How To Observe Part 3

To proceed with the dependence of the morals on the character of the religion,--it is clear that in proportion as any religion encourages licentiousness, either positively or negatively,--encourages, that is to say, the excess of the pa.s.sions, might will have the victory over right; the weak will succ.u.mb to the strong; and thus the condition of the poorer cla.s.ses depends on the character of the religion of their country. In proportion as the religion tends to licentiousness, will the poorer cla.s.ses be liable to slavery. In proportion as the religion tends to asceticism, will be the amount (other things being equal) of the hards.h.i.+p and want which they must sustain. In proportion as the religion approximates to the moderate, (the use without the abuse of means of enjoyment,) will the poorer cla.s.ses rise to a condition of freedom and comfort.

The character of the religion serves, in like manner, as an index to that of the government. A licentious religion cannot be adopted by a people who are so moderate in their pa.s.sions as to be able to govern themselves. One would not look for a display of meats offered to idols in the Capitol of the American Congress. An ascetic religion, too, inflicts personal and mutual wrongs which could never be endured among a people who agree to govern one another. There is no power which could induce such to submit to privations and sufferings which can be tolerable to none but devotees,--a small fraction of every society.

Absolutism is commonly the character of the government of any country where either of these religions prevails;--a despotism more or less tempered by a variety of influences. It is the observer's business to bring the religion and the government into comparison, and to see how the latter is modified by the coexistence of the former.

The friendly, no less than the domestic and political relations of society, are dependent upon the prevailing religion. Under the licentious, the manners will be made up of the conventional and the gross. A Burmese minister was sitting on the p.o.o.p of a steam-vessel when a squall came on. "I suggested to his Excellency," says Mr. Crawford, "the convenience of going below, which he long resisted, under the apprehension of committing his dignity by placing himself in a situation where persons might tread over his head; for this singular antipathy is common both to the Burmese and Siamese. The prejudice is more especially directed against the fair s.e.x,--a pretty conclusive proof of the estimation in which they are held. His Excellency seriously demanded to know whether any woman had ever trod upon the p.o.o.p; and, being a.s.sured in the negative, he consented at length to enter the cabin." The house fixed for the residence of an American missionary was not allowed to be fitted up, as it stood on ground which was higher than the king's barge as it lay in the river; and such a spectacle would not become the king's dignity. The prime minister of this same king was one day, for absence from his post at a fire, "spread out in the hot sun." He was extended on his back in the public road for some hours in the most sultry part of the day, with a heavy weight upon his chest,--the public executioners being employed to administer the punishment. Nor is the king alone authorized to perpetrate such barbarisms. A creditor is permitted to seize the wife, children, and slaves of a debtor, and bind them at his door to broil in the sun of Ava. Here we see in perfection the union of the conventional and the gross in manners; and such manners cannot be conceived to coexist with any religion of a higher character than Buddhism.

Under ascetic forms, what grossness there is will be partially concealed; but there will be no nearer an approach to simplicity than under the licentious. The religion being made still to consist much in observances, the society becomes formal in proportion as it believes itself growing pure. We must again take an extreme case for an example.

The Shakers of America are as sophisticated a set of persons as can be found; with their minds, and even their public discourses, full of the one subject of their celibacy, and their intercourse with each other graduated according to strict rules of etiquette. So extreme an asceticism can never now spread in any nation to such an extent as to bear a relation to its general government: but it is observable that such societies of ascetics live under a despotism;--one of their own appointment, if the general will has not furnished them with one.

Under the moderate aspect of religion is an approximation towards simplicity of social manners alone to be found. There is as yet only a remote antic.i.p.ation of it in any country in the world; only a remote antic.i.p.ation of that ease of social manners which must exist there alone where the enjoyments of life are freely used without abuse. It matters not that the licentious and the ascetic parties each boast of having attained this consummation,--the one under the name of ease, and the other of simplicity. There is too much pain attendant upon grossness to justify the boast of ease; and too much effort in asceticism to admit of the grace of simplicity. It is the observer's business to mark, wherever he goes, the degree in which the one is chastened and the other relaxed, giving place to the higher form of the moderate, which, if society learns from experience, as the individual does, must finally prevail.

When many individuals of a society attain that self-forgetfulness which is promoted by a high and free religious sentiment, but which is incompatible with either licentious or ascetic tendencies, the tone of manners in that society will be much raised. When, free from the grossness of self-indulgence, and from the constraint of self-denial, every one spontaneously thinks more of his neighbour than of himself, the world will witness, at last, the perfection of manners. It is clear that the high morals of which such refined manners will be the expression, must greatly depend on the exaltation of the religious sentiment from which they emanate.

The traveller may possibly object the difficulty of cla.s.sing societies by their religious tendencies, and ask whether minds of every sort are not to be found in all numerous a.s.semblages of persons. This is true: but yet there is a prevailing religious sentiment in all communities.

Religious, like other sentiment, is modified by the strong general influences under which each society lives; and in it, as in other kinds, there will be general resemblance, with particular differences under it.

