With surprise I learnt from Stern’s scribbling and Shawlman’s parcel the fact that no coffee is planted in the district of Lebak. That is a great mistake, and I shall consider my pains largely rewarded, if the Government through my book perceives this fault.
From Shawlman’s papers it would appear that the soil in these regions is not fit for coffee-culture; but that is no excuse; and I maintain that it is an unpardonable neglect of the interests of Holland generally, and of the coffee-brokers in particular; yes, of the Javanese, neither to make the ground fit for coffee—[the Javanese have nothing else to do]—or, if they think this impossible, to send the men who live there to other places where the ground is good for coffee.
I never say anything that I have not well considered, and I dare affirm that I here speak with a knowledge of business, because I have maturely considered this matter more than once since I heard Dominé[2] Wawelaar’s sermon on the Fast-day[3] for the Conversion of the Heathen.
That was on Wednesday evening. You must know that I punctually fulfil my obligations as a father, and that I [[159]]take the moral education of my children very much to heart. As Fred has during the last few days assumed something in tone and manner which displeases me—[that confounded parcel is the cause of it all]—I have given him a good lecture, and said, “Fred, I am not satisfied with you: I always set you a good example, and you forsake the right path; you are conceited and troublesome; you make verses, and you have kissed Betsy Rosemeyer. The fear of the Lord is the source of all wisdom: therefore you must not kiss the Rosemeyers, and you must not be so conceited. Immorality leads to destruction: read the Scriptures, and mark that Shawlman. He left the ways of the Lord: now he is poor, and dwells in a little garret; that is the consequence of immorality and bad conduct; he wrote improper articles in the Indépendance and let the ‘Aglaja’ fall: such are the consequences of being wise in one’s own eyes. He does not now know what o’clock it is, and his little boy wears knee-breeches. Think that your body is a temple of God, and that your father has always had to work very hard for his bread—[it is the truth]. Raise your eyes upwards, and endeavour to become a respectable broker when I go to Driebergen.[4] And consider all those men, who will not listen to good counsel, who trample upon religion and morality, and see yourself in these men. Do not think yourself equal to Stern, whose father is so rich, and who will always have [[160]]money enough, even if he does not like to become a broker. Only think that wickedness is always punished: look again at that Shawlman, who has no winter overcoat, and who looks like a clown. Pay attention when you are at church, and you must not fidget so much on your bench, as if you were annoyed; and do not wait for girls when the service is over, for that destroys all chance of edification. Do not make Mary laugh when I am reading the Bible at breakfast; all this should not be in a respectable household.
“You have also drawn caricatures on Bastianus’ desk when he was not at the office on account of the gout, which continually plagues him,—this keeps them in the office away from their work; and you may read in the Word of God that such follies end in ruin. This Shawlman did the same when he was young: when a child he beat a Greek on the Wester Market; now he is idle, conceited, and sickly. Do not always make fun with Stern; his father is rich; and do as if you did not see it, when he makes wry faces to the bookkeeper, and when he is busy with verses outside the office. Tell him that he had better write to his father that he likes our Company very much, and that he is so contented here, and that Mary has embroidered slippers for him. Ask him, if he thinks that his father will go to Busselinck and Waterman, and tell him that they are low fellows. Do you see that you will in this way bring him into the right path? you owe [[161]]this to your fellow-creatures, and all that verse-making is nonsense. Be just and obedient, Fred, and do not pull the maid-servant’s dress when she brings tea into the office; and do not make me ashamed that she spills it; and St. Paul says, that a son must never vex his father. These twenty years I have frequented the Exchange, and I may say, that I am esteemed there at my stall. Therefore listen to my exhortations, Fred; fetch your hat, put on your coat, and go with me to the prayer-meeting: that will do you all the good in the world.”
So I have spoken, and I am convinced that I made some impression, above all because Dominé Wawelaar had for his subject:—The love of God evident in His wrath against unbelievers.—(Samuel’s reproof of Saul: 1 Sam. xv. 33.)
I continually thought, while listening to his sermon, how great is the difference between human wisdom and divine. I have already told you, that in Shawlman’s parcel, there is, amongst much rubbish, a great deal of what appeared to be sound common sense; but of how little significance is this, when compared with such language as that of Parson Wawelaar. And not from his own strength,—for I know Wawelaar, and consider him to be a man of middling capacity—his eloquence is given him by the power that comes from above. This difference was still more obvious, because he hinted at many things, about which Shawlman himself had written; for you have seen, that in his parcel, he speaks much about [[162]]Javanese and other Pagans—[Fred says that the Javanese are no Pagans; but I call every one who has a wrong faith a Pagan]. From the Dominé’s sermon I got my idea of the unlawful revocation of the coffee-culture at Lebak, about which I shall say more by and by; and because, being an honest man, I am not willing that the reader should receive nothing for his money, I will here communicate some extracts from the sermon, which I consider particularly touching. He had proved in a few words from the above-named text the love of God, and very soon went on to the point in question, viz., the conversion of Javanese, Malay, and other Pagan races, whatever may be their names.
“Such, my beloved! was the vocation of Israel”—[he meant the destruction of the inhabitants of Canaan]—“and such is the vocation of Holland! No, it shall not be said that the light which beams upon us has been put aside under a bushel, nor that we grudgingly communicate the bread of life. Glance at the islands of the Indian Ocean, inhabited by millions and millions of children of the accursed son—and of the rightly accursed son—of the noble, God-serving Noah. There they creep in the disgusting snake-holes of Pagan ignorance, there they bow the black woolly head under the yoke of selfish priests. There they worship God, invoking a false prophet that is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord; and, beloved! as if it were not enough to [[163]]obey a false prophet, there are even those among them who worship another God, or rather other gods; yes, gods of wood and stone, which they themselves have made in their own image—black, abominable, with flat noses, and devilish. Yes, beloved! tears almost arrest me; for deeper still is the depravity of the race of Ham. There are amongst them, that know no God under any name whatever; who think it sufficient to obey the laws of society; who consider a harvest-song, wherein they express their joy on the success of their labour, as a sufficient thanksgiving to the Supreme Being who made the harvest ripen.
“There are ignorant men, my beloved, who think that it is sufficient to love wife and child, and not to take from their fellow-beings what does not belong to them, and that they may then calmly lay down their heads and sleep! Do you not shiver with horror at this picture? does not your heart shrink when you think of what will be the fate of all those fools as soon as the trumpet shall sound which will summon the dead and separate the faithful from the unfaithful? Do you not hear? Yes, you do hear; for from the text you have perceived that your God is a mighty God, and a God who will inflict vengeance—yes, you hear the breaking bones, and the crackling of the flames in the eternal Gehenna, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth:—there, there they burn and perish not, for the punishment [[164]]is eternal:—there the flame licks with a never-satisfied tongue the screaming victims of unbelief:—there the worm dies not that gnaws their hearts through and through without destroying them, that there may always remain a heart to gnaw in the breast of the God-forsaken. Look how they strip off the black skin of that unbaptized child, that, scarcely born, was slung away from the breast of its mother into the abyss of eternal damnation——”[5]
[Now, at this moment a woman fainted away.]