Bygones Worth Remembering Volume Ii Part 13

My seemingly abrupt and distrustful question was not a reflection upon his veracity of speech. Mr. Cribbace quite understood that from my tone of inquiry. It never struck me that his threadbare dress, his half-famished look, and necessity of "taking up a collection" the previous night "to pay expenses," showed that faith was not a source of income to him. Yet he had told us that faith would be all that to us, and with a sincerity which never seemed to me more real on any human lips. He did not mistake the earnestness or purport of my question. He parried with his answer with many words, and at length said that "the promise was to be taken with the provision that what we asked for would be given, if G.o.d thought it for our good." Christ did not think this; He did not say it; He did not suggest it. Knowing how many generations of men to the end of the world would imperil their lives on the truth of His words, He could not suffer treacherous ambiguity to creep into His meaning by omission. His words were: "If it were not so, I would have told you." There was no double meaning in Christ, no reticence, no half-statement, leaving the hearer to find out the half-concealed words which contradicted the half-revealed. All this I believed of him, and therefore I trusted Christ's sayings.

St. Chrysostom, in the prayer of the Church Litany, does not stop, but keeps open the gap through which this evasion crawls. "Almighty G.o.d," he says, "who dost promise that when two or three are gathered together in Thy name, Thou wilt grant _their_ requests. Fulfil _now_, O Lord, the desires and pet.i.tions of Thy servants, as may be most _expedient_ for them." Christ was no juggler like St. Chrysostom. A prayer is a deposit--the money of despair paid into a bank; but no one would pay money into a bank if they were told they would get back only as much as was good or expedient for them.

My heart sank within me as Mr. Cribbace spoke the words of evasion.

There was nothing to be depended upon in prayer. The doctrine was a juggle of preachers. They might not mean it or think it straight out, but this is what it came to. Christ a second time repeated the words: "If ye shall ask anything in My name, I will do it." However it might be true in apostolic days, it was not true in ours, and the preachers knew it, and did not say so. Christ might as well be dead if the promise had pa.s.sed away. Christianity had no material advantage to offer to the believer, whatever else it may have had.

Mr. Cribbace spoke the truth now; I could see that. Never did that morning pa.s.s from my mind. That answer did not make me disbelieve, but I was never again the same Christian I had been before. The foundation on which every forlorn, helpless, uninformed, trusting believer rests had slipped--slipped away from under my feet. Whatever Christianity might be, it was no dependence in human need. The hard, material world was not touched by prayer. How else it could be moved I then knew not.

For myself, I did not think about the terms of the Bible, but believed them. If there was an exception, it related to the saying of Christ that every "idle word" men should speak should be recorded against them. If "idle words" were to go down, then angry or wicked words would also be recorded. At night, as I made my last prayer, I tried to think over what I had said or done which might have been added to that serious catalogue, and thus I suffered more than my fair share of alarm. I did not know then that the rich have a much smaller account against them above than the poor, and that they fare better than the indigent in heaven, as they do on earth. A gentleman has his house and grounds, no one he dislikes can enter his home. His neighbour cannot much annoy him; he is at a distance from him. If he has a feud with his annoyer, he does not meet him above once a year, perhaps at a county ball, and there he can "cut" him; while a poor man lives in a house where he has several fellow-lodgers, who have done him a shabby turn, and whom he meets four or five times a day on the stairs. Evil thoughts come into his heart, evil words escape his lips, and he himself employs a recording angel all his time in taking down his offences, while the rich man has, peradventure, only a single note made against his name once a week.

It was after I had been some time at the Mechanics' Inst.i.tution--which was quite a new world of thought to me--that I was asked if I would conduct a cla.s.s at the New Meeting Unitarian Sunday school. The rooms in which the Mechanics' Inst.i.tution was held were those of the Sunday school of the Old Meeting-house, no other being obtainable. Since anything I knew had been taught me by these generous believers, it seemed to me natural that they should invite me to a.s.sist in one of their schools, and that I should comply. My consenting was not because I shared their tenets. The Rev. Mr. Crompton, whose sister subsequently became Mrs. George Dawson, asked me after a time what my view was as to the unity of Deity. My answer was that I believed in three Deities.

I had never thought of the possibility of all this great world being managed by _one_ Being. My preference for the acquaintance of Unitarians was that there was so much more to be learned among them than among any other religious body I had known. My invitation to their school was to teach Euclid to one cla.s.s, and the simpler elements of logic to another.

