BOOK III: RELIGION FOR NEGROES
[207] Mr. Froude's passing on from matters secular to matters spiritual and sacred was a transition to be expected in the course of the grave and complicated discussion which he had volunteered to initiate. It was, therefore, not without curiosity that his views in the direction above indicated were sought for and earnestly scrutinized by us. But worse than in his treatment of purely mundane subjects, his attitude here is marked by a nonchalant levity which excites our wonder that even he should have touched upon the spiritual side of his thesis at all. The idea of the dove sent forth from the ark fluttering over the heaving swells of the deluge, in vain endeavour to secure a rest for the soles of its feet, represents not inaptly the unfortunate predicament of his spirit with regard to a solid [208] faith on which to repose amid the surges of doubt by which it is so evidently beset. Yet although this is his obvious plight with regard to a satisfying belief, he nevertheless undertakes, with characteristic confidence, to suggest a creed for the moralization of West Indian Negroes. His language is:—
"A religion, at any rate, which will keep the West Indian blacks from falling back into devil-worship is still to seek. In spite of the priests, child-murder and cannibalism have re-appeared in Hayti, but without them things might have been much worse than they are, and the preservation of white authority and influence in any form at all may be better than none."
We discern in the foregoing citation the exercise of a charity that is unquestionably born of fetish-worship, which, whether it be obeah generally, or restricted to a mere human skin, can be so powerful an agent in the formation and retention of beliefs. Hence we see that our philosopher relies here, in the domain of morals and spiritual ethics, on a white skin as implicitly as he does on its sovereign potency in secular politics. The curiousness of the matter lies mainly in its application to natives [209] of Hayti, of all people in the world. As a matter of fact we have had our author declaring as follows, in climax to his oft-repeated predictions about West Indian Negroes degenerating into the condition of their fellow-Negroes in the "Black Republic" (p. 285):—
"Were it worth while, one might draw a picture of an English governor, with a black parliament and a black ministry, recommending, by advice of his constitutional ministers, some measure like the Haytian Land Law."
Now, as the West Indies degenerating into so many white-folk-detesting Haytis, under our prophet's dreaded supremacy of the Blacks, is the burden of his book; and as the Land Law in question distinctly forbids the owning by any white person of even one inch of the soil of the Republic, it might, but for the above explanation, have seemed unaccountable, in view of the implacable distrust, not to say hatred, which this stern prohibition so clearly discloses, that our author should, nevertheless, rely on the efficacy of white authority and influence over Haytians.
In continuation of his religious suggestions, he goes on to descant upon slavery in the [210] fashion which we have elsewhere noticed, but it may still be proper to add a word or two here regarding this particular disquisition of his. This we are happy in being able to do under the guidance of an anterior and more reliable exponent of ecclesiastical as well as secular obedience on the part of all free and enlightened men in the present epoch of the world's history:—
"Dogma and Descent, potential twin
Which erst could rein submissive millions in,
Are now spent forces on the eddying surge
Of Thought enfranchised. Agencies emerge
Unhampered by the incubus of dread
Which cramped men's hearts and clogged their onward tread.
Dynasty, Prescription! spectral in these days
When Science points to Thought its surest ways,
And men who scorn obedience when not free
Demand the logic of Authority!
The day of manhood to the world is here,
And ancient homage waxes faint and drear.
. . . . . .
Vision of rapture! See Salvation's plan
'Tis serving God through ceaseless toil for man!"
The lines above quoted are by a West Indian Negro, and explain in very concise form the attitude of the educated African mind [211] with reference to the matters they deal with. Mr. Froude is free to perceive that no special religion patched up from obsolete creeds could be acceptable to those with whose sentiments the thoughts of the writer just quoted are in true racial unison. It is preposterous to expect that the same superstition regarding skin ascendency, which is now so markedly played out in our Colonies in temporal matters, could have any weight whatsoever in matters so momentous as morals and religion. But granting even the possibility of any code of worldly ethics or of religion being acceptable on the dermal score so strenuously insisted on by him, it is to be feared that, through sheer respect for the fitness of things, the intelligent Negro in search of guidance in faith and morals would fail to recognize in our author a guide, philosopher, and friend, to be followed without the most painful misgivings. The Catholic and the Dissenting Churches which have done so much for the temporal and spiritual advancement of the Negro, in spite of hindrance and active persecution wherever these were possible, are, so far as is visible, maintaining their hold on the adhesion of those who belong to them.