It is well known that even sects, exclusive in their opinions and straitened by forms, differ in different countries almost as much as if there were no common bond. Not only is episcopacy not the same religion among born East Indians as in England, but the Quakers of the United States, though like the English in doctrine and in manners, are easily distinguishable from them in religious sentiment: and even the Jews, who might be expected to be the same all over the world, differ in Russia, Persia, and Great Britain as much as if a spirit of division had been sent among them. They not only appear here in furs, there in cotton or silk, and elsewhere in broadcloth; but the hearts they bear beneath the garments, the thoughts that stir under the cap, the turban, and the hat, are modified in their action as the skies under which they move are in aspect. They are strongly tinctured with the national sentiment of Russia, Persia, and England; and if the fond dream of some of them (in which, by the way, large numbers of their body have ceased to sympathize,) could come true, and they should ever be brought together within their ancient borders, they would find that their religion, so unique in its fixedness, though one in word, is many in spirit.--Much more easy is the a.s.similation between different forms of Christianity, and between Christianity and an elevated natural religion: and the search can never therefore be in vain for a pervading religious sentiment among the various religious inst.i.tutions of any and every people.

It is, of course, more difficult to discover this religious sentiment among a nation enlightened enough to be divided in theological matters, than among a rude people who regulate their devotions by the bidding of a single order of priests. The African traveller, pa.s.sing up the Niger, sees at a glance what all the wors.h.i.+ppers on the banks feel, and must feel, towards the deities to whom their temples are erected. A rude shed, with a doll,--an image of deformity,--perched on a stand, and supposed to be enjoying the fumes of the cooking going on before his face;--a place of wors.h.i.+p like this, in its character of the habitation of a deity, and of a sensual deity, leaves no doubt as to what the religious sentiment of a country must be where there is no dissent from such a wors.h.i.+p. In such a society there are absolutely none to feel that their deep palm groves are a n.o.bler temple than human hands can rear.

There are none who see that it is by a large divine benignity that all the living creatures of that region are made happy in their rank seclusion. There is no feeling of grat.i.tude in the minds of those who see the myriads of gay b.u.t.terflies that flit in the glare of noon, and the river-horse which bathes in the shady places of the mysterious great stream. There a G.o.d is seen only in his temple, and there is nothing known of any works of his. That he is great, is learned only through the word of his priests, who say that yams are too common a food for him, and that nothing less than hippopotamus' flesh must be cooked beneath his shrine. That he is good is an idea which has not yet entered any mind.--In other places, the religious sentiment is almost equally unquestionable; as when every man in Cairo is seen in his turn to put on the dress of pilgrimage, and direct his steps to Mount Arafat. Here the sentiment is of a higher order, but equally evident and uniform.--A further advance, with somewhat less uniformity of sentiment, is found among the followers of the Greek church in a Russian province. The peasants there make a great point of having time for their devotions; and those who have the wherewithal to offer some showy present at a shrine are complacent. They make the sign of the cross, and have therein done their whole duty: and if some speculative wors.h.i.+pper of the Virgin with Three Hands is not satisfied about the way in which his patroness came by her third hand, he keeps his doubts to himself when he tells his sins to his confessor.--A still further advance, with an increased diversity, may be met with among the simple Vaudois, the general characteristics of whose faith are alike, but who entertain it, some more in the spirit of fear, others more in the spirit of love. The prevailing sentiment among them is of the ascetic character, as the stranger may perceive, who sees the peasantry marching in serene gravity to their plain places of wors.h.i.+p on the mountain pinnacle, or under the shelter yielded by a clump of black pines amidst a waste of snow: but here the clergy are more guides than dictators; and not a few may be found who doubt their opinions, and find matter for thoughtless delight, rather than religious awe, when they follow the echoes from steep to steep, and watch for the gleams of the summer lightning playing among the defiles.--The diversity grows more striking as civilization advances; but it has not yet become perplexing in the most enlightened nations in the world. In England, in France, in America, there is a distinct religious sentiment: in England, where there is every variety of dissent from the established faith; in America, where there is every variety of opinion, and no establishment at all; and in France, now in that state which most baffles observation,--a state of transition from an exaggerated superst.i.tion to a religious faith which is being groped for, but is not yet found. Even in this uncertain state, no one can confound the religious sentiment of New England and of France; and an observation of their places of wors.h.i.+p will indicate their differences.

In New England, the populous towns have their churches in the midst, s.p.a.cious and conspicuous,--not exhibiting any of the signs of antique origin which are impressed on those of Europe, and to be accounted for only by the immediate religious tastes of the people. In new settlements, the church rises side by side with the house of entertainment, and is obviously considered one of the necessaries of social life. The first thing to be learned about a fresh inhabitant is, how he stands disposed towards the church, whatever may be its denomination. In France, such of the old churches as are still used for their ancient purpose, bespeak a ritual religion, and therefore a religion light and gay in its spirit; all religions being so which cast responsibility into outward observances, especially where the outward observances are not of a very burdensome character. If nuns in their cloister, and Jews in their synagogues, have been characterized by the lightness of their religious spirit, well may the Catholics of an enlightened country be so, discarding the grossest and most burdensome of their rites, and retaining the ritual principle. The searchers after a new faith in France must increase by millions before they can change the character of the religious sentiment of the country; and perhaps before that which is now gross can be elevated into what is genial, and before a mixture of levity and fear can be changed into the cheerful earnestness of a moderate or truly catholic religious conviction, the ancient churches of France may be standing in ruins,--objects for the research of the antiquary.

The rule of examining things before persons must be observed in ascertaining the religious sentiment of any country. A stranger in England might interrogate everybody he saw, and be little wiser at the end of a year. He might meet a fanatic one day, an indifferent person the next, and a calmly convinced one the third: he might go from a Churchman to a Jew; from a Jew to a Quaker; from a Quaker to a Catholic; and every day be farther from understanding the prevailing religious sentiment of the country. A much shorter and surer method is, to examine the Places of Wors.h.i.+p, the condition of the Clergy, the Popular Superst.i.tions, the observance of Holy Days, and some other particulars of the kind.