These were subjects never thought of in the Evangelical Sunday schools to which I had belonged. The need of human knowledge had become very clear to me. I could see that young men of my age trained in Unitarian schools were very superior to Evangelical youths, who had merely spiritual information. Devoutness I knew to be goodness; but I could see it was not power. My personal piety did not conceal from me my inferiority to those better informed. This made me grateful to the Unitarians, who cared on Sundays for human as well as spiritual things; and I thought it a duty to help them, as far as my humble attainments might enable me.

As soon as this was known in the Inge Street church, to which I was considered to belong, the elders spake unto me thereupon. I was invited to a prayer-meeting, which I readily consented to attend, when I found that all the prayers were directed against me--were mere solicitations to heaven to divert my heart from continuing to attend the Unitarian schools. It would be wronging my sincere and well-meaning friends of that time, to recount the deterrents they used and the fears they expressed. Religion refined by human intelligence was regarded then as a form of sin. At the end I did not dissent from their view, but I made no promise to do what they wished. It seemed to me a sin that any youths should be as ignorant as I had been, and I refuse to give them such knowledge as I had acquired. In this matter of teaching I said it was right to do as the Unitarians did, but wrong to believe as they believed. This opinion I held all the while I was a teacher in their Sunday school.

Had these prayerful friends of mine succeeded in their object of persuading me from a.s.sociation with these larger believers, they would have shut the door of freedom, effort and improvement for me. My lot would have been to spend my days inviting others, with much earnestness, to cherish like incapacity. Yet I have no word of disrespect for their honest-hearted endeavour to advise me, as they thought, for the best.

It was the desire of knowledge which saved me from their dangerous temptation.

The Meeting-house to whose Sunday school I went, was the one where Dr.

Priestley formerly preached. It was my duty on a Sunday to accompany my cla.s.s into chapel during the morning service. The scholars' seats were near the gallery stairs. The other teachers sat at the end of the forms, farthest from the stairs. I always chose the end nearest the stairs.

When invited to sit elsewhere I never explained the reason why I did not. My reason was my belief that the wickedness of the preacher, in addressing only one Deity, would one day be resented by heaven, and that the roof would fall in upon the congregation. As I did not share their faith, I thought I ought not to partake of their fate; and I thought that by being near the stairs I could escape--if I saw anything uncomfortable in the behaviour of the ceiling, which I frequently watched. Being the person who would first understand what was about to happen, I concluded that my descent would be unimpeded by the flying and unsuspecting congregation. It seems to me only yesterday that I sat calculating my chance of escape as Mr. Kentish's sonorous and instructive sermon was proceeding.

CHAPTER XLIII. NEW CONVICTIONS WHICH CAME UNSOUGHT

These singular instances of bygone experience of a religious student, of which few similar have ever been given, must be suggestive--perhaps instructive--to religious teachers in church and chapel, engaged in inculcating their views. How much happier had been my life had there then existed that tolerance of social effort, that regard of social needs, that consideration of individual aspiration, which happily now prevail. This chapter will conclude what Herbert Spencer would call the "natural history" of a mind, or, as Lord Westbury would say, "what I am pleased to call my mind."

One evening, at the Mechanics' Inst.i.tution, Birmingham, I was told that Robert Owen, who had unexpectedly arrived in town, was likely to speak in Well Lane, Allison Street, and was asked "would I go?" Mistaking the name for Robert Hall, I said I would. Of Robert Owen I had scarcely heard; of the Rev. Robert Hall (who had denounced all deflectors from the Baptist standard with brilliant bitterness) I had heard, admired (and do still), and much desired to see. Great was my disappointment when I discovered the mistake. As Mr. Owen pa.s.sed me on entering the room, I--a mere youth--looked at the aged philosopher (who had been working for human welfare long before I was born) with an impertinent pity. I felt also some real terror for his future, as I thought what a "wicked old man" he must be. I had been a.s.sured by Robert Hall that morality without faith was of no avail in the eye of G.o.d.

Eventually it became known at the works where I was employed that I had been to hear Robert Owen, and remarks were made. In those days (1837-8) advocates of social reform were called "Socialists." Some of the remarks made against them were unjust Some "Socialists" were fellow-students at the Mechanics' Inst.i.tution. These commentators made the usual mistake of concluding that the social thinkers in question must hold the opinions it was inferred that they held. At that time I did not understand this way of reasoning, though no doubt I used it myself, as those among whom I was reared knew no better. Everybody was sure that an opponent must mean what you inferred he meant, and charged against him the inference as a fact--never thinking of inquiring whether it was so. If I was not misled by those confident arguments, it was because I knew that the persons accused were leal and kind in daily life. Out of mere love of fairness I defended them to my working a.s.sociates, as far as my knowledge went. Being told that "I did not know what their principles were" caused me to read their pamphlets and to hear some lectures. For a year or more I used the knowledge thus gained against the uninformed impressions of their aspersers around me.

