Part 21 (1/2)
Chastened by conte mortality, awed into truth by the spectacle of a whole world made kin by that icy touch of nature, the belated soul seeks refuge in a final justice which excludes from natural heirshi+p to the external home not one of earth's weary myriads
Your conception of heavenly justice is found in the concession of equal spiritual birthright, based on the broad charter of common humanity, and forfeitable only by individual worthlessness or deliberate refusal
Why is your idea of earthly justice so widely different--since the principle of justice must be absolute and immutable? Yet while the Church teaches you to pray, ”Thy will be done on earth, as it is done in heaven,”
she tacitly countenances widening disparity in condition, and openly sanctions that fearful abuse which dooms the poor man's unborn children to the mundane perdition of poverty's thousand penalties Is God's will so done in heaven?
While the Church teaches you to pray, ”Thy Kingdom come,” she strikes with doe Better silence than falsehood; better no religion at all--if such lack be possible--than one which concedes equal rights beyond the grave, and denies them here
I wish you to face the truth frankly (continued the pipe), for, heaven knows, it faces you frankly enough Ecclesiastical Christianity vies with the effete Judaisnitude
Passing over as purely local and conte impeachment of that doo exactitude, and added e on earth Chorasin and Bethsaida have no lack of antitypes an
The reat tree, but the unclean fowls lodge in its branches The synia of Court--er the cross of Christ Eighteen-and-a-half centuries of purblind groping for the Kingdom of God finds an idealised Messiah shrined in the eneration,” leprous with the sin of usury; ”a royal priesthood,” paralysed with the cant of hireling clergy; ”a holy nation,” rotten with the luxury of wealth, or e of poverty; ”a peculiar people,” deformed to Lucifer's own pleasure by the curse of caste; while, in this pandemonium of Individualism, the weak, the diffident, the scrupulous, and the afflicted, are thrust aside or traent need is a , from the oppressed to the oppressor, I witness the unspeakable insolence of a Gospel of Thrift, preached by order of the richon the shoulders of Lazarus a burden grievous to be borne, a burden which Dives (or Davis, or S--but Christ's brutal ”rich ry for the proers The Church quibbles well, and palters well, and, in her own pusillanimous way, means well, by her silky loyalty to the law and the profits, and by her steady hostility to so personification known as the Common Enemy
But because of that pernicious loyalty, she has reason to co s on the blessedness of slavery and starvation Meanwhile, as no nanimous sinner can live down to the pseudo-Christian standard, unprogressive Agnosticisdo Utopian (pleaded the pipe) in the charter of that kingdom--in the sunshi+ny Serible order of things, but a practical, workable code of daily life, adapted to any stage of civilisation, and delivered toof hopeless pessimists, or strenuous advocates for Individualistic force and cunning, were in all respects like ourselves-- delivered, moreover, by One who knew exactly the potentialities and aspirations of inal Idea, the outco is es First, the slenderest crescent, seen by eyes that diligently searched the sky; then, a broader crescent; a hemisphere; at last, a perfect sphere, discovered by the Nazarene Artisan, and by him es that orb was there, waiting for recognition, waiting with the awful, tireless, all-conquering patience for which no better name has been found than the Will of God
History marks a point of time when first the Humanity of God touched the divine aspiration in , under the skies of Palestine, the diol to western Aztec ”The Soul, naturally Christian,” responds to this touch, even though blindly and erratically, and so fro to welcome the Gospel of Hueneration to generation phylactered exclusiveness takes counsel against the revolution which is to s new And shall this opposition--the opposition by slander, conspiracy, bribery, and force--prevail till the fatal line is once more passed, and you await the titus sword to drown your land in blood, and the Hadrian-plough to furrow your Temple-site?
I think not (added the pipe, after a pause) I think not For a revolt undrearess now--a revolt of enlightenainst the dohtest intellects are answering one by one to the roll-call of the New Order, and falling into line on the side chaitator”
that died o' Wednesday Inconceivably long and cruel has the bondage been, hideous beyond radation of the disinherited; but I think the cycle of soul-slaying loyalty to error draws near its close; for the whole armoury of the Father of Lies can furnish no shi+eld to turn aside the point of the tireless and terrible PEN--that Ithuriel-spear which, in these latter days, scornfully touches the
Contehtfully) is our surest register of advance or retrogression; and, with few exceptions indeed, the prevailing and conspicuous eleo is a tacit acceptance of irresponsible lordshi+p and abject inferiority as Divine ordinances Brutal indifference, utter conte condescension, toward the rank and file, was an article of the fine old English gentleion-- ”a point of our faith,” as the pious Sir Tho a loathsome servility toward nobility and royalty
In that era, the lish poets felt constrained to weave into his exquisite Elegy an undulating thread ofunder notice the short and siht poverty, humility, industry, and piety a beautiful combination for the wearer of the smock frock Even Crabbe blindly accepted the sanctified lie of social inequality And this assuiously acquiesced in by the lower anilorified God for the distinctly unsearchable wisdoulations which separated his own toil-worn age frohts he should have died fighting for when he was young And, as entleer in your forefathers' prose than in their poetry At last, Burns and Paine flashed their own strong, healthy personalities on the co an epoch; and froy of Hu scope Now, if social-economic conditions fail to keep abreast with the ience, the ti, the latter shall assail the former; and the scene of this unpleasantness (concluded the infatuated pipe) is called in the Hebrew tongue, Ar steadily along, with his billy in one hand and his water-bag in the other; on his shoulder, horse-shoe fashi+on, his forty years' gathering; and in his patient face his forty years' history, clearly legible to ift which I happily possess
I was roused fro:
”How fares our cousin Haar the expense”
”Good day,” responded Ha his journey
”Come on! come on! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?”
”Eh?” And he stopped, and faced about
”Come and have a feed!” I shouted
”I'll do that ready enough,” said he, laying his fardel down in the shade, and seating hih
I rooted ed the ashes off it with a saddle-cloth, and placed it before e of leathery cheese, a sheath-knife, and the quart pot and pannikin
”Eat, and good dich thy good heart, Ape ht, but one which never loses its interest to ard wreck of what should have been a fine soldierly lected hair and rey
His eyes revealed another victie of ophthalmia This ht The latter is acute; the for froth
”Well, to tell you the truth, I ain't had anything since yesterday afternoon
Course, you of'en go short when you're travellin'; but I' about it”
”Would n't you stand a better show for work on the other side of the river?”
”Eh?”