First, for the Churches. There is that about all places of wors.h.i.+p which may tell nearly as plain a tale as the carved idols, with messes of rice before them, in Hindoo temples; or as the human bones hung round the hut of an African G.o.d. The proportion and resemblance of modern places of wors.h.i.+p to those which were built in dark times of superst.i.tion; the suitability or incongruity of all that is of late introduction into their furniture and wors.h.i.+p with what had its origin in those dim ages;--such circ.u.mstances as these cannot but indicate whether the common religious sentiment is as nearly as possible the same as in centuries past, or whether it is approximating, slowly or rapidly, towards the ascetic or the moderate.

There is evidence in the very forms of churches. The early Christian churches were in the basilica form,--bearing a resemblance to the Roman courts of justice. This is supposed to have arisen from the churches being, in fact, the courts of spiritual justice, where penance was awarded by the priest to the guilty, and absolution granted to the penitent. From imitation, the Christian churches of all Europe for centuries bore this form; and even some built since the Reformation preserve it. But they have something of their own which serves as a record of their own times. The history of the Crusades does not present a more vivid picture of feudal society than s.h.i.+nes out from the nooks of our own cathedrals. The spirit of monachism is as distinguishable as if the cowled ghosts of the victims were actually seen flitting along the aisles. What say the chantries ranged along the sides? There perpetual prayers were to be kept up for the prosperity of a wealthy family and its retainers in life, and for their welfare after death. What says the chapter-house? There the powerful members of the church hierarchy were wont to a.s.semble, to use and confirm their rule. What say the cloisters?

Under their shelter did the monks go to and fro in life; and in the plot of ground enclosed by these sombre pa.s.sages were they laid in death.

What says the Ladye chapel? What say the niches with their stone basins?

They tell of the intercessory character of the sentiment, and of the ritual character of the wors.h.i.+p of the times when they were set up. The handful of wors.h.i.+ppers here collected from among the tens of thousands of a cathedral town also testify to the fact that such establishments could not be originated now, and are no longer in harmony with the spirit of the mult.i.tude.--The contrast of the most modern sacred buildings tells as plain a tale:--the red-brick meeting-house of the Friends; the stone chapel of the less rigid dissenters, standing back from the noise of the busy street; the aristocratic chapel nestling amidst the shades of the n.o.bleman's park; and the village church in the meadow, with its neighbouring parsonage. These all tell of a diversity of opinion; but also of something else. The more ancient buildings are scantily attended; the more modern are thronged;--and indeed, if they had not been wanted by numbers, they would not have been built. This speaks the decline of a ritual religion, and the preference of one which is more exclusively spiritual in its action.

In Scotland the kirks look exactly suitable to the population which throngs towards them, with sober dress and gait, and countenances of solemnity. These edifices stand in severe simplicity, whether on the green sh.o.r.e of a lake, or in the narrow street of a town; and asceticism is marked on every stone of the walls, and every article of their decorations.

No one who has travelled in Ireland can forget the aspect of its places of wors.h.i.+p,--the lowly Catholic chapels, with their beggarly ornaments of lace and crucifixes, placed in the midst of villages, the whole of whose inhabitants crowd within those four walls; and a little way off, in a field, or on an eminence by the road side, the Protestant church, one end in ruins, and with ample harbourage for the owl, while the rest is encompa.s.sed with nettles and thorns, and the mossy grave-stones are half hidden by rank gra.s.s. In a country where the sun rises upon contrasts like these, it is clear in what direction the religious sentiment of the people is indulged.

What the stranger may thus learn in our own country, we may learn in his, whatever it be. The large plain churches of Ma.s.sachusetts, their democratic benches (in the absence of aristocratic pews) silently filled for long hours of a Sabbath, as still as a summer noon, by hundreds and thousands who restore the tones of their pilgrim ancestors in their hymn-singing, and seem to carry about their likeness in their faces, cannot fail to instruct the observer.--Then there is the mosque at Cairo, with its great tank or fountain of ablution in the midst; and its broad pavement spread out for men of every degree to kneel on together; its doors standing wide from sunrise to sunset, for the admission of all but women and strangers; its outside galleries, from which the summons to prayer is sounded;--these things testify to the ritual character of the wors.h.i.+p, and to the low type of the morals of a faith which despises women and strangers, giving privileges to the strong from which the weak are excluded.--Then there is the Buddhist temple, rearing its tapering form in a recess of the hills, with its colossal stone figures guarding the entrance, and others sanctifying the interior,--all eloquently explaining that physical force is wors.h.i.+pped here: its images of saints show that the intercessory superst.i.tion exists; and the drum and gong, employed to awaken the attention of the G.o.ds, can leave little danger of misapprehension to the observer. There are lanterns continually burning, and consecrated water, sanctified to the cure of diseased eyes.--Such places of wors.h.i.+p tell a very plain tale; while there is not perhaps a church on earth which does not convey one that is far from obscure.

The traveller must diligently visit the temples of nations; he must mark their locality, whether placed among men's dwellings or apart from them; their number, whether multiplied by diversity of theological opinion; and their aspect, whether they are designed for the service of a ritual or a spiritual religion. Thus he may, at the same time, ascertain the character of the most prominent form of religion, and that of the dissent from it; which must always ill.u.s.trate each other.

