Satires and Profanities

OUR OBSTRUCTIONS

(1877.)

Walking along the Strand and Fleet Street and through the heart of the City, noting the churches on the way – high St. Martin’s, St. Mary-le-Strand, St. Clement Danes, the Cathedral, and the many still left wedged in by offices in the narrowest and busiest streets, or lanes of London – I am always reminded of the old wooden ships laid up “in ordinary,” as one sees them at Plymouth and Portsmouth, and elsewhere. The churches, like the ships, though not so surely, may have done good service in their time; but their day is past, never to return. When we reflect on the subject, however, we find manifold differences between the state of the churches and that of the ships. These are dismantled, unrigged and dismasted, passive white hulls ghostly on the waters, as it were the phantoms of the old swift-winged and thunder-striking eagles of battle. But the churches remain in all their pride, complete in equipment from lowest vault to topmost spire, even those which are shut silent all the week, without the least pretence of use, and in which on Sunday the droning and drowsy worship of a meagre congregation “rattles like a withered kernel in a large shell.” Again, the crews of the ships were discharged as soon as these were put out of commission, while the full crews of the churches, rectors, vicars, ushers, beadles, are kept on at full pay, and saunter through the old exercises and parades as if they were valiant effectives instead of dummies and shams. And this death-in-life of the churches is more dreary and doleful than the naked death of the ships.

These churches officially and effetely represent what is called the English Reformation, the most ignoble in Europe; which, as Macaulay remarks, merely transferred the full cup from the hand of the Pope to the hand of the King, spilling as little,as possible by the way. It is true that the State Church thus established, in spite of its illogical position, boasted great men in its early days, inspired by patriotism as against Rome, with abounding faith for the mysteries, with firm belief in the Bible, with full confidence in metaphysical divinity. But now Rome is formidable no longer, the mysteries are seen to be not only incomprehensible but self-contradictory, the Bible has been torn asunder by criticism, metaphysical divinity has been proved baseless; all the best thought of the age abandons the Church and disregards its dogmas; it has great men no more, nor ever again will have. Its general character is well hit off by Ruskin, himself a devoted Christian, in the phrase “the smooth proprieties of lowland Protestantism.”’ It may be worth while to quote a little more from him on this subject (“Modern Painters,” part v., chap. 20, “The Mountain Glory”) – “But still the large aspect of the matter is always, among Protestants, that formalism, respectability, orthodoxy, caution and propriety, live by the slow stream that encircles the lowland abbey or cathedral; and that enthusiasm, poverty, vital faith and audacity of conduct, characterise the pastor dwelling by the torrent side.” And again: “Among the fair arable lands of England and Belgium extends an orthodox Protestantism or Catholicism – prosperous, creditable and drowsy; but it is among the purple moors of the highland border, the ravines of Mount Genévre, and the crags of the Tyrol, that we shall find the simplest evangelical faith and the purest Romanist practice.” In other words, in religion the highlander is enthusiastic and superstitious, the low-lander lukewarm and worldly. Thus our fat English Church still keeps to the text, “By grace ye are saved;” but its grace now is chiefly of deportment. It boasts that its clergy are gentlemen; and they may be, as a rule, in society, though we unbelievers seldom find them so in controversy; and it seems to be persuaded that we should continue to allow it several million pounds a year to keep up this supply of gentlemen, when every profession, every trade shows gentlemen quite as good, with the advantages of more intellect, more experience of life, more courage and more sincerity.

There is indeed a section of the clergy full of zeal – to restore the priesthood. How some of these gentlemen compound with their consciences in taking English pay and position for doing Romish work, is a standing puzzle to honest laymen untrained in casuistry. But as they do rank themselves among the parsons of our State Church, their ecclesiastical pretensions are even more ludicrous than they are outrageously arrogant. For ever preaching up the authority and discipline of the Church, they are the first to rebel against it when it does not suit their whims. Thus Mr. Tooth, of Hatcham, not only defies an Act of Parliament, but also defies his bishop, and has plenty of abettors in doing both. I read in the Daily News: “Two of Mr. Tooth’s supporters, whose letters we have published, insist that the Public Worship Regulation Act is not law and is not binding on Churchmen, because it has never received the sanction of Convocation” – the said Convocation having about as much influence and authority in the country as a tavern discussion society.

