Whenever I enter an old Spanish church, in the south or in the north, still intact in its material details, in the observance of its traditions, in its antique grandiosity or loveliness, nearly always there is a latent fear at my heart. Who knows how long these things will be left on the earth? Even if they escape the dangers due to the ignorance or carelessness of their own guardians, no one knows what swift destruction may not at any moment overtake them.
In the leading article of the Barcelonese Diluvio to-day I read:
The unity which marked the Middle Ages is broken into an infinite
variety of opinions and beliefs.
Everywhere else, however, except in our country, there has been
formed a gradation, a rhythm, of ideas, passing from the highest to
the deepest notes of the scale. There are radicals in politics, in
religion, in philosophy; there are also reactionaries in all these
fields; but it is the intermediate notes, conciliatory, more or less
eclectic, which constitute the nucleus on which every society must
depend. In Spain this central nucleus has no existence. Here in all
orders of thought there are only the two extremes: all or
nothing.
And the article concludes by saying that this state of things is so threatening to the nation that some pessimists are already standing, watch in hand, to count the moments of Spain's existence.
This tendency of the Spanish spirit, which there can be little doubt about, may not threaten the existence of Spain, but it threatens the existence of the last great fortress of mediaeval splendour and beauty and romance. France, the chosen land of Saintliness and Catholicism, has been swept clear of mediaevalism. England, even though it is the chosen land of Compromise, has in the sphere of religion witnessed destructive revolutions and counter-revolutions. What can save the Church in Spain from perishing by that sword of Intolerance which it has itself forged?
June 20.—In a side-chapel there is a large and tall Virgin, with seemingly closed eyes, a serene and gracious personage. Before this image of the Virgin Mother kneels a young girl, devoutly no doubt, though with a certain careless familiarity, with her dark hair down, and on her head the little transparent piece of lace which the Spanish woman, even the smallest Spanish girl-child, unlike the free-spirited Frenchwoman, never fails to adjust as she enters a church.
I have no sympathy with those who look on the Bible as an outworn book and the Church as an institution whose symbols are empty of meaning. It is a good thing that, somewhere amid our social order or disorder, the Mother whose child has no father save God should be regarded as an object of worship. It would be as well to maintain the symbol of that worship until we have really incorporated it into our hearts and are prepared in our daily life to worship the Mother whose child has no known father save God. It is not the final stage in family evolution, certainly, but a step in the right direction. So let us be thankful to the Bible for stating it so divinely and keeping it before our eyes in such splendid imagery.
The official guardians of the Bible have always felt it to be a dangerous book, to be concealed, as the Jews concealed their sacred things in the ark. When after many centuries they could no longer maintain the policy of concealing it in a foreign tongue which few could understand, a brilliant idea occurred to them. They flung the Bible in the vulgar tongue in millions of copies at the heads of the masses. And they dared them to understand it! This audacity has been justified by the results. A sublime faith in Human Imbecility has seldom led those who cherish it astray.
No wonder they feel so holy a horror of Eugenics!
June 22.—I can see, across the narrow side-street, that a room nearly opposite the windows of my room at the hotel is occupied by tailors, possibly a family of them—two men, two women, two girls. They seem to be always at work, from about eight in the morning until late in the evening; even Sunday seems to make only a little difference, for to-day is Sunday, and they have been at work until half-past seven. They sit, always in the same places, round a table, near the large French windows which are constantly kept open. At the earliest sign of dusk the electric light suspended over the table shines out. They rarely glance through the window, though certainly there is little to see, and I am not sure that they go away for meals; I sometimes see them munching a roll, and the Catalan water-pot is always at hand to drink from. If it were not that I know how the Catalan can live by night as well as by day, I should say that this little group can know nothing whatever of the vast and variegated Barcelonese world in whose heart they live, that it is nothing to them that all last night Barcelona was celebrating St. John's Eve (now becoming a movable festival in the cities) with bonfires and illuminations and festivities of every kind, or that at the very same moment in this same city the soldiery were shooting down the people who never cease to protest against the war in Morocco. They are mostly good-looking, neatly dressed, cheerful, animated; they talk and gesticulate; they even play, the men and the girls battering each other for a few moments with any harmless weapons that come to hand. They are always at work, yet it is clear that they have not adopted the heresy that man was made for work.