Next to the Churches comes the consideration of the Clergy. The clergy are usually the secondary potentates of a young country. In a young country, physical force, and that which comes to represent it, is the first great power; and knowledge is the next. The clergy are the first learned men of every nation; and when the streams of knowledge are only just issuing from the fountain, and the key is in the hands of the clergy, they enjoy, rightly and unavoidably, a high degree of consequence. Knowledge spreads abroad; and it is as impossible for man to dam it up as for the fool to stop the Danube by filling the narrow channel at its source with his great boots,--crying out the while, "How the people will wonder when the Danube does not come!" As knowledge becomes diffused, the consequence of the clergy declines. If that consequence is to be preserved, it must be by their attaining the same superiority in morals which they once held in intellect. Where the clergy are now a cherished cla.s.s, it is, in fact, on the supposition of this moral superiority,--a claim for whose justification it would be unreasonable to look, and for the forfeiture of which the clergy should be less blamed than those who expect that, in virtue of a profession, any cla.s.s of men should be better than others. Moral excellence has no regard to cla.s.ses and professions; and religion, being not a pursuit but a temper, cannot, in fact, be professionally cultivated with personal advantage. It will be for the traveller to note whether this is more or less understood where he travels; whether the clergy are viewed with indifference as mere professional men; or whether they are reverenced for their supposed holiness; or for their real superiority in learning; or whether the case wears the lowest aspect of all--when the clergy are merely the jugglers and puppet-masters of the mult.i.tude. A patient consideration of this will lead to a pretty safe conclusion as to the progress the people have made in knowledge, and the spiritual freedom which it brings;--a freedom which is at once a virtue and a cause of virtue.

The observer must note what the clergy themselves consider their function to be;--whether to guide individual minds; or to cultivate theological and other studies, in order to place their results at the disposal of the minds with which they have to deal; or to express in wors.h.i.+p the feelings of those minds; or to influence the social inst.i.tutions by which the minds of the people are modified; or to do any other of the many things which the priests of different countries, and ages, and faiths, have in turn included in their function. He will note whether they are most like the tyrannical Brahmins, who at one stroke--by declaring the inst.i.tution of Caste to be of divine authority--obtained boundless control over a thousand generations, subjecting all intellects and all hands to a routine which could be easily superintended by the forty thousand of the favoured priestly race; or whether they are like the Christian clergy of the dark ages, a part of whose duty it was to learn the deepest secrets of the proudest and lowliest,--thus obtaining the means of bringing to pa.s.s what events they wished, both in public and private life;--or whether they are like such students as have been known in the theological world,--men who have not crossed the threshold of their libraries for eighteen years, and who are satisfied with their lives, if they have been able to elevate Biblical science, and to throw any new light on sacred history;--or whether they are like the American clergy of the present day, whose exertions are directed towards the art of preaching;--or whether they are like the ministers of the Established Church in England, who are politically represented, and large numbers of whom employ their influence for political purposes. Each of these kinds of clergy must be yielded by a particular state of society, and could not belong to any other. The Hindoos must be in a low degree of civilization, and sunk in a deadly superst.i.tion, or they would tolerate no Brahmins. The people of four centuries ago must have depended solely upon their priests for knowledge and direction, or they would not have submitted to their inquisitorial practices. Germany must have advanced far in her appreciation of philosophical and critical research in theology, or she would not have such devoted students as she can boast of. The Americans cannot have attained to any high practice of spiritual liberty, or they could not follow preaching so zealously as they do. The English cannot have fully understood, or taken to heart the principles of the Reformation, which have so long been their theme of eulogy, or they would not foster a political hierarchy within the bosom of their church.

As the studies of the clergy lie in the past, as the days of their strongest influence are behind, and as the religious feelings of men have hitherto reposed on the antique, and are but just beginning to point towards the future, it is natural, it is unavoidable, that the clergy should r.e.t.a.r.d rather than aid the progress of society. A disposition to a.s.sist in the improvement of inst.i.tutions is what ought not to be looked for from any priestly cla.s.s; and, if looked for, it will not be found. Such a mode of operation must appear to them suicidal. But much may be learned by comparing the degree of clerical resistance to progression with the proportion of favour in which the clergy are held by the people. Where that resistance is greatest, and a clerical life is one of peculiar worldly ease, the state of morals and manners must be low. Where that resistance is least, where any social improvement whatever is found to originate with the clergy, and where they bear a just share of toil, the condition of morals and manners cannot be very much depressed. Where there is an undue part.i.tion of labour and its rewards among the clergy themselves,--where some do the work and others reap the recompence,--the fair inference is that morals and manners are in a state of transition. Such a position of affairs cannot be a permanent one; and the observer may be a.s.sured that the morals and manners of the people are about to be better than they have been.--The characteristics of the clergy will indicate, or at least direct attention to, the characteristics of dissent: and any extensive form of dissent is no other than the most recent exposition of the latest condition of morals among a large, active, and influential portion of the people. A foreign traveller in Germany, in Luther's time, could learn but little of the moral state of that empire, if he shut his eyes to the philosophy and the deeds of the reformers. If he saw nothing in the train of nuns winding down into the valleys from their now unconsecrated convent on the steep; if the tidings of the marriage of Catherine de Boria came to him like any other wedding news; if he did not mark the subdued triumph in family faces when the Book--Luther's Bible--was brought out for the daily lecture; if the decrees of Worms seemed to him like the common orders of the church, and the levelling of altars and unroofing of crypts was in his eyes but masons' work, he was not qualified to observe the people of Germany, and had no more t.i.tle to report of them than if he had never left home. Thus it is now, in less extreme cases. The traveller in Spain knows little of the Spaniards unless he is aware of the theological studies, and the wors.h.i.+p without forms, which are carried on in private by those who are keeping alive the fires of liberty in that priest and tyrant-ridden country. The foreigner in England will carry away but a partial knowledge of the religious sentiment of the people if he enters only the cathedrals of cities and the steepled churches in the villages, pa.s.sing by the square meeting-houses in the manufacturing towns, and hearing nothing of the conferences, the a.s.semblies, and the missionary enterprises of the dissenters. The same may be said of observation in every country enlightened enough to have shaken off its subservience to an unquestioned and irresponsible priesthood: that is, of every country advanced enough to maintain dissent.