Again: “One writer talks of the Church having been declared to be free from all civil jurisdiction in spiritual affairs by many successive Sovereigns. We did not know that our Sovereigns had a right to make laws by Royal declarations, [and] not merely for their own time, but for all time. According to these principles of constitutional government we have three rival law-making powers in England – the Parliament, with the Sovereign for one; the Declaration of the Sovereign for another; and Convocation for a third. Of these Parliament would seem to be the weakest, for it cannot negative the proceedings of the other two; but either of these two can declare invalid what it has done.” Can anything be more absurd? Here is a State Church established by Parliament with the sanction of the monarch, endowed with national endowments, liable to be disestablished and disendowed by Parliament with the sanction of the monarch; yet many of its ministers claim to be free from the authority of the State and Parliament to which it owes its existence and subsistence! If they really desire such freedom, they can easily obtain it. They have but to sever their adulterous connexion with the State, restoring to the nation the endowments they have so long misused, and they will then be emancipated from all control, at liberty to teach what doctrines and practise what ritual they please. But these super-spiritual clergy keep a desperate clutch on the revenues. If anything could be more absurd than the defiance of Parliament, it would be the defiance of their ecclesiastical superiors by these champions of absolute ecclesiastical subordination. His bishop inhibits Mr. Tooth, Mr. Tooth coolly disregards the inhibition, and one who sympathises with him calmly writes to the Daily News? “Considering how bishops have been appointed since the Reformation, it is hard to see why Mr. Tooth and your correspondents should even pretend to obey them.” This is frightful, and may well make even the hardened sceptic shudder. What! a genuine successor of the Apostles (else the English Church has no genuine priesthood) chosen by the Holy Ghost itself (in obedience to the recommendation of the King or Queen) against his own humble wish (for he declared Nolo Episcopari); and English Churchmen need not even pretend to obey him! Such is the subordination of those who maintain the extreme authority of the Church!

Jesus has told us that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and the house of our State Church is divided against itself most savagely. But as the factions, while opposed to each other in all else, thoroughly agree in adhering to their endowments and privileges, and with this object shore up and buttress the edifice whose fall would be otherwise imminent, it behoves us to exert ourselves in bringing to the ground as speedily as possible the unsure and dangerous building, and diverting the immense funds misemployed in sustaining its uselessness to the real edification of the people. For as materially the Church of St. Mary is planted silent, void and death-like in the midst of the living currents of the Strand, obstructing and breaking the broad stream into two narrow arms, so intellectually and morally, in whatever channel our active life may flow, we find a similar obstacle, and in all directions we meet one cry – “The Church stops the way.”

But when we have removed the obstacle, when we have blasted it as the Americans recently blasted that other rock of Hell-gate, clearing the entrance to New York’s noble harbor, we shall find another and a more inveterate obstacle fronting us – a Book. A book seems but a slight thing to bar the way; but multiplied by millions and millions, and desperately defended as divine and infallible by legions of zealots, it constitutes a far more formidable barricade than the stoutest church of stone. The various sects of Nonconformists, who all join with us in attacking the State Church, will all join the Churchmen to maintain against us their common fetish, the Bible. Regarding this as a human production, there is much of it which we highly esteem; but regarded as the word of God, it works far more evil than good, and the evil is ever increasing while the good decreases; for the revelations of science grow ever more clear, and men must more and more strain their consciences and sophisticate their intellects in order to believe that they believe in the super-human character of the book which reason and science show to be so thoroughly human. We are told by men whom we respect that, considered historically, Christianity and the other great religions merit better treatment than we are wont to accord them. Certainly they merit better treatment than is accorded them by those who crudely brand them all alike, in all their doctrines and legends and ritual, as the mere inventions of priestcraft fostered by kingcraft and statecraft. But we are far from committing ourselves to such an impeachment, not less monstrous than the most monstrous superstition it assails. We freely recognise the naturalness of these religions in the past, their genuine consonance with the communities wherein they arose and prevailed; the sincerity and truth and nobleness formulated, however erroneously, in many of their dogmas, embodied, however imperfectly, in many of their myths; but we see that their day is gone by; we cannot allow the past, which was the real childhood and youth of mankind, to dominate the present, which is its riper age; we discern that the errors of the dogmas and the fiction of the myths are now so obvious and incontestable that to revere them as faultless and authentic is a gross self-delusion. When we say – “The tree is dead; cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?” we do not imply that it never bore good fruit. On the other hand, when we admit that it once bore good fruit, we do not imply that it is not now dead and an encumbrance to the ground. It is precisely because we do consider these old faiths historically, because we fully recognise their early efficiency and vigor, that we can thoroughly realise their decrepitude and dissolution. And taking western Christianity in particular, both the Roman embodied in Mary and the Protestant embodied in Jesus, we affirm that it has no longer real life, but only the “ghastly affectation of life.” Reason and science have disembowelled it, have removed its heart and its brain. It is ready for the historical embalmer. Its great part in the drama of human life is played out; it is still kept above ground, its life still asserted, because large numbers would lose much by the frank acknowledgement of its decease, and other large numbers who cannot bring themselves to face the fact of its death, persist in hoping against hope that the lifelessness is hut a swoon or a cataleptic fit, from which it will yet awaken with renewed strength. We, however, dare to see what we cannot help seeing, we venture to avow the fact which is beyond fair dispute. Doubtless the living man did brave work in his time; but shall we therefore bow down worshipping his mummy, and keep it from its sepulchre, and continue to allot immense revenues to his army of servitors who have now no service to render? No; the sooner we bury the corpse and send the servitors about their business the better for us and for them.

