“I will set my camel free and trust him to Allah.” Mahomed answered, “Tie thy camel first, and then commit him to God.”—Arabian Saying.
We soon had everything in good working order. A committee of entertainment was appointed; one evening of each week was devoted to instruction and practice in singing, for which an excellent teacher was secured. Another evening was for the literary society, when essays were read and subjects discussed, the members appointed in turn, so as to give every one a chance, and all to take an interest and have something to do. This compelled them to read and think, which took up all their leisure hours from work, formerly spent in idleness and folly. We had no idea of having any one or a few do all the work and receive all the benefit, but every one, no difference who they were, was urged, assisted and required to do their part, not so much for the benefit they might give to others, but what they would do for themselves. Ours was a mutual improvement association, the weakest to be helped the most.
CHAPTER XL.
Every Sunday morning there was a lecture or a sermon read, prayers and singing. We gleaned in all fields, gathering the ripest grain we could find. For our needs the library was increased by the addition of valuable books as works of reference, for investigation of subjects for discussion. There were only a few novels, and by the best writers. We always had plenty of music and singing, and in a few years our club became quite a musical society. We had no castes, as in “society,” to prevent Mrs. Smack, the clerk’s wife, from sitting beside Mrs. Grimsby, the wife of the railway guard.
The intention was to vary the exercises, even the religious, so as to do away with that everlasting monotony prevalent in the churches; to make all of moral benefit and intellectual profit, as well as attractive and entertaining. The subjects of the lectures, articles and sermons, took a wide range from earth to heaven, from the physiology of plants and animals to astronomy, the care of the homes, the health of our bodies, the welfare of our moral natures, temperance a most prominent topic, the restraint of our passions and the immortality of our souls, everything that might make us cleaner, healthier, wiser and nobler. We believed in useful work to make people happy, to fit them to live on earth, more than in worrying them about what they might be hereafter, or in troubling them about “the ineffable relations of the Godhead before the remotest beginnings of time;” in making a heaven for them in this life and trust to God and their own fitness for the one to come; not so much in trying to penetrate the mysteries and glories of heaven, as to realize the facts and realities of every day life on earth; less in describing the many mansions and the golden pavements of the new Jerusalem, but caring more about improving the homes and cleaning the alleys of the poor, giving them good bread for which they were hungering daily, instead of wasting time on dilated descriptions of the imagined joys of the blessed, so very far away. It seemed to be a settled conviction among us that if we could get our people to live good, clean, honest, happy lives here, they would run no risk of enjoying the life to come.
Who dare say that we had not the right to try the experiment, and to do as we pleased in the matter?
Why should we not start our society, found our church, if we choose to call it such, as any other set of men to found theirs?
If the church of Rome, the church of England, the Presbyterian or any one of the other thousand heterogeneous sects could set up for itself, why should we not do the same? They did not ask us or anybody for their privileges, why need we ask anything of them? We were not responsible for them as they certainly would deny any responsibility to us. Should they say that they had divine authority, could we not make the same claim for ourselves? Since God our father created us, as we believe He did, as He created them, why could we not have a share in His divine rights as well as they? We conceded to all others the same privilege, the right to do as they deemed best, and claimed the same right for ourselves.
If that libidinous, much-wived and wife murderer, Henry the Eighth, could set up for himself in founding a church, why cannot other men of better morals and less exceptional tastes start a society, a church, a denomination? To go further back: If Constantine, who “drowned his wife in boiling water, butchered his little nephew, murdered two of his brothers-in-law with his own hand, killed his own son Crispus, led to death several men and women and smothered in a well an old monk,” and yet was the distinguished patron, and one of the founders of the Christian church, cannot others whose hands have never been stained with blood dare to think and act for themselves?
Much might be said of the bigotry and assumption of some classes of people who claim like the egotistical, over-bearing Jews of old, that they are the elect, the chosen people of God and all the rest of mankind are to be subdued, exterminated, unless they fall into the ways and accept the creeds and ceremonies of these self-assumed religious rulers of the world; claiming that “God’s actual grace is limited to those who are within the church and have the faith,” meaning thereby their little church and their very doubtful faith, and boldly inscribe on their portals, “Beware of imitations; here is the only genuine article;” that there is no truth, except what is seen under their little ecclesiastical microscopes.