The law of likeness

Part II

1. Of the Beginning of the Earth-Life — and

After

2. The Travail of Youth

3. The Spiritual Man

4. The New Religion .

5. Tpie Fact of Likeness

7. The Precept and Hope of Likeness

PROLOGUE

SECTION I

Naturally, because my parents were very good and lovable, their creed — Avliich was of the Calvinistic type of Christianity — was, through all the years of my youth and early manhood, the creed of my abso^ lute belief. And though I do not believe in its dogma now, and though I feel compelled to write this book with purpose to expose its error, I write sorely against my own inclination, and in a spirit most anxious to avoid offence to any who may hold its tenets in sincerity and charity.

The creed premised the absolute truth of the Bible as the inspired Word of God. On that

authority it declared that the God of Israel a God

of a pecuhar and chosen people — was also, in the same sense, the God of the Elect in Christ, all of whom would certainly inherit eternal life in heaven ; while for all the rest of mankind there remained but outer darkness and despair, the fires of hell, and the company of the damned for ever.

It declared that God, being inexorably righteous, could not forgive unrighteousness ; that Man, through the disobedience of Adam, was born in sin, and incapable of holiness ; and that therefore all the world was under hopeless condemnation by the divine law. That in this deadlock the only possible way of mercy was by the sacrifice of a substitute, who himself without sin, should be also mighty to make full atonement for the sins of many. That for this end God gave His only-begotten Son, who was born into the world, and dwelt for a space among men; and who then, by a death of shame upon the cross, and a descent into hell in fulfilment of the sentence against the wicked, once for all reconciled the divine justice with the divine mercy, and by his blood washed away all the sins of his chosen in the sight of God for ever ! And after the passing of Christ, God sent the Holy Ghost to inspire the hearts of the Elect with saving faith in their Redeemer, and to gather them into his fold from the uttermost ends of the earth; wherefore none of them can be lost, but all, born again of the Spirit, become in the fulness of time possessed of eternal life, and the love of God, and the desire of purity of heart, and the sure hope of perfection and felicity in the presence of the glory of God in heaven for ever and ever !

It is a logical creed, and its plan of salvation, mthin the limit of its purpose, is perfect. Despite the loose tenure of its arbitrary dogma by many Christian Churches, it is essentially the creed of Christianity. Behind all the gloss of human charity with which the pulpits cover its inhumanity ; behind the gracious presence of Jesus of Nazareth which they uplift before its dreadful statement; behind all the indefinite interpretation which seeks to enlarge the plan of salvation and to fit it to the extreme limit of human necessity, it remains rigid and unchangeable — the Creed of the Apostles and of Christianity. It is authoritative. It is either truth or error. If it is true, it is most terrible ; and absolutely believed, it would be quite intolerable to poor humanity. If it is false, then we ought no longer to tolerate it as a matter of make-believe.

My Experience

A child of many prayers, I was early " converted "' — came to feel the overwhelming burden of my sinfulness, and an intense desire for conscious reconciliation with God — and in due course I believed myself to be possessed of a living faith in Christ, was accepted of the elders, and baptized into the Church. Zealous for the faith, and sensitive to its operation upon the heart, I soon afterwards began to preach, and was approved of a congregation who were severe judges both of sound doctrine and of spiritual experience.

But it presently happened that in mind and heart I discerned myself to be unfit for the office of a minister of the Gospel ; for both alike, with equal force, questioned the righteousness of the Creed which I had to expound, and questioned in vain.

It would be of no service to write at length of my sore perplexity and deep distress. A like experience of doubt and heart-searching in matters of faith and conduct is recorded in many books, and is known to all sincere souls whose religion is a living verity. But in no record of such experience have I found an answer to my questionmg, or an indication of any solid ground whereon I could rest. While many have recorded answers which they have declared were of approved sujfficiency for their peace of mind and satisfaction of heart, it always seemed to me that they were content with phrases rather than with ideas, and that they succeeded only in suppressing doubt, and not in attaining to knowledge.

I could not reconcile the dogma of my belief with my innate sense of justice, still less with my sense of mercy and divine love. Nor could I live up to, or anywhere near to, its standard of holy living and aspiration. The generous covenant of God with the saved was of no avail for my contentment alongside with the inexorable exclusion of the lost ; and although my faith might be a true and even a saving faith, I could not live by it happily.

