Crying for the Light.

Vol. 2.

by J. Ewing Ritchie.

CHAPTER XI.

THE STRUGGLES OF A SOUL.

There comes to us all a time when we seek something for the heart to rely on, to anchor to, when we see the hollowness of the world, the deceitfulness of riches; how fleeting is all earthly pleasure, how great is the need of spiritual strength, how, when the storm comes, we require a shelter that can defy its utmost force. Out of the depths the heart of man ever cries out for the living G.o.d. The actress Rose felt this as much amid the glare of life and the triumphs of the stage as the monk in his cloister or the hermit in his desert cell. Like all of us, in whom the brute has not quenched the Divine light which lighteth everyone who cometh into the world, she felt, as Wordsworth writes:

'The world is too much with us, late and soon; Getting and spending we lay waste our power.

Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away a sordid boon.'

She felt, as we all must feel, that there is something more than this feverish dream we call life-something greater and grander and more enduring beyond. To her the heavens declared the glory of a G.o.d, and the firmament showed forth His handiwork. To her day unto day uttered speech, and night unto night showed forth knowledge. She had no wish to shut out Divine speech. Her labour was how best to hear it, and most quickly to obey. The history of humanity testifies to this one all-pervading desire in ages most remote, in countries the most savage.

As the great Sir James Mackintosh wrote to Dr. Parr in 1799, after the loss of his wife: 'Governed by those feelings which have in every age and region of the world actuated the human mind to seek relief, I find it in the soothing hope and consolatory reflection that a benevolent wisdom inflicts the chastis.e.m.e.nts, as well as bestows the enjoyments of human life; that superintending goodness will one day enlighten the darkness which surrounds our nature and hangs over our prospects; that this dreary and wretched life is not the whole of man; that an animal so sagacious and provident, and capable of such science and virtue, is not like the beasts that perish; that there is a dwelling-place prepared for the spirits of the just, and that the ways of G.o.d will yet be vindicated to man.' Our actress felt the same; she had, she felt, a soul to be saved, a G.o.d to be loved, a heaven to be won.

But how? Ah! that was the question. Naturally she turned to the old Church of Christendom, the Church that calls itself Catholic and universal. She went to the priest; he showed her a bleeding Saviour, and a burning, bottomless pit. She trembled as she stood in the old dim cathedral, where no light of heaven ever came, where no voice of mercy ever penetrated, where the whole air of the place was redolent of priestcraft and artifice and sham.

'You,' screams the priest, 'are all unjust, extortioners, adulterers, dead in trespa.s.ses and sins. Give me money, and I will make it right with the Almighty. Down on your marrow-bones, eat fish on a Friday, count your beads, confess to me-a man no better than yourself-pay for Ma.s.ses. In my hand is the key to eternal joy; pay my fees, and the door shall be unlocked, and you shall straightway go to paradise.'

Refuse, and he shows you an angry Jehovah, in His rage destroying a fair world which He Himself had called into being and filled with life, and sweeping millions into torments that never end. The sight is awful.

Happily, reason comes to the rescue, and the priest and the cathedral, and the Ma.s.s and the music, the incense and wax lights, disappear.

Enter the State Church, not of the Romanist, but the Protestant, where you are told you are made a child of G.o.d in baptism, where the cure of souls is sold in the market-place, and where the Bishop, or overseer of the Church, often is put into his high position because he is a relative of a lord, or is a firm supporter of the Minister of the day. There is no room for the anxious inquirer in a Church which rejoices in the Athanasian Creed, and which regards all Free-Church life as schism. With its pomp and wealth and power, with its well-paid clergy, in time past on the side of the rich against the poor, of abuse and privilege against the rights of the people and the progress of the nation, the Church has left the ma.s.ses whom it was paid to teach and save little better than heathen.

You ask, What has it to do with the religion of Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter's son? What is it but an inst.i.tution to give an air of respectability to life, to confer a prestige on the church-goer, and to lend an additional charm to a State ceremony? Is it not there emphatically that, as a rule-to which there are splendid exceptions-

'The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed;'

that is, if they need something more than a musical performance or a conventional observance?

