During the past few years there have been many examples of men belonging to the hierarchy of the Church, who have wantonly and knowingly outraged every canon of honour and virtue, and their sins appear all the blacker because of the whiteness of the faith they profess to serve. A criminal is twice a criminal when he adds hypocrisy to his crime. The clergyman of a parish, who has all doors thrown open to him,—who invites and receives the trust of his parishioners,—who is set among them to guide, help and comfort them in the devious and difficult ways of life, is a thousand times more to blame than any other man in a less responsible position, when he knowingly and deliberately consents to sin. Unless he is able to govern his own passions, and eschew every base, mean and petty motive of action, he is not fit to influence his fellow men, nor should he presume to instruct them in matters which he makes it evident he does not himself understand.
Quite recently a case was chronicled in the daily press of a clergyman who went to visit a dying woman at her own request. She wished to make a last confession to him, and so unburden her soul of its secret misery before she passed away, trusting in God’s mercy for pardon and peace. The clergyman went accordingly, and heard what she had to say. When the unhappy creature was dead, however, he refused her poor body the sacred rites of burial! Now it surely may be asked what authority had he or any man calling himself a Christian minister to refuse the rites of burial even to the worst of sinners? Whatever the woman’s faults might have been, vengeance wreaked on a corpse is both futile and barbarous. There is nothing in Christ’s pure and noble teaching that can endorse so unholy a spirit of intolerance,—one too, which is calculated to give the bitterest pain to the living friends and relations of the so coarsely-insulted dead, and to breed in them a relentless hostility to the Church and its representatives. For the poorest erring human creature that ever turned over the pages of the New Testament, knows that such conduct is not Christ-like, inasmuch as Christ had nothing but the tenderest pity, pardon and peace for the worst sinner at the last moment. When death steps in to close all accounts, it behoves man to be more than merciful to his brother man. “For if ye forgive not men their trespasses neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses.”
Still fresh in the minds of many must be the un-Christian conduct of the late Cardinal Vaughan in denying the rites of Christian burial to the venerable Dr. St. George Mivart. Dr. St. George Mivart was a man of science whose theories did not agree with the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church, and as he belonged ostensibly to that form of faith, one may call him, if one so chooses, a bad Catholic. But when it is remembered that within quite recent days, so-called “Christian” priests in Servia have given their solemn benediction to the assassins of the late King and Queen of that country, it is somewhat difficult to understand or appreciate the kind of “religion” that blesses murderers and regicides, yet refuses burial to a modern scientist who, as far as his intellectual powers allowed him, was working for the good and the wider instruction of the human race. At the time of the “inhibition” and subsequent death of Dr. Mivart, I ventured to address an “Open Letter” to Cardinal Vaughan on the subject. This Letter was published in March 1900, and though no doubt the great “Prince of the Church” never deigned to read it, a large majority of the public did, and I have had much cause to rejoice that in the timorously silent acquiescence of the Christian world in a deed which shames the very name of Christ, I, at least, as one of the humblest among the followers of the Christian faith, did have sufficient courage to speak out openly against the wicked intolerance which made the Church itself seem mere “sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal,” because lacking in that holy charity “which suffereth long and is kind.” It was a barbarous act to “inhibit” Dr. Mivart,—it was still more barbarous to refuse his body the sacred burial-rites,—and though the great Cardinal has now followed his victim to that world where all the secrets of the soul are made manifest, his cruelty remains as a blot on his mortal career,—a black smirch, ugly to look upon in the chronicle of his various virtues and excellencies. No ordained minister of the Gospel has the right to be intolerant. He has not the slightest excuse for arrogating to himself any other code of ethics or conduct than that which is set out plainly for him in the New Testament. Away from that he should not dare to go, if he truly believes what he elects to preach,—and if he does not believe, he should at once resign his office and not live on the proceeds of what in his own private conscience he considers untrue.
Most of us have met with many a mean little curate,—many a sly, spiteful, scandal-mongering hypocritical parson,—in the daily round of our common lives and duties. Most of us know the “salad” cleric,—the gentleman who is a doubtful compound of oil and vinegar, with a good deal of tough green vegetable matter growing where the brain should be,—coarse weed of bigotry, prejudice, and rank obstinacy. None of us are entirely ignorant of the sedately amorous parson who is either looking out for a wife on his own account, or attempting a “Christianly” conversion of the wife of somebody else. In country towns we can scarcely fail to have come across the domineering vicar,—the small and petty tyrant, who whips the souls committed to his charge with rods steeped in his own particular pickle of arrogance, austerity and coercion, playing the part of a little despot over terrorized Sunday-school children, and laying down the law for his parishioners by way of a “new dispensation” wherein the Gospel has no part. One such petty martinet, well known in a certain rural parish, plays regular “ogre” to his choir boys. It is always a case of “Fee, fi, fa, fo, fum, I smell the blood of a chorister,” with him. Should one of these unfortunate minstrels chance to sneeze during service, this vicar straightway imposes a penny fine (sometimes more) on the unlucky little wretch for yielding to an irresistible nasal impulse! This kind of thing is, of course, ridiculous, and would merit nothing but laughter, were it not for the dislike, distrust and contempt engendered in the minds of the boys by the display of such a peevish spirit of trumpery oppression on the part of a man who is placed in the position he holds to be an example of kindness, good temper, cheerfulness and amiability to all. True, the vicar in question is what may be called “liverish,” and a small boy’s sneeze may seem, to a mind perverted by bilious bodily secretions, like the collapse of a universe. But there are various ways of conquering even one’s physical ills,—at least to the extent of sparing poor children the infliction of fines because they have noses which occasionally give them trouble.