Thus far I think all Secularists will go with me. But for many, perhaps the majority of us, who are not only Secularists, but Republicans, there is a third great obstacle, the Throne, which is now little else than a costly sham. Yet, sham as it is, it is still strong to obstruct, being encompassed and fortified by the power of the nobles, the power of the clergy, the power of the wealthy, the degraded and degrading snobbishness of the middle and lower middle classes. The artisans and laborers generally, as we know, care nothing for it or are distinctly hostile. We have had some great monarchs, though the greatest we ever had was crown-less, and we can yield to monarchy in the past something of such historical respect as we yield to Christianity. But who that is not a very serf by nature can feel any genuine respect for monarchy as we have it in these days? when the main duty of the King or Queen is to countersign the decrees of Parliament; a duty which the Lord Chancellor or the Speaker could perform just as well and with more promptitude. One need not dwell on the character of the reigning house, which, brought ignobly to the throne, has been consistently ignoble from the first until the accession of her present Most Gracious Majesty. A much nobler royal family would be just as superfluous now as the present we have outgrown the need of a paternal or guardian king. Nor is the question of principle really affected by the fact that this ignoble family, like other species of the lower animals, is excessively prolific, and that every prince or princess born of it, costs us several thousands a year. We should not grudge the money for service rendered; the gravamen of our impeachment is that no monarch now can render service of value. The effective energy of our monarchy in these days is well symbolised in the procedure at the opening of Parliament – royal carriages without royal occupants; royal life-guards with no royal life to guard; a royal robe spread on a vacant throne; the Lord Chancellor reading a royal speech composed by responsible ministers. Her Majesty during fourteen long years has been doing her best to teach us how well we can get on without a monarch, and how stupid we are therefore to keep one at a great expense. We may find something venerable in the throne when put aside and conserved simply as a curious relic of the past; we find it merely absurd while retained for useless use, a pretentious seat with no one to sit in it. As Théophile says: “Si rien nest plus beau que l’antique, est plus laid que le suranné.”

MR. KINGSLEY’S CONVERTITES

(1865.)

