About Religion:—I was taught religion as children used to be taught it in my younger days, and are taught it still in some cases, I believe—through the medium of creeds and catechisms. I read the Bible too early, and too indiscriminately, and too irreverently. Even the New Testament was too early placed in my hands; too early made a lesson book, as the custom then was. The letter of the Scriptures—the words—were familiarised to me by sermonising and dogmatising, long before I could enter into the spirit. Meantime, happily, another religion was growing up in my heart, which, strangely enough, seemed to me quite apart from that which was taught,—which, indeed, I never in any way regarded as the same which I was taught when I stood up wearily on a Sunday to repeat the collect and say the catechism. It was quite another thing. Not only the taught religion and the sentiment of faith and adoration were never combined, but it never for years entered into my head to combine them; the first remained extraneous, the latter had gradually taken root in my life, even from the moment my mother joined my little hands in prayer. The histories out of the Bible (the Parables especially) were, however, enchanting to me, though my interpretation of them was in some instances the very reverse of correct or orthodox. To my infant conception our Lord was a being who had come down from heaven to make people good, and to tell them beautiful stories. And though no pains were spared to indoctrinate me, and all my pastors and masters took it for granted that my ideas were quite satisfactory, nothing could be more confused and heterodox.
It is a common observation that girls of lively talents are apt to grow pert and satirical. I fell into this danger when about ten years old. Sallies at the expense of certain people, ill-looking, or ill-dressed, or ridiculous, or foolish, had been laughed at and applauded in company, until, without being naturally malignant, I ran some risk of becoming so from sheer vanity.
The fables which appeal to our higher moral sympathies may sometimes do as much for us as the truths of science. So thought our Saviour when he taught the multitude in parables.
A good clergyman who lived near us, a famous Persian scholar, took it into his head to teach me Persian (I was then about seven years old), and I set to work with infinite delight and earnestness. All I learned was soon forgotten; but a few years afterwards, happening to stumble on a volume of Sir William Jones’s works—his Persian grammar—it revived my Orientalism, and I began to study it eagerly. Among the exercises given was a Persian fable or poem—one of those traditions of our Lord which are preserved in the East. The beautiful apologue of “St. Peter and the Cherries,” which Goethe has versified or imitated, is a well known example. This fable I allude to was something similar, but I have not met with the original these forty years, and must give it here from memory.
“Jesus,” says the story, “arrived one evening at the gates of a certain city, and he sent his disciples forward to prepare supper, while he himself, intent on doing good, walked through the streets into the market place.
“And he saw at the corner of the market some people gathered together looking at an object on the ground; and he drew near to see what it might be. It was a dead dog, with a halter round his neck, by which he appeared to have been dragged through the dirt; and a viler, a more abject, a more unclean thing, never met the eyes of man.
“And those who stood by looked on with abhorrence.
“‘Faugh!’ said one, stopping his nose; ‘it pollutes the air.’ ‘How long,’ said another, ‘shall this foul beast offend our sight?’ ‘Look at his torn hide,’ said a third; ‘one could not even cut a shoe out of it.’ ‘And his ears,’ said a fourth, ‘all draggled and bleeding!’ ‘No doubt,’ said a fifth, ‘he hath been hanged for thieving!’
“And Jesus heard them, and looking down compassionately on the dead creature, he said, ‘Pearls are not equal to the whiteness of his teeth!’
“Then the people turned towards him with amazement, and said among themselves, ‘Who is this? this must be Jesus of Nazareth, for only He could find something to pity and approve even in a dead dog;’ and being ashamed, they bowed their heads before him, and went each on his way.”