The begging cleric is of all sacerdotal figures the one most familiar to the general community. One can seldom attend a church without hearing the mendicant’s plea. If the collection taken were indeed for the poor, and one felt that it was really and truly going to help feed the starving and nourish the sick, how gladly most of us would contribute, to the very best of our ability! But sad experience teaches us that this is not so. There are “Funds” of other mettle than for the sick and poor,—“restoration” funds especially. For many years a famous church was in debt owing to “restorations,” and Sunday after Sunday the vicar implored his congregation to lift “the burden” off its time-honoured walls—in vain! At last one parishioner paid the amount required in full. The vicar acknowledged the cheque,—put a recording line in the “Parish Magazine,”—wrote a formal letter of thanks regretting that the donor did not “show a good example by attending public worship on Sundays,”—after which, for more than a year he did not speak to that parishioner again! This is a fact. Neither he nor his wife during that time ever showed the slightest common civility to the one individual who, out of all the parish, had “lifted the burden,” concerning which so many pious exordiums had been preached. Till the debt was paid, the vicar showed every friendliness to the person in question—but afterwards—well!—one can only suppose it was a case of “Othello’s occupation gone!” He could beg no more,—not for that particular object. But I understand he has started fresh “restorations” lately, so till he finds another trusting sheep in the way of a too sympathetic parishioner, he will be quite happy.
There are some clerics who, to their sacred duties add “a little literary work.” They are not literary men,—indeed very frequently they have no idea whatever of literature—they are what may be called “literary jobbers.” Many clergymen have been, and are still, greatly distinguished in the literary calling—but I am not alluding to past or future Kingsleys. The men I mean are those who “do a bit of writing”—and help in compiling books of reference to which few ever refer. They are apt to be the most pertinacious beggars of their class,—beggars, not for others’ needs, but for their own. They want introductions to “useful” people—people of “influence”—and they ask for letters to publishers, which they sometimes get. The publishers are not grateful. They are over-run, they say, with clergymen who want to write guide-books, books of travel, books of reference, books of reminiscence. One of these “reverend” individuals, pleading stress of poverty, was employed by a lady to do some copying work, for which, in a well-meant wish to satisfy the immediate needs of his wife and children, she paid him in advance the sum of Fifty Pounds. He sent her a signed receipt for the money with the following gushing epistle:
“Dear ——,
Could I write as you do, I might find words to express in part some of my feelings of gratitude to you for all your kindness. My little daughter owes to you untold happiness, and I believe the goodness you ever show her will brighten her whole future life. My dear wife you help to bear her many burdens of health and loneliness as no other has ever attempted to do; and my very mediocre self owes to you, a recognition, after many long struggles, I will not say of merit, for no one knows better than myself, my own shortcomings, but of ‘effort.’ In fact, you come to us as Amenhotep sung of the sun:—
Thou art very beautiful, brilliant and exalted above earth,
Thy beams encompass all lands, which thou hast made.
Thou art our sun.
Thou bindest us with thy love.
Thou art on high, but the day passes with thy going!
Even so, your kindly heart has shone upon our life, and made us feel the springs of life within us. May the Great Master of all things for ever bless you and yours!”
After this poetical effusion,[4] it is difficult to believe that this same “Christian” minister, in order to gratify the private jealousy, spite and malice of a few common persons whom he fancied might be useful to him on account of their “local” influence, wrote and published a scurrilous lampoon on the very friend who had tried to benefit him and his wife and family, and to whom he had expressed himself in the above terms of unmeasured gratitude! But such, nevertheless, was the case. Report says that he was handsomely paid for his trouble, which may perhaps serve as his excuse,—for in many cases, as we know, money outweighs principle, even with a disciple of Christ. It did so in the case of Judas Iscariot, who, however, “went out and hanged himself” promptly. Perhaps the “very mediocre” cleric who owed to the woman he afterwards insulted, “a recognition after many long struggles,” will do the same morally and socially in due course. For it would be as great a wrong to the Church to call such a man a “Christian” as it would be to canonize Judas. Even the untutored savage will not injure one with whom he has broken bread. And to bite the hand that has supplied a need, is scarcely the act of a mongrel cur,—let us hope it is a sufficiently rare performance among mongrel clerics.
Among other such “trifling” instances of the un-Christianity of Christian ministers may be quoted a recent instance of a letter addressed to a country newspaper by a clergyman who complained of the small fees allowed him for the burial of paupers! “The game,” so he expressed it, “was not worth the candle.” Christian charity was no part of the business. Unless one can make a margin of profit, by committing paupers to the hope of a joyful resurrection, why do it at all? Such appeared to be the sum and substance of the reverend gentleman’s argument. Another case in point is the following: A poor man of seventy-five years old, getting the impression that Death was too long in coming to fetch him, committed suicide by hanging himself in a coal-shed. His widow, nearly as aged as he was, went tottering feebly along to the clergyman of the parish, to relate the disaster and seek for help. The first thing the good minister told her was, that her husband, by committing suicide, had gone to hell. He then relaxed his sternness somewhat, and kindly said that, considering her age, infirmity and trouble, she “might call at the rectory every afternoon for the tea-leaves.” This gracious invitation meant that the bereaved old creature could have, for her consolation, the refuse of the afternoon tea-pot after it had been well drained by this “Christian” gentleman, his wife and family! Of other help she got none, and life having become too hard for her to manage alone, despite the assistance of the clergyman’s tea-leaves, she very soon, fortunately for herself, died of grief and starvation. “He that giveth to the poor” in this fashion, truly “lendeth to the Lord.”