CHAPTER V.
THE AUDIENCE.
In the audience-chamber there stood three gentlemen in animated conversation: the grandmaster and two other Freemasons, the director, and university professor. They were handsomely dressed, and wore several orders upon their breasts. They seemed to be very familiar with their surroundings, for they moved about with perfect unconcern. The grandmaster of the Freemasons especially appeared to be full of his own importance, and he glanced haughtily at one of the king’s attendants when he entered the apartment.
“Something has gone wrong to-day,” said he, looking at his watch. “It is already a quarter of an hour after the appointed time. I have never been treated so before.”
“I also remark something unusual,” exclaimed the director. “There, behind the table, stands a chair of state. The king never seats himself when giving audiences; why, therefore, has this rule been violated? There is a bell upon the table—what does all this mean?”
“The king has his humors, no doubt,” replied the grandmaster sarcastically, placing meanwhile an address upon the silver salver which stood upon the table.
At once the folding-doors opened, and the king entered, looking grave and dignified. He advanced towards the chair of state, and, placing his hand upon it, he waited until those present had finished bowing. No gracious smile lighted up his features, and he returned their salutation with a scarcely perceptible nod of the head.
“Most gracious majesty!” commenced the grandmaster, “it cannot have escaped your notice that a serious disturbance threatens the peace of the whole German Empire, as well as the kingdom which is so happy as to be governed by your wise and prudent rule. The infallibility of the Pope, so dangerous to the state, and invented only to bring princes and people under the sceptre of the Roman Pontiff, has provoked universal indignation. Everywhere societies and meetings are protesting against this usurpation of Rome. At Munich and Darmstadt, good and learned men have taken part in the proceedings. In both cities, resolutions were passed which your majesty will be graciously pleased to accept.”
The king silently took the address from the salver, and laid it upon the table.
“Your majesty will permit me to remark,” continued the grandmaster, “that, at the Protestant Diet of Darmstadt, the Jesuits were specially designated as the most dangerous conspirators in the service of Rome, and particularly hostile to the German Empire. Now, as the Society of Jesus exists also in your majesty’s dominions, we have ventured, actuated solely by the interest we take in the peace and political welfare of the kingdom, to humbly petition that your majesty will insist upon the immediate expulsion of the above-named society.”
“Are you a Catholic, Herr Counsellor of the High Court?” asked the king.
“Strictly Catholic, your majesty—strictly Catholic,” replied the Freemason. “I hold firmly to the old doctrines of the Holy Catholic Church, and shall resist with all my strength the innovation of the last council.”
“According to what you say, your petition asking for the suppression of the Jesuits does not come with such ill grace from you, for you, as a Catholic, speak about Catholic affairs,” said the king. “But why a Protestant diet should meddle itself with the ecclesiastical discipline and religious belief of Catholics is beyond my conception. The Catholics also have public meetings; but I never hear that they concern themselves in the slightest degree about Protestant matters. I am aware of the resolutions passed by the Protestant Diet of Darmstadt, and regret them exceedingly, because they are only calculated to grieve Catholics, to disturb the peace, and to seriously embarrass governments. The Gustave Adolph Society is a proof how, in former times, Protestants have united themselves with the foreign invader and destroyer of our country against the Catholic Emperor of Germany. Hostile treatment, or even an attempt to suppress the Catholic Church on the part of the state, might in like manner force Catholic Germans to unite themselves with a foreign power in opposition to the Protestant Emperor of Germany. A faithful people are not in need of forgiveness if they love their God and their religion more than they do the tyranny of their fatherland.”
The Freemasons were astonished; they did not expect to hear the king speak as he did.
“You make mention of the resolutions of the glass palace at Munich, which were also directed against the Jesuits,” continued the king. “Do you believe the grave accusations which they bring against the Society of Jesus?”
“I have the fullest conviction of their truth,” replied the grandmaster, bowing low.
The king now seated himself, and looked through the address. The men of the trowel cast significant glances at each other.
“A ruler must be just; he should never belong to a party,” said the king. “You demand the suppression of men who are highly respected and venerated by thousands of my subjects. The Burgomaster and principal men of Weselheim are here to petition for the restoration of their pastor, a Jesuit father. If, after hearing these men, I am convinced that the actions of the Jesuits correspond with the Munich resolutions, then I will not be disinclined to grant your request for the suppression of the society; but, if the contrary, then justice must be done!”
He rang a bell. The folding-doors at the lower end of the salon opened, and the burgomaster, together with the councilmen of Weselheim, entered, all looking anxious as to the result of the interview. The king rose from his chair, and his whole manner changed; with a friendly gesture, he invited the embarrassed deputies to draw nearer.
“Ah! Herr Burgomaster, I am delighted to see you again!” said he to the burgomaster, giving him his hand. “You have not become older in the course of the year—always young and active. How are the trout? Shall I see any more of them upon my table?”
“O most gracious king!” replied the delighted burgomaster, “the whole parish will catch trout for your majesty.”
“I am glad to hear it!” rejoined the king. “And how is your little golden-haired son with the rosy cheeks? Has he grown tall?”
“Two feet taller this year; your majesty would not know him!”
The councilmen were enchanted. The ice was broken.