The expressions of established forms of prayer convey more information as to the state of the clergy than of the people; since these expressions are furnished by the clergy, and continue to be prompted by them, while the people have no means of dismissing or changing the words of their framed prayers for long after the words may have ceased to represent the feeling. The traveller will receive such objectionable expressions as he may hear, not as indications of the then present sentiments of the crowd of wors.h.i.+ppers, but rather as evidencing the disinclination of the clergy to change. It would be hard, for instance, to impute to Moslem wors.h.i.+ppers in general the formation of such desires as are uttered by the school-boys of Cairo at the close of their daily attendance. "O G.o.d! destroy the infidels and polytheists, thine enemies, the enemies of the religion! O G.o.d! make their children orphans, and defile their abodes, and cause their feet to slip, and give them and their families, and their households, and their women, and their children, and their relations by marriage, and their brothers, and their friends, and their possessions, and their race, and their wealth, and their lands, as booty to the Moslems! O Lord of all creatures!"--It would be unjust to impute a horror of "sudden death" to all who use the words of prayer against it which are found in the Litany of the Church of England. Sudden death deserved to be cla.s.sed among the most deadly evils when the Litany was framed,--in the days of the viatic.u.m; but now it would be unjust to a mult.i.tude of wors.h.i.+ppers who use the Litany to suppose that they are afraid to commit themselves to the hands of their Father without a pa.s.sport from a priest; and that they are not willing to die in the way which pleases G.o.d,--some rather preferring, probably, a mode which will save those who are nearest and dearest to them the anguish of suspense, or of witnessing hopeless decline. In all antique forms of devotion there must be expressions which are inconsistent with the philosophy and the tastes of the time; and these are to be regarded therefore as no indications of such philosophy and taste, but as an evidence, more or less distinct, of the condition of the clergy in enlightenment and temper.

The splendid topic of human Superst.i.tions can be only just touched upon here. In this boundless field, strewn with all the blossoms of all philosophy, the human observer may wander for ever. He can never have done culling the evidence that it presents, or enjoying the promise which it yields. All that we can now do is just to suggest that as the superst.i.tions of all nations are the embodiment of their idealized convictions, the state of religious sentiment may be learned from them almost without danger of mistake.

No society is without its superst.i.tions, any more than it is without its convictions and its imaginations. Even under the moderate form of religion, there is room for superst.i.tion; and the ascetic, which glories in having put away the superst.i.tions of the licentious forms, has superst.i.tions of its own.--The followers of an ascetic religion have more or less belief in judgments,--in retributive evils, arbitrarily inflicted. Among them may be gathered a harvest of tales of divine interference,--from the bee stinging the tip of the swearer's tongue to the sudden death of false witnesses. Among them do superst.i.tions about times and seasons flourish, even to the forgetfulness that the Sabbath is made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Some ascetics have faith in the lot,--like the Moravians in ordering marriage, or Wesley in opening his Bible to light upon texts. Others believe in warnings of evil; and most dread the commission of ritual fully as much as of moral sins. To play even a hymn tune on the piano on Sundays is an offence in the Highlands of Scotland; and to miss prayers is a matter of penance in a convent. The superst.i.tions of the ascetic are scarcely fewer or more moderate than those of the licentious form of religion; the chief difference between the two lies in the spirit from which they emanate.

The superst.i.tions of the ascetic arise from the spirit of fear; those of the heathen arise perhaps equally from the spirit of love and the spirit of fear.

It seems as if the portents which present themselves to ascetic minds must necessarily be of evil, since the only good which their imaginations admit is supposed to be secured by grace, and by acts of service or self-denial. To the Fakir, to the Shaker, to the nun, no good remains over and above what has been long claimed, while punishment may follow any breach of observance. On the other hand, before one who makes himself G.o.ds of the movements of inanimate nature and human pa.s.sions, the two worlds of evil and good lie open, and he is perpetually on the watch for messengers from both. The poor pagan looks for tokens of his G.o.ds being pleased or angry; of their intentions of giving him a good or a bad harvest; or of their sending him a rich present or afflicting him with a bereavement. Whatever he wants to know, he seeks for in portents;--whether he shall live again,--whether his departed friends think of him,--whether his child shall be fortunate or wretched,--whether his enemy or he shall prevail. It is open to the traveller's observation whether these superst.i.tions are of a generous or selfish kind,--whether they elevate the mind with hope, or depress it with fear,--whether they nourish the faith of the spirit, or extort merely the service of the lip and hand.

