VIII.
So much, then, for the how of the Salvation Army. Let us now consider if it has helped us to the why—nay, if it has not absolutely told us the why! Did we not instinctively catch at something we saw two or three times rising before us as with small but teleological significance in it? Did we not feel, as we uttered that expression with which this something inspired us, that here was the why in propria persona? Religious Socialism.
In this state of affairs—the powerlessness of the Socialists to bring home to the People the great idea of social improvement: in the misery unspeakable of the People; in the atmosphere heavy with the degradation of the People—what is it that the People has done? It has evolved a movement, no longer from without, but from within itself. It has sought for consolation for its unspeakable wretchedness in the perennial spring of Religion, of the yearning love of Jesus. It has, at the touch of the first match that came to it, blazed up into the flaming fire of Religious Socialism.
In the early part of the thirteenth century the People did the same, the People of Italy. But what a heaven lies between the man who led that movement and the man that is leading this! O my eloquent Rationalists, O my loquacious Secularists, both of you whom I esteem so much—how ready are you to talk of the degradation which that gigantic superstition and delusion, Christianity, wrought upon the People! Whenever are you tired of brandishing “starry Galileo” and scattering the scattered dust of poor old Copernicus in the face of Catholicism, making it to tremble and sneeze fearfully? Does it never occur to you that that divine Goddess Scientia, whom you worship with such noble devotion, has wrought a far deeper degradation on the people than Catholicism ever did? Have you never seen, crouching under the shadow of your railways and your telegraphs and all your improved machinery, the unspeakable wretchedness of London, of Birmingham, of Manchester, of Glasgow? And now that this People, whose lives your Goddess has made of such a sort that they will not stand too favourable a comparison with those of dogs—now that this People, in its passionate searching after some consolation, however slight, of whatever sort, seizes on this creature of superstition and delusion, this Jesus who is only a man, just like you or me, and whom you have so triumphantly proved so, and makes him the text for this flaming fire of Religious Socialism—has it never struck you, O my eloquent Rationalists, O my loquacious Secularists, what an appalling difference there is between Salvation Army banners, handkerchiefs, brass-bands, and concertinas, and the “green boughs, flags, music, and songs of gladness” that came forth from the Umbrian towns and villages to welcome Francis of Assissi? have you never felt that there is any essential difference between the perpetual Revivalist hymn of “My Jesus to know and to feel his blood flow,” and the “Canticle of the Creatures?” But, above all, have you never felt that it is more to that divine Goddess Scientia, whom you worship with such noble devotion, than to anything else that this appalling difference is due?
And you, O my Middle-class, of whom I am so humble a unit, did it ever occur to you that it is rather a foolish thing to paint a boy’s face black and then be shocked at it? If the People, its foulness and its ferocity, makes you shiver and shudder, who pray made it foul and fierce but you who govern it?—What do you say? “It was no business of yours?” That was what Cain said, but respectable Christians like you are not surely going to take that eminent casuist as your mouth-piece? If you were Atheists or Agnostics, now, worshippers of “the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest,” of course that would be another matter, but you are Christians, respectable Christians who always wear black coats on Sundays, and object to having the Library and Picture-Gallery open.
Well, there! I cannot make myself angry with you, my dear Middle-class. I admire your good qualities too much for that—too much indeed, as I often tell myself; for who shall say but that my belief in your ultimate regeneration and new birth unto a really glorious place in a true civilization be not, after all, but infatuation? Here is Carlyle, whom we all love and admire so, trying to be our benefactor by demonstrating to us our illusions on this matter, and telling us, ever since 1830, of the “steady approach of democracy with revolution (probably explosive) and a finis incomputable to man; steady decay of all morality, political, social, individual; this once noble England getting more and more ignoble, and untrue in every fibre of it, till the gold (Goethe’s composite king) will all be eaten out, and noble England will have to collapse in shapeless ruin, whether for ever or not none of us can know.” Really there are hours when I am made quite to suffer by thinking of what is going to happen to my dear Middle-class when the People rise unanimously against it,—“roaring million-headed unreflecting, darkly suffering, darkly sinning ‘Demos’” (as Carlyle says again), “come to call its old superiors to account at its maddest of tribunals.” It will, I fear, be little good for the Mr. Caffyns of those times to write letters to the Argus of those times, explaining the physiological aspects of the movement. On such an occasion in Paris, in 1793, Mr. Caffyns went up into the arms of La Guillotine for much less heinous offences than that, and who would be left capable of recording whether, in this case, they went up “with a tripping movement” (as Mr. Caffyn tells us the fanatical “Hallelujah lasses” go), or whether they marched, as perhaps Mr. Caffyn himself marches to church or chapel every Sunday morning, to the edification of all beholders? But let us not think of such an appalling spectacle. Mr. Caffyn is still with us, and the Argus is still with us, and perhaps some morning we shall have some more brilliant letters on the physiological aspects of Mr. Caffyn’s friends, the hallelujah lasses.
I cannot, I say, make myself angry with you, my dear Middle-class of England (and you might plausibly suggest that it would not matter much if I did), and how then shall I even frown at this Middle-class of Victoria, about whom (if Carlyle is right) I am more infatuate still? Does not the People breathe free in Australia? Are we not liberated here from that charming “Upper Ten Thousand” which monopolises the best of the bad education England has to offer, the Public Schools and the Universities? Is there not a hope that, now that the primary education of the People is progressing so satisfactorily, some of our young rising politicians, (or even some of the old ones), may bring home to us the fact that we want equally—nay, far more!—a secondary education for the Middle-class? so that Victoria may step forward as a competitor with the most universally civilized nation in the world, France, and teach England the unspeakable glory and advantage of (we should call it) an Upper-class, “homogeneous, intelligent, civilized, brought up in good public schools” (and not, as now, in more or less good, or more or less bad, denominational, and “private adventure” schools) “and on the first plane.”
If only this Upper-class of Victoria and of Australia generally could be brought to see it! If only it would confess its sins, many and heinous, against true civilization and be “converted” and lead a new life! Nothing, I think, strikes an Englishman more, coming out here, than the brightness and intelligence of the Victorian girls! (“Our daughters,” you know.) And how heart-rending to discover that all this brightness and intelligence is wasted on the mere accidents and incidents of every-day existence! Two-shilling novels are her idea of literature: “Some day” and “Ehren on the Rhine” her idea of music: the coloured illustrations of the illustrated papers, her idea of art. And her brother is in a worse state! The tortoise English girl is, after all, better than the Australian hare, and the young male bull-dog than the kangaroo.
Everything cries out for the education, for the civilization, of the Upper-class, the ruling class. Educate it, civilize it, let it know what Truth is and what Beauty is, and abolish the bells and the brass-bands for ever! If the Upper-class is beautiful, its beauty will react on the Lower-class. Give us public schools for the Upper-class, as there are public schools for the Lower-class. Fight tooth and nail against any attempts after an “Upper Ten Thousand,” whether it be of land or of wealth. Keep clearly before us the ideal of an Upper-class that is homogeneous. Let us have the man of business as cultured as the professional man, and the professional man as cultured as the man of means. Let us be a true Republic, offering every opportunity to the intelligence of the Lower-class to attain to the culture of the Upper. Let us not have ten thousand aristocrats, but ten hundred thousand, ever more and more, and never less and less! On the other hand, let us learn from the People the great lesson which they have to teach us—the lesson of the language of the heart. Let us learn from them the softness of pity, yea and the richness of love. Let us give them our Social Socialism and let us take their Religious; for, in the perfect marriage of light and heat, is the perfect day, the true civilization, the beauty of the truth of Nature and of God.
February, 1885.