For our quarrel with Christian Science is, not that it prefers Mrs. Eddy to Æsculapius, or her practitioners to his practitioners; not that it sometimes shames us by rising superbly above our froward nerves, and on less happy occasions denies the existence of a cold which is intruding itself grossly upon the senses; but that it exempts its followers from legitimate pity and grief. Only by refusing such exemption can we play our whole parts in the world. While there is a wrong done, we must admit some measure of defeat; while there is a pang suffered, we have no right to unflawed serenity. To cheat ourselves intellectually that we may save ourselves spiritually is unworthy of the creature that man is meant to be.
And to what end! Things are as they are, and no amount of self-deception makes them otherwise. The friend who is incapable of depression depresses us as surely as the friend who is incapable of boredom bores us. Somewhere in our hearts is a strong, though dimly understood, desire to face realities, and to measure consequences, to have done with the fatigue of pretending. It is not optimism to enjoy the view when one is treed by a bull; it is philosophy. The optimist would say that being treed was a valuable experience. The disciple of gladness would say it was a pleasurable sensation. The Christian Scientist would say there was no bull, though remaining—if he were wise—on the tree-top. The philosopher would make the best of a bad job, and seek what compensation he could find. He is of a class apart.
If, as scientists assert, fear is the note which runs through the universe, courage is the unconquerable beat of man’s heart. A “wise sad valour” won the war at a cost we do well to remember; and from unnumbered graves comes a stern reminder that the world can hold wrongs which call for such a righting. We for whom life has been made, not safe, but worth the living, can now afford “le bel sérieux” which befits the time and occasion. When preachers cease pointing out to us inaccessible routes to happiness, we may stop the chase long enough to let her softly overtake us. When the Gospellers of Gladness free us of their importunities, our exhausted spirits may yet revive to secret hours of mirth. When we frankly abandon an attitude of cheerfulness, our Malvolio smile may break into sudden peals of laughter. What have we gained from the past seven years if not zest for the difficulties and dangers ahead of us? What lesson have we learned but intrepidity? The noble Greek lines upon a drowned seaman sound in our ears, and steady us to action:
“A shipwrecked sailor, buried on this coast,
Bids you set sail.
Full many a gallant bark, when he was lost,
Weathered the gale.”
The Beloved Sinner
All the world does not love a lover. It is a cultivated taste, alien to the natural man, and unknown to childhood. But all the world does love a sinner, either because he is convertible to a saint, or because a taste for law-breaking is an inheritance from our first parents, who broke the one and only law imposed upon them. The little children whom Fra Lippo Lippi sees standing in a “row of admiration” around the murderer on the altar step express their innocent interest in crime. Bayard, “sans peur et sans reproche,” has never stirred the heart of youth as has Robin Hood, that bold outlaw who “beat and bound” unpopular sheriffs, and “readjusted the distribution of property,”—delightful phrase, as old as the world, and as fresh as to-morrow morning. The terrible and undeserved epithet, “blameless,” has robbed great Arthur of his just meed of homage. The “Master Thief” enjoyed, and still enjoys, unmerited popularity.
I sometimes wonder what a man conscious of talent, like the Master Thief, would have thought if the simple criminologists of his day—who knew no subtler remedy than hanging—had confronted him with clinics, and laboratories, and pamphlets on the “disease of crime.” I sometimes wonder how his able descendants, like the humorous rogues who stole the gold cup at Ascot; or the wag who slipped the stolen purses (emptied of their contents) into the pocket of the Bishop of Lincoln; or the redoubtable Raymond—alias Wirth—who stole a shipping of Kimberley diamonds and a Gainsborough portrait, feel about their pathological needs. “The criminal is a sick man, the prison is his hospital, and the judge who sentenced him is his physician,” said Dr. Vaughan, dean of the Medical School in the University of Michigan. “Does a hunting man give up riding to hounds because he has had a fall?” asked a stalwart “invalid,” serving a sentence for burglary, of the chaplain who had urged upon him the security of an honest life.