'Do you mean to say,' said the actress to a clergyman's wife, 'that you can follow the psalms of the day, and ask G.o.d to crush your enemies and make them perish for ever?'

'Oh,' said the lady, 'I always repeat them all. You know, one does not believe exactly all one says. All you have to do is to give a general a.s.sent.'

This was what the actress could not do. Her Bible was a constant difficulty. She could believe it was the Word of G.o.d, but not all of it.

Its contradictions puzzled and perplexed her. Give it up, said her worldly friends. Be happy in Agnosticism. Leave off thinking about the hereafter and a G.o.d. Believe what you see and hear. Life is short; it has not too much of joy in it. Be happy while you may.

In her distress she consulted a clergyman of the cla.s.s more common now than they were then, who reject the term Protestant, and whose aim is the revival of what they call the Church Primitive and Apostolic.

'You must be baptized,' he said.

'But I have been.'

'Where?'

'In a chapel.'

'A mere form,' was the reply. 'Our Church teaches that man is made a member of Christ, the child of G.o.d, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven, in and by holy baptism.'

'I cannot see that.'

'Then you are shut out, unless you are baptized, from the sacrament in which the body and blood of Christ are given to every one who receives the sacramental bread and wine.'

'How do you prove that?'

'Prove it: I don't want to prove it. I fear you are in grievous error.

Your duty and that of everyone is to obey the Book of G.o.d: a book not to be dealt with upon the same rules which are applicable to the works of man.'

And then they parted; he stern and resolved, she sorrowful and sad; he intimating something about it was a pity that people could not remain satisfied with the station of life in which they were born, which did not pour balm into a wounded soul. Happily for herself, however, she could exclaim with Sir Thomas Browne, 'As for those mazy mysteries in divinity and airy subtleties in religion which have unhinged the minds of many, they have never stretched the _pia mater_ of mine.' But to gain this position was a work of time.

With an aching heart, once more the actress sought a clergyman. He was a Broad Churchman. There were no difficulties for him. In antiquated forms, in vain repet.i.tions, in decaying creeds, there were difficulties, it might be; but one was not to bother one's self about them. It was true that one had to conform to outward form, but the spirit was greater than the form. The time would come when the Church would burst its bonds, but at present all they had to do was to make the best of a bad situation. It seemed to her such church-worship was a sham. The man in the pulpit, the man in the pew, alike ignored the dead creed, and instead revelled in glib phraseology, in poetical nothings, in much-sounding rhetoric and ecclesiastical show and ritual. The chief things were the music, the millinery, and the show-the white-robed choristers, the dim religious light.

Then she thought of her old training among the Dissenters, and went to a chapel. She was staying at an old country mansion, when one Sunday morning the gentlemen were going to have the usual smoke in the stables, and examine the horses and the hounds, and to make a few bets about a forthcoming race, and there was a smile of perfect horror as she expressed her intention of going to the village meeting-house, while the ladies were inexpressibly shocked. No one went to meeting; it was low.

One could not be received in society who was known to go to meeting.

'I show myself once or twice in a year at church just to keep myself on good terms with society,' said the gentleman of the mansion.

The actress went to the chapel, as nowadays the meeting-house is termed.

It was as Gothic in style as it was possible to be. The singing was good. The preacher was a man of culture, and was dressed as much like a clergyman as was possible. The hearers were of the respectable middle cla.s.s; the working man was conspicuous by his absence. But, alas! it was known the next Sunday that the quiet lady who had attended the previous Sunday was an actress from town. She found every eye turned towards her.

There was quite a crowd to see her arrive and depart, and further attendance was impossible.

