Satires And Profanities Part 8

And whereas it is considered by very many, and seems proved by the experience of the last ---- years that the country can do quite well without a monarch, and may therefore save the extra expense of monarchy:

And whereas it is calculated that from the accession of George I. of blessed memory until the decease of the most beloved of Queens, Victoria, a period of upwards of a century and a half, the Royal Family of the House of Guelph have received full and fair payment in every respect for their generous and heroic conduct in coming to occupy the throne and other high places of this kingdom, and in saving us from the unconst.i.tutional Stuarts:

And whereas the said Stuarts may now be considered extinct, and thus no longer dangerous to this realm: And whereas the said Royal Family of the House of Guelph is so prolific that the nation cannot hope to support all the members thereof for a long period to come in a royal manner:

And whereas the Dukes of this realm are accounted liberal and courteous gentlemen:

And whereas the const.i.tution of our country is so far Venetian that it cannot but be improved in harmony and consistency by being made more Venetian still:

Be it enacted, etc., That the Throne now vacant through the ever-to-be-deplored death of her late most gracious Majesty shall remain vacant. That the mem-ers of what has been hitherto the Royal Family keep all the property they have acc.u.mulated, the nation resuming from them all grants of sinecures and other salaried appointments. That no member of the said Family be eligible for any public appointment whatever for at least one hundred years. That the Dukes in the order of their seniority shall act as Doges (with whatever t.i.tle be considered the best) year and year about, under penalty of large fines in cases of refusal, save when such refusal is supported by clear proof of poverty (being revenue under a settled minimum), imbecility, brutality, or other serious disqualification. That no members of a ducal family within a certain degree of relations.h.i.+p to the head of the house be eligible for any public appointment whatever; the head of the house being eligible for the Doges.h.i.+p only. That the duties of the Doge be simply to seal and sign Acts of Parliament, proclamations, etc., when requested to do so by the Ministry; and to exercise hospitality to royal or ruling and other representatives of foreign countries, as well as to distinguished natives. That a fair and even excessive allowance be made to the Doge for the expenses of his year of office. That the royal palaces be official residences of the Doge. That the Doge be free from all political responsibility as from all political power; but be responsible for performing liberally and courteously the duties of hospitality, so that Buckingham Palace shall not contrast painfully with the Mansion House. Etc., etc.

G.o.d preserve the Doge!

The Commission of Inquiry having thus triumphantly vindicated our beloved and gracious Sovereign against the cruel aspersions of people in general, and having moreover drafted a plan for obviating such aspersions against any British King or Queen in future, ends its Report, and dissolves itself, with humble thankfulness to G.o.d Almighty whose grace alone has empowered it to conclude its arduous labors so speedily, and with results so incalculably beneficial.

P. S.-Since the above report was drawn up, that ardent English patriot and loyalist, Benjamin Disraeli, being by the grace of G.o.d and the late Earl of Derby Prime Minister of this realm, has proposed that Parliament shall enable her Most Gracious Majesty to a.s.sume the additional t.i.tle of Empress of India, and Parliament has so far humbly a.s.sented. Being sore pressed by many cantankerous persons to give valid reasons for this change, he has given reasons many and weighty; such as the earnest desire of the princes and people of India, which desire has been so abundantly expressed that the expressions thereof cannot be produced lest they should overwhelm Parliament and destroy the balance of the world in general; then the imposing authority of "Whitaker's Almanack,"

a dissenting minister and a school-girl aged twelve: and lastly the necessity of such a t.i.tle for scaring all the Russias from India. But I believe that in deference to the well-known modesty of her Most Gracious Majesty he has not produced the most cogent reason of all, which is that for her wonderful and continual goodness during the past fourteen years in abstaining from the active functions of royalty, thus not only doing no mischief but preparing us for a Republic de jure by habituating us to a Republic _de facto_, she merits a great reward; and that, as she has already more money than she knows what to do with, this reward of royal virtue can most fittingly be rendered by her grateful subjects promoting her to the rank of Empress. And it should be noted that whereas the old t.i.tle of Queen has a certain strength and stability in the habitudes if not in the affections of the people, the new fangled t.i.tle of Empress has no such support, so that in a.s.suming it our beloved monarch is but working consistently and resolutely toward the great end of her reign, the speedy abolition of monarchy and establishment of a Republic.

A BIBLE LESSON ON MONARCHY

(1876.)

The old theory of "The right divine of kings to govern wrong," and the much-quoted text, "Fear G.o.d and honor the king," seem to have impressed many good people with the notion that the Bible is in favor of monarchy.

