‘Prove it: I don’t want to prove it. I fear you are in grievous error. Your duty and that of everyone is to obey the Book of God: a book not to be dealt with upon the same rules which are applicable to the works of man.’
And then they parted; he stern and resolved, she sorrowful and sad; he intimating something about it was a pity that people could not remain satisfied with the station of life in which they were born, which did not pour balm into a wounded soul. Happily for herself, however, she could exclaim with Sir Thomas Browne, ‘As for those mazy mysteries in divinity and airy subtleties in religion which have unhinged the minds of many, they have never stretched the pia mater of mine.’ But to gain this position was a work of time.
With an aching heart, once more the actress sought a clergyman. He was a Broad Churchman. There were no difficulties for him. In antiquated forms, in vain repetitions, in decaying creeds, there were difficulties, it might be; but one was not to bother one’s self about them. It was true that one had to conform to outward form, but the spirit was greater than the form. The time would come when the Church would burst its bonds, but at present all they had to do was to make the best of a bad situation. It seemed to her such church-worship was a sham. The man in the pulpit, the man in the pew, alike ignored the dead creed, and instead revelled in glib phraseology, in poetical nothings, in much-sounding rhetoric and ecclesiastical show and ritual. The chief things were the music, the millinery, and the show—the white-robed choristers, the dim religious light.
Then she thought of her old training among the Dissenters, and went to a chapel. She was staying at an old country mansion, when one Sunday morning the gentlemen were going to have the usual smoke in the stables, and examine the horses and the hounds, and to make a few bets about a forthcoming race, and there was a smile of perfect horror as she expressed her intention of going to the village meeting-house, while the ladies were inexpressibly shocked. No one went to meeting; it was low. One could not be received in society who was known to go to meeting.
‘I show myself once or twice in a year at church just to keep myself on good terms with society,’ said the gentleman of the mansion.
The actress went to the chapel, as nowadays the meeting-house is termed. It was as Gothic in style as it was possible to be. The singing was good. The preacher was a man of culture, and was dressed as much like a clergyman as was possible. The hearers were of the respectable middle class; the working man was conspicuous by his absence. But, alas! it was known the next Sunday that the quiet lady who had attended the previous Sunday was an actress from town. She found every eye turned towards her. There was quite a crowd to see her arrive and depart, and further attendance was impossible.
When are we to have a rational change in the land? We have had a Reformation that, incomplete as it was, freed us at any rate from the worship of the Mass. When is our religion to be free of Church creeds—of the Assembly Catechism—of the iron fetters of chapel trusts—of the traditions of the elders—of the influence of the fables and traditions and superstitions of the Middle Ages? When is a man to stand up in our midst and honestly utter what he believes, careless of his ecclesiastical superiors, of the frowns of deacons and elders? When are we to get rid of conventional observances and conventional forms? There is no place of worship in which it would be proper for me to enter without the chimney-pot hat, or take a brown-paper parcel in my hand. If I did so, I should be set down as little better than one of the wicked—as wicked as if I were to read the Weekly Dispatch on a Sunday, or spend an hour or two in a museum or a picture-gallery. When are we to realize that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath? Why are Churches to be less tolerant than the Master, who invited all to come, and who rebuked His ignorant disciples when they would have put obstacles in their way? It is hard to think how many souls have been thus driven away. You are an actress, said the Church to her; you must give up your profession. She felt that was wrong; that on the stage she could be as good a Christian as anywhere else. It was her happiness to believe in a
‘Father of all, in every age,
In every clime, adored—
By saint, by savage, or by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord.’
Toleration is the great need of our day. But we need more: we need less of prayer that is not worship; of hymnology that makes men utter on their tongues what is rarely, if ever, in their hearts. We want more of honesty in all our public services, to whatever denomination we belong. We have far too much of indifference; too much of dogma; too much of silly sentimentalism; too much mysticism; too much morbid faith. Our missionaries often make converts, who are the worse, and not the better, for the use of their primitive creeds. The shapeless block of wood, hideously carved and fantastically ornamented, that I, in the sunlight, may look upon with scorn, my brother, living in the dark places of the earth, may look upon as the very highest type of his ideal god, and as such he may gaze upon it with reverence, and worship it with awe. And who am I that I may say that he is not the better for so doing? Who am I that I am to laugh as my happy sister prays, or to deprive her of a faith that ‘scorns delights and lives laborious days’? Would the savage be less a savage had he not before him that type of a Divine ideal? Would he be a better man if I were to blot that out of his being? Would that make him less selfish, less cruel; more kindly in act, more ready to do good? Would he be happier in the sunshine, braver in the battle and the storm? Yes, it is more religious toleration that we need, though we have, rather against the grain, ceased to burn heretics. And that comes only as knowledge increases, and the torch of science throws its light over the dark mysteries of Nature and her laws.
The difficulty with the actress was not faith, but the form; not with the Spirit, but with its manifestation in so-called Christian churches and among Christian men; not with the Divine idea, but its human expression. And that is the giant Difficulty of our day. It is impossible for any Church to realize its truest conceptions. It is in vain that finite man seeks to grapple with the problem of the infinite. It is told of St. Augustine, how once upon a time he was perplexed about the doctrine of the Trinity while he was walking on the seashore. All at once he saw a child filling a shell with water, and pouring it out on the sand. ‘What are you doing?’ said the old saint. ‘Putting the sea into this hole,’ was the reply. The child’s answer was not lost on the saint if it made him feel the main essence of Christianity is not a dogma, but a life.