XVI
I am writing in the decline of life, when the sixtieth birthday is already five years behind, and one must contemplate the possibility of immediate dissolution and the certainty of a speedy end; when all that life has to give, or that fortune chooses to give, has been already given. The love of woman; of wife and children; the allotted measure of success; the joy of work; the joy of struggle; the joy of victory; the love of friends who have gone before and of friends who are left; the reputation, whatever it may be—all these things have been received and enjoyed; and with them the piled-up hatreds and revenges of the baser sort. There is work still to be done: it is the carrying on of old work, not the making of new work. We gather up the threads and accomplish the task, happy if it has been a task so weighty as to be prolonged into the year three score and ten.
Let me end these reminiscences with a few words befitting the close of a life—being upon the Conduct of Life and the Influence of Religion.
One is not expected to be much above the standards of one’s own time. At school, for instance, we had no athletics to speak of in my time; we played cricket and football, we ran races. There was no responsibility laid upon the back of the senior boys yet; in a way they did look after the juniors—it was an irresponsible and spontaneous fashion; such words as “good form” and “bad form” were unknown, yet the things were known.
At King’s College, London, the professors and lecturers took no personal interest in the students; the principal. Dr. Jelf, knew nothing of them and paid them no attention; nobody cared whether they read; nobody ever considered it worth while to look after the better sort; we were all left absolutely alone. There was no college life in the place, no clubs, no social intercourse among the students. The idea was simply to present the means of learning if the men chose to avail themselves of the gift; in the same way the old and still lingering administration of the Church was to open the doors, to present the means of grace, and to allow those who wished to avail themselves of the gift. Outside the college, I have already explained, I used to wander about the City. But there was the evening to get through. No one appeared to know how desperately miserable an evening all alone in lodgings may be. I have sat with my books before me while the silence grew more and more intolerable, rising up all round as a cloud hiding the rest of the world. When my nerves would stand it no longer, I have taken my hat and rushed out into the streets.
The evening amusements of London were more varied, and far, far more coarse than they are now. As a young fellow of eighteen I ought not to have gone to them—that is quite certain. Yet what could be done when solitude became intolerable? There were the theatres at half-price—there were not many theatres, and in a week or two one could get through them all. There were the dancing places of the more decorous sort, the Argyle Rooms, the Holborn Casino, “Caldwell’s,” besides places whose reputation was such that one was afraid to venture within their walls. At the Holborn and the Argyle the ladies were very beautifully dressed. I did not go there to dance or to make their acquaintance; I sat on the red velvet benches and listened to the music. At “Caldwell’s,” on the other hand, where the girls were more simply attired, and where they liked to meet a young fellow who could dance, and could dance tolerably well, I did dance. Perhaps it was wrong; perhaps, however, it was not. I take no blame to myself on account of “Caldwell’s.”
There were places not quite so Innocent whither my wandering footsteps led me. There were the Coal Hole, the Cider Cellars, Evans’s. At these places there was singing; some of the songs were very beautiful and very well sung; part songs were given at Evans’s; poses plastiques were offered for the corruption of youth at a place whose name I have forgotten; and at the Coal Hole or the Cider Cellars there was “Baron” Nicholson and the “judge and jury.” Such an exhibition would not be tolerated at the present day; I remember it as clever but inconceivably coarse. In the summer one could go to Cremorne or to Highbury Barn; even, for curiosity, walk to the Eagle in the City Road. When I remember all these places and how, in order to escape the awful stillness of my lodgings, I would go out in the evening and prowl about looking in here and there, I wonder that some horrible obsession of the devil did not fall upon me, as it fell upon hundreds and thousands of young fellows like myself, turned into the streets because I could not bear to sit alone. Why, there were clerks and students all round me; every house in my street was filled with them; every man sat in his own dismal cell and listened to the silence till his nerves could stand it no longer. Then he went out into the street. If there are fifty devils in the streets today, there were five hundred then. It was not everyone who at eighteen was so boyish in mind and manner and in appearance as I was; not everyone who was short-sighted and shy; not everyone who was able to sit among the rabble rout and listen to the music as if surrounded by nymphs and swains of the highest purity and virtue.
However, the thing to be remembered is that London was much coarser in its evening amusements then than now; that the outward show of morals was not insisted upon so much. London is bad enough now, but in most localities only after ten o’clock and before twelve, whereas in the fifties things went on all day long. I remember that among the houses south of Waterloo Bridge there was a whole row where in the ground floor windows there was everyday an exhibition of girls dancing up and down, and inviting the young men to come in. And I remember that, apart from the “judge and jury” business, the songs sung at some places were coarse beyond belief. And considering all these things, I cannot wonder that I went to them, having no one to warn or to restrain me, or to offer any substitutes for the amusements which were gross enough, yet promised the attractions of music and singing.