“You desire your pastor, the Jesuit father, to return to you again?” began the king, seating himself in the chair. “That is right; such a request is honorable to you all. Parishioners should always esteem a worthy pastor. But, my dear people,” he continued, “there are some difficulties. It is asserted that the Jesuits are men dangerous to the state; that their teachings are destructive to morals. It is further said that the Jesuits conspire against the government; that they are opposed to the enlightenment of the people; and I am therefore petitioned by some of my subjects to authorize their expulsion. These are the very words contained in the address I hold in my hand.”
The men looked at one another; they evidently did not comprehend the meaning of the accusations made against the Jesuits.
“I ask pardon, your majesty; but we do not understand you,” said the burgomaster. “We know, indeed, that there are many who hate the Jesuits, and who wish to see them exterminated, none more so than the Freemasons. But your majesty must not listen to such persons; for even our Lord was accused by his enemies of inciting the people, of being dangerous to the state; and they even went so far as to nail him to the cross. If our Saviour would come again to-day in the flesh, the Freemasons would not be satisfied until they had crucified him again.”
The king cast a quick look at the flushed countenances of the Freemasons.
“I ask you, upon your conscience,” said he to the burgomaster, “if your Jesuit father ever taught immoral doctrines?”
“O great heaven!” exclaimed the excited burgomaster. “Immoral doctrines—our pastor? Why, your majesty, he is like a saint, and he does his best to make saints of the whole parish. If two young persons of a different sex live together without being married, our pastor never rests until both have given up their scandalous life and are married. If enmities exist, and lawsuits and quarrels, our pastor is indefatigable until he effects a reconciliation. Thus, our pastor is like an angel for our parish. Formerly there were many who hated each other; we had dissensions among ourselves; but now everything is peaceable and quiet in the village, and all this we owe to our pastor, the Jesuit father.”
“And what he does for the children is beyond belief, your majesty,” said Keller. “He visits the schools every day; the children love him. In former times, parents had to command the children to pray in the morning and the evening; now they pray without being told to do so. And our children are so obedient, for our pastor impresses upon them the full importance of the fourth commandment.”
“Has your pastor no enemies in the parish?” inquired the king.
“Yes, most gracious majesty; he has enemies, that is, three rascals, who would like to see him driven out,” said the burgomaster.
“You see, gentlemen,” said the king to the officials, “that your accusations against the Jesuits are by no means confirmed.”
“The Jesuit of Weselheim may perhaps be an exception,” replied the grandmaster.
Franz Keller seemed possessed with a desire to speak, but he controlled his impatience.
“Your majesty will excuse me for saying that the accusations against the Jesuits appear very surprising to me,” remarked Ewald. “In the Bible, we read that the Jews dragged our Saviour before the high-priests, and accused him of different crimes. And when our Saviour defended himself, one of the servants struck him in the face, whereupon our Saviour said: ‘If I have spoken evil, give testimony of the evil; but, if well, why strikest thou me?’ It is the same with the Jesuits. If they are really as wicked and criminal as their enemies assert, well, let them be brought before the law, and be punished according to the law. But if nothing can be proved against them, why continue to slander and persecute them, and to treat them like murderers and thieves?”
“Very well said, and very true!” answered the king.
“Most gracious king, I can tell you what people are against the Jesuits—the Freemasons,” began Keller, unable any longer to keep quiet. “A short time ago, I heard them talking on the Vogelsberg. These three gentlemen (pointing to the Freemasons) were there, and one other. The one with the gray beard said: ‘The trowel or the cross, that is the watchword!’ Then they all declared that the religion of Christ must be exterminated; and, because the Jesuits are good preachers and zealous priests, therefore they must be the first to be overthrown. And they also said that, when the altars were destroyed, the thrones must be demolished. What else they said, most gracious king, I will not grieve you by repeating.”
The king looked silently, but with an expression of severe displeasure, at the officials.
“Will your majesty permit us to withdraw?” inquired the grandmaster.
“You will remain; we have not finished yet,” replied the king sternly.
“Most gracious king,” entreated the burgomaster, “be kind enough to look through the window.”
The king did as requested, and saw at the foot of the hill the whole parish of Weselheim congregated together—men, women, and children. They all stood with their faces turned towards the palace. Many knelt upon the ground. The king was visibly affected at the sight.
“The whole village unite with us in asking your majesty to give us back our dear, good, pious Jesuit father,” said the burgomaster.
At this moment, a chamberlain appeared, and handed the king a written communication.
“He is very welcome; admit him at once!” commanded the king.
The delegation were attentive spectators of what was transpiring. In the antechamber they heard the voice of the pastor, who now entered the salon, and was most graciously received by the king. The presence of royalty alone prevented loud exclamations of delight from his parishioners, whose faces shone with joy.
“The Society of Jesus was very active during the last war,” said the king, after certain formalities had been gone through. “How many German Jesuits were on the scene of action?”
“Nearly all, your majesty—one hundred and eighty-eight,” replied the Jesuit. “Our older members took care of the sick; for, during the war, all our colleges were converted into hospitals.”
“No proof of hostility to the state,” remarked the king, turning to the officials. “How many Freemasons were employed in attending to the sick and wounded in the hospitals during the war?”
“The care of the sick does not belong to the vocation of a Freemason,” answered the grandmaster shortly.
“Much is said and written to-day concerning the extraordinary power of the Jesuits,” said the king to the reverend father. “I have in vain endeavored to discover the secret of this power; you may perhaps be able to enlighten me on the subject?”
