Part 11 (1/2)
THE MISSIONARIES.
In the presence of the contradictions alluded to above, the position of the Greek church and of American Protestant missionaries becomes one of mutual delicacy and difficulty. The church allows religious liberty, and a.s.sumes religious tolerance. Yet it naturally holds fast its own children within its own borders. The Protestants are pledged to labor for the world's Christianization. When they see its progress opposed by antiquated usage and insufficient method, they cannot acquiesce in these obstacles, nor teach others to revere them. Here we must say at once that no act is so irreligious as the resistance of progress. Thought and conscience are progressive. Christ's progressive labor carried further the Jewish faith and tenets which were religious before he came, but which became irreligious in resisting the further and finer conclusions to which he led. ”I come not to destroy, but to fulfil.” Progress does fulfil in the spirit, even though it destroy in the letter.
Protestantism acknowledges this, and this acknowledgment const.i.tutes its superiority over the Greek and Catholic churches. The sincere reader of the New Testament will be ever more and more disposed to make his religion a matter lying directly between himself and the Divine Being.
His outward conformity to all just laws and good inst.i.tutions will be, not the less, but the more, perfect because his scale of obligation is an individual one, the spring and motive of his actions a deeply inward one. Church and state gain in soundness and efficiency by every individual conscience that functions within their bounds. Religion of this sort leads away from human mediations, from confessions, benedictions, injunctions, and permissions of merely human authority. It confesses first to G.o.d, afterwards, if at all, to those whom its confessions can benefit. It brings its own thought to aid and ill.u.s.trate the general thought. It cannot abdicate its own conclusions before any magnitude either of intellect or of age.
The Protestant, therefore, would be much straitened within the Greek limits. He is forced to teach those who will listen to him that G.o.d is much nearer than the priest, and that their own simple and sincere understanding of Christian doctrine is at once more just and more precious than the fallacies and sophisms of an absolute theology. Such teaching will scarcely be more relished by the Greek than by the Romish clergy; yet the Protestant must teach this, or be silent.
And this, after their fas.h.i.+on, the American missionaries do set forth and ill.u.s.trate. Their merits and demerits I am not here to discuss. How much of polite culture, of sufficient philosophy, goes with their honest purpose, it is not at this time my business to know or to say. Neither is their special theology mine. They believe in a literal atonement, while I believe in the symbolism which makes a pure and blameless sufferer a victim offered in behalf of his enemies. They look for a miraculous, I for a moral regeneration. They make Christ divine of birth, I make him simply divine of life. Their dogmas would reconcile G.o.d to man, mine would only reconcile man to G.o.d. Finally, they revere as absolute and divine a book which I hold to be a human record of surpa.s.sing thoughts and actions, but with the short-comings, omissions, and errors of the human historiographer stamped upon them. With all this diversity of opinion between the church of their communion and that of mine, I still honor, beyond all difference, the Protestant cause for which they stand in Greece, and consider their representation a just and genuine one.
In writing this I have had in mind the three dissenting missionaries, Messrs. Kalopothaki, Constantine, and Zacularius. The older mission of Dr. and Mrs. Hill is an educational one. I believe it to have borne the happiest fruits for Greece. Whenever I have met a scholar of Mrs. Hill, I have seen the traces of a firm, pure, and gentle hand--one to which the wisest and tenderest of us would willingly confide our daughters. In raising the whole scale of feminine education in Greece, she has applied the most potent and subtle agent for the elevation of its whole society.
She herself is childless; but she need scarcely regret it, since whole generations are sure to rise up and call her blessed.
Dr. Hill is at present chaplain to the English emba.s.sy, at whose chapel he preaches weekly. Mrs. Hill and himself seem to stand in very harmonious relations with Athenian society, as well as with the travelling and visiting world.
The missionaries preach and practise with unremitting zeal. They also publish a weekly religious paper. Their wives labor faithfully in the aid and employment of the Cretan women and children, and, I doubt not, in other good works. But of these things I have now told the little that I know.
THE PIAZZA.
Venice has a Piazza, gorgeous with shops, lights, music, and, above all, the joyous life of the people. Athens also has a Piazza, bordered with hotels and cafes, with a square of trees and flowering shrubs in the middle. It lies broadly open to the sun all day long, and gives back his rays with a torrid refraction. When day declines, the evening breezes sweep it refres.h.i.+ngly. Accordingly, as soon as the shadows permit, the s.p.a.ces in front of the cafes--or, in Greek, _caffeneions_--are crowded with chairs and tables, the chairs being filled by human beings, many of whom have ripened, so far as the head goes, into a fez--have unfolded, so far as the costume goes, into pali-kari petticoats and leggings.
Between the two hotels is mortal antipathy. Ours--”Des Etrangers”--has taken the lead, and manages to keep it. The prices of the other are lower, the _cuisine_ much the same, the upper windows set to command a view of the Acropolis, which is in itself an unsurpa.s.sable picture.