Readers can scarcely have forgotten the amusing “turn-up” between the Rev. Mr. Kingsley and the Rev. Dr. Newman, in which the latter got the former “into Chancery,” and punished him so pitilessly. While reading the “Apologia pro Vitâ Sua,” one naturally reflected now and then upon the opinions, as stated in the books, of Dr. Newman’s antagonist; and the fight grew more and more comically exquisite as one gradually learnt the thorough agreement at bottom of the two who were struggling so fiercely at top. When I speak of Mr. Kingsley’s books, I mean his novels and romances, all of which (except the one not yet completely published) I have duly read and enjoyed. As for certain collections of sermons, a dialogue for loose thinkers, a jeu d’esprit on the Pentateuch, together with various trifles by way of lectures on history and philosophy, I confess that none of these have I ever even attempted to peruse. To palliate this sin of omission I can only urge the high probability that a man of Mr. Kingsley’s character must find much more vigorous and ample expression in a free and easy novel than in any didactic or argumentative treatise, with its wearisome requirements of consecutiveness and cramping limitations of logic. I now ask the leaders of the National Reformer to accompany me in a general review of his romances, because I think that such a review will develop two or three facts seldom noticed in the critiques – whether friendly or adverse – that abound upon his writings. Especially, I think that it will be found that the popular phrases, “Muscular Christianity” and “Broad Church,” by no means sufficiently characterise his religious tendency; and that, with all the superficial unlikeness, almost amounting to perfect contrast between him and Dr. Newman, the opponents as religious men are fundamentally alike in this – that their respective creeds satisfy, or appear to satisfy, in the same manner the same peculiarly intense want in their several natures.

In every one of Mr. Kingsley’s romances there is a chief personage, more or less naturally good but decidedly godless at the beginning, god-fearing and saintly at the end. Some of the romances have each two or three of these convertites, the throes of whose regeneration are the principal “motives” of the most striking scenes, and may be thus fairly said to furnish the plot and passion of the book. My present object is not aesthetic, and I therefore need not argue the question whether narratives thus constructed can have any claim to rank as genuine works of art. With the melancholy Jaques in “As You Like It,” I believe:

Out of these Convertites

There is much matter to be heard and learned —

so will stay “to see no pastime, I,” but run through the stories of these conversions, touching only the most salient points.

Alton Locke, when adolescent, is a very poor tailor, a poet whose verses are far more vigorous than his character, a chartist, a sceptic. He madly falls in love with a Dean’s daughter, and through the patronage of the Dean himself, gets a volume of poems published. As the fiercest of the rhymes have been soothed out of this volume by the decorous Dean, Radical friends forward to young Locke a pair of plush-breeches – fitting testimonial to the flunkeyism conspicuous in the omissions. He is imprisoned for inciting a rustic mob to a Chartist outbreak, confounds the prison chaplain by sporting the latest novelties in heresy direct from Germany, shares when released in the delirium of the memorable tenth of April, finds that the lady of his love is to be married to his cousin, and consummates the long orgy of excitement with a desperate fever. The Dean had directed his attention to the study of natural history; hence the frenzy of the fever takes a zoological turn, and he undergoes therein marvellous transmigrations through a series of antediluvian monsters; awaking at last to sane consciousness (sane comparatively, he is never quite in his right senses, poor fellow) to find himself nursed by a young widow, the dean’s elder daughter, who soothes him with ladings from Tennyson. She has very recently lost her husband, who was merely a brilliant nobleman, and she herself a Convertite; in a few days the modest Alton is hinting at a declaration to her. She will not marry him, nor indeed any other man, but she sends him out to South America on a special poetical mission. On the voyage thither he dies, a believer, regenerate, leaving as legacy to his friends and the world at large a war-song of the Church (ferociously) Militant. What has converted him? – the plush breeches? the crash of the tenth of April? the loss of his first lady love? the reading of the “Lotus-eaters?” the delirious Fugue of Fossils? Some or all of these it must be supposed; for weak though he was, he surely could not have been seriously influenced by the comical caricatures of Socratic dialectics, which the Dean sometimes played with him in lieu of chess or backgammon.

Next comes Yeast, whose great Convertite is Lancelot Smith. He is introduced to us as fresh from Cambridge, a stalwart gallant fellow of great abilities, rather debauched, but discontented with his debauchery, and utterly without fixed creed. An accident confines him long to the house of the Squire whom he is visiting. During his convalescence he becomes a lover of one of the Squire’s daughters – a young lady whose vernacular name is Argemone, and who is herself rapidly growing a perfect saint. He also becomes the friend of a gamekeeper who reads Carlyle, writes poetry, and has experienced special religious illumination. Lancelot then loses all his fortune by the failure of his uncle’s bank, and loses his sweetheart by the sulphuretted-hydrogen fever; turns street-porter for the nonce to earn a bit of bread, and finally goes off one knows not whither; an excellent fervid Christian, after playing through several bewildering pages a wild burlesque of the Platonic dialogue with a personage so mysterious that I prefer not to attempt a description of him. What has converted Lancelot? The loss of his money and the death of his sweetheart seem to have been the main influences. For although he was stunned with calamity, I will not deem him so stupefied as to think that he was made a believer by the unintelligible dialogue.