[212] And it cannot be pretended that, among enlightened Africans as compared with other enlightened people, there have been more grievous failings off from the scriptural standard of deportment. Possible it certainly is that considerations akin to, or even identical with, those relied upon by Mr. Froude might, on the first reception of Christianity in their exile, have operated effectually upon the minds of the children of Africa. At that time the evangelizers whose converts they so readily became possessed the recommendation of belonging to the dominant caste. Therefore, with the humility proper to their forlorn condition, the poor bondsmen requited with intense gratitude such beneficent interest on their behalf, as a condescension to which people in their hapless situation could have had no right. But for many long years, the distinction whether of temporal or of spiritual superiority has ceased to be the monopoly of any particular class. The master and employer has for far more than a century and a half been often represented in the West Indies by some born African or his descendant; and so also has the teacher and preacher. It is not too much to say that [213] the behaviour of the liberated slaves throughout the British Antilles, as well as the deportment of the manumitted four million slaves of the Southern United States later on, bore glorious testimony to the humanizing effects which the religion of charity, clutched at and grasped in fragments, and understood with childlike incompleteness, had produced within those suffering bosoms.
Nothing has occurred to call for a remodelling of the ordinary moral and spiritual machinery for the special behoof of Negroes. Religion, as understood by the best of men, is purely a matter of feeling and action between man and man—the doing unto others as we would they should do unto us; and any creed or any doctrine which directly or indirectly subverts or even weakens this basis is in itself a danger to the highest welfare of mankind. The simple conventional faith in God, in Jesus, and in a future state, however modified nowadays, has still a vitality which can restrain and ennoble its votaries, provided it be inculcated and received in a befitting spirit. Our critic, in the plenitude of his familiarity with such matters, confidently asks:—
[214] "Who is now made wretched by the fear of hell?"
Possibly the belief in the material hell, the decadence of which he here triumphantly assumes to be so general, may have considerably diminished; but experience has shown that, with the advance of refinement, there is a concurrent growth in the intensity of moral sensibility, whereby the waning terrors of a future material hell are more than replaced by the agonies of a conscience self-convicted of wilful violation of the right. The same simple faith has, in its practical results, been rich in the records of the humble whom it has exalted; of the poor to whom it has been better than wealth; of the rich whose stewardship of worldly prosperity it has sanctified; of the timid whom it has rendered bold; and of the valiant whom it has raised to a divine heroism—in fine, of miracles of transformation that have impelled to higher and nobler tendencies and uses the powers and gifts inherited or acquired by man in his natural state. They who possess this faith, and cherish it as a priceless possession, may calmly oppose to the philosophic reasoning against the existence of [215] a Deity and the rationalness of entreating Him in prayer, the simple and sufficient declaration, "I believe." Normal-minded men, sensible of the limitations of human faculties, never aspire to be wise beyond what is revealed. Whatever might exist beyond the grave is, so far as man and man in their mutual relations are concerned, not a subject that discussion can affect or speculation unravel. To believers it cannot matter whether the Sermon on the Mount embodies or does not embody the quality of ethics that the esoteric votaries of Mr. Froude's "new creed" do accept or even can tolerate. Under the old creed man's sense of duty kindled in sympathy towards his brother, urging him to achieve by self-sacrifice every possibility of beneficence; hence the old creed insured an inward joy as well as "the peace which passeth all understanding." There can be no room for desiring left, when receptiveness of blessings overflows; and it is the worthiest direction of human energy to secure for others that fulness of fruition. Is not Duty the first, the highest item of moral consciousness; and is not promoting, according to our best ability, the welfare of our fellow creatures, the first and [216] most urgent call of human duty? Can the urgency of such responsibility ever cease but with the capacity, on our own or on our brother's part, to do or be done by respectively? Contemptuously ignoring his share of this solemn responsibility—solemn, whether regarded from a religious or a purely secular point of view—to observe at least the negative obligation never to wantonly do or even devise any harm to his fellows, or indeed any sentient creature, our new apostle affords, in his light-hearted reversal of the prescriptive methods of civilized ethics, a woful foretaste of the moral results of the "new, not as yet crystallized" belief, whose trusted instruments of spiritual investigation are the telescope and mental analysis, in order to satisfy the carpings of those who so impress the world with their superhuman strong-mindedness.