But "king" in the text plainly has the general meaning of "ruler," and would be equally applicable to the President of a Republic. In Romans xiii. 1-3, we read: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.

For there is no power but of G.o.d: the powers that be are ordained of G.o.d. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of G.o.d: and they that resist shall receive to themselves d.a.m.nation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil." Without stopping to discuss the bold a.s.sertion in the last sentence, we may remark that the real teaching of this pa.s.sage is that Christians ought to be indifferent to politics, quietly accepting whatever government they find in power; for if the powers that be are ordained of G.o.d, or in other words, if might is right, all forms of government are equally ent.i.tled to obedience so long as they actually exist. Of course Christians are not now, and for the most part have not been for centuries, really indifferent to politics, because for the most part they now are and long have been Christians only in name; but it is easy to understand from the New Testament itself why the first Christians naturally were thus indifferent, and why Christianity has never afforded any political inspiration. Nothing can be clearer to one who reads the New Testament honestly and without prejudice than the fact that Christ and his apostles believed that the end of the world was at hand. Thus in Matt, xxiv., Jesus after foretelling the coming to judgment of the son of man in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, when the angels shall gather the elect from the four winds, adds, v. 34, "Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pa.s.s, till all these things be fulfilled." This is repeated in almost the same words in Mark xiii., and Luke xxi., and a careful reading of the Epistles shows that their writers were profoundly influenced by this prophecy. But with the world coming to an end so soon, it would be as absurd to take any interest in its politics as for a traveller stopping two or three days in an inn to concern himself self with schemes for rebuilding it, when about to leave for a far country where he intends settling for life. If therefore we want any political guidance from the Holy Scriptures, we must go to the Old Testament, not to the New.

Now the first lesson on Monarchy, which we remember made us think even in childhood, is the fable of the trees electing a king, told by Jotham, the son of Gideon, in Judges ix. The trees in the process of this election showed a judgment much superior to that which men usually show in such a business. It is true that they did not select first the most strong and stalwart of trees, the cedar or the oak, but they had the good sense to choose the most sweet-natured and bountiful, the olive, then the fig, then the vine. But the bountiful trees thus chosen had good sense too, and would not forsake the fatness and the sweetness and the wine which cheereth G.o.d and man, to rule over their fellow trees.

Then the poor trees, like a jilted girl who marries in spleen the first scamp she comes across, asked the bramble to be their king; and that barren good-for-nothing of course accepted eagerly the crown which the n.o.ble and generous had refused, and called upon the trees to put their trust in its scraggy shadow, "and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon." Young as we were when this fable first caught our attention, we mused a good deal over it, and even then began to learn that those most eager for supremacy, the most forward candidates in elections, are nearly always brambles, not olives or fig-trees or vines; and that the first thought of a bramble, when made ruler over its betters, is naturally to destroy with fire the cedars of Lebanon.

But G.o.d himself in the case of the Israelites has vouchsafed to us a very clear judgment on the question of Monarchy. In the remarkable const.i.tution for that people which he gave to Moses, he did not include a king, and Israel remained without a king for more years than it is worth while endeavoring to count here. We read, 1 Samuel viii., how "All the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Hamah, and said unto him, Behold thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.

But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord. And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.

"... Now therefore hearken unto their voice: how-beit yet protest solemnly unto them, and show them the manner of the king that shall reign over them." Some students of the Bible may have thought that G.o.d's severe condemnation of the Israelites for wanting a king arose chiefly from wounded pride, from the fact that they had rejected him, and we cannot affirm that this feeling did not inflame his anger, for he himself has said that he is a jealous G.o.d; but the protest which he orders Samuel to make, and the exposition of the common evils of kings.h.i.+p, prove clearly that G.o.d did not (and therefore, of course, does not) approve this form of government. And, indeed, it is plain that if he had approved it, he would have given it to his chosen people at first. For although divines have termed the form of government under which the Jews lived before the kings a theocracy, G.o.d did not then rule immediately, but always through the medium of a high-priest or judge, and could have governed through the medium of a king had he thought it well so to do. And he who reads the history of the Jews under the Judges, as contained in the Book of Judges, and especially the narratives in chapters xvii. to xxi. which ill.u.s.trate the condition of Jewish society in those days when "there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes," will see that G.o.d must have thought a Monarchy very vile and odious indeed when he was angry at the request for it, and implied that it was actually worse than that government by Judges alternated with bondage under neighboring tribes which the theologians call a theocracy. Samuel warned the people of what a king would do, and doubtless thought he was warning them of the worst, but kings have far outstripped all that the prophet could foresee. The king, he said, will take your sons to be his warriors and servants; and will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and cooks, and bakers.