The Swiss herdsmen believe that the three deliverers (the founders of the Helvetic Confederacy) sleep calmly in a cave near the Lake of Lucerne; and that, whenever their country is in her utmost need, they will come forth in their antique garb, and a.s.suredly save her. This is a superst.i.tion full of veneration and hope.--When the Arabs see a falling star, they believe it to be a dart thrown by G.o.d at a wanderer of the race of the genii, and they exclaim, "May G.o.d transfix the enemy of the faith!" Here we find in brief the spirit of their religion.--In Brazil, a bird which sings plaintively at night is listened to with intent emotion, from its being supposed to be sent with tidings from the dead to the living. The choice of a bird with a mournful instead of a lively note speaks volumes.--The three angels in white that come to give presents to good children in Germany at Christmas, come in a good spirit.--There is a superst.i.tion in China which has a world of tenderness in it. A father collects a hundred copper coins from a hundred families, and makes the metal into a lock which he hangs, as a charm, round his child's neck, believing that he locks his child to life by this connection with a hundred persons in full vigour.--But, as is natural, death is the region of the Unseen to which the larger number of portents relates. The belief of the return of the dead has been held almost universally among the nations; and their unseen life is the grand theme of speculation wherever there are men to speculate. The Norwegians lay the warrior's horse, and armour, and weapons, beside him. The Hindoos burn the widow. The Malabar Indians release caged birds on the newly-made grave, to sanction the flight of the soul. The Buccaneers (according to Penrose) concealed any large booty that fell into their hands, till they should have leisure to remove it,--murdering and burying near it any helpless wretch whom they might be able to capture, in order that his spirit might watch over the treasure, and drive from the spot all but the parties who had signed their names in a round-robin, in claim of proprietors.h.i.+p. The professors of many faiths resemble each other in practices of propitiation or atonement laboriously executed on behalf of the departed. Some cla.s.ses of mourners act towards their dead friends in a spirit of awe; some in fear; but very many in love. The trust in the immortality of the affections is the most general feature in superst.i.tions of this cla.s.s; and it is a fact eloquent to the mind of the observer.--An only child of two poor savages died. The parents appeared inconsolable; and the father soon sank under his grief. From the moment of his death, the mother was cheerful. On being asked what had cheered her, she said she had mourned for her child's loneliness in the world of spirits: now he had his father with him, and she was happy for them both. What a divine spirit of self-sacrifice is here! but there is scarcely a superst.i.tion sincerely entertained which does not tell as plain a tale. Those which express fear indicate moral abas.e.m.e.nt, greater or less. Those which express trust and love indicate greater or less moral elevation and purity.

The practice of Suicide is worth the contemplation of a traveller, as affording some clear indications as to religious sentiment. Suicide in the largest sense is here intended,--the voluntary surrender of life from any cause.

There has been a stage in the moral advancement of every nation when suicide, in one form or another, has been considered a duty; and it is impossible to foresee the time when it will cease to be so considered.

It was a necessary result from the idea of honour once prevalent in the most civilized societies, when men and women destroyed themselves to avoid disgrace. The defeated warrior, the baffled statesman, the injured woman, destroyed themselves when the hope of honour was gone. In the same age, as in every succeeding one, there have been suicides who have devoted themselves for others, presenting a series of tales which may almost redeem the disgraces which darken the annals of the race.--The most ill.u.s.trious of the Christian Fathers, immersed in the superst.i.tions about the transcendent excellence of the virtue of chast.i.ty which have extinguished so many other virtues, and injured the morals of society to this day, by sacrificing other principles to fanaticism on this, permitted women to kill themselves to escape from violence which left the mind in its purity, and the will in its rect.i.tude.--Martyrdom for the truth existed also before the venerating eyes of men,--the n.o.blest kind of suicide: it attracted glory to itself from the faithful heart of the race; and, from its thus attracting glory, it became a means of gaining glory, and sank from being martyrdom to be a mere fanatical self-seeking. While the spirit of persecution was roaming abroad, seeking whom it might devour, there were St. Theresas roaming abroad, seeking to be devoured, from a spirit of cupidity after the crown of martyrdom.--Soldiers, in all times and circ.u.mstances, pledge themselves to the possible duty of suicide by the very act of becoming soldiers.

They engage to make the first charge, and to mount a breach if called upon. And there have been found soldiers for every perilous service that has been required, throughout all wars. There have been volunteers to mount the breach, solitary men or small bands to hold narrow bridges and pa.s.ses, from the first incursion of tribe upon tribe in barbarous conflict, up to the suicide of Van Speyk, whose monument is still fresh from the chisel in the Nieuw Kerk of Amsterdam. Van Speyk commanded a gun-boat which was stranded in a heavy gale, and boarded by the Belgians,--the foe. Van Speyk had sworn never to surrender his boat, and his suicide was a point of military honour. He seems to have considered the matter thus; for he prayed for pardon of his crime of self-destruction after laying his lighted cigar on the open barrel of powder which blew up the boat. The remaining suicides (except, of course, the insane,) are justified by none. Persons who shrink from suffering so far as to withdraw from their duties, and to forsake those to whom their exertions are due, are objects of contemptuous compa.s.sion in the present day, when, moral having succeeded to physical force in men's esteem, it is seen to be n.o.bler to endure evils than to hide one's spirit from them.