Well do I remember that one day, as I pa.s.sed two workmen in the mill-yard, one said to the other, "That is young Holyoake the sceptic."

They did not know that "sceptic" merely meant a doubter in search of evidence. They used the word in the brutal sense of one who disbelieved the truth, knowing it to be the truth. The term startled me, as I neither believed nor a.s.sumed to believe what I had reported as the opinions of my friends. For myself, I had no thought of holding their opinions. The heresy supposed to be included in them was, indeed, my aversion. Then I made the resolution to examine their principles, with a view to show what arguments I could myself bring against them. Great was my dismay when, after months of thought, I found that the questioned tenets seemed, on the whole, to be true. These tenets were that wise material circ.u.mstances were likely to have a better influence on men than bad ones; and that, men having general qualities which they have inherited, the treatment of the worst should be tempered by compa.s.sion for their ill-fortune. Then it concerned me no more what any one said of me. It was as though I had pa.s.sed into a new country, leaving behind me the barren land of supplication for a land of self-effort and improvement; and entered into the fruitful kingdom of material endeavour, where help and hope dwelt. Heretofore doubt and perturbation as to whether I was of the "elect" had oft agitated me. Now, I had no bonds in the death of my disproved opinions--no struggle, no misgivings.

Without wish or effort of mine, I was delivered by reason alone from the prison-house in which I had dwelt with its many terrors. Not all at once did the terrors go. They long hovered about the mind like evil spirits tempting me to distrust the truth written in the Book of Nature, of which I believed G.o.d to be the author.

Some time before this change in my opinion occurred I had taken in, out of my slender savings, the beautiful Diamond edition of the Rev.

Mr. Stebbing's Bible in parts. The type was very fine, the outline ill.u.s.trations seemed to me very beautiful; they affect me with admiration still. It was the first book with marks of art about it that I had possessed. I had it bound in morocco, with silver clasps. It was quite a wonder in the workshop when I took it there. To possess many things I never cared, but if I had only one, and it had some beauty and finish in it, it was to me as though I had a light in my room at night, and the thought of it made me glad in the dark. A fellow-workman of sincere piety, whom I respected very much, coveted this Bible, and induced me to sell it to him, which I did, as I had it in my mind to get another bound in a yet daintier way.

Simple and natural as was this transaction, it was misconstrued. It was said I had "sold" my Bible, as though it was my act instead of being the act of another. Next it was reported that I had "burnt" it. Thus I became a founder of myths without knowing it. Nevertheless, it gave me pain--for nothing was more alien to my mind, my taste and reverence, than the act imputed to me. But what made a greater impression upon me, it being inconceivable, and unforeseen, was that he who induced me to part with my valued volume never came forward to say so. The inspiration of Christianism I had taken to be personal truth which could be trusted. In the n.o.blest minds it is so still. But for the first time I found a Christian could be mean.

It was about this period that a poor woman I knew drew near to death from consumption. At times I visited and read the Scriptures to her. One night I asked her if she would like some one to pray with her. As she wished it, I induced one with whom I had been a Sunday school teacher to come with me one evening and pray by her side.

The consolation was very precious to her, and that is why I sought it for her. At no time did it seem to me that everybody should be of one opinion, since honesty of life consists in living and dying in that opinion of the truth of which you are convinced. This man whom I took with me was a workman, poor, mean, and utterly uninformed. In religious sympathy he inclined to the Ranters, who are not at all melodious Christians. Yet heaven might respect his prayer as much as a bishop's, for he had given up his night, after a hard day's labour, to afford what humble consolation he could to this poor woman.

One sentiment that had always possessed me was a pleasure in vengeance.

I had quite a distinct pa.s.sion of hatred where I was wronged, and had no means of resistance or redress. A man in my father's employ did something very unfair to me when I was quite a youth, and during nine years that I worked by his side I did not forget it or forgive it. The Lord's prayer taught me that I should "forgive those who trespa.s.sed against me," and at times I thought I had forgiven him, but I never had.

Christian as I was, the revengeful lines of Byron long influenced me:--

"If we do but watch the hour, There never yet was human power, That could evade, if unforgiven, The patient search and vigil long Of him who treasures up a wrong."

