Part 32 (2/2)
”Shall I pray, then? For what? I will coax none, natter none--not even the Supreme! I will not be absurd enough to wish to change that order, by which sun and stars, saints and sinners, alike fulfil their destinies. There is one comfort, my friends; coax and flatter as we will, he will not hear us.”
”Pleasant, for puir deevils like us!” quoth Mackaye.
”What then remains? Thanks, thanks--not of words, but of actions. Wors.h.i.+p is a life, not a ceremony. He who would honour the Supreme, let him cheerfully succ.u.mb to the destiny which the Supreme has allotted, and, like the sh.e.l.l or the flower--('Or the pickpocket,' added Mackaye, almost audibly)--become the happy puppet of the universal impulse. He who would honour Christ, let him become a Christ himself! Theodore of Mopsuestia--born, alas! before his time--a prophet for whom as yet no audience stood ready in the amphitheatre of souls--'Christ!' he was wont to say; 'I can become Christ myself, if I will.' Become thou Christ, my brother! He has an idea--the idea of utter submission--abnegation of his own fancied will before the supreme necessities. Fulfil that idea, and thou art he! Deny thyself, and then only wilt thou be a reality; for thou hast no self. If thou hadst a self, thou wouldst but lie in denying it--and would The Being thank thee for denying what he had given thee? But thou hast none! G.o.d is circ.u.mstance, and thou his creature! Be content! Fear not, strive not, change not, repent not! Thou art nothing! Be nothing, and thou becomest a part of all things!”
And so Mr. Windrush ended his discourse, which Crossthwaite had been all the while busily taking down in short-hand, for the edification of the readers of a certain periodical, and also for those of this my Life.
I plead guilty to having been entirely carried away by what I heard. There was so much which was true, so much more which seemed true, so much which it would have been convenient to believe true, and all put so eloquently and originally, as I then considered, that, in short, I was in raptures, and so was poor dear Crossthwaite; and as we walked home, we dinned Mr.
Windrush's praises one into each of Mackaye's ears. The old man, however, paced on silent and meditative. At last--
”A hunder sects or so in the land o' Gret Britain; an' a hunder or so single preachers, each man a sect of his ain! an' this the last fas.h.i.+on!
Last, indeed! The moon of Calvinism's far gone in the fourth quarter, when it's come to the like o' that. Truly, the soul-saving business is a'thegither fa'n to a low ebb, as Master Tummas says somewhere!”
”Well, but,” asked Crossthwaite, ”was not that man, at least, splendid?”
”An' hoo much o' thae gran' objectives an' subjectives did ye comprehen', then, Johnnie, my man?”
”Quite enough for me,” answered John, in a somewhat nettled tone.
”An' sae did I.”
”But you ought to hear him often. You can't judge of his system from one sermon, in this way.”
”Seestem! and what's that like?”
”Why, he has a plan for uniting all sects and parties, on the one broad fundamental ground of the unity of G.o.d as revealed by science--”
”Verra like uniting o' men by just pu'ing aff their claes, and telling 'em, 'There, ye're a' brithers noo, on the one broad fundamental principle o'
want o' breeks.'”
”Of course,” went on Crossthwaite, without taking notice of this interruption, ”he allows full liberty of conscience. All he wishes for is the emanc.i.p.ation of intellect. He will allow every one, he says, to realize that idea to himself, by the representations which suit him best.”
”An' so he has no objection to a wee playing at Papistry, gin a man finds it good to tickle up his soul?”
”Ay, he did speak of that--what did he call it? Oh! 'one of the ways in which the Christian idea naturally embodied itself in imaginative minds!'
but the higher intellects, of course, would want fewer helps of that kind.
'They would see'--ay, that was it--'the pure white light of truth, without requiring those coloured refracting media.'”
”That wad depend muckle on whether the light o' truth chose or not, I'm thinking. But, Johnnie, lad--guide us and save us!--whaur got ye a' these gran' outlandish words the nicht?”
”Haven't I been taking down every one of these lectures for the press?”
”The press gang to the father o't--and you too, for lending your han' in the matter--for a mair accursed aristocrat I never heerd, sin' I first ate haggis. Oh, ye gowk--ye gowk! Dinna ye see what be the upshot o' siccan doctrin'? That every puir fellow as has no gret brains in his head will be left to his superst.i.tion, an' his ignorance to fulfil the l.u.s.ts o' his flesh; while the few that are geniuses, or fancy themselves sae, are to ha' the monopoly o' this private still o' philosophy--these carbonari, illuminati, vehmgericht, samothracian mysteries o' bottled moons.h.i.+ne. An'
when that comes to pa.s.s, I'll just gang back to my schule and my catechism, and begin again wi' 'who was born o' the Virgin Mary, suffered oonder Pontius Pilate!' Hech! lads, there's no subjectives and objectives there, na beggarly, windy abstractions, but joost a plain fact, that G.o.d cam' down to look for puir bodies, instead o' leaving puir bodies to gang looking for Him. An' here's a pretty place to be left looking for Him in--between gin shops and gutters! A pretty Gospel for the publicans an' harlots, to tell 'em that if their bairns are canny eneugh, they may possibly some day be allowed to believe that there is one G.o.d, and not twa! And then, by way of practical application--'Hech! my dear, starving, simple brothers, ye manna be sae owre conscientious, and gang fas.h.i.+ng yourselves anent being brutes an' deevils, for the gude G.o.d's made ye sae, and He's verra weel content to see you sae, gin ye be content or no.'”
”Then, do you believe in the old doctrines of Christianity?” I asked.
<script>