This was the truth, and nothing but the truth, but it was not the whole truth; for the sons have been taken to be far worse than mere warriors and servants, and the daughters for much viler purposes than cooking and baking. Samuel goes on: "And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants"-when he does not keep them for himself might have been added. "And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants." Surely much more than a tenth, O Samuel! We will not quote the remainder of this wise warning.

Like most wise warnings it was ineffectual; the foolish people insisted on having a king, and in the following chapters we read how Saul the Son of Kish, going forth to seek his father's a.s.ses, found his own subjects.

The condemnation of Monarchy by G.o.d, as we read it in this instance, is so thorough and general that we feel bound to add a few words on an exceptional case in which a king is highly extolled in the Scriptures, without any actions being recorded of him, as in the instances of David and Solomon, to nullify the praise. The king in question was Melchizedek, King of Salem, and priest of the most high G.o.d, who met Abram returning from the defeat of the four kings and blessed him, and to whom Abram gave t.i.thes of all, as we read in Genesis xiv. But this short notice of Melchizedek in Genesis does not by any means suggest to us the full wonderfulness of his character, though we naturally conclude from it that he was indeed an important personage to whom Abram gave t.i.thes of all. The New Testament, however, comes to our aid, and for once gives us a most valuable political lesson, though the inspired writer was far from thinking of political instruction when he wrote the pa.s.sage. In Hebrews vi., 20, and vii., 1 to 3, we read: "Jesus, made an High Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec. For this Melchisedec, King of Salem, priest of the most high G.o.d, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him; to whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all; first being by interpretation King of righteousness, and after that also King of Salem, which is King of peace; without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of G.o.d; abideth a priest continually." Now he to whom Jesus is compared, and who is like the Son of G.o.d, is clearly the n.o.blest of characters; and therefore, as the history in the first book of Samuel teaches us that Monarchy is generally to be avoided, these fine verses from the Epistle to the Hebrews delineate for us the exceptional king whose reign is to be desired.

The delineation is quite masterly, for a few lines give us characteristics which cannot be overlooked or mistaken. This model monarch must be a priest of the most high G.o.d-a king of righteousness and king of peace; without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of G.o.d. Whenever and wherever such a gentleman is met with, we would advise even the most zealous Republicans to put him forthwith upon the throne. But in the absence of such a gentleman we can hardly do wrong if we follow the good advice of Samuel dictated by G.o.d Almighty, and manage without any Monarch.

PRINc.i.p.aL TULLOCH ON PERSONAL IMMORTALITY

[two excerpts.]

(1877.)

Dr. Tulloch has the sense to perceive and the candor to acknowledge that even to those who have not any faith in G.o.d or Immortality, death need not be terrible, and often is not; that they may be resigned or peaceful, and meet the inevitable with a calm front; that they may be even glad to be done with the struggle of existence. Of course this is no news to us who have stood at the bedside of dying Materialists and Atheists, or are familiar with trustworthy well-authenticated accounts of the last hours of such persons. Still it is encouraging to find a distinguished and influential minister openly recognising the facts, instead of distorting them with the old contemptible pious fictions, again and again repeated after being again and again refuted. But Dr.

Tulloch considers that only the light of the higher life in Christ can glorify death. It would have been well had he been more specific as to this higher life and the glory it casts on death. If they are as described at length in the only authoritative Christian Scripture on the subject, the Book of Revelation, it seems to me that the life is anything but high, and radiates anything but glory. However, tastes differ, and man is a queer fellow; and there may actually exist many people who would prefer to annihilation a sort of everlasting Moody and Sankey meeting, and would even regard this as celestial beat.i.tude.

Concerning such I will only say with Goethe, I hope I shan't go to heaven with that lot! Yet these are not quite the lowest of the low in our civilised Christendom; or are there not many who look forward with complacency and even enthusiasm to a life beyond death, wherein they shall be largely employed in rapping tables, jogging arms and scrawling illiterate nonsense? Dr. Tulloch, in quoting St. Paul, seems to forget that he was writing of himself and his fellow Christians, to whom his words were thoroughly applicable; not of mankind in general, to whom they were not, and by the construction of the sentence could not be. "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most miserable;" we, the Christians. And why would they be of all men the most miserable? Clearly because, in obedience to the injunctions of their Master, they had cut themselves off from this world that they might secure the next; had renounced wealth, honor, society, enjoyment, all interest in art, science, literature, all political and national aspirations, and had courted obloquy and persecution; so that if the next life should turn out to be a mockery, a delusion and a snare, they were of all men the most miserable, being the most miserably deluded.