Then follows Hypatia. And here I may remark that I am unable to concur in what seems the general opinion – namely, that Mr. Kingsley intended his heroine to represent the character of the Hypatia of history. Although living in the same city at the same period, both lecturing on philosophy, and both ultimately murdered by Christian mobs; it appears to me that, as women, the two Hypatias differed so much from each other that no one having heard them talk for five minutes could have the slightest doubt as to which was which. History and Mr. Kingsley have each composed an acrostic on this lovely name, and with the same bouts rimes; but the body (and the spirit) of the one poem is extremely unlike the body (and the spirit) of the other. Mr. Kingsley proffers us an ancient cup and a flask, Greek-lettered “Wine of Cyprus”; we commence to drink solemnly and devoutly, but – O most miserable mockery! it is indubitable brandy and water. Well may he call this an old foe with a new face! The Kingsley Hypatia is not altogether, but is very nearly a Convertite; so nearly that he would certainly have made her altogether one, had not the bouts rime’s been too well known for alteration. Her best pupil (of whom more anon) abandons her, she begins to love a beautiful young Greek monk, and yet (that philosophy may have the help of worldly power in its mortal duel with Christianity) consents to marry the Prefect of Alexandria, whom she very justly despises. While miserable with the consciousness of how low she is stooping to conquer, she is fascinated or mesmerised by an old Jewish hag, and crouches in a sort of fetish worship to what she thinks a statue of Apollo, said statue being represented by the handsome monk. In the agony of shame which follows her discovery of this cheat she performs a short parody of the Socratic dialogue in concert with the pupil who had left her and who has returned a Christian, and at last, when going to the lecture hall (where murder shall prevent her from ever lecturing more) she confesses to a certain longing for Christianity. Why? She was wretched, humiliated, defeated, weary; she had staked all on the red, and had lost – what more natural than a yearning to try the black? And this character is published and generally received for the Hypatia of history!

But the great Convertite of this romance is the pupil already mentioned, the renegade Jew, Raphael Ben Ezra. In the prime of life, wealthy, the favorite comrade of the Prefect, superlatively gifted with that subtle Hebrew clearness, which, swayed by a strong will and intense self-love, can scarcely be distinguished from genius, we find him in the opening chapters already as used up as the old King Solomon of Ecclesiastes, having exhausted all excitements of wine, women, and philosophy, all voluptuousness, physical and intellectual. Desperate with ennui, he abandons Hypatia, casts away his wealth (how many Jews do the same!), barters clothes with a beggar, and sets out to wander the world with an amiable British bull-bitch (afterwards the happy mother of nine sweet infants) for his sole guide, philosopher and friend. The chapter wherein his Pyrrhonism disported itself “on the floor of the bottomless” seems to have been, in great measure, borrowed from the talk of one Babbalanja in Herman Melville’s “Mardi;” perhaps, however, both were borrowed direct from Jean Paul’s gigantic grotesque, “Titan.” Becoming involved in the meshes of the great war in Africa – that revolt of Heraclian against Honorius which Gibbon treats with such contemptuous brevity in his thirty-first chapter – he is nearly killed himself, saves an old officer from death and soon falls in love with this officer’s daughter. He reads about this time certain epistles, and infers therefrom that Saul of Tarsus was one of the finest gentlemen that ever lived. Also, while the guest of good Bishop Synesius, he hears Saint Augustine preach, and engages with him in long discussions, fortunately unreported. Returning to Alexandria, he almost converts Hypatia, sees her murdered, sharpens his tongue on Cyril the primate, and leaves again to marry his saintly sweetheart, and end his lire as quite a model Christian. What has converted him? His love for the young Christian? the gentlemanly character of Paul’s Epistles? the bull-bitch with her ninefold litter, like Shakespere’s nightmare? the murder of Hypatia by the Christians, who rent, and tore and shred her living body to fragments? Or was it mere satiety and weariness of thinking – the weariness which leads so many who thought freely when young to find a resting-place in the bosom of the Church as they get old?

