Meredith expresses the same idea, with the difference that he does not speak apologetically from within, but with the unqualified disapproval of the outsider. Jenny Denham, an incisive and thoughtful woman, says,[331]
“My experience of the priest in our country is, that he has abandoned—he’s dead against the only cause that can justify and keep up a Church; the cause of the poor—the people. He is a creature of the moneyed class. I look on him as a pretender.”
In his subtle way Meredith satirizes the Catholic Church by having the Countess de Saldar take refuge in and approve of it. Its great asset is that its democracy includes even tailors. That it is the only true spiritual home for a true gentleman she proves by citing an example. A noble knight does not hesitate at telling a flat falsehood to save a lady, being safe in morality because “his priest was handy.” Her nature is defined as the truly religious, that is, one with need of vicarious strength and a sense of renewed absolution. Another exponent is Constance Asper, in Diana of the Crossways, whose boudoir was filled with expensive Catholic equipments, affording “every invitation to meditate in luxury on an ascetic religiousness.”
Butler was not content to view the Church from his external position with the silence of George Eliot or the casual comments of Meredith. The intensity of his iconoclasm demanded full expression,—kept, however, from crudeness by his ironic finish, and from injustice by his fundamental reasonableness. In Erewhon his chief point is the perfunctory character of established religion. The Erewhonians have two distinct economic currencies, one of which is supposed to be the system, and is patronized by all who wished to be considered respectable. Yet its funds have no direct value in the community, whose actual business is conducted on the other commercial system. The Musical Banks excel in architecture, and keep up a routine of receiving and paying checks. But their patrons are for the most part ladies and some students from the College of Unreason. Mrs. Nosnibor, a staunch shareholder, deplores this apparent lack of public interest, and remarks that it is “indeed melancholy to see what little heed people paid to the most precious of all institutions.” Her guest observes,—[332]
“I could say nothing in reply, but I have ever been of opinion that the greater part of mankind do approximately know where they get that which does them good.”
The Musical Bankers not only protest too much as to the ascendancy of their institution, but consistently depreciate the other:[333]
“Even those who to my certain knowledge kept only just enough money at the Musical Banks to swear by, would call the other banks (where their securities really lay) cold, deadening, paralyzing, and the like.”
As to the cashiers and managers,—[334]
“Few people would speak quite openly and freely before them, which struck me as a very bad sign. * * * The less thoughtful of them did not seem particularly unhappy, but many were plainly sick at heart, though perhaps they hardly knew it, and would not have owned to being so. Some few were opponents of the whole system; but these were liable to be dismissed from their employment at any moment, and this rendered them very careful, for a man who had once been a cashier at a Musical Bank was out of the field for other employment, and was generally unfitted for it by reason of that course of treatment which was commonly called his education.”
Erewhon Revisited deals more specifically with the miraculous and doctrinal side of Christianity, mirrored in the account of the origin of Sunchildism and its connection with the old Musical Banks. The two main characters are Hanky and Panky, Professors respectively of Worldly and Unworldly Wisdom. They are carefully distinguished:[335]