“Your majesty, the so-called power of the Jesuits is a mere phantom invented by our enemies to excite the fears of the credulous,” answered the priest. “In fact, the Jesuits are, of all men, the weakest. They are slandered, persecuted, suppressed. In many places, they have not even the right to exist or to breathe, as in Bavaria and Switzerland. All societies are protected in Bavaria, all associations can exist in Switzerland, except the Society of Jesus. If the Jesuits, therefore, possessed in reality the power claimed for them, they would not permit their members to be treated like slaves, as they now are.”
“I believe you,” rejoined the king. “Being a foreigner, your reverence had to abandon the sphere of your labor; but now I grant you the right of a subject, and liberty to return to your mission. May you live many years to be a blessing to the parish of Weselheim!”
He took the hand of the priest, and led him to the village delegation.
“Here, you have your pastor back again! Honor and obey him!” said he to them.
“Most gracious king, may Almighty God reward you a thousand times for what you have done!” exclaimed the men, down whose cheeks the tears were streaming; and, if two of the chamberlains had not interfered, and led them out of the salon, they would have committed many breaches of etiquette, so great was their joy.
The king now approached the Freemasons; his manner was cold, but his eyes were ablaze with indignation.
“I thank divine Providence,” said he, “for having exposed before my eyes the cunning and malicious snare in which you sought to entrap me. The Jesuits are not the enemies of culture nor of the state; but the Freemasons are. The foundation of culture is Christianity, and not Freemasonry, which is the enemy of Christianity. In my kingdom, the cross, and not the trowel shall be the symbol of government. The Jesuits neither teach nor practise a false and corrupt morality, but the Freemasons do, for they seek to overthrow not only altars but thrones. The Freemasons are unscrupulous, false, and perjured officials, for they have presumed to say that their king to whom they have sworn fidelity was a narrow-minded man who did not govern, but was governed! It would be nothing more than just to have the whole order prosecuted for high treason!”
The excited king ceased speaking. The Freemasons, who at first looked defiant and unconcerned, now trembled with fright. His majesty stood for a while in perfect silence. From the foot of the hill resounded many hundred voices chanting the grand hymn of praise, the German Te Deum, while they accompanied their beloved pastor to the village.
The king, who had recovered his self-command, now pronounced the following sentence: “The director, the Counsellor of the High Court, the professor of the university, and the government counsellor Schlehdorn are from this time forth deprived of their offices. I shall not institute judicial proceedings against them, out of regard to the feelings of their innocent families!”
The king turned, and left the salon.
The Freemasons looked at one another. Upon the lips of the grandmaster an ironical, revengeful smile was seen.
“A blow in the water will startle any one, if it is given unexpectedly,” said he, “and our present discomfiture is only of that nature!” he continued, with a peculiar movement of the hand, and in language whose obscure meaning they evidently understood. “Brethren, our labors in a small sphere are only discontinued that we may resume the work on a grander scale; for the trowel of the Freemasons shall yet build the arch that covers the grave of the greater as well as of the smaller!”
The other Freemasons bowed affirmatively to the words of the grandmaster, and followed him out of the salon.
[WHAT IS CIVILIZATION?]
The word civilization, adopted into almost every European language, is derived from the Latin of civitas, a city, and civis, a citizen. Webster thus defines civilization: “It consists in the progressive improvement of society considered as a whole, and of all the individual members of which it is composed.” And further: “A well-ordered state of society, culture, refinement.” Now, it is worth while to inquire into the tangible ideal of that people to whose language we are indebted for this comprehensive word. The Romans considered their empire the appointed head, by divine right, of the whole world. They could not take in the idea of their supremacy being disputed, much less resisted, and hence the proud motto, “Civis Romanus sum,” which was meant to express the ne plus ultra of human dignity. No greater honor could be bestowed upon a stranger, whether ally or conquered foe, than to make him a Roman citizen. It was a title more valuable than that of Cæsar; it had privileges attached to it which neither the blood of a Machabee nor an Alexander could claim; it compelled greater respect than the heroism of a Leonidas or the uprightness of a Socrates. Thus early had false notions of material civilization corrupted the genuine meaning of a word which should always stand, not for political supremacy, but for moral excellence. Rome, the heart of the dominant empire which had vanquished and absorbed at least two civilizations of higher degree than its own, the Hebrew and the Greek, has transmitted to the word civilization the spirit of its intensely local autonomy. Every kindred word derived from the same root has a like meaning, especially “civility,” a synonyme of “urbanity” (from urbs, a city), thereby conveying the insinuation that city customs alone have that grace and refinement necessary to pleasant social intercourse. Another meaning naturally flowed from this arbitrary assumption of perfection to imperial Rome. Civil came to mean national as opposed to foreign; as we say, for instance, civil, for intestine, war. More or less all nations of the world have adopted this way of looking upon civilization as a local thing; and, to the greater majority of mankind, there is a certain flavor of disparagement implied in the terms foreign and foreigner. We speak in a tone of half-concealed pity of men from far-off countries, as if they must needs be a little lower in the scale of creation than our enlightened selves. We have not forgotten that “barbarian” and “foreigner” were terms used interchangeably by the Greeks, and our local pride still unconsciously crops out in the most childish and laughable demonstrations. Nothing shows better how very arbitrary is the interpretation of the word civilization than our various estimates of its essence. The Chinese who wears yellow for mourning smiles compassionately at the European in his dusky garment of sorrow; and the European who is accustomed to eat his dinner with a knife and fork thinks that a nation can hardly be civilized which tolerates the use of chop-sticks. To come nearer home, we have known an Englishman of distinguished birth and position refuse the hand of his daughter to a French diplomat, a nobleman of the old stock, an accomplished gentleman, a rich land-owner, for the weighty reason that “he was a foreigner”!