Every society has its suicides, and much may be learned from their character and number, both as to the notions on morals which prevail, and the religious sentiment which animates to or controls the act. It is with the last that we now have to do.--The act of laying down life is one thing among a people who have dim and mournful antic.i.p.ations of a future life, like the ancient Greeks; and quite another among those who, like the first Christians, have a clear vision of bliss and triumph in the world on which they rush. Suicide is one thing to a man who is certain of entering immediately upon purgatory; and to another whose first step is to be upon the necks of his enemies; and to a third who believes that he is to lie conscious in his grave for some thousands of years; and to a fourth who has no idea that he shall survive or revive at all. When Curtius leaped into the gulf, he probably leaped into utter darkness, other than physical; but when Guyon of Ma.r.s.eilles sunned himself for the last time in the balcony of the house where he was shut up with the plague-spotted body which he was to die in dissecting, he had faith that he should step out of a waxing and waning sunlight into a region which "had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to s.h.i.+ne in it, the glory of G.o.d being the light of it." The sick Moslem who, falling behind his troop, and fearing to lie unburied, scoops his grave and lies down in it, wrapped in his grave-clothes, and covers himself up, except the face, leaving it to the winds to heap sand upon it, trembles the while at the thought of the two examining angels, who are this night to prove and perhaps torture him. The English lady who took laudanum on learning that she had a fatal disease, from fear of becoming loathsome to a husband for whom she had lived, had before her the prominent idea of reunion with him; so that life in one world presented as much of hope as in the other of despair.--Nations share in differences like these, according to the prevalent religious sentiment; and from this species of act may the sentiment be more or less correctly inferred.

Suicide is very common among a race of Africans who prefer it to slavery. They believe in a life of tropical ease and freedom after death, and rush into it so eagerly on being reduced to slavery, that the planters of Cuba refuse them in the market, knowing that after a few hours, or days, in spite of all precautions, nothing but their dead bodies will remain in the hands of their masters. The French have, of late years, abounded in suicides, while there are few or none in Ireland. The most vain and the most sympathetic part of the French mult.i.tude were found to be the cla.s.ses which yielded the victims. If a young lady and her lover shot one another with pistols tied with pink ribbons, two or three suicides amidst blue and green ribbons were sure to follow the announcement of the first in the newspaper, till a sensible physician suggested that suicides should not be noticed in newspapers, or should be treated with ridicule: the advice was acted upon, and proved by the result to be sound. This profusion of self-murders could not have taken place amidst a serious belief of an immediate entrance upon purgatory, such as is held by the majority of the Irish. Only in a state of vague speculation as to another life could the future have operated as so slight a check upon the rash impulses of the present. The Irish, an impetuous race, like the French, and with a good share of vanity, of sympathy, and of sentiment, are probably deterred from throwing away life by those religious convictions and sentiments which the French once held in an equal degree, but from which they are now pa.s.sing over into another state.

A single act of suicide is often indicative, negatively or positively, of a state of prevalent sentiment. A single instance of the Suttee testifies to the power of Brahmins, and the condition of Hindoo wors.h.i.+ppers, in a way which cannot be mistaken. An American child of six years old accidentally witnessed in India such a spectacle. On returning home, she told her mother she had seen h.e.l.l, and was whipped for saying so,--not knowing why, for she spoke in all earnestness, and, as it seems to us, with eloquent truth.--The somewhat recent self-destruction of an estimable English officer, on the eve of a court-martial, might fully instruct a stranger on the subject of military honour in this country. This officer fell in the collision of universal and professional principles. His justice and humanity had led him to offer a kindly bearing towards an irresolute mob of rioters, in the absence of authority to act otherwise than as he did, and of all co-operation from the civil power; his military honour was placed in jeopardy, and the innocent man preferred self-destruction to meeting the risk; thus testifying that numbers here sustain an idea of honour which is at variance with that which they expect to prevail elsewhere and hereafter.--Every act of self-devotion for others, extending to death, testifies to the existence of philanthropy, and to its being regarded as an honour and a good. Every voluntary martyrdom tells a national tale as plain as that written in blood and spirit by Arnold Von Winkelried, in 1386. When the Swiss met their oppressors at the battle of Sempach, it appeared impossible for the Swiss to charge with effect, so thick was the hedge of Austrian lances. Arnold Von Winkelried cried, "I will make a lane for you! Dear companions, remember my family!" He clasped an armful of the enemy's lances, and made a sheaf of them in his body. His comrades entered the breach, and won the battle. They remembered his family, and their descendants commemorate the sacrifice to this day; thus bearing testimony to the act being a trait of the national spirit.

By observations such as these, may the religious sentiment of a people be ascertained. While making them, or struggling with the difficulties of opposing evidence, the observer has to bear in mind,--first, that the religious sentiment does everywhere exist, however low its tone, and however uncouth its expression; secondly, that personal morals must greatly depend on the low or high character of the religious sentiment; and, thirdly, that the philosophy and morals of government accord with both,--despotism of some sort being the natural rule where licentious and ascetic religions prevail; and democratic government being possible only under a moderate form of religion, where the use without the abuse of all blessings is the spirit of the religion of the majority.

CHAPTER II.

GENERAL MORAL NOTIONS.

"Une differente coutume donnera d'autres principes naturels. Cela se voit par experience; et s'il y en a d'ineffacables a la coutume, il y en a aussi de la coutume ineffacables a la nature."--PASCAL.