When are we to have a rational change in the land? We have had a Reformation that, incomplete as it was, freed us at any rate from the worship of the Ma.s.s. When is our religion to be free of Church creeds-of the a.s.sembly Catechism-of the iron fetters of chapel trusts-of the traditions of the elders-of the influence of the fables and traditions and superst.i.tions of the Middle Ages? When is a man to stand up in our midst and honestly utter what he believes, careless of his ecclesiastical superiors, of the frowns of deacons and elders? When are we to get rid of conventional observances and conventional forms? There is no place of worship in which it would be proper for me to enter without the chimney-pot hat, or take a brown-paper parcel in my hand. If I did so, I should be set down as little better than one of the wicked-as wicked as if I were to read the _Weekly Dispatch_ on a Sunday, or spend an hour or two in a museum or a picture-gallery. When are we to realize that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath? Why are Churches to be less tolerant than the Master, who invited all to come, and who rebuked His ignorant disciples when they would have put obstacles in their way? It is hard to think how many souls have been thus driven away. You are an actress, said the Church to her; you must give up your profession. She felt that was wrong; that on the stage she could be as good a Christian as anywhere else. It was her happiness to believe in a

'Father of all, in every age, In every clime, adored- By saint, by savage, or by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord.'

Toleration is the great need of our day. But we need more: we need less of prayer that is not worship; of hymnology that makes men utter on their tongues what is rarely, if ever, in their hearts. We want more of honesty in all our public services, to whatever denomination we belong.

We have far too much of indifference; too much of dogma; too much of silly sentimentalism; too much mysticism; too much morbid faith. Our missionaries often make converts, who are the worse, and not the better, for the use of their primitive creeds. The shapeless block of wood, hideously carved and fantastically ornamented, that I, in the sunlight, may look upon with scorn, my brother, living in the dark places of the earth, may look upon as the very highest type of his ideal G.o.d, and as such he may gaze upon it with reverence, and worship it with awe. And who am I that I may say that he is not the better for so doing? Who am I that I am to laugh as my happy sister prays, or to deprive her of a faith that 'scorns delights and lives laborious days'? Would the savage be less a savage had he not before him that type of a Divine ideal? Would he be a better man if I were to blot that out of his being? Would that make him less selfish, less cruel; more kindly in act, more ready to do good? Would he be happier in the sunshine, braver in the battle and the storm? Yes, it is more religious toleration that we need, though we have, rather against the grain, ceased to burn heretics. And that comes only as knowledge increases, and the torch of science throws its light over the dark mysteries of Nature and her laws.

The difficulty with the actress was not faith, but the form; not with the Spirit, but with its manifestation in so-called Christian churches and among Christian men; not with the Divine idea, but its human expression.

And that is the giant Difficulty of our day. It is impossible for any Church to realize its truest conceptions. It is in vain that finite man seeks to grapple with the problem of the infinite. It is told of St.

Augustine, how once upon a time he was perplexed about the doctrine of the Trinity while he was walking on the seash.o.r.e. All at once he saw a child filling a sh.e.l.l with water, and pouring it out on the sand. 'What are you doing?' said the old saint. 'Putting the sea into this hole,'

was the reply. The child's answer was not lost on the saint if it made him feel the main essence of Christianity is not a dogma, but a life.

The Church service day by day gets more ornate, more artificial, more of a show, and men and women go to it as a theatre. But, any rate, it is devotional so far as devotion is displayed in form, in the Free Churches, as they are called, or, rather, love to call themselves, for freedom is as much to be found in the Church service as in that of the chapel; the pulpit and the man who fills it play a more important part. The vanity which is in the heart of all of us more or less is gratified more than in the Church service, which has a tendency to sink the man and to exalt the function. The whole tone of the chapel service is personal. The man in the pulpit is the great 'I am.' The deacons have more or less the same spirit. Positively it is amusing: you enter before the time of commencing worship. Presently a man ascends the pulpit stairs. Is he the preacher? Oh no, he is only the man to carry up the Bible. Again the vestry door opens, and in the conquering hero comes. A deacon reverently follows. Is he going to a.s.sist? Not a bit of it. He merely shuts the pulpit-door, and sinks back into his native insignificance.