The word “barbarian” (from the Greek βάρβαρος) is given in Webster’s Dictionary as meaning, in the first and literal sense, foreign. Barber or Barbar was originally the native name of a part of the coast of Africa. The Egyptians, fearing and hating its inhabitants, used their name as a term of contumely and dread, in which sense it passed to the Greeks and Romans. Thus the kindred words barbarous and barbarity have kept the meaning of “cruel and ferocious,” but the main stock of βάρβαρος generally signifies the two almost synonymous things, “foreigner” and “barbarian”! The imitative sound of barber was applied by the Greeks to the ruder tribes whose pronunciation was most harsh and whose grammar most defective. Dr. Campbell says that the Greeks were the first to brand a foreign term in any of their writers with the odious name of barbarism. This word with the Greeks had the additional general meaning of ignorance of art and want of learning, and as such has been used by Dryden. Barbaric remains to this day the synonyme of foreign and quaint, far-fetched, as Milton, following the Greeks, has used it:
“The gorgeous East with richest hand,
Showers on her kings barbaric gold and pearl.”
But Dryden has also put the more unusual word barbarous for the same thing:
“The trappings of his horse embossed with barbarous gold.”
The misapplication of all these terms, and more especially of “civilization,” is of daily recurrence. We cannot open a newspaper without seeing its self-eulogium expressed in the term “a journal of civilization”; we cannot read a leading article on the financial prosperity of the country without finding it confidently stated that such prosperity is an infallible sign of civilization; we hear of railroads “carrying civilization” among the wild tribes of Central Africa; and we see atheism and false science parading their unhappy progress as the “march of civilization.”
Now, admitting the very just definition we have quoted above, that civilization is “the progressive improvement of society as a whole, and of each individual member of which it is composed,” it seems to us conclusive that only one perfect form of it could exist on earth, i.e. that which flourished for a short time in the Garden of Eden. Mankind in the state of innocence was ipso facto civilized, and civilized to the highest moral and intellectual degree possible to mere human creatures. Had there been no original sin, and had Adam’s posterity continued in utter sinlessness to inhabit the peaceful and fruitful earth, we should have had that well-ordered state of society in which the only progressive improvement would have been ever-increasing love and knowledge of God.
But this, the only perfect civilization, was lost with all other precious gifts—incorruptibility, innocence, and clear insight into the things of God. The state of grace followed the state of innocence, and man, having fallen from his innate mastership over nature when he fell from his mastership over himself, found that civilization and progressive improvement must henceforward mean nothing to him but the painful effort to regain as much of his former power as God would allow him, in guerdon of his repentance, to regain. All civilization since the Fall, therefore, has been only approximative, and can never be more than this. This explains why the highest civilization has been attained only since Christianity has prevailed, the state of accomplished redemption being the most perfect mankind has yet reached, superseding even the state of expectancy of the Hebrew dispensation. It explains, too, why the Jews were the most civilized of all ancient nations—a point to which we will refer at greater length in another place. From the few details briefly mentioned in Genesis, we infer that the earliest civilization after the Fall was by no means inferior to our own as far as material prosperity was concerned. Besides the obvious callings of husbandman and shepherd, always the first and indeed indispensable foundation of civilized life, we find that during the lifetime of Adam, i.e., the first thousand years after the Creation, cities were built and the arts cultivated. Cain was the first to build and organize a town, and his descendant Jubal is called the father of “them that play on the harps and organ.” Tubal Cain was “a hammerer and artificer in every work of brass and iron.” Hunting and the use of weapons were of course familiar to the pioneers of the human race, for tradition tells us that it was while hunting that Lamech slew a man, supposed by some to have been Cain, mistaking him for a wild beast. It was not long before solemn religious ceremonies were instituted, as appears from this passage: “This man (Enos) began to call upon the name of the Lord,” which is thus interpreted: although Adam and Seth had called upon the name of the Lord before the birth of their son and grandson Enos, yet Enos used more solemnity in the worship and invocation of God. The natural bent of fallen man, however, prevailed over the efforts of a few faithful souls, and that material civilization which, could we in imagination reconstruct its gorgeous completeness, would undoubtedly not fall below that of the great empires of Assyria, Egypt, or Persia, led surely though insensibly to moral corruption. The fatal beauty of the women of Cain’s race, “the daughters of men,” their wealth too, doubtless their worldly prosperity and lavish display, tempted the descendants of Seth, “the sons of God,” till, in a few hundred years, “all flesh had corrupted its way,” and “it repented God that he had made man.” This was the first example of the deteriorating effect of mere animal civilization, and, alas! how faithfully has it been copied in all ages since! How persistently and with what unwearying perseverance have its details of profligacy been imitated by the succeeding generations of mankind!
