There is a faith—Judaism—which originated so far back that we have only a legendary account of it. It was the cult of a warrior nation whose ideal was bravery and whose glory was war, who considered the rest of the world as Philistines and treated them ruthlessly, who kept themselves as a nation apart.
Nineteen hundred years ago there arose among them a prophet, said to be of the ancient kingly house. He preached a doctrine which prescribed as the rule of life mildness and self-denial, renunciation of this world; who denounced war and conquest, and held out as a goal for attainment heaven, which is the peace of God.
This Prophet, The Christ, was executed, but He left behind Him disciples who spread His religion widely. Amongst His own people it never attained great strength, and in time it died away and disappeared. There are no Christians amongthe Jews. All Semitic nations have rejected this faith. But it spread far to the west, and is now in one form or another the accepted faith of the half world to the west of Palestine. It never spread east.
There is a faith—Brahminism—which originated so far back that we have but legendary accounts of it. It was the cult of a warrior nation whose ideal was courage and whose glory was war, who considered the rest of the world as outcasts and treated them ruthlessly, who kept themselves as a nation apart.
Two thousand five hundred years ago there arose among them a prophet, the son of the Royal House. He preached a doctrine which prescribed as a rule of life meekness and self-denial, renunciation of the world. He denounced war and conquest, and held out as a goal for attainment the Great Peace.
This prophet, the Buddha, was rejected by all the higher castes and he died, having made but little way. But his disciples spread his religion widely. Amongst his own people it never attained great strength, and in time it died away and disappeared. There are no Buddhists in Oude, and, with perhaps a slight exception, there are no Buddhists at all in India. But it has spreadfar to the east, and is now in one form or another the accepted faith of nearly all people east of the Bay of Bengal, and also of Ceylon. It never spread west.
I do not say that Christianity and Buddhism are the same, for although in some ways, especially in conduct, their teaching is almost identical, and in others—such as Heaven and Nirvana—though differently expressed, the idea is almost the same, yet in certain theories they differ very greatly. Yet, however they may differ, the above parallel cannot but strike one as extraordinary. Indeed, the parallel might have been very largely augmented, but it suffices for the purpose of this chapter; and that is to enquire why each teacher's doctrine was rejected by his own people and accepted by others.
It is no answer to say that no one is a prophet in his own country. All the Jewish prophets, from Moses to Isaiah,wereprophets in their own country. Christ alone was not. Mahommed was a prophet to the Arabs, Zoroaster to the Persians, Confucius and Laotze to the Chinese. All teachers of Hinduism have been native born Hindus. In Buddhist countries it is the same. Luther was a prophet to the Germans, Loyola to the Spaniards. The rule is otherwise. A prophet isnever a prophet to anybuthis own people, except the two greatest Prophets in the world, Christ and Buddha. They alone were rejected by their own and accepted elsewhere. They almost divide the world between them. Hinduism, from which Buddhism arose, still exists untouched by either; Judaism, from which Christianity arose, and its near kin Mahommedanism, exist untouched by either; but most of the rest of the world is either Christian or Buddhist. These are very astonishing facts, and must have some very strong reasons to cause them. The question is, What are the reasons, and are they the same in each case? Was it a similar cause that occasioned such similar effects? What quality was it in the Jews and Hindus that led them to reject their prophets, and what are the qualities in the converted nations that led them to accept these prophets?
It might seem at first as if the clue was contained in the first sentence of each paragraph, that the reason was because both Jews and Hindus, especially the higher caste Hindus, were warrior nations. The rule of life preached by each teacher was absolutely against all that they had revered so far, hence that each rejected it. The fact, of course, is true. Each nation had up to the coming of the Teacher learned a rule of life hopelessly in contrast to the new teaching. Theideals of Christ and Buddha were absolutely opposed to those a fierce, warlike, exclusive people could maintain. They could not accept them without throwing to the winds all their past. This is true, but is it an explanation? It is certainly not a full one. The Jews were warriors, bitter, terrible, ruthless fighters, and they rejected Christ. But they are no longer a nation of warriors, and they still reject Him.
The world has never seen keener soldiers than those of western Europe, but these nations accept Him.
The Hindu warrior caste are warriors to the bitter end. They rejected Buddha, but so did many peoples of India; the Bengalees, for instance, who are not fighters.