At Cambridge there were none of these things. Yet there were coarsenesses at Cambridge which one looks back upon with surprise. After dinner (the dinner hour was four—an unholy hour) there were “wines” which were often prolonged far into the evening. There were also suppers, and at wines and at suppers men sang songs which would not now be tolerated by the most rowdy set in the most rowdy college. Then there was little or no disguise if a man supported the suburb called Barnwell; the only thing was that he must not be caught by the proctors. The suburb was well populated and freely discussed. That a man was intended for Holy Orders did not offer an obstacle to this patronage of Barnwell; there were fellows of colleges who were as bad as the undergraduates in this respect. I mention the fact simply to show the temptations to which young men were then exposed. Nothing is more remarkable than the change at my university in respect to wine—and Barnwell. Meantime it must not be supposed that there were no undergraduates of a higher tone or a purer life; on the contrary, there were many; their lives, their conversation, their habits were a continual protest against the general low level.
In a word, the youth of my time were brought up in the midst of great laxity of morals, great coarseness of conversation, amusements gross and unseemly, yet with the existence all around them of Puritan austerity and the condemnation of the reasonable recreations of life. Unfortunately the Puritan austerity demanded too much of young men; it could only be adopted by the few who were as cold-blooded as fishes, or by the fanatics who curbed themselves with resolution and by violence. For it condemned all amusements. “Could you,” said one, and it was thought by his following to be a clincher—“could you say grace before sitting down to cards.” The answer would be now “Of course—why not?” For indeed there is no reason why, if we are not Pharisaic, we should not thank God for every innocent recreation. “Can you,” asked another, “put your arm round the waist of a girl in the dance without thoughts of love?” The answer is now obvious. Formerly it was not so obvious. “Can you,” asked a third austerely, “go to the theatre while your immortal soul remains to be saved?” And so they went on. Is there any wonder that the revolt against the Evangelicals waited only for the spark, and that when this spark was applied by the newly founded Saturday Review the defeat and the rout of the Evangelicals speedily followed.
The Evangelicals represented for the most part a pitiless and horrible Calvinism, The world groaned under the dreadful creed. Not only did it limit the mercy of God and the mediation of Christ to an insignificant minority, but it held that as a man died—at the moment of death—so his soul was affected forever. I remember how a cousin of mine was drowned when I was a boy. The young fellow had told his mother that he was not going to the water; he changed his mind and went; and he was drowned. The kindly religious folk said that he had gone to meet his God with a lie upon his lips, and that his doom was certain. You may imagine the agony and misery of his mother.
For my own part I began to read the works of Frederick Denison Maurice; he taught me the way out of the Evangelical creed and I followed that way with the greatest alacrity.
Having shovelled away the Evangelical rubbish, I was ready to make a clean sweep of a good deal more. I do not suppose that anyone wants to know how I arrived at my present simple creed, but such as it is, perhaps it may interest some readers:—
I believe, in an intelligent Mind who hears, listens, guides, and directs; to which nothing is small, nothing is mean, nothing is contemptible; which leads a Darwin in the direction of discovery, or grants what is good for a simple girl; which has ordered the evolution of an insect as much as that of a man.
I believe that this Mind has in some way ordered the conversion of a ball of flaming rock into a globe covered with vegetation. In other words, what we call the laws of Nature are due to the Mind. They are laws to which all life is subject; if they are broken, the breaker suffers.
I believe that these laws are in a moral or spiritual order as well as physical order. The discovery of this moral order has been made little by little, but the greatest contributors to the discovery have been the Jewish prophets, ending with Jesus.
If one calls him the Son of God, why not? We are all the Sons of God, and He is the greatest. That He was martyred was a natural result of His teaching at such a time.
The doctrine of atonement by blood is found in every age and in every country; it forms a part of the great theory of sacrifice—viz., the propitiation of the Deity, as a Deity, by something rare and precious as the eldest son, or a captive, or so many head of cattle or of sheep. We no longer believe in the sacrifice and altars, in giving roast beef to the Lord, or in offering him streams of wine or human sacrifices. We no longer believe in blood being poured out in order to propitiate the Deity. Therefore to speak of the blood of Jesus is a mere survival in words of an exploded belief.
The pretensions of the so-called Christian priest are not more foolish than the pretensions of any other priest. The Jewish prophets have proclaimed, in words that ought to serve once for all, their contempt for the Jewish priest. The spirit of sacerdotalism is the same in every religion and in every age. The priest claims supernatural powers; we convert bread into flesh and wine into blood; we confer some mysterious benefit by baptising the child, marrying the man and woman, and burying them. The priest surrounds himself with mystery, gets inside a sacred enclosure, mumbles, makes signs, puts on vestments. He does this whether he is making taboo in a Polynesian island, or mumbo-jumbo in West Africa, or obeah in Jamaica, or is a Roman Catholic priest in St. Peter’s or a Ritualist in an English church.