A historical review of each separate attempt at civilization made by the dispersed nations after the building of the Tower of Babel would be a serious task, and its result too long for these pages; but, before we leave this part of our subject to turn to the more abstract question of the essence of civilization, let us stop to remark what a high pitch of human culture had already been attained in times so remote that, save through revelation, no memorial of them remains to us. Wendell Phillips has partially developed this idea in his lecture on the “Lost Arts,” proving that three-fourths of our discoveries are plagiarisms, that our best witticisms are borrowed from the Indian and the Greek, and that our most boasted arts are but gropings in the dark after some vanished ideal of antiquity. And how much more learning than we can conjecture must there not be utterly buried out of sight in the sealed records of antediluvian times! The only likeness which we can safely boast of with those colossal days is the likeness of unbelief and corruption. The “mighty men of old,” of whom the Bible so mysteriously speaks, were doubtless as much above our standard of intellect and even of prosperity as vulgar superstition ranges them above our standard of physical strength and height. A veil of mystery shrouds them and their lives from our utmost research, and we know only one thing for certain; that is, their sin and its awful doom—little more than is told us of the fall of Lucifer and his angels, yet enough to teach us that all civilizations which in their arrogance dare to defy the laws of God must inevitably fall beneath his rod.
And now, what is civilization? What is the “good of society considered as a whole”?
Two things are indispensable to it—the inviolability of the family, and the stability of the laws of property. On these two pillars, humanly speaking, is society built, and whatever is antagonistic to these fundamental principles is necessarily and directly antagonistic to civilization.
Paternal and patriarchal government was the first known because the most natural; and, when the increasing number of families confused the original system and complicated its duties, the ruler chosen to take charge of the whole tribe or nation still looked to no higher title than that of father of his people. The stability of the laws regulating property was in all lands reckoned the gauge of prosperity and the test of national vigor. The desire of personal possession, of undisputed ownership over a tract of land however small, is a natural and legitimate instinct of man; its realization alone can bring with it to each individual that independence, that self-respect, which, in the aggregate, creates the feeling of national honor. Patriotism is not an intangible virtue; it springs from the broader basis of domestic affection; it follows the feeling of responsibility induced by the knowledge of having a personal stake in your country’s advancement. The Romans have left us their motto: Pro aris et focis—“For our altars and our hearths.” If we could no longer qualify these hearths as ours, what a lessened interest they must necessarily have in our eyes! The man who works for himself alone is reckless even if brave, lukewarm even if conscientious. He may do his work, but he does it without enthusiasm. He who works for those near and dear to him, to gain or defend a patrimony for those who in the future will take his place and bear his name, is gentle, considerate, patient, far-seeing, persevering, as well as brave and conscientious. But granted that these social and domestic laws are well-guarded, in what else does civilization consist? There are four things which dispute the title to forming the highest test of a well-ordered state of society: riches, political freedom, education, and religion. Some men would combine these elements in varied quantities to form their ideas of civilization; others would sink every element but one, and try the experiment as long as it could be made to minister to their own private aggrandizement; others, again, look for the visionary supremacy of one element alone, and the subordination to itself of every other, whether baser or nobler. We need not say to which class we hope to belong—the sequel will show.
Does civilization consist in riches, whether national or individual? True, the command of wealth inspires respect in neighboring peoples; for national wealth means large resources, speedy armaments, flourishing colonies, and means of thwarting the commerce of lesser nations. But national wealth is seldom attained unless from the basis of individual wealth. It is impossible for the state to absorb and administer such resources as these, and yet to compel private citizens to lead lives of Spartan frugality. The individual cannot be made to acknowledge any right on the part of the state which will interfere with his own right of accumulating capital, provided he makes over to the government a fair share of his profits in the shape of legitimate tribute. Private wealth then becomes the source of private luxury and extravagance, and behind extravagance lurks moral decay. Factitious wants are created, an abnormal state of society is brought about, unmanning the body and weakening the mind. To many men, riches simply suggest new means of indulging in vice; and to all men, vice, in the long run, means disease. Material prosperity has thus reached its apogee, has overshot its mark, and has found a fitting punishment in physical deterioration. There is yet another side to the question. Inordinate riches in the hands of a few, especially if unsupported by territorial prestige, by hereditary honors and the semi-feudal spirit which in Europe still links the agricultural and landed interests in personal association, are apt to breed class jealousies, and to estrange labor from capital. A civil war far more terrible than an armed insurrection is set on foot and slowly undermines the political structure. It is true that the most fatal example of this kind was the upheaval of the French Revolution of ‘93, and that it took place under a monarchical government; but, though monarchical, it was not a feudal government, and the men whose birth, wealth, and station marked them out as the victims of the people’s rage were essentially men whose associations had long been dissevered from the land. Their estates had been abandoned to unscrupulous agents or sold to ambitious roturiers; and for what reason? That its price might cover their needless display at an unstable court! At the present day, where is socialistic agitation most rife in Europe? In the manufacturing towns: not in the agricultural districts. Almost to a man, every factory-gang is ready to turn against its employer; while, in the country, laborers will even die in the defence of their landlords. In the former case, the master is always a “self-made” man, a man of the people, or at least one whose associations are obscure; in the latter, the master is the hereditary representative of gentle blood and gentle nurture, the personal friend of each man on his estate, identified with the neighborhood, and attached to the soil.
The verdict of history has certainly gone against the theory that times of material luxury, pushed to its furthest extent, are therefore times of great national prosperity. Athens was at the height of her ultra-refined civilization when the rude and martial Roman conquered her autonomy; Rome herself, made effeminate by the conquering vices of her conquered foe, was at the giddiest pinnacle of merely physical prosperity when the resistless tide of the barbarians poured over her frontiers; Spain had just grasped the New World with its teeming riches when she fell from her political supremacy in the Old; France was revelling in her Augustan Age when the tocsin of the Revolution woke her from her dalliance. Great wealth has everywhere been the herald of national misfortune; and, as if to set off this truth yet more palpably, we have the republics of Sparta and of Switzerland to show us that, both in classic and in modern times, frugality is the best preservative of freedom.