The following is a profound reflection presenting, doubtless, quite a new revelation to an unsophisticated world, which had so long submitted in reverential tameness to the self-evident impossibility of exploring the Infinite:—
"The tendency of popular thought is against [217] the supernatural in any shape. Far into space as the telescope can search, deep as analysis can penetrate into mind and consciousness or the forces which govern natural things, popular thought finds only uniformity and connection of cause and effect; no sign anywhere of a personal will which is influenced by prayer or moral motives."
How much to be pitied are the gifted esoterics who, in such a quest, vainly point their telescopes into the star-thronged firmament, and plunge their reasoning powers into the abyss of consciousness and such-like mysteries! The commonplace intellect of the author of "Night Thoughts" was, if we may so speak, awed into an adoring rapture which forced from him the exclamation (may believers hail it as a dogma!)—
"An undevout astronomer is mad!"
Most probably it was in weak submission to some such sentiment as this that Isaac Newton nowhere in his writings suggests even the ghost of a doubt of there being a Great Architect of the Universe as the outcome of his telescopic explorations into the illimitable heavens.
[218] It is quite possible, too, that he was, "on insufficient grounds," perhaps, perfectly satisfied, as a host of other intellectual mediocrities like himself have been, and even up to now rather provokingly continue to be, with the very "uniformity and connection of cause and effect" as visible evidence of there being not only "a personal will," but a creative and controlling Power as well. In this connection comes to mind a certain old Book which, whatever damage Semitic Scholarship and Modern Criticism may succeed in inflicting on its contents, will always retain for the spiritual guidance of the world enough and to spare of divine suggestions. With the prescience which has been the heritage of the inspired in all ages, one of the writers in that Book, whom we shall now quote, foresaw, no doubt, the deplorable industry of Mr. Froude and his protégé "popular thought," whose mouth-piece he has so characteristically constituted himself, and asks in a tone wherein solemn warning blends with inquiry: "Canst thou by searching find out God; canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection!" The rational among the most loftily endowed of mankind have grasped [219] the sublime significance of this query, acquiescing reverently in its scarcely veiled intimation of man's impotence in presence of the task to which it refers.
But though Mr. Froude's spiritual plight be such as we have just allowed him to state it, with regard to an object of faith and a motive of worship, yet let us hear him, in his anxiety to furbish up a special Negro creed, setting forth the motive for being in a hurry to anticipate the "crystallization" of his new belief:—
"The new creed, however, not having crystallized as yet into a shape which can be openly professed, and as without any creed at all the flesh and the devil might become too powerful, we maintain the old names, as we maintain the monarchy."
The allusion to the monarchy seems not a very obvious one, as it parallels the definitive rejection of a spiritual creed with the theoretical change of ancient notions regarding a concrete fact. At any rate we have it that his special religion, when concocted and disseminated, will have the effect of preventing the flesh and the devil from having too much power over Negroes. The objection to the [220] devil's sway seems to us to come with queer grace from one who owes his celebrity chiefly to the production of works teeming with that peculiar usage of language of which the Enemy of Souls is credited with the special fatherhood.
No, sir, in the name of the Being regarding whose existence you and your alleged "popular thought" are so painfully in doubt, we protest against your right, or that of any other created worm, to formulate for the special behoof of Negroes any sort of artificial creed unbelieved in by yourself, having the function and effect of detective "shadowings" of their souls. Away with your criminal suggestion of toleration of the hideous orgies of heathenism in Hayti for the benefit of our future morals in the West Indies, when the political supremacy which you predict and dread and deprecate shall have become an accomplished fact. Were any special standard of spiritual excellence required, our race has, in Josiah Henson and Sojourner Truth, sufficing models for our men and our women respectively. Their ideal of Christian life, which we take to be the true one, is not to be judged of with direct reference to the Deity whom we cannot [221] see, interrogate, or comprehend, but to its practical bearing in and on man, whom we can see and have cognizance of, not only with our physical senses, but by the intimations of the divinity which abides within us.* We can see, feel, and appreciate the virtue of a fellow-mortal who consecrates himself to the Divine idea through untiring exertion for the bettering of the condition of the world around him, whose agony he makes it his duty, only to satisfy his burning desire, to mitigate. The fact in its ghastly reality lies before us that the majority of mankind labour and are being crushed under the tremendous trinity of Ignorance, Vice, and Poverty.