No sermon, no prayer, no belief, no Divine command, rendered me neutral towards those I disliked. Neither authority nor precept had force which gave no reason for amity. But when I came to understand Coleridge's saying that "human affairs are a process," I could see that patience and wise adaptation of condition was the true method of improvement, since the tendency to n.o.bleness or baseness was alike an inheritance nurtured by environment. If tempest of the human kind came, precaution and not anger--which means ignorance taken by surprise--was the remedy. Pity takes the place of resentment. Clearly, vengeance did but add to the misfortune of destiny.

I oft pondered Hooker's saying, that "anger is the sinew of the soul, and he that lacketh it hath a maimed mind." Nevertheless, I am content to be without that "sinew." Anger is rather the epilepsy of the understanding than the dictate of reason. I had come to see that there are no bad weeds in Nature--but much bad gardening. The reasons of amity had become clear to me, and that Helvetius was right. We should "go on loving men, but not expecting too much from them." Even Hooker could not win me back to the profitless pursuits of anger and retaliation.

These bygone days left their instruction with me evermore. In them I learned consideration for others. Whatever my convictions, I was always the same to my mother. The wish to change her views never entered my mind. She had chosen her own. I respected her choice, and she respected mine. In after years, when I visited Birmingham, I would read the Bible to her. She liked to hear my voice again as she had heard it in earlier days. When her eyes became dim by time I would send her large type editions of the New Testament, and of religious works which dwelt upon the human tenderness of Christ. The piety of parents should be sacred in the eyes of children. Convictions are the food of the soul, which perisheth on any other diet than that which can be a.s.similated by the conscience.

One of the bygones which had popularity in my day was silence, where explicitness was needed. Nothing is more grateful to the young understanding than clear, definite outlines. _The Spectator_ (July 23, 1891) said that "Dean Stanley could not at any time have exactly defined what his own theology really was." George Dawson, who charmed so many audiences and was under no official restraint, never attempted it.

Emerson, who criticised everybody who had an opinion, never disclosed his. Carlyle, who filled the air with adjurations to sincerity of conviction, carefully concealed his own. They who take credit for advising the public what to believe should avow their own belief. Otway, crossing the street to Dryden's house, wrote upon his door: "Here lives Dryden, a poet and a wit." Seeing these words as he came out, Dryden wrote under them: "Written by Otway opposite," which might mean: "This is but a partial and friendly estimate written by my neighbour who lives over the way, opposite to me"; or, it might mean that "It is written by Otway--the very 'opposite' of 'a poet and a wit.'" Ja.n.u.s sentences are the very grace of satire, because they offer a mitigating or a complimentary construction; but in questions of conscience, ethics, or politics, uncertainty is an evil--an evil worth remembering where it can be avoided.

"Socialists" were liable to indictment who officiated in a place not licensed as a place of wors.h.i.+p. Such a license could be obtained on making a declaration on oath that their discourses were founded on belief in the cardinal tenets of the Church. Two social speakers were summoned to swear this. One was the father of the late Robert Buchanan.

He and his colleague did so swear to avoid penalties, though they swore the contrary of the truth. I joined with other colleagues in protesting against this humiliation and ignominy. And in another way imprisonment came to all of us. Silence or the oath was the alternative from which there was no escape. The question then arose, "Was the existence of Deity so certainly known to men that inability to affirm it justified exclusion from citizens.h.i.+p?" Thus it was of the first moment to inquire whether it was so or not, and what was regarded as an atheistical investigation became a political necessity in self-defence. Was there such conclusive knowledge of the Unknowable as to warrant the law in making the possession of it a condition of justice and civil equality?

Thus the refutation of Theism became a form of self-defence, and without foreseeing it, or intending it, or wis.h.i.+ng it, I was, without any act of my own, engaged in it.

This narrative concerns those who deplore the rise and popularity of independent thinkers, alien to received doctrine. Few persons are aware how or why agnostic advocacy was welcomed and extended. Surely this is worth remembering. The tenet bore statute fruit, for the Affirmation Act came out of it.

It will be a satisfaction to students of spiritual progress to know that the extension and legalisation of the rights of conscience, brought no irreverence with it. The sense that the nature of Deity was beyond the capacity of dogmatism to define, created a feeling of profound humility in the mind; the incapacity which disabled me from a.s.serting the infinite premises of Theism rendered denial an equal temerity. What tongue can speak, what eye can see, what imagination can conceive the marvels of the Inscrutable? I think of Deity as I think of Time, which is with us daily. Who can explain to us that mystery? Time--noiseless, impalpable, yet absolute--marshals the everlasting procession of nature.