Where can you find stronger warrior spirit than has always existed in Japan? Yet Buddhism is the prevailing religion there. It is evident, I think, that this explanation will not suffice. It may in addition be asserted that the men of Latin nations are usually frankly atheistic, and the Teutonic nations, though theoretically Christian, yet practically when they want to fight they forget Christ and fall back to the Jehovah of the Jews. The Puritans and the Boers are cases in point. They get their fighting faith out of the Old Testament, not the New. But still they accept Christ, andthough they may find it impossible, like all nations, to follow His teaching, they do not reject it, or deny it. With Buddhism in the further East the parallel does not last, because Buddhism in ethical teaching stands alone. The Buddhist who wants to fight cannot fall back on the original faith. He has simply to go without a faith at all. He has not the advantage of a double set of conduct, one of which can always be trusted to fit anything he wants to do He has to go without a faith when he fights. Still he does so.
I confess that for a long time I seemed to find no answer, and at length it came not through studying out this question, but in observing other phenomena of religion altogether.
To one coming to Europe after years in the East and visiting the churches nothing is more striking than the enormous preponderance of women there. It is immaterial whether the church be in England or in France, whether it be Anglican or Roman Catholic or Dissenter. The result is always the same. Women outnumber the men as two to one, as three to one, sometimes as ten to one. Even of the men that are there, how many go there from other motives than personal desire to hear the service? Men go because their wives take them, boys go with their mothers or sisters, oldmen with their daughters. Professional men are there because it would injure them among their women clients to be absent. Women go because they desire to do so; nine out of ten even of these few men who do go are taken by their women folk. They admit it readily. And more, when they are away from these women they do not enter the churches. It is borne in upon an observer, especially an observer who has been long enough away from Europe to become depolarised, to what an enormous extent the observance of religious duty in Europe among Christian nations is due to women. It is they only who care for, who are in full sympathy with the teaching of Christ; for men when they are religious, and in certain cases they are so, take their religion of conduct much more from the Old Testament than the New.
In Burma it is not otherwise. The deeper the tenets of Buddhism are observed, the more the women are concerned in it. Who lights the candles at the pagoda, who contribute the daily food to the monks, who attend the Sunday meetings in the rest houses? Nearly all of them are women. Even in Burma, where the devotional instinct is so strong and so deeply held, the immense influence of women is manifest. In Christian and Buddhist countries the women are free to attend the services; they are free, to agreater or lesser extent, in all matters, and in religion they are conspicuous—they rule it, they form it to suit themselves.
But in the races that rejected Christianity, that rejected Buddhism, it is otherwise. The Hindu women keep themselves in zenanas. They are not allowed in the temples, or only in special parts. They can take no part in the public services. They cannot combine to influence religious matters. At the time the Buddha lived women were very much freer than they are now, and this accounts for its initial partial success at home. But as waves of conquest, the incessant rigorous struggle for existence deepened and circumstances contracted that liberty, so as it contracted did Buddhism die. Till at length the women remained immured, and Buddhism fled to countries where women had still some freedom.
It is the same with Christianity. The Jewish women, if not quite so secluded as Hindu women, were yet never openly allowed to join in the synagogues. They, too, as the Mahommedan even, had their "grille" apart. The Jewish men and the Mahommedan men kept their religion for themselves, a virile religion, where women had little place. It may be the fact—I think in another chapter I have shewn that it is a fact—that women seek after religion far more than menBut they must have a religion to suit them. The tenets of Christ and of Buddha do appeal to them, do come nearer to them than they do to the generality of men. And so where women have been free to make their influence felt, to impress their views upon the faith of a country, the mild beliefs of non-resistance, of peace, of meekness and submission have obtained. Whereas in the countries and nations where for one cause or another women are not free to make their combined influence felt, where they remain under the greater dominance of man in all matters, the faiths that retain the stronger and more virile codes of conduct have remained.
I am not sure that there have not been other influences also at work. I can, I think, see another strong influence that has worked to the same end. There may be many reasons. But that would not alter the fact that the influence of women has been a main force, that they have greatly been concerned in the change of faith.
What is the most general, the most conspicuous form in which religion expresses itself? Is it not in prayer? Where is the religion that is without prayer? There is none. And perhaps, too, it is the very first expression of religion, that when the savage fell and prayed the lightning to spare him, he was inaugurating the greatest religious form the world has known.
What a wonderful thing it is, wonderful in every form, beautiful wherever you see it—from the glorious masses sung in the cathedrals to the Mussulman spreading his mat upon the sand and bowing towards Mecca. There is nothing so beautiful, nothing that so touches the heart of man as prayer.
I have said that it is common to all religions, and so it is. Religions live not in creeds, but in the believers. Pure Buddhism knows notprayer, but does not the Buddhist know it? Go to any pagoda and see the women there praying to Someone—Someone, they know not whom—and ask if Buddhists know not prayer? I have written so fully of it in my other book that I will not repeat it here.
Prayer is common to all believers; it is the greatest, as perhaps it is the only expression common to all religions. And whence comes this custom of prayer? The Jew and the Mussulman and the Christian will answer and say, "It comes from our belief in God, it is an outcome of that belief. Our God has bade us pray to Him."