Next to the religion of a people, it is necessary to learn what are their Ideas of Morals. In speaking of the popular notion of a Moral Sense, it was mentioned that, so far from there being a general agreement on the practice of morals, some things which are considered eminently right in one age or country are considered eminently wrong in another; while the people of each age or country, having grown up under common influences, think and feel sufficiently alike to live together in a general agreement as to right and wrong. It is the business of the traveller to ascertain what this general agreement is in the society he visits.

In one society, spiritual attainments will be the most highly honoured, as in most religious communities. In another, the qualities attendant upon intellectual eminence will be wors.h.i.+pped,--as now in countries which are the most advanced in preparation for political freedom,--France, Germany, and the United States. In others, the moral qualities allied to physical or extrinsic power are chiefly venerated,--as in all uncivilized countries, and all which lie under feudal inst.i.tutions.

The lower moral qualities which belong to the last cla.s.s have been characteristics of nations. The valour of the Spartans, the love of glory of the Romans and the French, the pride of the Spaniards,--these infantile moral qualities have belonged to a people as distinctly as to an individual.--Those which are in alliance with intellectual eminence are not so strikingly characteristic of entire nations; though we praise the Athenians for their love of letters and honour of philosophy; the Italians for their liberality towards art, and their wors.h.i.+p of it while a meaner glory was the fas.h.i.+on of the world; the Germans for their speculative enterprise, and patience of research; and the Americans for their reverence for intellect above military fame and the splendour of wealth.--No high spiritual qualities have ever yet characterized a nation, or even--in spite of much profession--any considerable community. Hospitality and beneficence have distinguished some religious societies: the non-resistance of Quakers, the industry of Moravians, and of several kinds of people united on the principle of community of property, may be cited: but this seems to be all. The enforced temperance, piety, and chast.i.ty of monastic societies go for nothing in this view; because, being enforced, they indicate nothing of the sentiment subsequent to the taking of the vow. The people of the United States have come the nearest to being characterized by lofty spiritual qualities. The profession with which they set out was high,--a circ.u.mstance greatly to their honour, though (as might have been expected) they have not kept up to it. They are still actuated by ambition of territory, and have not faith enough in moral force to rely upon it, as they profess to do. The Swiss, in their unshaken and singularly devoted love of freedom, seem to be spiritually distinguished above other nations: but they have no other strong characteristic of this highest cla.s.s.

The truth is that, whatever may be the moral state of nations when the human world emerges hereafter from its infancy, high spiritual qualities are now matters of individual concern, as those of the intellectual cla.s.s were once; and their general prevalence is a matter of prospective vision alone. Time was when the swampy earth resounded with the tramp and splash of monstrous creatures, whom there was no reason present to cla.s.sify, and no language to name. Then, after a certain number of ages, the earth grew drier; palm-groves and tropical thickets flourished where Paris now stands; and the waters were collected into lakes in the regions where the armies of Napoleon were of late encamped. Then came the time when savage, animal man appeared, using his physical force like the lower animals, and taught by the experience of its deficiency that he was in possession of another kind of force. Still, for ages, the use he made of reason was to overcome the physical force of others, and to render available his own portion. On this principle, and for this object, variously modified, and more or less refined, have societies been formed to this day; though, as morals are the fruit of which intellect is the blossom, spiritualism--faith in moral power--has existed in individuals ever since the first free exercise of reason.

While all nations were ravaging one another as they had opportunity, there were always parents who did not abuse their physical power over their children. In the midst of a general wors.h.i.+p of power, birth, and wealth, the affections have wrought out in individual minds a preference of obscurity and poverty for the sake of spiritual objects. Amidst the supremacy of the wors.h.i.+p of honour and social ease, there have always been confessors who could endure disgrace for the truth, and martyrs who could die for it.--Such individual cases have never been wanting: and, in necessary connexion with this fact, there has always been a sympathy in this pure moral taste,--an appreciation which could not but help its diffusion. Thence arose the formation of communities for the fostering of holiness,--projects which, however mistaken in their methods and injurious in their consequences, have always commanded, and do still command, sympathy, from the venerableness of their origin. Not all the stories of the abuses of monastic inst.i.tutions can destroy the respect of every ingenuous mind for the spiritual preferences out of which they arose. The Crusades are still holy, notwithstanding all their defilements of vain-glory, superst.i.tion, and barbarism of various kinds.

The retreat of the Pilgrim Fathers to the forests of the New World silences the ridicule of the thoughtless about the extravagances of Puritanism in England.

Thus far has the race advanced; and, having thus advanced, there is reason to antic.i.p.ate that the age may come when the individual wors.h.i.+p of spiritual supremacy may expand into national; when a people may agree to govern one another with the smallest possible application of physical force; when goodness shall come to be naturally more honoured than birth, wealth, or even intellect; when ambition of territory shall be given up; when all thought of war shall be over; when the pursuit of the necessaries and luxuries of external life shall be regarded as means to an end; and when the common aim of exertion shall be self and mutual perfection. It does not seem to be rash to antic.i.p.ate such a state of human affairs as this, when an aspiration like the following has been received with sympathy by thousands of republicans united under a const.i.tution of ideas. "Talent and worth are the only eternal grounds of distinction. To these the Almighty has affixed his everlasting patent of n.o.bility; and these it is which make the bright, 'the immortal names,'

to which our children may aspire, as well as others. It will be our own fault if, in our land, society as well as government is not organized on a new foundation."--"Knowledge and goodness,--these make degrees in heaven, and they must be the graduating scale of a true democracy."[F]