It touches us in the present with the hand of Eternity, and we know it only by finding that we were changed as it pa.s.sed by us.

CHAPTER XLIV. DIFFICULTY OF KNOWING MEN

Events of the mind as well as of travel may be worth remembering.

Columbus, high on a peak of Darien, saw an unexpected sight--never to be forgotten. Of another kind, as far as surprise was concerned, though infinitely less important in other respects, was my first reading of a pa.s.sage of Pascal, which more than any other revealed to me a new world of human life. The pa.s.sage was the well-known exclamation:--

"What an enigma is man? What a strange, chaotic and contradictory being?

Judge of all things, feeble earth-worm, depository of the Truth, ma.s.s of uncertainty, glory and b.u.t.t of the universe, incomprehensible monster!

In truth, what is man in the midst of Nature? A cypher in respect to the infinite; all, in comparison with nonent.i.ty: a mean betwixt nothing and all."

Everybody knows that not only in different nations, but in the same nation, mankind present a strange variety of qualities and pa.s.sions.

The English are outspoken, the Scotch reticent, the Irish uncertain, the American alert, the French ceremonial. Even our English counties have their special ways of action. London is confident, Birmingham dogged, Manchester resolute, New-castle-on-Tyne has greater modesty and greater pride than any other place. Yes; every one agrees with Pascal that man is a bewildering creature. He is proud and abject, generous and mean, defiant and craven, standing up for inflexible truth, and lying in his daily life. As Byron says, "Man is half dust, half deity." If we go far enough in our search we find people of all qualities. Everybody sees these characteristics of countries and cla.s.ses. Everybody recognises these conflicting elements of character in a race; but what amazed me was to perceive that they are to be found in _each_ person in varying proportion and force--they are all there. The varieties of the race are to be found in the same individual. No man who understands this ever looks upon society as he did before. Not knowing this fact, not calculating upon it, error, distrust, disappointment, estrangement, grow up needlessly.

Twice within the public recollection, two political parties in England have been formed, and made furious by a common ignorance. During the great Slave War in America, the Southern planter was held up as a gentleman of polished manners, of cultivated tastes, a paternal master and courteous host By others he was described as selfish, sensual, tyrannical, with whom any guest who betrayed sympathy with slaves had an unpleasant time. Both accounts were true. The same model gentleman who showered upon you courtly attentions would tar and feather you if he found you display emotion when you heard the shriek of the slave under the whip. Later, Parliament, the press, and the Church were divided upon the character of the Turk. One party said he was tolerant, picturesque, abounding in concessions and hospitality. The other party described him as subtle, evasive, treacherous, vicious, and cruel. No one seemed to recognise that all the while he was both these things. He was an adept in personal deference, generous in professions, evasive and treacherous--in short, "Abdul the d.a.m.ned." To those from whom the Sultan had anything to hope, his graciousness was superb--to those at his mercy he was rapacious and murderous.

The Circa.s.sians will offer their daughters to the Turk--they send their virgin beauty into the market of l.u.s.t, and then fight for the purchasers. The Hindoos seem a gentle, unresisting, rice-minded people; yet have such capacity of heroic and vigilant reticence, that though we have been masters of India for one hundred and fifty years, it is said by experienced officials, we do not know the real mind of a single man.

The Zulus have savage instincts and habits; but they are honest, speak the truth, and despise a man who is angry or excited.

Thiers, the great French statesman, had trust in individuals, but despised the ma.s.ses. Yet the ma.s.ses pulled down the Bastile, where only gentlemen were imprisoned and not themselves. The ma.s.ses were moved by a generous dislike of oppression as strongly as Thiers himself.

President Was.h.i.+ngton, looking only at the corruption of cla.s.ses he came in contact with, predicted evil to the future of American society. Yet, one hundred years after, a latent n.o.bleness of sentiment appeared, which gave a million of lives in order that black men with large feet, as was scornfully said, should be free.

Because oppression had made, for years, a.s.sa.s.sination frequent in Italy, many thought every man carried a stiletto, and did not know that Italians are more patient and cooler-headed on great occasions than Englishmen or Frenchmen.

The Irish do not conceal that they are our enemies, and ruin every English movement in which they mingle, yet who have such brightness, drollery of imagination as they? Or who will stand by a friend of their country at the peril of their lives without hesitation as they do?