suffered if he didn’t. Some there are who say we lie when we say he suffered, but I don’t believe thatourGod would allow any one to preach Reason without making it all-fired hot for him; at least I know ifIhad been God,Iwould have made his soul shriek with pain;Iwould have tormented him, for there is nothing more fatal toourreligion andourinterests than Reason. Then down with Reason, I say, for it is the whole Devil, and every truly sanctified barker’s eternal enemy.
Illustration: WITH MY LITTLE SLING AND STONE WILL I SMITE HIM.
“As for this other Reasoner, this Bob, surely we can kill him, just as we killed his predecessor, Tom. Never call him by his respectable name of Robert; none but barkers and true believers are entitled to be called by their respectable names. That’s how we overthrew Thomas—by contemptuously calling him Tom. We got the world to deride him; that was far more easy than to refute his book. Call him ‘Bob,’ then; and brethren, in a cause so momentous and holy as this, ye may even lie about him; for the world will always believe anything evil about a dog with a bad name; but if by any miracle of grace he should ever be converted,thenye shall call him Robert, and esteem him respectable.
Illustration: BOB, THE GOD-STEALER.
“This Bob is an awful public danger; if he be allowed to run around loose he will steal our God, he will overthrow the Almighty; he will deprive the dogs of the inestimable blessing of having something to worship. Already hath he somewhat loosened his eternal foundations, and shaken his immovable fixtures, and on several occasions, had it not been for us rushing to his rescue, our Almighty must have been overthrown.
“Now, brethren, this constant strain upon our minds, this perpetual anxiety to ward off this beast’s constant attacks upon our omnipotent God, is wearing us to skin and bone. Something ought to be done to restrain him. Have we not laws to imprison such as he? Yea, verily, have we. Have we not laws against blasphemy? Yea, we have. Then why is this dog allowed to go about putting our God in peril? Why is he allowed to go about sapping and mining under his feet with intent to make him fall? He has been caught many times boring holes in his anatomy and letting in the daylight; he has been convicted many times of exposing the mystery of his flaming eyes and his smoking mouth and nostrils, yet nothing has been done to him. Where are the police? Where are the good old Blue Thunderbolts? Alas! they rust and rot in the swampy places, where our cowardly police dogs dropped them when Unbelief reared its ugly head in our midst.
“Oh brethren, what we need is a great revival of the good old-fashioned Blue Laws and the Blue Thunderbolts. We need the re-erection of the good old safeguards wherewith our fathers surrounded our Almighty God, and preserved him, which the degenerate dogs of this day have allowed to fall into innocuous desuetude. Oh! we need the revival of the good old methods, by which Reason and Unbelief were held down by the strong hand of the Law, and the eternal, almighty and all-convincing truths of our only genuine and original Gospel were given a show.
“No wonder that True Religion and Simple Faith prospered and prevailed in those days; for the authorities were all holy and did their duty—the police were effective. And no wonder that Reason and Unbelief stalk haughtily abroad to-day and our omnipotent Almighty is despised, rejected and shoved to the rear; for our laws are obsolete, and our authorities careless and indifferent about helping him.
“Let us then, pray for a great outpouring of holy zeal upon the police, that they may be inspired to dig up the good old Thunderbolts and polish them for use again. Is not this Bob dog a public nuisance? Is he not endeavoring to make all dogs godless, and by so doing endeavoring to overthrow the country, even as his friend the Tom dog tried to do in his day, and perhaps would have done had not God caused him to die an infidel’s death?
“His suppression, then, ought to be the public concern, and I call on our police, our rulers, and all fleas big and little that have the love of God and Country in their hearts to put him down, imprison him, and forever shut his mouth.”
At the conclusion of this magnificent burst of oratory all the assembled barkers burst into loud and prolonged approbation, and some one moved, and another seconded, and another supported, and the assembly unanimously carried a Resolution; that
“Whereas, Our good old Almighty and fearful God and his blessed eternal Hell are menaced by a certain blasphemous dog, of the name of Bob, with utter destruction and overthrow, and“Whereas, The said destruction and overthrow of the said Almighty would lead straight and swift to utter godlessness amongst dogs, and to the setting up of Thought and Reason inhis place, and“Whereas, In the setting up of said Thought and Reason, all dogs everywhere would be led to shake off all allegiance they owe to the divinely appointed fleas, and with them us and all our vested worldly interests,“Resolved, That we call upon Pup McPoodle, his counsellors, the police, and all who have the safety of the country and the welfare of dogs at heart to arise at once in their might and rescue our terribly beleaguered and imperilled God, by smiting this Bob and all his following with a great smiting greatly, and if necessary killing them all, and hand over their souls to us for damnation, which we undertake to do with all solemnity, neatness and despatch.”
And this resolution was signed by all the Society for the Protection of the Almighty, and all the other many Anti-Evil Societies, and all the eminent and Monstrous Fleas, and was carried by Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite and other choice-souled barkers to the authorities. And the authorities said it was a very fine resolution, and did great credit to the holy zeal and patriotism of all concerned; and nothing would give them greater pleasure than to make the poor dogs more miserable if it were possible; but just now there seemed to be no feasible way of doing it, and they were afraid that their Almighty would have to wag along as best he could, for the present. Anyhow, they would see about it—they would see about it.