And the Hindu, how will he answer? He will say, "Our gods have power over us, they deal with us as they will. They listen to us if we pray. And therefore it is right for us to beseech them in our trouble. It comes from our belief in our gods." And the savage will answer, "I fear the Devil, so I pray to him." But what will the Buddhist answer?
For Buddhism knows no God. The world is ruled by Law, unchangeable, everlasting Law. No one can change that Law. If you suffer it is the meet and proper consequence of your sins. The suffering is purifying you and teaching you how to live. It would not be well for you tobe relieved of it now if you could be. Therefore suffer and be silent.
A very beautiful belief. And yet the people pray. Why? When a Buddhist prays it is not in consequence of his belief, but in spite of it. It cannot be traced as the result of any theory of causation.
Therefore one doubts the Theist's explanation and one reflects. Was, indeed, prayer born of their beliefs? And then the doubt increases. Are these creeds older than prayer, or maybe is it not that prayer is older than the creeds? Did these creeds exist in men's minds first or did the necessity for prayer exist first? Which is nearer to man?
Let us consider what prayer is. It consists of three things mainly. Petition to be saved, to be helped from imminent danger; praise at being so saved; and last, probably last, but surely greatest of all, confession.
When men pray they are always doing one or other of these things. When the savage was caught in the thunderstorm or shaken in the earthquake and fell on his knees in fear, babbling strange things, do you think he had reasoned out a God behind the force first? Do you think his inarticulate cry for help was not involuntary? That if he had not first reasoned out the Godhe would not so cry? Have you ever seen people in deadly fear, how they will babble for help, crying unto the unknown? If there was ever anything that came forth absolutely spontaneously from the heart of man, which needed no belief of any kind anterior to its birth, it was prayer, the prayer that comes from fear, the prayer for help. It is the unconscious, unreasoned cry of the heart. If there is Someone to whom to direct the cry, well and good; but if not, the cry comes just the same.
When troubles fall upon the man, what is his first impulse? To tell someone. If the confidant can help, so much the better; but if not, still to tell. To ease the pent up heart by telling, that is what is wanted. And with joy, too. Have you not seen how, when good news comes to a man, he loves to rush forth and tell it? To whom? It does not matter. Tell it, tell it. Cry it aloud, if but the trees and rocks can hear. To keep secret a great thing is very hard. Remember the courtier who discovered that King Midas had asses' ears. He could not keep the terrible deadly truth to himself. He dared not tell it to man. And so, going softly to the river, he confessed the dreadful knowledge to the reeds: "Midas hath asses' ears." Can you trace here any cause and effect? And there is confession, to tell someoneof our sins, to confess. Is that dependent upon any religious theory? Much has been written about confession, this necessity of the laden spirit, but never has anything been written like that study by Dostoieffsky called "Crime and Punishment." The "Crime" was murder, not an ordinary murder committed by a ruffian in passion or from sordid motives, but a murder by a student intended to result in good. The murderer is suspected—nay, is known by a police officer—and the motive of the first half of the story is not to gain evidence, not to unravel the story, but it lies in the efforts of the detective to induce Raskolnikoff to make a voluntary confession. And why? There was evidence enough, the offender could have been arrested and convicted at any time. But that would not do. Punishment alone will not always, will indeed but seldom, benefit the criminal. Punishment is for the protection of society. It is for the future, not the past. For the criminal to redeem himself he must confess. In that lies the only medicine for a diseased soul. It is a marvellous story, and it holds the truth of truths. Confess. There is no emotion of the human heart so strong as this, the eminent necessity to tell someone. No one who has had much to do with crime will doubt this. There is in all naturalmen a burning desire, an absolute necessity, to tell of what has been done. It comes out sometimes in confessions to the police or to the magistrate. All criminal annals are full of such stories. A crime is committed and there is no clue, till the man confesses. I have myself seen a great deal of this. I have received many confessions. But you will object that was amongst Burmese; and I reply, Wherein is there any difference? Criminals of all countries frequently confess. But as civilisation progresses the confession is not often to a magistrate. The fear, the terrible fear of punishment outweighs the natural impulse. But still the confession is made. If you read the cases in the papers you will see how often it is made. To a wife, to a companion, sometimes to a complete stranger. The men who can hold their tongues, who can stifle nature, are very few. With all but hardened criminals the tendency is always to confession, and those whose work has laid among them know that the denial, the defence, except with hardened criminals, is seldom theirs. If there were no relations to urge them, no lawyers to assist them, five out of six first offenders would confess openly.
