Part 28 (1/2)
The loathing of ”capital” with which our laboring cla.s.ses today are growing more and more infected seems largely composed of this sound sentiment of antipathy for lives based on mere having. As an anarchist poet writes:--
”Not by acc.u.mulating riches, but by giving away that which you have,
”Shall you become beautiful;
”You must undo the wrappings, not case yourself in fresh ones;
”Not by multiplying clothes shall you make your body sound and healthy, but rather by discarding them . . .
”For a soldier who is going on a campaign does not seek what fresh furniture he can carry on his back, but rather what he can leave behind;
”Knowing well that every additional thing which he cannot freely use and handle is an impediment.”[194]
[194] Edward Carpenter: Towards Democracy, p. 362, abridged.
In short, lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or on being, and in the interest of action people subject to spiritual excitement throw away possessions as so many clogs. Only those who have no private interests can follow an ideal straight away.
Sloth and cowardice creep in with every dollar or guinea we have to guard. When a brother novice came to Saint Francis, saying: ”Father, it would be a great consolation to me to own a psalter, but even supposing that our general should concede to me this indulgence, still I should like also to have your consent,” Francis put him off with the examples of Charlemagne, Roland, and Oliver, pursuing the infidels in sweat and labor, and finally dying on the field of battle. ”So care not,” he said, ”for owning books and knowledge, but care rather for works of goodness.” And when some weeks later the novice came again to talk of his craving for the psalter, Francis said: ”After you have got your psalter you will crave a breviary; and after you have got your breviary you will sit in your stall like a grand prelate, and will say to your brother: ”Hand me my breviary.”. . . And thenceforward he denied all such requests, saying: A man possesses of learning only so much as comes out of him in action, and a monk is a good preacher only so far as his deeds proclaim him such, for every tree is known by its fruits.”[195]
[195] Speculum Perfectionis, ed. P. Sabatier, Paris, 1898, pp. 10, 13.
But beyond this more worthily athletic att.i.tude involved in doing and being, there is, in the desire of not having, something profounder still, something related to that fundamental mystery of religious experience, the satisfaction found in absolute surrender to the larger power. So long as any secular safeguard is retained, so long as any residual prudential guarantee is clung to, so long the surrender is incomplete, the vital crisis is not pa.s.sed, fear still stands sentinel, and mistrust of the divine obtains: we hold by two anchors, looking to G.o.d, it is true, after a fas.h.i.+on, but also holding by our proper machinations. In certain medical experiences we have the same critical point to overcome. A drunkard, or a morphine or cocaine maniac, offers himself to be cured. He appeals to the doctor to wean him from his enemy, but he dares not face blank abstinence. The tyrannical drug is still an anchor to windward: he hides supplies of it among his clothing; arranges secretly to have it smuggled in in case of need.
Even so an incompletely regenerate man still trusts in his own expedients. His money is like the sleeping potion which the chronically wakeful patient keeps beside his bed; he throws himself on G.o.d, but IF he should need the other help, there it will be also.
Every one knows cases of this incomplete and ineffective desire for reform-drunkards whom, with all their self-reproaches and resolves, one perceives to be quite unwilling seriously to contemplate NEVER being drunk again! Really to give up anything on which we have relied, to give it up definitely, ”for good and all” and forever, signifies one of those radical alterations of character which came under our notice in the lectures on conversion. In it the inner man rolls over into an entirely different position of equilibrium, lives in a new centre of energy from this time on, and the turning-point and hinge of all such operations seems usually to involve the sincere acceptance of certain nakednesses and dest.i.tutions.
Accordingly, throughout the annals of the saintly life, we find this ever-recurring note: Fling yourself upon G.o.d's providence without making any reserve whatever--take no thought for the morrow--sell all you have and give it to the poor--only when the sacrifice is ruthless and reckless will the higher safety really arrive. As a concrete example let me read a page from the biography of Antoinette Bourignon, a good woman, much persecuted in her day by both Protestants and Catholics, because she would not take her religion at second hand.
When a young girl, in her father's house--
”She spent whole nights in prayer, oft repeating: Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And being one night in a most profound penitence, she said from the bottom of her heart: 'O my Lord! What must I do to please thee? For I have n.o.body to teach me. Speak to my soul and it will hear thee.' At that instant she heard, as if another had spoke within her: Forsake all earthly things. Separate thyself from the love of the creatures. Deny thyself. She was quite astonished, not understanding this language, and mused long on these three points, thinking how she could fulfill them. She thought she could not live without earthly things, nor without loving the creatures, nor without loving herself. Yet she said, 'By thy Grace I will do it, Lord!' But when she would perform her promise, she knew not where to begin.