Where the magic resides which keeps our hotel full and the other empty, I know not, unless it be in the slippery Eastern smile of the landlord--an expression of countenance so singular that it inevitably leads you, from curiosity, to follow it further. In our case it led to no profound of wickedness. We were not cheated, nor plundered, nor got the better of in any way that I remember. Our food was good, our rooms proper, our charges just. Yet I felt, whenever I encountered the smile, that it angled for me, and caught me on a hook cunningly baited.
I must say that our landlord was even generous. Besides our three meals _per diem_,--which grew to be very slender affairs, so far as we were concerned,--we often required lemonades and lok.u.mia, besides sending of errands innumerable. For these indulgences no extra charge was made. In an Italian, French, or English hotel, each one of them would have had its penitentiary record. So the mystery of the smile must have had reference to matters deeply personal to its wearer, and never made known to me.
The cafes seemed to maintain a thrifty existence. But one of them took especial pains to secure the services of a band of music. Hence, on the evenings when the public band did not play, emanated the usual capriccios from Norma, Trovatore, and the agonies of Traviata. Something better and worse than all this was given to us in the shape of certain ancient Greek or Turkish melodies, obviously composed in ignorance of all rules of thorough-ba.s.s, with a confusion of majors and minors most perplexing to the cla.s.sic, but interesting to the historic sense. I rejoiced especially in one of these, which bore the same relation to good harmony that Eastern dress bears to good composition of color. It was obviously well liked by the public, as it was usually played more than once during the same evening.
Before the shadows grew quite dark, a barouche or two, with ladies and livery, would drive across the Piazza, giving a whiff of fas.h.i.+on like the gleam of red costume that heightens a landscape. And the people sat, ate and drank, came and went, in sober gladness, not laughing open-mouthed--rather smiling with their eyes. From our narrow hotel balcony we used to look down and wonder whether we should ever be cool again. For though the evenings were not sultry, their length did not suffice to reduce the fever of the day. And the night within the mosquito-nettings was an agony of perspiration. I now sit in Venice, and am cool; but I would gladly suffer something to hear the weird music, and to see the cheerful Piazza again. Yet when I was there, for ten minutes of this sea-breeze over the lagoons I would have given--Heaven knows what. O Esau!
DEPARTURE.
Too soon, too soon for all of us, these rare and costly delights were ended. We had indeed suffered days of Fahrenheit at 100 in the shade.
We had made experience of states of body which are termed bilious, of states of mind more or less splenetic, lethargic, and irritable. We dreamed always of islands we were never to visit, of ruins which we shall know, according to the flesh, never. We pored over Muir and Miss Bremer, and feebly devised outbreaks towards the islands, towards the Cyclades, Santorini, but especially towards Corinth, whose acropolis rested steadily in our wishes, resting in our memory only as a wish.
Towards Constantinople, too, our uncertain destinies had one moment pointed. But when the word of command came, it despatched us westward, and not eastward. By this time our life had become somewhat too literally a vapor, and our sublimated brains were with difficulty condensed to the act of packing. Perpetual thirst tormented us. And of this as of other Eastern temptations, I must say, ”Resist it.” Drinking does not relieve this symptom of hot climates. It, moreover, utterly destroys the tone of the stomach. A little tea is the safest refreshment; and even this should not be taken in copious draughts.
Patience and self-control are essential to bodily health and comfort under these torrid skies. The little food one can take should be of the order usually characterized as ”nutritious and easy of digestion.” But so far as health goes, ”Avoid Athens in midsummer” will be the safest direction, and will obviate the necessity of all others.
In spite, however, of all symptoms and inconveniences, the mandate that said, ”Pack and go,” struck a chill to our collective heart. We visited all the dear spots, gave pledges of constancy to all the kind friends, tried with our weak sight to photograph the precious views upon our memory. Then, with a sort of agony, we hurried our possessions, new and old, into the usual narrow receptacles, saw all accounts discharged, feed the hotel servants, took the smile for the last time, and found ourselves das.h.i.+ng along the road to the Piraeus with feelings very unlike the jubilation in which we first pa.s.sed that cla.s.sic transit. It was all over now, like a first love, like a first authors.h.i.+p, like a honey-moon.
It was over. We could not say that we had not had it. But O, the void of not having it now, of never expecting to have it again!
Kind friends went with us to soften the journey. At the boat, Dr. and Mrs. Hill met and waited with us. I parted from the apostolic woman with sincere good-will and regret. Warned to be on board by six P. M., the boat did not start till half-past seven. We waved last adieus. We clung to the last glimpses of the Acropolis, of the mountains; but they soon pa.s.sed out of sight. We savagely went below and to bed. The diary bears this little extract: ”The aegean was calm and blue. Thus, with great pleasure and interest, and with some drawbacks, ends my visit to Athens.
A dream--a dream!”