Is it otherwise with our children? What is it we teach them above all else? Never to do wrong? No! For we know that isimpossible. Children, like men, will err. But, "when you have done wrong confess, for only so can you lift the weight from your heart." Confess, confess. Everywhere it is the same. If you have done wrong, only by confession can you remove the stain. But it must be voluntary. It must not be forced. Such a confession is of no value. Even our courts reject it.
It is an instinct of the heart that comes who can tell whence, that means who can tell what? And from this have grown many things. It has become part of all the greater religions, and the forms it has taken are significant not so much of the faiths, but of the people.
Among the Jews and the Mahommedans we hear little of it. They were a hard people when their faiths were formed, a strong people, and little advanced in the gentler feelings. They were warriors who lived greatly by the sword, and it was necessary for them to stifle all that might weaken or even polish them. For one man to humble himself to another is very hard, for a proud man to confess to another is almost impossible. And so into these Theistic faiths the confession was to God. If a man sinned it was to God alone he could confess. But with Christianity it has been different. There is in Christianity what exists in no other faith in thesame way, an intermediary between God and man.
There are the priests.
This desire of the soul for confession, the absolute necessity with strong emotional people to tell someone their sins and their truths, has been one of the greatest cults of the Church of Rome. Man must confess, let him confess to the priests. Their tongues are tied, they will never reveal what they are told; they are the ministers of God. Therefore let the innate desire for confession be directed towards the priests. It is universal in Catholic countries. Whatever may be its abuses it is the great safety valve, the great help of the people, that as they must confess they should have someone to confess to.
With the Northern Teutonic nations it has been different. They got their Christianity from Rome, a Christianity that was built on the needs of impulsive Celtic natures. It suited not with the harder natures of the north. They could not confess to men, it galled them to be told to confess. Their natures were different. Had they no need of confession? Yes, but they were as the Jews and Mahommedans. They would not humble themselves to men. And so, for this and other similar reasons, they revolted from Rome and made their own church, whereconfession is only to God. But the necessity of confession still remains; our services are full of it. It is strange how very often we find the Christianity of Teutonic people nearer in observed facts to the faiths of Semitic peoples than to the Christianity of the Celts. All these peoples, all these Churches, recognise the need of confession. But, it may be said, all this is a difference of very slight detail. All confession is to God. The Roman priests are only representatives of God. If you believe in God you must believe in confession, because God has always directed it. Confession is in all the Churches because God ordered it. The need comes from God, who gives absolution.
Then how about the Buddhists? They have no God, but yet they confess. The Buddha himself many times pointed out how needful confession was, and how healing to the heart. There is no God to confess to, there is no representative of God. But there is the head of the Monastery. Let the younger monk who sins confess his sins to his superior. There is no absolution. Man works out his future himself, always by himself. There is no absolution, no help to be gained by confession. But the Buddha knew the hearts of man. He knew that confession was good for the soul. He knew thatit needed no absolution from any priest to help the confesser, no belief in any God to pardon because of the confession. Confession, if it be made honestly and truly, brings with it always its own reward. It may be objected, that this is not general, but only applies to those trying to live the holy life. The Buddha taught that all men should do so. He meant it to be general. It is true that it is not, it cannot be general, or the world would cease. Only a few are monks. Is, then, the help of confession denied to the multitude? Perhaps by the stringent Buddhist faith it may not be urgently inculcated, and men and women in outside life cannot confess to monks. Do they then go without? Not so. Go to any pagoda at any time and you will see there kneeling many people, some men, but mostly women. They are there confessing, audibly sometimes, their troubles, their sins, their joys also. To whom? Ah! then I cannot tell you. "Someone will hear," they say, "Someone will hear." Religions are for the necessity of man, and if the narrow creed will not suffice it must be enlarged.
It is a strange subject this of confession, and its ally, prayer. It is strange to follow it to its roots in the human heart, and to see that it is stronger, is older, is more persistent than creeds.Creeds come and go, they change, and man changes with them; he may have any religion or have none, but it makes no difference to this. Hindu and Christian, Mahommedan and Buddhist, Atheist and Jew, the heart of man is ever the same. Read that wonderful story of Balzac's, "La Messe d'Athèe," and you will see.
If you postulate God or gods, and try from that to deduce prayer and confession, you find yourself very soon as the boy found himself long ago. You are at an impasse. If God be indeed as stated, then can prayer and confession never be necessary. You cannot get round it, you can only hide yourself in mists of words like the scientific theologian. If God be as postulated, then can prayer and confession not be necessary, or even beautiful.