Having thought on the religious in monasteries, that they forsook all earthly things by being shut up in a cloister, and the love of themselves by subjecting of their wills, she asked leave of her father to enter into a cloister of the barefoot Carmelites, but he would not permit it, saying he would rather see her laid in her grave. This seemed to her a great cruelty, for she thought to find in the cloister the true Christians she had been seeking, but she found afterwards that he knew the cloisters better than she, for after he had forbidden her, and told her he would never permit her to be a religious, nor give her any money to enter there, yet she went to Father Laurens, the Director, and offered to serve in the monastery and work hard for her bread, and be content with little, if he would receive her. At which he smiled and said: That cannot be. We must have money to build; we take no maids without money; you must find the way to get it, else there is no entry here.
”This astonished her greatly, and she was thereby undeceived as to the cloisters, resolving to forsake all company and live alone till it should please G.o.d to show her what she ought to do and whither to go.
She asked always earnestly, 'When shall I be perfectly thine, O my G.o.d?' And she thought he still answered her, When thou shalt no longer possess anything, and shalt die to thyself. 'And where shall I do that, Lord?' He answered her, In the desert. This made so strong an impression on her soul that she aspired after this; but being a maid of eighteen years only, she was afraid of unlucky chances, and was never used to travel, and knew no way. She laid aside all these doubts and said, 'Lord, thou wilt guide me how and where it shall please thee. It is for thee that I do it. I will lay aside my habit of a maid, and will take that of a hermit that I may pa.s.s unknown.' Having then secretly made ready this habit, while her parents thought to have married her, her father having promised her to a rich French merchant, she prevented the time, and on Easter evening, having cut her hair, put on the habit, and slept a little, she went out of her chamber about four in the morning, taking nothing but one penny to buy bread for that day. And it being said to her in going out, Where is thy faith? in a penny? she threw it away, begging pardon of G.o.d for her fault, and saying, 'No, Lord, my faith is not in a penny, but in thee alone.'
Thus she went away wholly delivered from the heavy burthen of the cares and good things of this world, and found her soul so satisfied that she no longer wished for anything upon earth, resting entirely upon G.o.d, with this only fear lest she should be discovered and be obliged to return home; for she felt already more content in this poverty than she had done for all her life in all the delights of the world.”[196]
[196] An Apology for M. Antonia Bourignon, London, 1699, pp. 269, 270, abridged.
Another example from Starbuck's MS. collection:--
”At a meeting held at six the next morning, I heard a man relate his experience. He said: The Lord asked him if he would confess Christ among the quarrymen with whom he worked, and he said he would. Then he asked him if he would give up to be used of the Lord the four hundred dollars he had laid up, and he said he would and thus the Lord saved him. The thought came to me at once that I had never made a real consecration either of myself or of my property to the Lord, but had always tried to serve the Lord in my way. Now the Lord asked me if I would serve him in HIS way, and go out alone and penniless if he so ordered. The question was pressed home, and I must decide: To forsake all and have him, or have all and lose him! I soon decided to take him; and the blessed a.s.surance came, that he had taken me for his own, and my joy was full. I returned home from the meeting with feelings as simple as a child. I thought all would be glad to hear of the joy of the Lord that possessed me, and so I began to tell the simple story.
But to my great surprise, the pastors (for I attended meetings in three churches) opposed the experience and said it was fanaticism, and one told the members of his church to shun those that professed it, and I soon found that my foes were those of my own household.”
The penny was a small financial safeguard, but an effective spiritual obstacle. Not till it was thrown away could the character settle into the new equilibrium completely.
Over and above the mystery of self-surrender, there are in the cult of poverty other religious mysteries. There is the mystery of veracity: ”Naked came I into the world,” etc.-- whoever first said that, possessed this mystery. My own bare ent.i.ty must fight the battle--shams cannot save me. There is also the mystery of democracy, or sentiment of the equality before G.o.d of all his creatures. This sentiment (which seems in general to have been more widespread in Mohammedan than in Christian lands) tends to nullify man's usual acquisitiveness. Those who have it spurn dignities and honors, privileges and advantages, preferring, as I said in a former lecture, to grovel on the common level before the face of G.o.d. It is not exactly the sentiment of humility, though it comes so close to it in practice. It is HUMANITY, rather, refusing to enjoy anything that others do not share. A profound moralist, writing of Christ's saying, ”Sell all thou hast and follow me,” proceeds as follows:--