Those poor simple early Christians (on the showing, true or false, of the books all Christians revere as sacred and divine), having only Jesus and his apostles to instruct them, had not reached that lofty mercantile wisdom which made the late Mr. Binney one of the most popular preachers in our pious and mercantile country, when he solved the problem of _How to Make the Best of Both Worlds_. Of other-worldliness they indeed had enough and to spare; but they lacked the large modern grasp which combines and intermingles it with an equal measure of this worldliness.

"They didn't know everything down in Judee;" and St. Paul, though fairly intelligent and cultivated for his benighted time, was in a deplorable need of some lessons from Weigh-house Chapel.

When the worthy Princ.i.p.al says that men cannot find strength or comfort in what has been called the Religion of Humanity, and that they crave a personal life, is he aware that he has descended from the highlands of morality and truth to the lowest lowlands of Paley and Binney expediency? Is he aware that he is moreover begging the question, making the monstrous a.s.sumption that men must get what they crave? I call this the childish lollipop attraction of religion, so absurd as to be really beneath the contempt of full-grown men and women. Just as young ones would look forward to having the free range as long as they liked (which they would interpret for ever and ever) of shops full of sweeties, so those big babies, our dear simple Christian brethren, look forward to their Lubberland of eternal bliss, in singing Glory! Glory! Glory! Their claim to it is purely the infant's, because they would like it. Their mouths water, they lick their lips, they gurgle luxuriously with the foretaste: "Oh, we shall be so 'ap-'ap-'appy! Canaan is a happy place; we'll go to the land of Canaan!" And usually these beatific adult babies are creatures such as an intelligent man would be ashamed to bring into the world, much more a G.o.d. You can't endure an hour of their society here, and they pester you to come and spend eternity with them! I am really sorry to find Dr. Tulloch in such company.

In conclusion, I ask the reader to note especially the preacher's avowal that his faith in personal immortality has no warrant from Nature, no warrant from Science; nay, more, that the suggestions of scientific a.n.a.lysis "mockingly sift the sources of life only to hint our mortality." There is indeed no temper of mockery in Science, but its soberest deductions may well seem to mock with a terrible derision the inordinate greed and self-conceit of men, who, because they profess an unscientific and unnatural faith, have lost all sense of proportion between their infinitesimal selves and the infinite Universe.

THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH

Its Real As Distinguished From Its Apparent Strength

(1862.)

In discussions with "Infidels," Churchmen are very ready with the taunt, "You are but a handful of' fanatics. Nearly the whole intellect of the nation is for us and against you." In general the taunt is merely parried by a "What matter, if _we_ are right?" whereas it should also be retorted by a counter-thrust of denial. For, in truth, but a very small part of the intellect of the nation-_i.e._, intellect in the only sense in which it is of importance-_active_ intellect, is devoted to the Establishment or even to the Establishment and the so-called Dissenters combined. If they only are the true soldiers of the Church militant whom she spiritually feeds and equips for the warfare of life, and who are loyal to her with their whole heart and mind, how many legions must be deducted from the armies gathered round her banners before we can fairly estimate her actual power in the field! Should Jesus come to eliminate his true followers from the mult.i.tudes of professing Christians, as Gideon selected his, three hundred from the two and thirty thousand Israelites, let us consider whom he would reject.

_First_, all the cowards and hypocrites who simply cling to what appears the dominant party, and who would therefore call themselves Atheists were Atheism in the ascendant; a vile brood, the inc.u.mbrance and disgrace of every cause they adopt; "hateful to G.o.d and to the enemies of G.o.d"; of whom even to write is not pleasant.

_Secondly_, the indifferent through lack of vitality; men of tepid heart and inert brain, who are incapable of any strong sane affection. I use the word _sane_ because these creatures have intense self-love, which in its essence is insane; and because also they may be frenzied by the drunkenness of fanaticism, in which state they can die as devotedly as they can murder atrociously. The adhesion of these also I count no gain to any cause.