But you can see from daily life that they are so. Who can doubt it? There is in life nothing so beautiful, nothing so true, nothing that acts as balm to the heart like prayer and confession, and they exist naturally. They are there from the beginning; they need no religious theory to bring them into life. What, then, is the inference? Not perhaps exactly what it at first sight would seem to be, that God does not exist or has those qualities of prejudice, of favour, ofpartiality which religious books and religious people give to Him. It is, I think, this: That the truth, the original truth, is the necessity of confession and prayer, and that to explain this the theory of the nature of God or gods have arisen. Prayer did not proceed from God, but God from prayer—i.e., the theories of God.
No strongly religious man can reason about his own faith. Christians will say that the idea of the True God is inherent in man also, that if not earlier than prayer, it is co-existent. So be it. But how about false gods—the savage praying to a mountain, the Hindu to an image or a stone, representing who knows what? the Buddhist woman praying by the pagoda? Their prayer is beautiful. It is as beautiful as yours. Never doubt it. Go and see them pray. You will learn that prayer is beautiful, is true in itself. And can such a thing proceed from a false theology? See men pray and hear them confess and you will be sure of this, that prayer and confession, no matter by whom, no matter to whom, are always true, have always their effect upon the heart. Whatever is false, they are not. It is one absolute truth that all men will admit.
I am not sure that in such an enquiry as this history is of much avail. I do not find that those who search into the past to write the history of it ever discover much that is of use to-day. It seems to me that in tracing an idea, or a law, or a custom, historians are satisfied with giving an account of its growth or decay as if it were the life of a tree. They do not enquire into the why of things. They will tell you that an idea came, say, from the East and was accepted generally. They do not say why it was accepted. And to have traced a modern belief back into the far past is to them sufficient reason for its presence, forgetful that whatever persists, whether a law or an idea or a belief, does so because it is of use. Living things require a sanction as well as a history, and therein lies their interest. And what I am writing now is of the sanctions of religions.
Still, there is sometimes an interest, if but a negative one, in the history of an observance or belief. It is useful sometimes to trace an observance back, if only to show that the reason generally given for its retention is not and cannot be the real one. Of such is the history of the observance of Sunday, or the Sabbath, in England and Scotland.
We have discovered from the inscriptions at Accad, upon the Euphrates, that in the time of Sargon, 3,800 years B.C., the days were divided into weeks of seven days, named after the sun and moon and the five planets, as they are now in places. And there were, moreover, "Sabbaths" set apart as days of "rest for the soul," "the completion of work." There were five of these Sabbaths in Chaldea every lunar month, occurring on the 7th, the 14th, the 19th, the 21st, and 28th of the month. That is to say, the new moon, the full moon, and the days half way between were Sabbaths, with the addition of a fifth Sabbath on the 19th day. On these days it was not lawful to cook food, to change one's dress, to offer a sacrifice; the king may not speak in public or ride in a chariot, or perform any kind of military or civil duty; even to take medicine was forbidden. It was a day of rest. And this was3,800 B.C., nearly 2,000 years before Abraham lived, 2,300 years before Moses and the Ten Commandments, almost contemporary, according to the Bible records, with Cain and Abel. The day was already called the Sabbath. It had existed already for no one knows how long, probably thousands of years; it was a day of rest, and it was observed much as was subsequently the Jewish Sabbath. Without doubt the Jews only adopted a custom known to more civilised nations ages before, and they gave to it the sanction of their religion, as they and many other people have done to many matters. There is everywhere a strong tendency, if possible, to give religious sanction to every observance. The stronger emotions attract to themselves the lesser. So have the Jews and Mahommedans adopted sanitary precautions, the Hindus sanitary and marriage laws, and Christianity marriage laws also in their faiths. So did my friend mentioned in the preface include all civilisation in his religion.
The observance of the Sabbath arose not from a religious command transmitted by Moses, but as the result of observation and custom thousands of years before, that a day of rest was needed for man.
When they reached a certain standard ofcivilisation all peoples seem to have had such a day set apart. It was a want that arose out of the keener struggle for existence, a mutual truce to the war of competition. But the day itself varied. The Greeks divided their lunar month into decades, having thus three festival days in a month. The Romans, we are told, divided it into periods of eight days, though I do not know how they managed their arithmetic or got eight into twenty-nine without some awkward remainder. And in the farther East it was usual to celebrate the full moon and the new moon and the days half way between as days of rest. A lunar month consisting of sometimes twenty-nine and sometimes thirty days, the period between rest days was sometimes six days as in a week, and sometimes seven days. Thus among the Burmese, although there are, as usual, seven days named after the sun, moon, and planets, the rest day goes by the day of the month, not by that of the week, just as it did with the Accadians. For in the East a month remains a month; it is the life of a moon. It begins with the new moon and ends with the fourth quarter, and is easily reckoned by any villager. With us in the North the age of the moon has ceased to be of any importance. Our life after dark isindoors, where we have lights and the moon is of no use to us. Our houses are lit artificially, and very few Europeans could tell at a moment's notice how old the moon is.