In “Westward, Ho!” the great conversion is of Ayacanorah. But as this is a conversion not merely religious but also moral, social and intellectual, a conversion from barbarism to civilisation, it does not come fairly into the class I am describing. Two incidents in the romance, however, must not be passed over. The first occurs in the Lotus-eating chapter. Will Para-combe tired, as well he may be, of wandering about savage America in search of El Dorado, blindly refuses to see that it is his chief end as man to continue wandering until El Dorado is found and the captain has glutted his heart with vengeance on the Spaniards; and Will gives such excellent reasons for staying in the beautiful spot where he is, with the beautiful and affectionate native woman whom he is willing and anxious to marry in the most legal mode attainable, that Captain Amyas Leigh, who has been urging him onward with true Kingsleyan diffidence and mildness, finds himself dumbfounded. But valuable logical assistance is at hand. A jaguar like a bar of iron plunges on poor Will, and he and his arguments are settled on the spot. Amyas thanks God for this special interposition of providence in his favor. And the man who wrote the adventure of Amyas can sneer at the faith of a Catholic like Dr. Newman! The other incident is the conversion of Amyas from his diabolical hatred of the Spaniards in general, and of the Don with whom Rose had eloped in particular. A lightning-flash strikes him blind, and he thereupon repents him of his hatred and desire of revenge, and, moreover, has a vision of the Don drowned with his sunken galleon, who assures him that his hatred was without just cause. These are the true Kingsleyan dialectics; these, and not those burlesques of what Plato wrote and Socrates spoke, and Mr. Kingsley is no more able to conduct than I am to lead on the violin like Herr Joachim, a great concerted composition of Beethoven. Let a jaguar loose into your opponent’s syllogistic premises, blind him with a lightning-flash that he may see the truth and have clear vision of the right way. Yet Mr. Kingsley has undoubtedly read about a tower in Siloam that fell, and what Joshua Bar-Joseph said of the people killed by this accident.

Lastly, we have “Two Years Ago,” whose great Convertite is Tom Thumal. Tom is one of the jolliest of characters, true as steel, tough as oak, quick and deft for all emergencies, a compact mass of common sense, and courage, and energy, living in the most godless state, He is not a heathen – he is more godless yet; for a heathen has something of wood or stone which serves him for a deity. In the Saga of Saint Olaf (in that great and glorious work “The Heims-kringla”) we read how this pious and terrible king going to his last battle was asked by two brothers, who were freebooters, for permission to fight in his ranks. But although these and their followers were “tall” men, and the king was in sore need of recruits, he would not accept their services unless they believed in Christ. Whereupon they answered that they saw no special need of the help of the “White Christ”; that they had been hitherto wont to believe in themselves and their own luck, and with this belief had managed to pull through very well, and thought they could do the same for the future. Ultimately, these excellent fellows did consent to be baptised and called Christians – not from any religious motive, alas! but only because of a “shtrong wakeness” they had for taking part in a set battle. Tom Thurnal has just as much, and as little, religion as these had. After wandering all over the world in all sorts of capacities, he comes back to be shipwrecked on the Cornish coast, and is the only one on board saved. While he is being dragged up the beach senseless, his belt of money – the fruit of a season at the Australian diggings – disappears; and he resolves to settle in the village, in order to discover it or the thief. Here he falls in love with the village schoolmistress, a sweet mystical devotee, whom he rather suspects of stealing his gold, and whom he defends from one ruffian in order to grossly insult her himself. In the village Tom is doctor, and, when the cholera comes, he is assisted in bringing the village through it by this saintly schoolmistress, and a pious Major, and a fervid High Church parson. At the breaking out of the Crimean War, Tom gets charged with a secret mission to the East. Somewhere in Turkey, in Asia, an imbecile Sheikh or Pasha whom he is endeavoring to serve, mistakes his manœuvres, and keeps him in captivity for a year or two. From this imprisonment he comes home crushed and abject, “afraid in passing a house that it would fall and smother him,” etc., marries his sweetheart and ends a model Christian. What has converted him? Simply, it appears, the year or two of solitary confinement – which took all the pith and manhood out of him. This last case, the work of Mr. Kingsley in the full maturity of his powers, is the most flagrant of all.