But the existence of abnormal wealth as a criterion of civilization has yet another phase. If it is possible under a republican form of government and under a constitutional régime, it is still more likely to reach gigantic proportions under a despotic system. Thus the East produces more princely fortunes than even the “enlightened” West, because, wealth being restricted to fewer individuals, it follows that these few fortunes must be colossal. Unlimited pomp, dazzling trains of slaves and camels, a fabulous blaze of gems, a limitless harem, seem to be matters of course for the favored few whose almost omnipotence has become proverbial among men as typical of the East. Therefore, if wealth be a gauge of civilization, we must conclude that despotism is the most civilized of states, since it is certainly the most favorable to the accumulation of riches. If so (and, for the sake of argument, let us grant it), how shall we reconcile this conclusion with the claims of the second and, according to some, infallible test of civilization—political freedom?
We understand by this the extreme of so-called self-government, the government by ballot and universal suffrage. We have had but very lately many signs of its woful fallibility; we have seen how cleverly it can throw the cloak of legality over the most unblushing frauds; we have seen hired violence control the very medium of government itself. Men who respected themselves would as soon touch pitch as defile their hands with voting tickets, or stand up by the side of illegally naturalized citizens, pressed into momentary service by the unscrupulous manipulators of the ballot-box. A form of government which in theory is more perfect than any other, and more in accordance with ideal human dignity, but which in sober practice has sometimes been found an inadequate safeguard against corrupting influences, is not apt to strike any one who has been familiar with the results of the last few years’ political wire-pulling as the most exalted criterion of civilization. The cant phrase of political freedom has unhappily come to mean political corruption, which hardly entitles this second candidate for the exclusive patent of civilization to a lengthened discussion in these pages. The third is education.
This is certainly a more plausible test than the two former. Learning, the arts, the sciences, the classics, all relate to the higher part of man’s nature, and reflect honor on those who strive to be their interpreters. This seems worthy of man, akin to his primeval state, and like the occupation of his future life. But alone even education cannot stand. When dissevered from religion, it falls, either into atheism or fanaticism, sometimes into both. At least one example of its pernicious moral results when thus left to itself is the brilliant shame of the Medicean renaissance. In the new groves of Academe, the ducal gardens of Fiesole, heathen voluptuousness speedily followed heathen philosophy; polished manners and elegant diction redeemed loose morals and equivocal conversation; Christianity was voted barbarous, and Christian pageants uncouth. It was the age of Boccaccio. The poison spread far and wide, the fever of a misdirected and one-sided education seized all classes, and the fathers of the church were forgotten for the lascivious poets of Greece and Rome. The mysteries of Bona Dea were almost enacted over again, the dances of Bacchus were revived, and the processions of Venus and Cupid took the place of Christian solemnities. The corruption was thus forced on the people, who, excited by gorgeous public entertainments of pagan complexion, caught the hollow enthusiasm of their rulers, and emulated the servile Romans of the empire who cried out, Panem et circenses, while they blindly surrendered their freedom into the crowned showman’s hands. Material prosperity and godless learning combined, stifled the last semblance of Florentine liberty under the rule of the Medici. In France it was atheism concealed under the guise of learning which prepared the way for the Revolution of ‘93; it was the delicately veiled irony, and the sportive unbelief of Voltaire’s disciples, which first made the “little rift within the lute.” The savage leaders of the Reign of Terror had nothing to do save crown with the guillotine the elaborate system of corruption already founded by the “philosophers.”
Education without religion has been as treacherous and as frail a support to the civilization of men as the reed that pierces the hand of him who leans upon it; political freedom (?) without religion has been only another name for a retrograde movement towards anarchy, and material wealth without the controlling influence of religion has proved the most dangerous because the most emasculating of allies to those nations who have built their civilization on its basis.
Each and all of these experiments have fallen far short of the ideal of the Garden of Eden, and each has practically confessed by its failure the radical infirmity of the theory it represented. The reason is self-evident: a system which undertakes to guide the complex workings of human nature cannot afford to disregard any of nature’s manifold instincts, and, by obstinately refusing to give a place to all legitimate aspirations, overbalances itself, and falls sooner or later into a trap of its own setting. You cannot govern man through his animal wants alone or through his intellectual yearnings only, any more than you can rule him solely through his spiritual instincts. He must be fed, clothed, and housed, true, but this alone will not satisfy him; his reason cries out for development and exercise, and his heart also puts in a claim to the notice of any one who would undertake to rule him. It is true that man is not an angel, and that spiritual food alone would not allay his hunger, but it is equally true that he is not a brute being, to be abundantly satisfied with good fodder and a dry stable. His nature is threefold: animal, intellectual, and spiritual, and claims an equal recognition of each of its phases. Neither mere riches addressed to the contentment of his lower instincts, nor mere educational and political advantages addressed to the satisfaction of his nobler self, are enough for his welfare; his soul is a higher region yet, and one which demands yet more imperatively an adequate amount of attention. This soul it is which, when bound and blinded as it but too often is in mere worldly systems of civilization, ends by grasping, like Samson, the insecure supports of this partial civilization itself, and in the untamed strength of despair dragging down the fabric in ruins at its feet.