Apart from the hard dogma of the atonement, it would have been eiisy to love God. The person of

Christ, the story of his life and death, his revelation of God as the Father, and his command to " love one another," all appealed directly and powerfully to my heart. But the plan of salvation — the doctrine of original sin and the alienation of the world from goodness, the redemption of the Elect, and the regeneration of the soul by the Holy Ghost — was impossible to me. The new birth, gifted with power for renunciation of the world on the one hand, and on the other with faculty of love and desire for the Kingdom of Heaven, was absolutely unknown to me as a living truth. The renunciation of the world seemed to me to be no less than renunciation of my very self — a negation, not of sin, but of being. I loved the life that coursed through my veins with my blood, and I did not, and could not, love an intangible life that demanded the suppression of all that which I felt to be actual and human in the present, for the sake of a future which presented nothing that commended itself to me as fitting to any faculty of desire or hope in my nature.

The consideration that my unhappiness might be accounted for by a failure in conduct — failure not of an impossible standard of perfection, but of a possible standard of rectitude and discipline, of which every one fails more or less — and that by prayer and endeavour I might yet win to a tenure of trust in the divine goodness and of desire for the promises of the Christian faith, availed me nothing. That was not to live, but only to hope to live ; and it seemed to me more and more certain that I was still imregenerate. I did not then question the truth of my creed. I firmly believed that the Bible was literally the Word of God, and I had no shadow of doubt as to the meaning of its revelation. But against its dogma my whole soul revolted ; and to its anticipation of eternal life my whole being was without response ; and in my heart I said in my despair, that I would rather be damned with the lost, than saved by a grace that was denied to them. I have no words to tell of my distress when at length I came to acknowledge myself in revolt against what I believed to be the essential and eternal truth of God's will and order. I was for a time as one already outcast from hope. The earth was as iron beneath my feet, and the heavens as brass above my head. Left to myself, I might in course of time have become indifferent to these things, as most people are ; but I was not left to myself. I held my belief in the truth of my creed to be beyond the possibihty of change; in myself alone I deemed a change might be possible, and of that I was hopeless. Yet there came a change, not in myself, fitting me for a living tenure of my faith, but in the article of faith itself ; by which it became mine to me ; life of my life ; a faith, clear as the sun at noonday, sure as the order of the stars, and lovely as love's own self.

The Change

The beginning of change was by an occurrence of a sort that we call supernatural; but as the actual change cannot be told without mention of the seeming fact that assuredly led to it, I must record it as briefly as I may.

It happened upon an occasion when I was in the very extremity of my perplexity, that suddenly, and without apparent cause, I felt that my distress had fallen from me as a garment ; my trouble was stilled, and I was conscious only of a great peace. Presently it seemed to me that I saw a light, not of this world, and heard a voice full of comfort and assurance — that in very truth I heard words which satisfied me of the goodness of God, and promised me enlightenment of understanding in time to come.

Now it may be that there was nothing in this experience beyond the possibilities of the human mind, which is apt in moments of excessive emotion to snap like an overstrained bow, and spring to the opposite ; so that the instant and unreasoning peace may have been no more than the consequence of a natural recoil from the extremity of distress and perplexity ; and all the rest — as doubtless many will account it — but mere illusion ; imaginative efHuvia of a brain in the crisis of a sudden release from intolerable pain. And looking back to the event across more than thirty years, I cannot for myself distinguish between its reality and its seeming. It seemed to me to be real, and my apprehension of a spiritual presence was beyond questioning ; but more than that I cannot affirm, and I refrain from telling it in detail for that reason.

I helicve that it was an interposition on the part of the divine Mind, whose continuous operation upon the minds of men is approved to me beyond all doubt, for my help and guidance on occasion of my extreme necessity. The method of the interposition does not matter, since the result was good and lasting; for beyond any question of seeming is the fact that from that time I was set free from the old bondage of Creed. I ceased to preach, because I had come to know that I had nothing to teach, but everything to learn. I was content to wait, convinced that I had been hasty in my judgment of matters too high for my understanding. I was no nearer to the solution of the problem that had so perplexed me, but I was no longer in a hurry to solve it, since the distress of its mystery had passed away. I was not conscious of even the beginning of doubt of the truth of my Creed, until long afterwards ; and I was not indifferent to the supreme matters with which it dealt ; but I had been made willing to wait with entire confidence for the further enlightenment which the voice had seemed to promise.

There was no revelation of new thino^s, or conlirniation of the old, on this occasion. I do not myself believe any doctrine whatever on the authority of the supernatural ; and I trust that no reader of this book will imagine that my conclusions have been in the slightest degree influenced by that experience of mine. It was the beginning of a change in my behefs, but, of itself, it afifected those beUefs so little, that I was unconscious of any change in them at all for some years afterwards.

