He commenced again. “Suppose this girl and other girls are friendless and weak, are they not the very ones to be protected? What are laws and governments for, if they are not to shield those who need protection the most? Are the laws for the rich, the strong and mighty, who do not need their aid? To whom should we be charitable if not to the poor? To whom shall we show mercy, if not to the weak and erring? These girls have immortal souls, or else Christianity and all human teaching is a lie. Have we not had it drummed into our ears, from our infancy that all souls are precious in the sight of God, and that He is not a respecter of persons; that the poor and helpless are his care? You know the teachings of Christianity and of the Church, but what is the practice? I am old enough to care very little about creeds and theories. I care more to know of a man’s life, what are his daily acts and thoughts. I don’t care to hear a man’s prayers, so much as to see what he does. He may pray for the poor with his lips, but I would rather see him pay for them from his pocket. But what is the practice here?
“We took this country because we had the power to do it. We hold it by might and force, and rule it with a sort of tyranny, a military despotism. We are not here because the people want us. If we did not keep the country by force, not by moral or religious power, but by real brutal force, it would slip out of our hands in a single day. Blink at it as we may, this is the fact and no one can question it. Here then is a force, of one hundred and fifty thousand English soldiers, more or less, sent out at an enormous expense to live by the sweat and blood of these poverty-stricken, overtaxed natives. Only ten per cent. of these soldiers are allowed to marry. A direct violation of the laws of God and nature. It is not enough that the people are taxed to support this great army, they must also provide victims to gratify the,—I will not say brutal, for that would be a libel on even the lowest of the brute creation,—but the foul, inhuman lust of these officers and soldiers. And what is enough to make infidels of all mankind, is that all this is done under a Christian Queen, a woman and a mother, by authority of a Christian Parliament, and executed by the Christian Government of India! By a nation ever ready to parade its civilization, chivalry and Christianity! No wonder that these heathen have so little faith in the Christian religion. I heard an old missionary say that the worst place for missionary work was in the vicinity of a cantonment; that the very lowest heathen were degraded by contact with the soldiers. It is so everywhere.
“A writer on Africa says, ‘The farther the traveler advances into the interior, the better is the condition of the natives found to be, less drunkenness and immorality!’ Yet it is pretended that we are holding this country for the glory of God, and the welfare of the people, and that the subjugation of the people of the world by Christian nations is for the promotion of civilization and Christianity! Out on such cant and hypocrisy! The biggest robbers get the loot, and we are the robbers. Why not say so, that we are after the loot and nothing else? Why not be truthful even if we are thieves and not try to cover up our iniquities with a film of religious varnish?”
I had no chance to put in a word and did not care to, as I thought he was hitting the bull’s-eye at every shot, but I interjected: “They say that it is necessary to make some provision.”
“All rot,” he exclaimed, “it is a slander on humanity. Don’t you know that men can frame excuses and apologies for everything they wish to do?
“Why not make provision for men to commit theft, or highway robbery or murder? It is false that men cannot restrain or subdue their sexual passion the same as they subdue their other passions. Are they worse than the brutes? If men are such gross animals that they cannot control themselves, they ought to do as Origen, the saint, did to himself, or as they cripple their fighting stallions.
“The fact is that the teachings of our people are wrong. They always uphold what they do themselves, and make excuses for those who do like them. One cannot take up a high society English novel but he reads of the seduction and ruin of some poor ignorant girl by some titled roue. High society seems to demand and gloat over such rotten mental food, as it enjoys its rank over ripe game. If not, why are such books written, and some of them by women, too? If the literature of every nation is the mirror of its mind, what can be the minds of those who write and read such books? The level of public morality must be very low when the higher classes can delight in such things. If these stories were written to condemn vice and licentiousness, to show the curse and crime of wrong-doing, I would say nothing, for I am not a prude, but the most of these stories make the amours and seductions by their heroes as something to be admired, rather than horrible and repulsive.
“If there is any truth in Christianity, or any force in morality, it should be used against the great vices of the nation, as well as of the individual. But, as the Rev. Mr. Morley, in the “Times,” says: ‘The church has nothing to say to public justice and mercy, to the spirit of our legislation, to the union of hearts and minds embracing all classes and conditions. All this it leaves to the world.’
“What are all the sweet mouthings in church about baptismal regeneration and holy communion, when the majority of those listening are constantly violating the laws of God and their own natures, and not a word about this? I suppose all the soldiers in these regiments have been baptized. Were they regenerated? If so, they must have got over it very quickly. If there is any virtue in baptism, they should be baptized every day, and by immersion, even to drowning, and then they would not be fit to live on earth, much less to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
“The trouble is, that in the churches, faith and morals, creed and practice have been divorced, and do not live together. Many of these soldiers would probably be astonished if it was suggested to them that their religion had anything to do with their passions or their lusts. They would probably answer as the old negro woman did, who had stolen a goose. She went to church and gave testimony for Jesus. When reproached by her mistress for doing such a thing, after her theft, she exclaimed: ‘Do you think I would deny my Lord and Master for the sake of a goose?’”