There remains one more element which is still claimed by a brave minority, as the essence of all true civilization, and that is religion. This is the most comprehensive criterion of a “well-ordered” state of society, for it includes all the rest as a matter of course. Religion is not incompatible with the possession and accumulations of wealth, as some erroneously suppose, but she requires that such interests shall be amenable to the dictates of moderation, and of charity; she does not scout learning as an ally, but eagerly welcomes it, so long as it keeps within its province and does not use its power to stifle the spiritual nature of man; she is no enemy to political freedom or to any particular form of government whatever, but she firmly resists the claims to omnipotence which every strong government, whether popular or absolutist, has in the hour of its worldly triumph invariably made. With a wisdom the counterpart of that which equalizes and controls the various forces of nature, religion holds in her hand the various emotions, passions, and necessities of man, and balances according to a divine standard the proportions in which each one may be legitimately satisfied. She subordinates the lower satisfactions to the higher, in exact proportion as the lower nature of mankind is, or should be, subordinate to the higher; she places delegates in each inferior sphere, that there may be no violence done to the spiritual order in furthering the interests of the material; she bids honesty watch over the legitimate increase of wealth, integrity temper the efforts of men in the cause of political freedom, and reverence guide them in the pursuit of learning. She gathers up these single threads of our lives, and, weaving them into a triple cord, imparts to them a strength which her blessing alone can confer, and which individually they could never have attained. It is she alone who skilfully brings within the practical reach of the poor, the oppressed, and of the ignorant, those theories which in the mouth of worldly apostles seem either poetical dreams or subversive and socialistic principles. It is she who is the true reformer, the true progressist, the true patriot. But why is she so? Simply because she is also the only true conservatrix in the world. Her mission is to foster the good, to seek it out, to make it known, to assimilate it to herself, to absorb it into her system. Material good is not excluded; wherever it is, it belongs of right to her; whether it be old or new, foreign or native, it matters not, religion takes it into her bosom, gives it immortality, sanctions its use, recommends its adoption. Being founded on the rock of truth, she can safely stoop to draw from the wreck of error any fragment of good contained in it, whether it be a scientific, a literary, or a domestic addition to the stock of ideas which is the common property of human nature, and of which she stands the perpetual guardian. This broad, open-armed, fearless, progressive spirit is the nearest approach to the ideal of the lost paradise: this is civilization—this is Christianity.
As an example of the superiority of religion over any other test of civilization, let us return for a moment to what we have said of the Jews. To the only reasonable and dignified conception of the Godhead known to the nations of old, they added the only worthy conception of human duties and responsibilities. Their domestic system was the only one in which woman bore a seemly part; their political organization, whether in the desert, under Moses and his “rulers over thousands, and over hundreds, and over fifties, and over tens”[148] (the same division afterwards prevalent in the Roman army), or in the land of Chanaan under the Judges, was essentially self-governing, federal, and independent. Their laws were minute in detail and stringent in execution, not only after their establishment as a nation in Chanaan, but during the forty years of their nomadic existence in the wilderness, a period which with any other people would have been one of irremediable lawlessness. Compacts and treaties are mentioned in the Bible even before the direct segregation from the world of what was afterwards known as the people of Israel. Abraham and Lot agreed solemnly and peaceably to settle the differences between their followers, by each tribe taking up its abode within certain given limits; Abraham and Abimelech came to a public understanding, the former meaning to do the heathen and alien leader no harm, and the latter restoring a well of which his servants had possessed themselves by force; Abraham insisted upon paying a full and fair equivalent in money to the Hethite who offered him gratis the funeral cave of Mambre; Eleazar made between Isaac and Rebecca a formal marriage contract; Esau when he had voluntarily sold his birthright, though at the bidding of necessity, was bound to hold by his rash cession; Jacob made and faithfully kept with his uncle Laban an engagement to give him his services for fair wages for a given number of years. Such social compacts, rigorously adhered to even when made with idolaters, are among the most convincing proofs of the high state of a country’s civilization, and present a strange, suggestive contrast with the rude polity of nations who, at that time and even many ages later, knew no right of property save that of forcible possession, and no guarantee of good faith save that which the sword could enforce. Attention to the duties of hospitality, another prominent sign of civilization, was a characteristic of the Jews. We have so many Biblical examples of this that it is impossible to give them. The division of the community into fixed orders of occupation is another recognized sign of an advanced state of society. Of course this and many others were held by the Jews in common with several nations of heathendom, some eminently distinguished for heroism, for honor, for learning, etc; and yet which of all the polished nations of antiquity had not some festering sore of pauperism, superstition, or barbarity, to conceal beneath its fair outside of dazzling “civilization”? The people of God, on the contrary, the only representatives of the true religion, were free from such social ulcers, and, even when their history shocks us by scenes of mysterious cruelty, it is universally admitted that the hand of God was working through them, and that they were but as instruments wielded in the dark by a power mightier than themselves.
