Part 12 (1/2)
”Not a bit of it; they do it because they are accustomed to do it, and they feel that it is expected of them. Religion is as much a part of their dissipation as evening dress is of ours, and just as much a purely conventional part; and I want to teach them to dissociate the two ideas in their own minds.”
”I doubt if you will succeed, Mr. Tremaine.”
”Yes, I shall; I invariably succeed. I have never failed in anything yet, and I never mean to fail. And I do so want to make the poor people enjoy themselves thoroughly. Of course, it is a good thing to have one's pills always hidden in jam; but it must be a miserable thing to belong to a section of society where one's jam is invariably full of pills.”
Elisabeth smiled, but did not speak; Alan was the one person of her acquaintance to whom she would rather listen than talk.
”It is a morbid and unhealthy habit,” he went on, ”to introduce religion into everything, in the way that English people are so fond of doing. It decreases their pleasures by casting its shadow over purely human and natural joys; and it increases their sorrow and want by teaching them to lean upon some hypothetical Power, instead of trying to do the best that they can for themselves. Also it enervates their reasoning faculties; for nothing is so detrimental to one's intellectual strength as the habit of believing things which one knows to be impossible.”
”Then don't you believe in religion of any kind?”
”Most certainly I do--in many religions. I believe in the religion of art and of science and of humanity, and countless more; in fact, the only religion I do not believe in is Christianity, because that spoils all the rest by condemning art as fleshly, science as untrue, and humanity as sinful. I want to bring the old Pantheism to life again, and to teach our people to wors.h.i.+p beauty as the Greeks wors.h.i.+pped it of old; and I want you to help me.”
Elisabeth gasped as Elisha might have gasped when Elijah's mantle fell upon him. She was as yet too young to beware of false prophets. ”I should love to make people happy,” she said; ”there seems to be so much happiness in the world and so few that find it.”
”The Greeks found it; therefore, why should not the English? I mean to teach them to find it, and I shall begin with your work-people on Whit Monday.”
”What shall you do?” asked the girl, with intense interest.
”It is no good taking away old lamps until you are prepared to offer new ones in their place; therefore I shall not take away the consolations (so called) of religion until I have shown the people a more excellent way. I shall first show them nature, and then art--nature to arouse their highest instincts, and art to express the same; and I am convinced that after they have once been brought face to face with the beautiful thus embodied, the old faiths will lose the power to move them.”
When Whit Monday came round, the throbbing heart of the Osierfield stopped beating, as it was obliged to stop on a bank-holiday; and the workmen, with their wives and sweethearts, were taken by Alan Tremaine in large brakes to Pembruge Castle, which the owner had kindly thrown open to them, at Alan's request, for the occasion.
It was a long drive and a wonderfully beautiful one, for the year was at its best. All the trees had put on their new summer dresses, and never a pair of them were of the same shade. The hedges were covered with a wreath of white May-blossom, and seemed like interminable drifts of that snow in summer which is as good news from a far country; and the roads were bordered by the feathery hemlock, which covered the face of the land as with a bridal veil.
”Isn't the world a beautiful place?” said Elisabeth, with a sigh of content, to Alan, who was driving her in his mail-phaeton. ”I do hope all the people will see and understand how beautiful it is.”
”They can not help seeing and understanding; beauty such as this is its own interpreter. Surely such a glimpse of nature as we are now enjoying does people more good than a hundred prayer-meetings in a stuffy chapel.”
”Beauty slides into one's soul on a day like this, just as something--I forget what--slid into the soul of the Ancient Mariner; doesn't it?”
”Of course it does; and you will find that these people--now that they are brought face to face with it--will be just as ready to wors.h.i.+p abstract beauty as ever the Greeks were. The fault has not been with the poor for not having wors.h.i.+pped beauty, but with the rich for not having shown them sufficient beauty to wors.h.i.+p. The rich have tried to choke them off with religion instead, because it came cheaper and was less troublesome to produce.”
”Then do you think that the love of beauty will elevate these people more and make them happier than Christianity has done?”
”Most a.s.suredly I do. Had our climate been sunnier and the fight for existence less bitter, I believe that Christianity would have died out in England years ago; but the wors.h.i.+p of sorrow will always have its attractions for the sorrowful; and the doctrine of renunciation will never be without its charm for those unfortunate ones to whom poverty and disease have stood sponsors, and have renounced all life's good things in their name before ever they saw the light. Man makes his G.o.d in his own image; and thus it comes to pa.s.s that while the strong and joyous Greek adored Zeus on Olympus, the anaemic and neurotic Englishman wors.h.i.+ps Christ on Calvary. Do you tell me that if people were happy they would bow down before a stricken and crucified G.o.d? Not they. And I want to make them so happy that they shall cease to have any desire for a suffering Deity.”
”Well, you have made them happy enough for to-day, at any rate,” said Elisabeth, as she looked up at him with grat.i.tude and admiration. ”I saw them all when they were starting, and there wasn't one face among them that hadn't joy written on every feature in capital letters.”
”Then in that case they won't be troubling their minds to-day about their religion; they will save it for the gloomy days, as we save narcotics for times of pain. You may depend upon that.”
”I'm not so sure: their religion is more of a reality to them than you think,” Elisabeth replied.
While Alan was thus, enjoying himself in his own fas.h.i.+on, his guests were enjoying themselves in theirs; and as they drove through summer's fairyland, they, too, talked by the way.
”Eh! but the May-blossom's a pretty sight,” exclaimed Caleb Bateson, as the big wagonettes rolled along the country roads. ”I never saw it finer than it is this year--not in all the years I've lived in Mers.h.i.+re; and Mers.h.i.+re's the land for May-blossom.”
”It do look pretty,” agreed his wife. ”I only wish Lucy Ellen was here to see it; she was always a one for the May-blossom. Why, when she was ever such a little girl she'd come home carrying branches of it bigger than herself, till she looked like nothing but a walking May-pole.”
”Poor thing!” said Mrs. Hankey, who happened to be driving in the same vehicle as the Batesons, ”she'll be feeling sad and homesick to see it all again, I'll be bound.”
Lucy Ellen's mother laughed contentedly. ”Folks haven't time to feel homesick when they've got a husband to look after; he soon takes the place of May-blossom, bless you!”