But in the East it is not so. With them the night is the time for being out of doors, and when they go to their houses it is only to sleep. The nights are cool after the hot day, and on the full moon nights the world is full of light. The night of the full moon, when the scent of flowers is on the still air and all about is full of magic, is one of the great beauties of this world. But of it we know nothing in Europe.
Therefore in colder climates the month by the moon was abandoned, and reckoning the year by the sun took its place. And as civilisation progressed it was inconvenient to be uncertain about which was the day of rest, so it became the custom to make it every seventh day, regardless of the moon. This seems to have obtained first in Egypt and to have spread over the civilised world, the seventh day being the Sabbath. But it still remained a day of rest, unassociated, except by the Jews, with religion.
The early Christians kept no Sabbath. They kept the first day of the week as a day ofrejoicing, to celebrate the rising of Christ. Indeed, the Jewish Sabbath was considered as abrogated, and the first day of the week was kept, much as it is now kept on the Continent, as a day of rest, of rejoicing, of relaxation after work.
So it was observed till the Reformation.
The Reformers, whatever they altered, did not alter this. They gave no command to return from Christian observance of the day to Jewish observance, and all over the Continent, among those of reformed churches as among those of the Catholic church, Sunday is the day of rest, of worship, and of relaxation.
It was so, too, in England and Scotland.
The change back to the Jewish Sabbath seems to have come with the Puritans and to have been introduced by them to Scotland. And this is but one example of how Puritanism was practically a rejection of Christianity and a return to the codes of Judaism, which suited those iron warriors much better than Christian ethics.
In England the feeling has been tempered, but among the Scotch, who are in so many ways like the old Jews, it took root, it flourished, and it is the Jewish Sabbath both in name and observance that we see now there.
Why was there this reversion? For what reason has the Jewish Sabbath appealed more nearly to the Scotch than the Christian Sunday? What feelings were those that caused this?
If you turn to the people who have done this and look into their characters you will note one strong and marked instinct. It is the dislike to art of all kinds, to painting and music, to dancing and acting, their strong distrust of beauty and gaiety. They are a sober people, hard and stubborn and dour, to whom art and amusement appeal, as a rule, not at all; and when they do appeal it is too strongly. They would not have organs in their churches and cards were to them the devil's picture books. They had in them then, they have now, no single fibre that responds to the lighter and brighter things of this world. Their very humour is grim. Have they, then, no idea of pleasure? Do they never enjoy themselves? It would be a mistake of the greatest to suppose that. They, too, as all other men, have their times for relaxation, for enjoyment, for mental rest and refreshment. Only that what gives pleasure to them is different from what gives pleasure to other people. They take their pleasures sadly; the chords of their hearts are tuned to other keys than that ofgaiety and art. These latter they cannot understand, they awaken either no echo or far too strong an echo; and, like all men when they cannot understand a thing, they hate it. There is no medium in these matters that appeal to the emotions. You must either like or hate. You may see this always. Either you enjoy Wagner's music or you abominate it, either you appreciate old masters or they are to you daubs, either you are in tune to laughter or it seems to you the veriest folly.
The Scotch take their amusement and their relaxation on the Sabbath as other people do on the Sunday. They rest from work, they attend divine service, and for relaxation they awaken those gloomy and fanatical thoughts which give them pleasure. For these are to them pleasure, just as much as gaiety is to other people.
Do not doubt that it is real pleasure to them. Men's hearts are tuned to many keys, and there is a minor as well as a major. It is true that it is difficult for those who rejoice in light and sunshine, in gaiety and humour, who revolt from grey skies and shaded days, from gloomy thoughts and dreams of hell, to realise that there are men to whom these are in harmony.
Most of us would forget hell if we could, would banish the thought if it arose, but some love to dwell upon it, to repeat it, to preach of it. The idea thrills them as blood and massacre do others. Some men would go miles to avoid seeing an execution, others would go as many miles to see it. Emotions are of all sorts, and what to some is horrible is to others attractive.
"Will the doctrine of eternal punishment be preached there?" asked the owner of a large room suitable for meetings to one who would have hired it to preach there. And when the answer was that the subject would not be touched on the room was refused. "Ay, but I hold to that doctrine," he repeated to every objection.
Widely, therefore, as the Continental Sunday and the Scotch Sabbath differ in appearance, they arise from the same causes, they result in the same effects.
They are caused by the desire for bodily rest, for soul nourishment, for mental relaxation, necessities of mankind, and each people so frames its conception of the proper way to keep the day as to attain those ends. For "the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath," and men adapt their religious teaching to suit their necessities.