It is mainly in the succouring of those who thus suffer that the vitality of the old creed is manifested in the person of its professors. Under this aspect we behold it moulding men, of all nations, countries, and tongues, whose virtues have challenged and should command on its behalf the unquestioning faith and adhesion of every rational observer. "Evidences of Christianity," "Controversies," "Exegetical Commentaries," have all proved [222] more or less futile—as perhaps they ought—with the Science and Modern Criticism which perverts religion into a matter of dialectics. But there is a hope for mankind in the fact that Science itself shall have ultimately to admit the limitations of human inquiry into the details of the Infinite. Meanwhile it requires no technical proficiency to recognize the criminality of those who waste their brief threescore and ten years in abstract speculations, while the tangible, visible, and hideous soul-destroying trinity of Vice, Ignorance, and Poverty, above mentioned, are desolating the world in their very sight. There are possessors of personal virtue, enlightenment, and wealth, who dare stand neutral with regard to these dire exigencies among their fellows. And yet they are the logical helpers, as holders of the special antidote to each of those banes! Infinitely more deserving of execration are such folk than the callous owner of some specific, who allows a suffering neighbour to perish for want of it.
We who believe in the ultimate development of the Christian notion of duty towards God, as manifested in untiring beneficence to man, cling to this faith—starting from the [223] beginning of the New Testament dispensation—because Saul of Tarsus, transformed into Paul the Apostle through his whole-souled acceptance of this very creed with its practical responsibilities, has, in his ardent, indefatigable labours for the enlightenment and elevation of his fellows, left us a lesson which is an enduring inspiration; because Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, benefited, in a manner which has borne, and ever will bear, priceless fruit, enormous sections of the human family, after his definite submission to the benign yoke of the same old creed; because Vincent de Paul has, through the identical inspiration, endowed the world with his everlasting legacy of organized beneficence; because it impelled Francis Xavier with yearning heart and eager footsteps through thousands of miles of peril, to proclaim to the darkling millions of India what he had experienced to be tidings of great joy to himself; because Matthew Hale, a lawyer, and of first prominence in a pursuit which materializes the mind and nips its native candour and tenderness, escaped unblighted, through the saving influence of his faith, approving himself in the sight of all [224] an ideal judge, even according to the highest conception; because John Howard, opulent and free to enjoy his opulence and repose, was drawn thereby throughout the whole continent of Europe in quest of the hidden miseries that torture those whom the law has shut out, in dungeons, from the light and sympathy of the world; because Thomas Clarkson, animated by the spirit of its teachings, consecrated wealth, luxury, and the quiet of an entire lifetime on the altar of voluntary sacrifice for the salvation of an alien people; because Samuel Johnson, shut out from mirthfulness by disease and suffering, and endowed with an intellectual pride intolerant of froward ignorance, was, through the chastening power of that belief, transformed into the cheerful minister and willing slave of the weaklings whom he gathered into his home, and around whom the tendrils of his heart had entwined themselves, waxing closer and stronger in the moisture of his never-failing charity; because Henry Havelock, a man of the sword, whose duties have never been too propitious to the cultivation and fostering of the gentler virtues, lived and died a blameless hero, constrained by that faith to be one of its most illustrious exemplars; [225] because David Livingstone looms great and reverend in our mental sight in his devotion to a land and race embraced in his boundless fellow-feeling, and whose miseries he has commended to the sympathy of the civilized world in words the pathos whereof has melted thousands of once obdurate hearts to crave a share in applying a balm to the "open sore of Africa"—that slave-trade whose numberless horrors beggar description; and finally—one more example out of the countless varieties of types that blend into a unique solidarity in the active manifestation of the Christian life—we believe because Charles Gordon, the martyr-soldier of Khartoum, in trusting faith a very child, but in heroism more notable than any mere man of whom history contains a record, gathered around himself, through the sublime attractiveness of his faith-directed life, the united suffrages of all nations, and now enjoys, as the recompense and seal of his life's labours, an apotheosis in homage to which the heathen of Africa, the man-hunting Arab, the Egyptian, the Turk, all jostle each other to blend with the exulting children of Britain who are directly glorified by his life and history.
