Still to thy dream of Heaven hold fast!
For then, whatever ills assail thee,
Though every earthly joy fly past,
This one sure hope shall never fail thee!
Bonn, 23. of the May-month, 1853.
CHAPTER IV
[BERNAYS]
Another much valued friend of ours was the great scholar Bernays. He also was a constant visitor whilst we were living in Bonn, often sitting for hours beside my mother’s invalid couch, talking to her. But he never partook of a meal in our house, and my childish mind was much troubled at this. His explanation was, that being a Jew, he must avoid being drawn into anything contrary to the customs and observances of his race. For his conscientious scruples, no less than for his profound learning and the breadth and liberality of his views, my parents entertained the very highest respect and admiration, my mother in particular never wearying of hearing him discourse on one or other of those deeper problems that will forever occupy men’s minds, rejoicing meanwhile to feel her own store of knowledge increase and her intelligence expand in this congenial atmosphere.
Bernays was not merely well-read in the Jewish Scriptures, but seemed to know the New Testament also better than we did ourselves, and his ideas on religious topics were always striking and impressive. I did not then know of his intimate friendship with Ernest Renan, and of the correspondence they kept up. I was indeed at this time considered much too young to be admitted even as a listener to the long and serious conversations—of such absorbing interest to both my parents—that took place between them and Bernays. The latter, I have since heard, felt it a great hardship that he should be excluded, on account of his nationality, from holding a professorship at the University, and this in spite of his being in his own line probably the finest scholar Bonn has ever produced. As for my own childish impression, I confess that it was chiefly one of awe at the solemn, rather severe-looking personage, whose eyes seemed to wear an expression of such unchanging gravity behind their dark spectacles. He was in point of fact much too short-sighted to see other faces clearly, and thus no ray of recognition ever lit up his own.
It was on account of his short-sightedness, and the nervousness that arose from it, that my mother always insisted on sending a manservant, carrying a lantern, to accompany Bernays home, whenever he had spent the evening with us. For the streets of Bonn were by no means brilliantly illuminated in those days. Whenever full moon was down in the almanack, then very few street lamps were lit. But certainly the moonlit nights were of exceptional loveliness. Our villa, which was called the Vinea Domini, had a beautiful big garden, sloping right down to the banks of the Rhine. Many and many an evening was spent on the terrace in the moonshine, watching the boats glide past, and it was hardly ever before the last steamer came puffing along, that the party broke up. “Here comes the late boat!” was a sort of standing joke, used as a signal for departure by more intimate friends, towards guests inclined to tarry perhaps all too long. On such occasions, when the conversation threatened to spin itself out into the small hours of the night, and my mother began to look tired out, someone—and more often than not it was Prince Reuss, the future ambassador, then young and full of high spirits—would call out: “Here is the evening boat,” and the assembly would at last disperse. To the minds of all who took part in those pleasant gatherings, the remembrance of the pretty house, with its sweet garden, must have been endeared. But they, alas, no longer exist; have long since disappeared, and the ground has been cut up and built over.
I was too young at that time, as I have said, to be allowed to hear much of the discussions that went on, and I have often thought since that it was a pity that I should have missed the chance of profiting by them. For, child as I was, I was studious and thoughtful beyond my years, and being of a naturally devout temperament, which was fostered by our pious training, I would have given much to hear my parents’ learned friend, whom they held in such unbounded veneration, expound his views on religion. It would have been worth still more, I have often said to myself since, to hear one so remarkable discourse, could they but have been brought together, with those kindred spirits, Renan and Tolstoi! As it was, of the rich spiritual feast set forth in such profusion, it was but a few crumbs that fell to my share. I cannot therefore profess to quote from memory Bernays’s precise words on any occasion, and should be the more diffident of the attempt, since he is no longer in this world, to correct any mistake I might inadvertently make. But very many of his arguments and inferences remained with me, together with a very clear apprehension of their general scope and tendency. Of the dogmatic value attaching to these, it is not for me to decide; but it would have been impossible for me, in chronicling these memories of my childhood, not to give full prominence to the striking personality whose teaching exercised so unbounded an influence over the minds of my parents, whilst in my own its mere echoes may possibly have aroused the first interest in the philosophy of religion, which I have retained throughout my life. For long years his opinion was constantly cited in our family circle;—“Bernays said this,” or, “Bernays would have thought so and so,” were phrases of daily recurrence, and carried with them the authority of an oracle.