SECTION II

The Place and the People

Curious to see something of the world beyond the seas, and compelled to abandon the hope I had entertained of going out as a missionary, I eagerly closed with an offer made to me to go as a clerk for a company trading on the West Coast of Africa. Of all countries Africa had taken the strongest hold of my imagination ; and truly it is a place where life is most strange and wonderful, and where death is very near and very easy.

My new quarters were on a " hulk " of some three hundred tons, roofed from stem to stern with a thatch of palm leaves, moored in the tideway of a river, at that spot about half a mile wide. The nearer bank had an average elevation of perhaps a hundred feet; the farther shore was a mangrove swamp, which festered for a mile or more between us and a wider branch of the river, which, like most African rivers, had made itself uninviting to the alien by the formation of a wide delta of poisonous black mud and rotting vegetation, through which it made its way to the sea by several channels. On the nearer bank was a clearing fenced with bamboos, enclosing our caskhouses; behind which stood a vast wall of glorious forest, with densest tangle of undergrowth, vocal with innumerable notes from birds, reptiles, and insects, which reached the ear blent into one incessant thrilling chorus that, especially at nightfall, was most striking and remarkable. Crowning the height over against our station was a mission house ; and two miles away down the river were some dozen or so trading hulks moored opposite to a populous native town.

I shall give no account of the West African trading life, as that has nothing to do with the purpose of this book ; but will confine myself to the interests of my leisure time, and to matters which led more or less directly to the growth of new ideas in my mind — which changed much of the thought that I had received from my teachers into other thought that was really my own, forced upon me by what I saw myself, and which gradually but surely approved itself as true.

In this connection also, I think that the mere change of environment must be taken into account. The responsibility of new duties naturally developed a new independence and self-reliance ; and the severance from familiar scenes and associations, the power of the sea, and the strange aspects of tropical nature, all tended to fit the mind for change of belief, to give it another standpoint of vision, and to compel it to the exercise of individual judgment.

I was placed where everything had an aspect of novelty, and where much was so beautiful, strange, and interesting, that no day seemed ever too long, and no hour was void of surprise. It was a liberal education of itself to stand under the stupendous roof of the larger forest trees, whose buttressed trunks bore aloft a whole world of greenery, only beginning at a height above that of our tallest oaks, and blending, confused and distant, almost with the very sky itself — a wonderworld of great ferns and curious orchids, of vines and multitudinous creepers and pendent mosses ; humming like a hive with a myriad of tiny wings, and joyous with strange and far-away songs from invisible birds ; a world of pushing, battling life, of intense energy and hurry, and infinite separate struggles; and yet the whole so still and solemn, so steadfastly sustained was all by those grand columns which had won their own victory in the battle long years ago. Not far from our position there was a gorge down which a little clear stream ran into the river from the higher ground at the back ; and as it had long been held in superstitious dread by the natives as the abode of a very evil spirit, it was a genuine bit of primitive forest, quite secure from the intrusion of any Calabar man, and indeed almost impenetrable by any one. Seen from the river there was no appearance of any depression in the ground, for in the hollow there stood several trees so gigantic, that their heads were upHfted quite to the average level of the giants that stood on the higher ground of the sides. And here, after one had broken, with no little difficulty, through the surrounding tangle, it was like being present during an act of the earlier life-drama of the earth. For conceit of comedy and very real tragedy were there, all the more exciting that so little of it all could be seen, while so much could be heard. Now the place would be amusing with the antics of a troop of monkeys, or the start and indignation of a squirrel surprised by the discovery of a strange intrusion in its neighbourhood ; then tragic with the pounce of a tiger-cat and the scream of its victim; and all the time it held the attention strained to catch the meaning of a thousand mysterious sounds which could hardly ever be traced to their source. The stir of soft footfalls stealthily approaching and as stealthily receding; the snapping of twigs under the weight of some great python, and the startled rush of porcupine or guinea-fowl before its dangerous advance; the rustle and patter and scratching of tiny feet all about; notes of alarm or contentment or complaint from a vast host of invisible performers ; while all that could be seen was now and again the flash and glitter of blue and crimson and gold as a bird or burnished insect gleamed for a moment in a shaft of blinding sunlight, to be instantly lost in the background of complex shadow.