It is some years ago now—about twenty, I think—that we first heard of the beginning of a new religion, the arrival of a new prophetess who was to unfold to us the mystery of the world and teach us the truths of life. And this religion began as other religions have been said to begin, this prophetess claimed belief as other teachers are said to have done, by her miraculous powers. She could do things that no one else could do: she could divide a cigarette paper in halves, and waft half through the air to great distances; she could piece together broken teacups in an extraordinary way. And because she could perform these feats she claimed for herself an authority in speaking of the hearts of men and of the before and after death, an authority which was accorded to her by many.
I have expressly refrained from suggestingeither the truth or the falsehood of these miracles. I am aware that the whole process is said to have been fully exposed. The question is immaterial, for they were, true or false, believed by many, and it is this question of belief in miracle which I wish to discuss, not the possibility of miracle or the reverse.
There is another point I wish to make clear. I have said that other religions are said to have started in the same way, other teachers to have claimed authority on the same ground. This may or may not be true. The theory of Buddhism is so essentially anti-miraculous that the miracles attributed to the Buddha seem almost certainly outside additions, as they are in direct variance with his known acts and beliefs. And the words and acts of Christ in His life seem all so at variance with the miracles attributed to Him that they, too, may be later additions or contemporary exaggerations. This has already been obvious to some, and had not the absolute inspiration of the Sacred Books been insisted on, thus stifling criticism, it would have been obvious to more. All this is immaterial. True or false, all religions have an embroidery, more or less deep, of miracle, and on these miracles their claim to truth was in the early days more or less pressed. If Madame Blavatsky performed miracles with teacups it wasbecause she saw that there was an attraction to many people in miracle that nothing else could supply. Miracle to many is the proof of truth. Had Madame Blavatsky performed no miracles, had there been no teacups, were there now no Mahatmas, who would have stopped to listen to her compote of Brahmanism, Buddhism, and truly western mysticism which she called Theosophy?
How can miracle be the proof of supernatural knowledge?
Suppose there arose to-morrow in England a man who could make one loaf into five, what should those of us who are without the instinct for miracle say? Merely that he knew some way of increasing bread which we did not know. The inference would end there. We should not suppose that he therefore knew anything more about the next world than we do. Where is the connection, we would ask? The telephone or the Röntgen rays would have been a miracle a hundred years ago. Two thousand years ago a phonograph would have been supposed to hold a devil, and the proprietor would have been a prophet, no doubt. But we do not now go to Edison or Maxim for our religions. Still, Madame Blavatsky started with miracles, and was wise in her generation. Still, all religions retain more or less of the miraculous, because there aremany to whom this appeals before everything, because they are sure that miracle is the proof of truth. Again, Theosophy claims to be Esoteric Buddhism. The countrypar excellenceof practical Buddhism is Burma. Yet the Burmans generally laugh at Theosophy. How is this? The answer lies, I think, like the answer to all these questions of religion, in the varying instincts of the people. It is an idea with us in the West that the East is the land of enchantment, of mystery, of the unknown, of miracle and all that is akin to it. We are never tired of talking of the mysterious East; it seems to us one vast wonderland full of things we cannot understand, full of marvels of the unknowable, the very home of superstition; while the West is matter of fact, material and reasonable, and easily understood. And yet I think the very first thing a man learns when he goes to the people of the East, certainly to the Burmese people, and tries to see with their eyes and understand with their hearts, that all this is the very reverse of the facts. Will anyone who wishes to see how very far they are from the cult of the mysterious, of dreams, of miracles, of visions, how verylittlesuch things appeal to them, turn to my chapters on the Buddhist monkhood in "The Soul of a People," and read them? I do not wish to repeat what I said there, only that amonk who saw visions or performed miracles would be ejected from his monastery as unworthy of his faith.
I do not say that there are no superstitions among the people. Their stage of civilisation is as yet low, as low perhaps as ours five hundred years ago. They have their strange fancies here and there; I have heard many of them. They are amusing sometimes and curious. I very much doubt, however, if the Burman of to-day is as superstitious as an ordinary countryman in England. I have heard English soldiers tell tales of old women changing into hares,that they themselves had seen, quite as seriously as any Burman could. And if you compare the Burman of to-day with the European peasant of even two hundred years ago, there is no comparison at all. The West simply reeks with superstition and all that is allied to it compared to the East. (I exclude the belief in ghosts, which is, I think, a separate matter.)
