“Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility. It is, therefore, able to undertake all things, and it completes many things and warrants them to take effect where he who does not love would faint and lie down. Love is watchful, and, sleeping, slumbereth not. Though weary, it is not tired; though alarmed, it is not confounded, but, as a lively flame and burning torch, it forces its way upwards, and securely passes all.... Love is born of God and cannot rest but in God, above all created things.”
Is OUR Gospel of modern life and society to-day one of love or hate? Do we help each other more readily than we kick each other down? Are we more eager to say kind things of each other or cruel? Do we prefer to praise or to slander our neighbours? Is it not absolutely true that “a cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as they run?” Can we leave anybody alone without covert or open detraction from his or her merits? Even in the most ordinary, every-day life do we not see people taking a malicious, insane delight in making their next-door neighbours as uncomfortable as possible in every petty way they can? These persons, by the way, are generally the class who go to Church most regularly, and are constant Communicants. Do they not by their profane attempt to assimilate the malignity of their dispositions with the gospel of Christ, deserve to be considered as mere blasphemers of the Faith?
Yet, as a matter of fact, it is much easier to love than to hate. Love is the natural and native air of the immortal soul. “While we fulfil the law of love in all our thoughts and actions, we cannot fail to grow.” Hatred, discontent, envy, and pessimism cramp all the higher faculties of the mind, and very often actually breed disease in the body. To love all creation is to draw the responsive health and life of creation into one’s own immortal cognizance. “Love easily loosens all our bonds. There is no discomfort that will not yield to its sovereign power.” But it must not be a selfish love. It must be that Love which is the keynote of the Christian Faith—“Love one another as I have loved you.”
It follows very plainly that if we truly loved one another there would be no wars, no envyings, no racial hatreds, no over-reaching of our brethren for either wealth, place, or power. There would be no such hells as the Lancashire factories, for example, where, as Allen Clarke graphically tells us,[1] “Amidst that sickening jerry-jumble of cheap bricks and cheaper British industry, over a hundred thousand men, women, and children toil and exist, sweating in the vast, hot, stuffy mills and sweltering forges—going, when young, to the smut-surrounded schools to improve their minds, and trying to commune with the living God in the dreary, dead, besmirched churches and grimy puritanical chapels; growing up stunted, breeding thoughtlessly, dying prematurely, knowing not, nor dreaming, except for here and there a solitary one cursed with keen sight and sensitive soul, of aught better and brighter than this shrieking, steaming sphere of slime and sorrow.” Contrast this picture with a crowded “supper night” at the Carlton or any other fashionable Feeding-place of London, and then maintain, if you dare, that the men and women who are responsible for two such differing sides of life are “Christians.”
England is, I am told, at the present juncture in danger of becoming “Romanized.” Priests and nuns of various “orders,” who have been thrust out of France and Spain for intermeddling, are seeking refuge here, in company with the organ-grinders and other folk who have been found unnecessary in their own countries. From Paris official news was cabled on September 11th as follows:—
JESUIT EXODUS FROM FRANCE.
Paris, Wednesday, September 11th.
It is announced officially that by the 1st of next month not a single Jesuit will be left in France. Most of them are emigrating to England, and will make Canterbury their headquarters.—Dalziel.
France will not have the Jesuits; may it be asked why we are to have them? It is England’s proud privilege to be an international workhouse for all the decrepit of the world, and for this cause a happy hunting ground is open to Rome among these same decrepit. There is no creed in the world which is better adapted for those who are morally weak and frightened of themselves. All the millionaires who have gotten their goods by fraud, can, by leaving the greater part of these goods to Rome, secure a reserved seat in Rome’s Heaven, with a special harp and crown. All the women with “soul-affinities” other than lawful, can, after a considerable wallow in social mire, enter the Church of Rome, and after confession, be “cleansed” sufficiently to begin again a new life approved of the saints. All the spiritualists and faith-healers can find support for their theories with Rome,—and the Roman hell, full of large snakes and much brimstone, is a satisfactory place to consign one’s enemies to, when we have quite put aside Christ’s command, “Love one another.” Altogether Romanism is calculated to appeal to a very large majority of persons through the sensuous and emotional beauty of its ritual;—it is a kind of heavenly narcotic which persuades the believer to resign his own will into the hypnotic management of the priests. The church is made gorgeous with soft lights and colours,—glorious music resounds through the building, and the mind drowses gently under the influence of the Latin chanting, which we need not follow unless we like,—we are permitted to believe that a large number of saints and angels are specially looking after us, and the sweet Virgin Mary is ever ready with outstretched hands to listen to all our little griefs and vexations. It is a beautiful and fascinating creed, hallowed by long antiquity, graced by deeds of romance and chivalry, sanctified by the memories of great martyrs and pure saints, and even in these degenerate days, glorified by the noble-hearted men and women who follow it without bigotry or intolerance, doing good everywhere, tending the sick, comforting the sorrowful, and gathering up the little children into their protecting arms, even as Jesus Himself gathered them. It would need an angel’s pen dipped in fire to record the true history of a faithful, self-denying priest of the Roman Church, who gives up his own advantage for the sake of serving others—who walks fearlessly into squalid dens reeking with fever, and sets the pure Host between the infected lips of the dying,—who combats with the Demon of Drink, and drags up the almost lost reprobate out of that horrible chasm of vice and destruction. No one could ever give sufficient honour to such a man for all the immense amount of good he does, unostentatiously and without hope of reward. But many men like himself exist equally in the English Church as the Roman,—in the Presbyterian Church, in the Greek Church, in the Buddhist temples, among the Quakers, “Plymouth Brethren,” and other sects—among the followers of Mahomet or of Confucius. For there are good men and good women in every Church, faithful to the SPIRIT OF CHRIST, and therefore, “Christians,” even if called Jews or Hindoos.
Personally, I have no more objection or dislike to Romanism than I have to any other “ism” ever formulated. From a student’s point of view I admire the Roman Catholic priesthood, because they understand their business, and thoroughly know the material with which they have to deal. Wise as their Egyptian prototypes of old, they decline to unveil “mysteries” to the uninitiated vulgar—therefore the laity are not expected to read the Bible for themselves. Knowing the terrors of a guilty conscience, they are able to intimidate the uneducated ruffian of both sexes more successfully than all the majesty of the law. Thoroughly aware of the popular delight in “shows,” they organize public processions on feast days, just as the “Masters of the Stars” used to do in Memphis, where, by the way (as those who take the trouble to study ancient Egyptian records will discover), our latest inventions, such as the electric light, the telephone, the phonograph, and many other modern utilities were used by the priests for “miraculous” effects. From the Egyptian priesthood we derive the beginnings of scientific discovery;—to the early Roman Catholic priesthood we owe the preservation of much history and learning. The one is, intellectually speaking, a lineal descendant of the other, and both deserve the utmost respect for their immense capacity as Rulers of the Ignorant.