It was a favourite assertion of Bernays, that the Jewish is the only religion which has kept itself free from any taint of fetichism; Christianity, like every other religion which is bent on proselytising, having been powerless to avoid contamination from the beliefs and practices of heathen nations, among whom its first converts were made. Is there not perhaps some truth in this contention? Is it not the weak point in the armour of every Faith that lays itself out for propaganda, that it is insensibly betrayed into making concessions, and thereby inevitably in the long run falls away from its lofty ideals! Christianity, we must own with shame, has lowered its standard since the days when its first teachings flowed, pure and untarnished, from the lips of its Divine Founder. And were we, who call ourselves Christians, to measure our thoughts and actions by the pattern set before us in the Sermon on the Mount, must we not blush at our own short-comings?
It was certainly by no means incomprehensible to me, that our friend should have taken it so ill, when his own brother became a Christian. On that point I have always had, I own, very much the feeling of the Roumanians, whose dislike to any change of religion is so thorough and intense, that they use the same expression—“s a’ turcit,”—i.e., “he has become a Turk, a Mahomedan,” indiscriminately to denote any change of faith, whether on the part of one becoming a Christian or a Mussulman. Quite different in this from their Russian brethren of the Orthodox Church, the Roumanians view with absolute disfavour the action of those who join their communion. To them such an act is always simply apostasy, and their language possesses no other term by which to designate it. In this, as I was saying, I am much in sympathy with them. Is it not an admission of weakness, to say the least, deliberately to abandon the Faith of our Fathers and enter another fold? Since all Churches are in a sense human institutions, what advantage have we in leaving the one in which we were born and brought up, only to find that of our choice equally fallible and imperfect! Should we not content ourselves with doing our very best, in all honesty and sincerity of purpose, within the community in which our lot is cast, striving to raise its aims and purify its ordinances, rather than impatiently to fling aside fetters that have perhaps become irksome, only by so doing to burden ourselves with other and perchance heavier chains, and from which we must no longer seek to free ourselves, seeing that they are of our own choosing? Is then the outward form under which we worship God, of so much importance after all? Some form undoubtedly there must be, as long as human beings meet together for prayer and praise, feeling themselves thereby more fitly disposed for their orisons and thanksgiving; but let us not forget that the essence of all service consists in its being performed “in spirit and in truth!” The rest matters little.
In the home that is now mine, Nathan the Wise might be welcomed daily, he would find here members of widely differing confessions dwelling together in harmony in one family. Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox, each respects the other’s faith, and never has the slightest discord arisen. As for the children, they have certainly never had occasion to feel, that the creed in which they are being brought up in any way differs from that of their elders. And in our household there is an Israelite to be reckoned among our secretaries, and he it is who is my most faithful auxiliary in all charitable work. So that of religious intolerance or narrow-mindedness it can surely never be question among us, and I have been able to live on here true to the lessons and traditions of my youth. Nor can any accusation of having recently either sanctioned or connived at the so-called persecution of the Jews, be equitably brought against the Roumanian government. What really took place was this. In this sparely populated country, in which all industries and manufactures are in the hands of foreigners,—notably of the Jews,—a succession of bad harvests, after causing indescribable suffering in agricultural districts, at length made itself felt in the commercial centres also. There had been no crops, and consequently no food for man or beast, no work done on the land for years, and there was no money forthcoming; as a result trade naturally suffered, and to such an extent that numbers of the traders—not merely Jews, but Catholics and Protestants also—left the land. They were not driven away, except by the same untoward circumstances that pressed so heavily on the whole nation; they emigrated voluntarily from a land which could no longer afford them the means of subsistence. As long as it was merely the peasantry who were starving, all Europe looked on with the greatest indifference, perhaps even in ignorance of what was going on; but directly the consequences of those years of famine began to affect the commercial and industrial classes, then all Europe was in an uproar.