[226] Here, then, are speaking evidences of the believers' grounds. Verily they are of the kind that are to be seen in our midst, touched, heard, listened to, respected, beloved—nay, honoured, too, with the glad worship our inward spirit springs forth to render to goodness so largely plenished from the Source of all Good. Can Modern Science and Criticism explain them away, or persuade us of their insufficiency as incentives to the hearty acceptance of the religion that has received such glorious, yet simply logical, incarnation in the persons of weak, erring men who welcomed its responsibilities conjointly with its teachings, and thereby raised themselves to the spiritual level pictured to ourselves in our conception of angels who have been given the Divine charge concerning mankind. Religion for Negroes, indeed! White priests, forsooth! This sort of arrogance might, possibly, avail in quarters where the person and pretensions of Mr. Froude could be impressive and influential—but here, in the momentous concern of man with Him who "is no respecter of persons," his interference, mentally disposed as he tells us he is with reference to such a matter, is nothing less than profane intrusion.
[227] We will conclude by stating in a few words our notion of the only agency by which, not Blacks alone, but every race of mankind, might be uplifted to the moral level which the thousands of examples, of which we have glanced at but a few, prove so indubitably the capacity of man to attain—each to a degree limited by the scope of his individual powers. The priesthood whereof the world stands in such dire need is not at all the confederacy of augurs which Mr. Froude, perhaps in recollection of his former profession, so glibly suggests, with an esoteric creed of their own, "crystallized into shape" for profession before the public. The day of priestcraft being now numbered with the things that were, the exploitation of those outside of the sacerdotal circle is no longer possible. Therefore the religion of mere talk, however metaphysical and profound; the religion of scenic display, except such display be symbolic of living and active verities, has lost whatever of efficacy it may once have possessed, through the very spirit and tendency of To-day. The reason why those few whom we have mentioned, and the thousands who cannot possibly be recalled, have, as [228] typical Christians, impressed themselves on the moral sense and sympathy of the ages, is simply that they lived the faith which they professed. Whatever words they may have employed to express their serious thoughts were never otherwise than, incidentally, a spoken fragment of their own interior biography. In fine, success must infallibly attend this special priesthood (whether episcopally "ordained" or not) of all races, all colours, all tongues whatsoever, since their lives reflect their teachings and their teachings reflect their lives. Then, truly, they, "the righteous, shall inherit the earth," leading mankind along the highest and noblest paths of temporal existence. Then, of course, the obeah, the cannibalism, the devil-worship of the whole world, including that of Hayti, which Mr. Froude predicts will be adopted by us Blacks in the West Indies, shall no more encumber and scandalize the earth.
But Mr. Froude should, at the same time, be reminded that cannibalism and the hideous concomitants which he mentions are, after all, relatively minor and restricted dangers to man's civilization and moral soundness. They can [229] neither operate freely nor expand easily. The paralysis of horrified popular sentiment obstructs their propagation, and the blight of the death-penalty which hangs over the heads of their votaries is an additional guarantee of their being kept within bounds that minimize their perniciousness. But there are more fatal and further-reaching dangers to public morality and happiness of which the regenerated current opinion of the future will take prompt and remedial cognizance. Foremost among these will be the circulation of malevolent writings whereby the equilibrium of sympathy between good men of different races is sought to be destroyed, through misleading appeals to the weaknesses and prejudices of readers; writings in which the violation of actual truth cannot, save by stark stupidity, be attributed to innocent error; writings that scoff at humanitarian feeling and belittle the importance of achievements resulting therefrom; writings which strike at the root of national manliness, by eulogizing brute force directed against weaker folk as a fit and legitimate mode of securing the wishes of a mighty and enlightened people; writings, in fine, which ignore the divine principle [230] in man, and implicitly deny the possibility of a Divine Power existing outside of and above man, thus materializing the mind, and tending to render the earth a worse hell than it ever could have been with faith in the supremacy of a beneficent Power.
NOTES
221. *"Est deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo."—Ovid.