Thus spake Keidansky when I reproachfully reminded him of a former utterance.
"There are the missionaries," he said, "who go forth among peaceful, law-avoiding savages to force upon them a religion that has outlived its usefulness, a religion that has not prevented them from doing such an immoral, impolite thing. They go forth to promulgate the truth of which they are not sure. They invidiously invade the premises of goodly primitive people, and ruthlessly trample upon their traditions, beliefs, superstitions and feelings. We shut people out of our country, and we send missionaries to offer them free admission or standing-room in our heaven. Heedless that their bodies are starving, we come and ask to let us save their souls. We forget that they have a right to their religion, to their way of non-thinking, to take the medicine they like; that their method of salvation is best for them,
'That human hopes and human creeds
Have their roots in human needs.'
We forget that they have just as much a right to wear their mental corsets as we have to wear ours, or, if you wish, that their beliefs are as true to them as ours are to us. We forget that they speak to God in their own language. We go forth among them and mock at all that is holy and dear to their hearts.
"Of course, missionaries, like all agitators, are devoted people, living up to their very highest principles, and we all mean well; but this sort of business, this invasion and utter disregard for others, is to me grossly immoral. And to court and minister to the needs of cannibals and brigands is too much altruism on our part, and that excessive phase of it is wicked and hurtful."
"But," I protested, "is not the legitimate advocacy of ideas justifiable?"
"Yes," said Keidansky, "the legitimate advocacy of ideas. There are those who on one day of the week would turn our cities into cemeteries, who would stifle our spirits and starve our souls, who on that day deny us music and mirth and song—think it a sin to smile, wicked to be happy, and a crime to make merry. If they could reach the sun, they would stop it from working overtime and shining on the Lord's day; yet if the sun should ever reach them, their piety would not cast such a pall over the community. Yes, I know; but listen. Have patience. Patience is a Christian virtue, which Christians have forced upon Jewish money-lenders. I know that there are many people to-day who have quite a high opinion of the Almighty, believing that He loves light and sunshine, laughter and joy, and glories in the happiness of every living thing, down to the humblest worm. But I am speaking of the others—those who deny the pleasure of everything except self-denial; for whom the only laws of life are the blue laws.
"Just now our city is being held up by the police, and at the point of a club told to be good and pious and religious. We are told not to breathe, or sigh, or sneeze, or smile, or show any signs of life on Sunday. Orders to stop the circulation of our blood on that day have not yet been issued, but everything comes to those who wait—every evil comes to those who have over-zealous pietists among them. To heaven, or be damned. It is a case of your adherence, or your life. You must be killed, or cured. Now in this disregard of disbelievers, the narrowness of vision and hurtful overzeal, I discern something immoral.