Agriculture, or the “arts of peace,” called by some the representative of civilization, was an honored calling among the Hebrews. The riches of Judith and of Booz were fields and cattle; the promises of future prosperity scattered through Holy Writ are always typified by “fields and vineyards”; the inheritances and dowers of the sons and daughters of Israel were herds and fields, and so jealous was each tribe of its landed possessions that it was enacted that its members should intermarry only among themselves, under pain of forfeiting all claim to the legal portion allotted the offender. So careful of the condition of the land and its products were the divinely inspired laws of the Hebrews that they provided every seven years a season of rest, “the Sabbath of the land,” when for a twelvemonth the fields should not be ploughed nor the vineyards pruned, neither any fruit forced to grow and produce by artificial means. It would take a volume to develop this mysterious superiority of the chosen people, as regards even material civilization, over every other contemporary nation during fully two thousand years. They saw whole systems of social economy rise from barbarism, and fade away into political dotage, or disappear beneath the heel of conquest; they watched nations live and die, and drop out of the memory of mankind as completely as Pharao’s hosts were hidden by the waves of the Red Sea, and yet they stood firm and indestructible, with unchanged laws, with fixed customs, a people small in number, but great in tradition, invincible as the sun, immovable as a rock. And why? Because their political existence and their social system was founded on truth, and controlled by religion. The Hebrew nation was the one holy and only true church of those days. And for the same reasons which gave the Jews that supernatural vitality, Christianity is at this day in the van of civilization. Everything we have said of the one applies to the other; the signs which we noticed as such prominent features of Jewish polity—division of orders, fixed occupations, care for agriculture, good faith, property and family laws, individual and federal government—whence have they come to us? We say it unhesitatingly, from Christianity. To put it into plainer language, let us say, from the church, and chiefly through the monastic orders.
These armies of peaceful conquerors invaded the morasses and forests of the North, and, carrying with them all that made the Hebrew system divine, planted that very system in the midst of the barbarian hordes. The monks were the first agriculturists, the first mechanics, the first engineers, of our modern civilization. What need to tell again the story of their giant labors and glorious success? After teaching us how to build our houses, to till our fields, to protect our rights, to clothe our bodies, they taught us how to beautify our lives by art, and store our minds with learning. They gave us cathedrals, that we might know how glorious was the God they taught; they gave us Roman, Greek, and Hebrew lore, that we might see how liberal was the Master they served. The laws under which all European nations and their offshoots now live were framed on the model of the Canons of the Church, themselves based on the Tables of the Mosaic law; and the sciences, the literature, and the arts, of which we in our pygmy self-glorification are so proud, have been painfully transmitted to us by the patient labor of monastic scholars. Christianity in the person of these heroic pioneers has paved the way for all the civilization we can boast of, and those who seek to divorce civilization from Christianity thereby disown their very title-deeds. Once blot the church out of the map of the world, and civilization will speedily follow. Thank God that that, at least, is now impossible!
Having therefore inherited all that made the Hebrew system the most perfect approach to the ideal of the Garden of Eden, Christianity stands to-day in the position of the only legitimate representative of true civilization. For one thousand five hundred years, Christianity meant Catholicism, and to the reign of her undisputed supremacy belongs every important discovery, every material progress, the world has ever made. Why then, when we face to-day that world which owes it to the church that it is strong enough to face anything—do we meet everywhere the reproach of intolerance, of retrogression?
Is the reproach true to-day which in the days of S. Columba was false? Have we changed, has the church changed? If not, where is the fault?
It lies, as all human mistakes do, in the confusion and perversion of terms. The world in its aberration has turned against its teacher, and wounded itself with the weapons that only a practised and steady hand may safely wield. It has erected its own puny tribunal at the foot of God’s throne, and judged the Eternal from its own point of view. If the childish madness were not so sad in its results, it would make one smile at its presumption. But it has the power of damning a human soul, and of frustrating the work of God himself on Calvary, so that we dare not smile at its arrogance, how supremely ridiculous soever it may be from a merely philosophical point of view. It is this aberration of the human mind which for the last three centuries has dubbed Christianity as retrograde. When the Pope’s Syllabus made the difference clear between true progress and its infidel counterfeit, the world cried out that he was retrograde. “See” it said, “he condemns the liberty of the press, the liberty of association, the right of self-government, the spread of education; he would have heretics burnt at the stake, and all Protestant sovereigns deposed from their thrones.”
Was it so? We know that it was not. We know that it was the abuse, not the use, of these things which was condemned, and that the denunciation of error is a very different thing from the extermination of that error’s victims. We know this, and the world too knew it, but it suited the purpose of the world to say otherwise, and to raise against us the cry of intolerance, fanaticism. Well, be it so; but who fashioned the languages in which that cry is raised, who taught the world the meaning of such words as intolerance and fanaticism, who led the way to the contrivance without which the liberty of the press could not exist?
Our civilization, it is true, is of a different order from that now in fashion. It is a civilization which has no need of iron ships and monster armies; it can subdue and humanize by other methods than the bullet and the shell. It tolerates all and any customs that do not strike at morality; it can adapt itself to any nation, and make itself all things to all men. It does not pin its faith to the color of the skin, the fashion of a garment, or any social conventionality; it does not supersede individuality, either personal or national, but engrafts itself upon it and makes it serve a higher purpose. It does not address itself exclusively to one branch of human development, but cultivates them all, each in its turn, making them subservient at last to the spiritual interests of the soul.
[TO A FRIEND.]
If ever, lady, any word of mine,
Spoken in sorrow, came to thy own heart
With any sense of comfort or of peace,
My sorrow that before was half divine
Becomes a joy! and I would never part
With its remembrance. Why should sorrow cease
That makes one happy? I would rather twine
Roses than cypress round a grief so dear;
And I could set as in an emerald shrine
That sadness in my soul for evermore.
How gladly would I live that evening o’er
Thinking of thee! Not vain, amid the scenes
Of that proud park, my mood was, from the shore
Watching the slow state of those ermined queens.
[GRAPES AND THORNS.]
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE.”