The sermon over, then comes the collection. It seems, apparently, that this is the great thing after all. I remember once going into a chapel; the minister had a weak voice, I could not hear a word of the prayer or the sermon. The only thing I did hear, and that was p.r.o.nounced audibly to be heard all over the place, was, 'The collection will now be made.'

Organization is carried to excess, till it becomes weariness and destructive of the spirit. What is wanted is something simpler. Listen to the minister as he announces from the pulpit the engagements and arrangements for the week; and as to the sermon, how often is it a pamphlet, or an essay, or a newspaper leader! One feels also prayer is too long and wearying, and that the personal element is somewhat intrusive. It is there the Church has the advantage; the chapel-goer is disgusted if the minister does not call on him, if the deacon does not shake hands with him, if he himself has not some official standing as a member of some committee or other. The poet tells us,

'G.o.d moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.'

Not so says the Evangelical; it is by means of our fussy activity and mechanical organization that His wonders are performed. 'It is,'

exclaims the Methodist, 'a penny a week, a shilling a quarter, and justification by faith.' No wonder that there are good Christians who never darken church or chapel doors. 'It conduces much to piety,' said the late Earl Russell to his wife, 'not to go to church sometimes.' And the actress was a Christian, G.o.dly, if not according to the G.o.dliness of Little Bethel. I don't know that she kept the Sabbath holy; she loved that day to get away from town and the world, and to worship Him whose temple is all s.p.a.ce and whose Sabbath all time. In the Roman Catholic or Protestant cathedral alike, she could worship, and from occasional attendances she often returned refreshed, but she could identify herself with no particular body. In the freer Churches of Christendom she would enter, and could leave all the better for the service, even if the preacher had, as preachers often do, proved unequal to her state of mind.

Here she listened to an essay logical and profound, which touched on no matter of earthly interest, and was as vain and worthless as questions as to how many angels could stand on the point of a needle, or what were the songs the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles a.s.sumed when he hid himself among women. There a raw youth thumped the pulpit, as he complacently dwelt on the doings of a G.o.d of whom his very idea was a caricature.

Then there were ingenious clerics who spoke upon the 'little horn' in Daniel, and who, while ignorant of Cheapside and the City, could unfold the Book of Revelation, and to whom the prophecies were as easy as A B C.

A good deal of what is commonly called good preaching was but to her an idle dream as preachers painfully tried to realise the past, and talked of distant lands, and worthy old patriarchs who had been dead thousands of years, and grand old prophets, who though able forces in their own times and amongst their own people, had little to do with the pa.s.sions and prejudices of the living present. Even when the preacher was morbidly sentimental, as so many of them were-and that is why the men stop away, or only attend to please their wives-or too p.r.o.ne to take for granted fables which cannot stand a moment's rational investigation, even, though they were more or less common to the mythology of every nation under the sun, poor Rose boldly faced the situation and sat it all out, though for all practical purposes she felt that she might just as well have listened to a lecture on the Digamma. One admits the force in many cases of a.s.sociated worship, the charm of the living voice, of a good delivery, of a pleasing figure; and yet a man is not to be condemned as one of the wicked because his pew is empty at times, because he reads the Bible and says his prayers alone, because he is distracted by the delivery of stale religious commonplace.

But the Free Churches, are not they the home of free thought? Are they not leaders in religious reform? Alas! they all have their dogmas and creeds to the believer in which they promise eternal life, while to the unbeliever, no matter how honest he may be, or how pure in heart and life, there is anathema maranatha. If the Church of England apes the Church of Rome, what are we to say of the conventicle, with its antiquated creed and its obsolete theology? Are they not still, in spite of their boasted freedom, under the rule of St. Augustine and the monks?

Nor can it well be otherwise. You take a young man, ignorant of the world, unversed in human nature; you shut him up in a college with others as ignorant as himself. You teach him theological conundrums rather than real life. Can such as they minister to a mind diseased? Am I to be saved by listening to such as they? Ah, no!