Part 33 (2/2)

Luke began at once questioning him about his father.

'And is he contrite and humbled? Does he see that he has sinned?'

'In what?'

'It is not for us to judge; but surely it must have been some sin or other of his which has drawn down such a sore judgment on him.'

Lancelot smiled; but Luke went on, not perceiving him.

'Ah! we cannot find out for him. Nor has he, alas! as a Protestant, much likelihood of finding out for himself. In our holy church he would have been compelled to discriminate his faults by methodic self-examination, and lay them one by one before his priest for advice and pardon, and so start a new and free man once more.'

'Do you think,' asked Lancelot with a smile, 'that he who will not confess his faults either to G.o.d or to himself, would confess them to man? And would his priest honestly tell him what he really wants to know? which sin of his has called down this so-called judgment?

It would be imputed, I suppose, to some vague generality, to inattention to religious duties, to idolatry of the world, and so forth. But a Romish priest would be the last person, I should think, who could tell him fairly, in the present case, the cause of his affliction; and I question whether he would give a patient hearing to any one who told it him.'

'How so? Though, indeed, I have remarked that people are perfectly willing to be told they are miserable sinners, and to confess themselves such, in a general way; but if the preacher once begins to specify, to fix on any particular act or habit, he is accused of personality or uncharitableness; his hearers are ready to confess guilty to any sin but the very one with which he charges them. But, surely, this is just what I am urging against you Protestants--just what the Catholic use of confession obviates.'

'Attempts to do so, you mean!' answered Lancelot. 'But what if your religion preaches formally that which only remains in our religion as a fast-dying superst.i.tion?--That those judgments of G.o.d, as you call them, are not judgments at all in any fair use of the word, but capricious acts of punishment on the part of Heaven, which have no more reference to the fault which provokes them, than if you cut off a man's finger because he made a bad use of his tongue. That is part, but only a part, of what I meant just now, by saying that people represent G.o.d as capricious, proud, revengeful.'

'But do not Protestants themselves confess that our sins provoke G.o.d's anger?'

'Your common creed, when it talks rightly of G.o.d as one ”who has no pa.s.sions,” ought to make you speak more reverently of the possibility of any act of ours disturbing the everlasting equanimity of the absolute Love. Why will men so often impute to G.o.d the miseries which they bring upon themselves?'

'Because, I suppose, their pride makes them more willing to confess themselves sinners than fools.'

'Right, my friend; they will not remember that it is of ”their pleasant vices that G.o.d makes whips to scourge them.” Oh, I at least have felt the deep wisdom of that saying of Wilhelm Meister's harper, that it is

”Voices from the depth of NATURE borne Which woe upon the guilty head proclaim.”

Of nature--of those eternal laws of hers which we daily break. Yes!

it is not because G.o.d's temper changes, but because G.o.d's universe is unchangeable, that such as I, such as your poor father, having sown the wind, must reap the whirlwind. I have fed my self-esteem with luxuries and not with virtue, and, losing them, have nothing left. He has sold himself to a system which is its own punishment.

And yet the last place in which he will look for the cause of his misery is in that very money-mongering to which he now clings as frantically as ever. But so it is throughout the world. Only look down over that bridge-parapet, at that huge black-mouthed sewer, vomiting its pestilential riches across the mud. There it runs, and will run, hurrying to the sea vast stores of wealth, elaborated by Nature's chemistry into the ready materials of food; which proclaim, too, by their own foul smell, G.o.d's will that they should be buried out of sight in the fruitful all-regenerating grave of earth: there it runs, turning them all into the seeds of pestilence, filth, and drunkenness.--And then, when it obeys the laws which we despise, and the pestilence is come at last, men will pray against it, and confess it to be ”a judgment for their sins;” but if you ask WHAT sin, people will talk about ”les voiles d'airain,” as Fourier says, and tell you that it is presumptuous to pry into G.o.d's secret counsels, unless, perhaps, some fanatic should inform you that the cholera has been drawn down on the poor by the endowment of Maynooth by the rich.'

'It is most fearful, indeed, to think that these diseases should be confined to the poor--that a man should be exposed to cholera, typhus, and a host of attendant diseases, simply because he is born into the world an artisan; while the rich, by the mere fact of money, are exempt from such curses, except when they come in contact with those whom they call on Sunday ”their brethren,” and on week days the ”ma.s.ses.”

'Thank Heaven that you do see that,--that in a country calling itself civilised and Christian, pestilence should be the peculiar heritage of the poor! It is past all comment.'

'And yet are not these pestilences a judgment, even on them, for their dirt and profligacy?'

'And how should they be clean without water? And how can you wonder if their appet.i.tes, sickened with filth and self-disgust, crave after the gin-shop for temporary strength, and then for temporary forgetfulness? Every London doctor knows that I speak the truth; would that every London preacher would tell that truth from his pulpit!'

'Then would you too say, that G.o.d punishes one cla.s.s for the sins of another?'

'Some would say,' answered Lancelot, half aside, 'that He may be punis.h.i.+ng them for not demanding their RIGHT to live like human beings, to all those social circ.u.mstances which shall not make their children's life one long disease. But are not these pestilences a judgment on the rich, too, in the truest sense of the word? Are they not the broad, unmistakable seal to G.o.d's opinion of a state of society which confesses its economic relations to be so utterly rotten and confused, that it actually cannot afford to save yearly millions of pounds' worth of the materials of food, not to mention thousands of human lives? Is not every man who allows such things hastening the ruin of the society in which he lives, by helping to foster the indignation and fury of its victims? Look at that group of stunted, haggard artisans, who are pa.s.sing us. What if one day they should call to account the landlords whose coveteousness and ignorance make their dwellings h.e.l.ls on earth?'

By this time they had reached the artist's house.

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