The delusion has, I think, arisen in many ways. To begin with, we are always looking out in the East for the mysterious. It is the East, and therefore mysterious. We very seldom try to understand the people, to see them from their standpoint. We prefer generally to assume that they have no standpoint and to talk of theincomprehensible Oriental mind, because it is easier to do so and it sounds superior. And again, we are apt to make absurd comparisons and reason without remembrance. An English officer will come across a Burman from the back country of the hills who has a charm against bullet wounds, and he will sit down and indite a letter to the paper on the "incredibly foolish superstition of these people," oblivious of the fact that he will find even now amongst his own countrymen quite as many people who believe in charms as among the Burmese, that Dr. Johnson touched various articles as charms, and that he himself throws salt over his shoulder. Yet he is of the better class of a people five hundred years older in civilisation than the Burman.
I confess that, personally, I have found even to-day infinitely more superstition and leaning to the miraculous among my own people than among Burmans. There are classes of English people who are almost free from it, there are other Englishmen, and especially Englishwomen, who are steeped in it to a degree that would astound any Oriental. And what was it a few hundred years ago? Have there ever been witch trials in the East, have there ever been ordeals, or casting lots "for God to decide"? Magicians have come to us from the East, truly; they were made forexport, the use for them at home being limited. Theosophy was started in the East, truly, but not by Orientals. Madame Blavatsky is believed to have been a Russian; her supporters were English and American. Palmistry and fortune-telling appeal as serious matters to many people in England and Europe generally. To the Burman they are matters of amusement. Do you think "Christian Science" would gain any foothold in the East? or spiritualism or a hundred forms of superstition that cling to the civilised people of the West?
The East is the home of religion, of emotion, of asceticism, of the victory of the mind over the body. The West is the home of superstition, of second sight, of miracle, of conjuring tricks of all kinds exalted into the supernatural. You may search all the records of the East and find no superstition—like touching for the King's evil, for instance. Can anyone imagine Joanna Southcote in India or in the further East? I have tried not to hear, I could never repeat, what the East says of the miraculous in Christianity. Superstition there is, of course, legend and miracle; they are the outcomes always of a certain stage of pre-civilisation. But even in India how scarce and faint they are compared to the West. For one thing must be carefully remembered. Ignoranceof the power of natural causes must not be put down to attribution of miraculous causes. The peasant in the East will often attribute a property to a herb, a mineral, a ceremony that it has not got. That is their ignorance of natural law, never their attribution of unnatural power. If a Burman peasant sometimes thinks a certain medicine can render his body lighter than water, it is simply that he is unaware of the limited power of drugs, not that he supposes there is anything miraculous in it. The power of phenacetin on a feverish patient seems to him far more astonishing. Indeed, from miracle as miracle he shrinks. To miracle as miracle the average European is greatly attracted. To the one it spells always charlatanism, to the latter supernatural power.
And therefore, even in the religions of Hindustan—Hinduism in its myriad forms, Mahommedanism, Sihkism, Jainism, and Parseeism—miracle plays a very minor part. I think there is no doubt that this repugnance to miracle is one reason why the Semites eventually rejected Christianity. How very few and unaffecting the essence are the miracles in Mahommedanism. But in Christianity it plays the major part. Christ was born and lived and died and rose again in miracle. In Latincountries miracles are of daily occurrence—as at Lourdes, for instance.
And though in Teutonic Christianity it is less than in Latin countries, it plays a great part also. The miracles of Christ's life are retained. Truly they say that now the age of miracle is past. The Church believes no more in prophecy, in miraculous cures, in risings from the dead. The bulk of the people reject miracle. But what a large minority is still left who absolutely crave for it, let the records of Theosophy and many another miraculous religion show. Miracle satisfies a craving, an instinct, that nothing else will meet. It is curious to note how the inclusion of miracle in religion varies inversely with the inclusion of conduct. With the Latins miracle is most, the Latin Christianity is the most miraculous of all religions, and therein conduct is least. With the Teutons miracle and conduct are both accepted, the former authoritatively of the past, privately also of the present. With the Burmans miracle and the supernatural are rejected absolutely as part of the religion of to-day, and conduct is all in all. Thus again do the instincts of the people find expression in their religion.
As to the growth of the instinct it is more difficult to reply. Instincts are very hard to account for. Indeed, in their origin all are quitebeyond the scope of inquiry at all. We can only see that they exist. But with this instinct for miracle there is one cause that no doubt contributes to its increase or decrease. It does not explain the instinct, but it does show why in some cases it is greater than in others.
It is greater in the West than in the East because many people in the West, with greater emotional power, from better food and little work, live narrower lives than any in the East. It is astonishing to see the difference. In the East every peasant lives surrounded by his relatives, very many of them; he is friends with all his village, he has always his work, his interests in life. He is hardly ever alone among strangers, with no work to occupy him. But in the West, how many there are who live alone, their relations elsewhere, with few friends, with no necessity for work, with no interests in life? It is terrible to see how many there are living lives empty of all emotion. These are they who seek the miraculous as a relief from their daily monotony of stupidity. These are they who run after new things. It is