Meantime foolish people—whose folly is boundless and amazing and past all understanding—spend their lives in fighting over what is, or is not, allowed in this or that Prayer Book. Not content with the slavery of the letter of the Bible, they have become slaves of the letter of the Prayer Book. Now, set the Prayer Book aside and appeal to common sense and experience.
Experience, at least, yells and shouts in our ears, only we will not understand, the fact that auricular confession is a slavery; that it destroys the will and that it leads a man to surrender his judgment and his freedom of action, and makes him in the conduct of life little better than a child.
The reservation of the host is proved to be fertile in superstition, in charges of blasphemy, and in the extension of priestly domination. The only excuse for it is that a man may die before the bread can be consecrated—as if it mattered in such a case, or in any case, whether the bread was consecrated or not.
The use of incense was originally introduced to correct the atmosphere during a crowded service in hot countries. If it were not, can anyone not corrupted by the ecclesiastical rubbish believe that the Lord is pleased by creating a stink in a church?
Some of the poor fanatics are desirous of introducing prayers for the dead; can they possibly be ignorant of the fact that the system means prayers for those who can pay, and the creation of chanting priests, to sing services—propitiatory services—for those who can pay? And can they see any difference between such a service, mumbled as a daily duty by a priest paid for the duty, and the mechanical prayers of a Buddhist priest? And can they reconcile this senseless repetition with any mercy, however inadequate, of an intelligent Creator and Father?
In fine, the more I consider the question—and it has been forced upon my consideration more than upon that of many men—the more I understand that the whole of the ecclesiastical system, with the pretensions of the clergy, the mock mystery of their ritual, the supernatural nonsense of their claims, their schemes for the domination of the human intellect, their ecclesiastical trappings, mouthings, murmurings, confessings, incense, consecration rites, and all the rest of it, are foolish, baseless, and to the highest degree mischievous.
Christianity seems to me a perfectly simple religion; it consists not only in a blameless life, but in a life whose ideals are continually growing higher and more noble. That this is possible, is in itself to me a proof of another life to follow this.
In Christianity I find no place for priest or for mysteries of man’s own making. The world is full of mysteries; all life is a mystery never to be discovered. There is the great and wonderful mystery of birth—can anything be more mysterious or more wonderful. There is the mystery of growth, the mystery of manhood and of strength, the mystery of decay and death. Why do we decay at sixty and die at seventy? There are the mysteries of disease, there are the mysteries of man’s intellectual achievements, his scientific discoveries, his subjugation of natural forces, his invention, his music and his arts, his poetry, in which he seems to draw back the veil—he only dreams of drawing it back, but he magnetises his audience so that for a time they think that they are looking at the things behind. Good Heavens! These are the great and solemn mysteries. To consider them, to work upon them, showing their reality since we can never show their cause, to study them, to make discoveries in them—these are things worthy of man, worthy of true religion. Why invent sham and meaningless mysteries which are but words, which lead to nothing but the mischievous intervention between God and man of a fellow-man who pretends to useless powers and professes to hold the keys of heaven?
A blameless life—what is it? You will find it all in the Sermon on the Mount, if you are wise enough to understand what is meant, and not to interpret it by the letter.
And so I leave my belief and my life. Looking back, as I have done in these chapters, I remember a good many mistakes—somethings even which I should be ashamed to set down in this page. But the book is not one of confessions. I could not pretend, as regards the things not set down, to be repentant; if I were to sprinkle ashes over my head, it would be, perhaps, while I was recalling the thing itself with a lingering pleasure. I have shown you the conditions of my early manhood; the finish of those conditions may be guessed, as much as you please. And as to my religious views, they have gradually come to me. Little by little they have formed themselves in my mind until they have become part and parcel of me. Now at last there is not left to me a single rag or scrap of the ecclesiastical rubbish. I do not seek to convert any of my readers to my own views; only, my very dear friends, if you could understand the freedom—the happy freedom—of the soul, when you have succeeded in recognising the utter baselessness of the priestly pretensions, you would at least take the trouble to find out what the views mean.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Walter Besant (1836–1901) was an English novelist and historian. Born at Portsmouth, Hampshire, Besant was the son of a wine merchant, whose other children included William, a prominent mathematician, and Frank, the husband of renowned theosophist, socialist, and activist Annie Besant. After attending King’s College London, he enrolled at Christ’s College, Cambridge to study mathematics, graduating with first class honors in 1859. Besant worked for six years as professor of mathematics at Royal College, Mauritius, returning to London in 1867 after a period of ill-health. In 1868, he published his work Studies in French Poetry and was appointed to the Palestine Exploration Fund as Secretary. Three years later, Besant was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn and began his literary collaboration with novelist James Rice. Together, they wrote such successful works of fiction as Ready-money Mortiboy (1872) and The Golden Butterfly (1876).