It often happens that a writer on matters connected with religion in a "heathen" land will tell little stories intended to illustrate the unsatisfying nature of the "heathen" rites, thus leaving the inference to be drawn that what the unhappy "pagans" are unconsciously in want of is Christianity with its crystallised statements of truth. Such a little story is the following, told by a writer upon whose pages I have drawn more than once.[420] "'What have you gained to-day in your appeal to the goddess?' I asked of a man that I had seen very devout in his prayers. He looked at me with a quick and searching glance. 'You ask me what answer I have got to my petition to the goddess?' he said. 'Yes,' I replied, 'that is what I want to know from you.' 'Well, you have asked me more than I can tell you. The whole question of the idols is a profoundly mysterious one that no one can fathom. Whether they do or can help people is something I cannot tell. I worship them because my fathers did so before me, and if they were satisfied, so must I be. The whole thing is a mystery,' and he passed on with the look of a man who was puzzled with a problem that he could not solve, and that look is a permanent one on the face of the nation to-day."
Perhaps there are a good many Englishmen and Americans who on reading this instructive little dialogue may be tempted to sympathise not a little with the idol-worshipper. A profound mystery that no one can fathom! I worship them because my fathers did so before me! Are there not thousands and thousands of Western people who might in all sincerity use those very words? For in spite of everything that all the Churches and all the prophets and all the philosophers have done for us, in spite of all we have learned from dogmas and revelations and sacred books, we are still groping in darkness. The whole thing is a mystery, and the man who can solve it is wiser than any man who has yet lived. Yes, inevitably replies the Protestant missionary, but God can solve it: and he has done so, for to us He has revealed the Truth. Not to you, but to Me! cries the Holy Catholic Church. Not to you, but to us! cry the Anglican and the Baptist and the Unitarian and the Quaker and the Theist and the Swedenborgian and the Mormon and the Seventh Day Adventist and the Christian Scientist and the Plymouth Brother and the Theosophist. Not to you, but to us! cry the Jew and the Mohammedan and the Brahman and the Sikh and the Bábist and the Zoroastrian.
What is Truth?
The Castle of Religion is guarded by an ever-watchful band of armoured giants called Creeds and Dogmas. When a lonely knight-errant rides up to the castle gate eager to liberate the lady Truth who he knows lies somewhere within, he is met by the giant warders, who repel him with menaces and blows. "You seek Truth?" they exclaim. "You need go no further. We are Truth." Some think that if the giants were slain the lordly castle itself would fade like a dream. Why should it fade? More likely is it that nothing but their defeat and death can save the time-battered walls from crumbling to utter decay; that only then the drawbridge will fall and the darkened windows blaze into lines of festal light; that only by stepping across those huge prostrate forms shall we ever come face to face with the Lady of the Castle—no more a manacled captive, but free and ready to step forth, gloriously apparelled and radiant with beauty, to receive for the first time a world's homage. From the lips of Truth herself will the question of the jesting Pilate at last be answered.
FOOTNOTES:
[402] Tylor's Primitive Culture (4th ed.), vol. ii. p. 122.
[403] For other examples of the "extraordinary survival of pagan fancies amidst Christian worship" see Gomme's Folk-lore Relics of Early Village Life, pp. 138-44; and the works of Tylor, Frazer and other anthropologists passim.