_Thirdly_, the indifferent through excess of vitality, including the most eminent "practical" men, soldiers, sailors, lawyers, engineers, statesmen. These, applying their whole energies to their several professions, rarely trouble themselves with theological any more than with other extraneous matters, but pa.s.sively acquiesce in whatever creed may be prevalent around them. Their real church is the world; their real wors.h.i.+p is labor; and they no more add to the strength of their nominal church than did the _savants_ to that of Napoleon's army in Egypt-those _savants_ whom the wise Napoleon always ordered (with the donkeys) to the centre whenever an attack was expected. To these must be added all the men whom we call fine animals, who enjoy such a red-blooded life in this world that they are not subject to bilious forebodings of another.

Some cla.s.ses of the most famous men-the poets, philosophers, doctors, physicists, mathematicians-are commanded by their very vocations to think seriously on some of the great theological questions, and therefore, whether ranged for or against the Church, count for something. The reader must ask his memory whether their weight in the balance has preponderated for orthodoxy or for heterodoxy. The statesmen I have counted among the indifferent, because their support of religion, in whatever form, has been almost universally no more than political.

_Fourthly_, the supersubtle, including laymen and divines of first-rate talent; who cannot help delighting in the exercise of their skill of fence, and who instinctively feel that it is much harder to champion any existing inst.i.tution than to attack it, and naturally (like all unconquerable knights-errant) prefer the most difficult _devoir_. Their adhesion to the Church, therefore, though seeming to strengthen it, really proclaims its weakness. Macaulay tells us how Halifax, the Trimmer, always joined the losing side.

_Fifthly_, the supremely reverential, including the very best of the laymen and divines; men whose lofty reason is drowned in a yet deeper faith, as mountain-peaks high as the highest in air are said to be submerged in the abysses of the Atlantic. In many cases these might be ranked in the preceding cla.s.s; for it is a general rule that the more reverence, the more subtlety. They see-how clearly!-the flaws and imperfections of their Church, they even realise the danger of its total fall; but they cannot tear themselves away from the venerable building wherein all their forefathers wors.h.i.+pped, in whose consecrated precincts all their forefathers were buried in hopes of a happy resurrection; whose chants were the rapturous music and whose windows were the heavenly glories of their pure childhood; whose prayers they repeated night after night and morning after morning at their mother's knee. Can they leave this, with all its treasured holiness of antiquity for some new bold glaring erection, wherein men certainly congregate ta talk about G.o.d, but which might just as well be used as a warehouse or a manufactory? No; rather than leave it they will believe, they will force themselves to believe, that some miraculous renovation is at hand, or that (as the structure was certainly raised by G.o.d) G.o.d will uphold it in spite of the law of gravitation. These are the men who keep the Church from falling into insignificance, but they are not essentially hers. It is not she alone whom they could thus wors.h.i.+p. Had they been brought up idolators, idolatry must have retained almost the same influence over spirits so reverentially humble, so loving and pure.

And here it may be remarked that one can scarcely conceive a Church so frail and gloomy and even vile, but that a fervent soul and a strong intellect could fortify it with argument, adorn it with the gold and jewels of imagination, ill.u.s.trate its dark altars and vivify its dead idols with the burning fire of spirituality, until it should be far more n.o.ble and mighty and splendid than ever was aspired to by the majority of men. But mark, such men as these of whom I speak do not derive their religiousness from, but really bestow it upon the Church in which they pray. She is subject and indebted to them, not they to her. She does not nourish them, they nourish her. She is the statue, they are Pygmalion.

And they are indeed idolators, for they wors.h.i.+p a creation of their own souls. Perhaps Pygmalion himself fell down and adored his flushed and breathing statue, thinking her, with artist-reverence, nothing less than a transformation of Venus Urania. When one thinks of certain n.o.ble men and women-as Maurice and Kingsley, Ruskin and the Browning-devoting themselves in spite of themselves to an effete faith, one is sadly reminded of poor Abis.h.a.g the Shunammite wasting and withering her healthful youth to cherish old worn-out David, "who knew her not," who could fill her with no new life, and who was, despite her cheris.h.i.+ng, so certainly near death. He had been a great king in his time, but now his time was past, and as it was now the maiden's spring-time, he should have left her to live her proper life.

But when all these are separated from the host, who are left to whom we may point in answer to Emerson's question, "In Christendom, where is the Christian?" Strictly speaking there has never been but one Christian-the man Christ Jesus. But I would give the t.i.tle to those who thoroughly believe the Bible after having investigated it to the best of their power, who find its doctrines completely satisfy them, and who sincerely endeavor to act up to those doctrines. How many of such are there? I have known perhaps half a dozen. Has any reader known many more? Will any one dare a.s.sert that they are more numerous in England than the equally sincere Secularists or Atheists? I scarcely think any honest and thoughtful person will.

FINISH.