Of the splendour of the nights on the river no words could telL Above, a sky of deepest purple, where the crescent moon or "Hesperus rode brightest " amid strange constellations ; below, the broad stream, gemmed like another sky, in which the steadfast fires of the stars blent with a haze of tiny lamps carried by thousands of dancing fireflies, and withal, a silence that could be felt, and was only more perfect because the fine notes of the bats and the thin trill from the black line of forest seemed but to make silence audible. There were other nights when, about sunset, a small cloud would Hft itself above the seaward horizon, and, rapidly enlarging and calling to itself other clouds, would sweep grandly up the river, a visible terror; its head crow^ned with gold, its base black as midnight, resting upon a pallid grey line of foam speeding under it like a charge of cavalry under the dreadful smokecloud of some tremendous battle. An ominous stillness came before it, the cicadoe ceased their song, and every living thing sought shelter and hiding, except only the sandpipers, which would flit uneasily over the surface of the water with warning and melancholy cry. Then a shudder would stir the river and a sobbing would run along the shore ; there would be a sullen heave into long rolling waves, a noise like the rush of an express train, and in a moment the full fury of the tornado would be upon us in a smother of blinding spray and shriek and roar of maddest wind. For a brief distracting space the river would be tossed like a stormy sea, only, a minute later, to be beaten flat again, a level mistiness, under the lashing of intolerable rain. Then for a while all would be bright as day in the glare of the incessant lightning, and the hulk would tremble in all her timbers to the deafening artillery of the rearguard of the storm, which, passmg as quickly as it came, would presently be faintly heard muttering and growling far away in the hinterland. A delicious freshness would be in the air, the stars would sparkle with exquisite purity and brilliancy, and the frogs, bats, and crickets would break out into a loud chorus of rejoicing, only to be soon again suppressed when the tornado came hurrying back on the way to its abiding place in the sea.

I could multiply descriptions ; but I wish only to record enough to distinctly mark the novelty of my environment, and to confine myself to facts which in the aggregate tended to change my point of view of many things with which I shall presently deal.

The picturesqueness of the human life of the place was beyond imagining. In the towns and on the plantations; in the market-places and on the river; the movement and colour, always seen in an incomparable setting, were a continual delight. I have seen nothing anywhere to equal or even approach the spectacle on the occasion of a grand

B palaver of chiefs on the river. The grouping of the great canoes into masses of intense and splendid colour; of richest yellows, reds, and oranges; the sparkle of the water vexed by a thousand paddles, in a sunlight brilliant yet soft ; the glorious vegetation of the banks, all green and gold in the lights and purple and blue in the shadows; gradated and softened as it receded to where the river broadened into a distance like an opal, where the beflagged ships and the crowd of canoes hung like a dream between earth and sky ; combined into a very " wilderness of harmony," which I would not willingly forget.

What of the people themselves ? " Half animal, half children, wholly savage and wholly heathen," as Drummond describes the people of the Central African plateau ? Well, no. All of us are half animal, and but children in the better half of our being ; but I question if " wholly savage and wholly heathen " would properly apply to any people on the earth. I should not call the people of Old Calabar uncivilised ; and if their civilisation and conventions were less complex than ours, they yet embraced all the prime factors of our social life, and were perhaps all the more noteworthy because of their simplicity. In reality there was no savagery among them worse than ours, even in high places ; and there was no vulgarity whatever to compare with the hideous vulgarity of the slums of our great cities ; and no heathenism so shameful and debased.

They had a king over them, and they were composed of an aristocracy, a priesthood, and a commons ; but, broadly speaking, they were of two classes only — masters and slaves, for the king had hardly any authority over the nobles, all of whom were initiated into the mysteries of the priesthood. Apart from the customs of superstition — the black man's " fashion " — the government was not to be called cruel ; it was patriarchal rather ; the relations between master and slave being somewhat similar to those which used to exist between a Highland chieftain and the clan. A man's belongings worked for him on his plantations, traded for him between the up-country markets and the ships, obeyed him, and generally were at his disposal even to the extent of life or death ; yet they regarded him rather as a protector than as a tyrant, and there was no hard and fast rule to hinder an exceptionally able slave from becoming a more important and influential person than his nominal master. The slave trade with the " civilised " world had been long suppressed in the river, and with it the most revolting particulars of African slavery had disappeared from the neighbourhood. The " fashion " which had been the curse and terror of the domestic slavery, had been driven into hiding by the persistent efforts of the missionaries ; and though only scotched, and not killed, it did not dare to commit the open atrocities of the time before their advent. This was the sacrifice of slaves on occasion of the death of a king or other person of consequence, so that the dead chief might not find himself without followers to do him service in the land of ghosts. This superstition ever dogged the steps of the common folk with fear ; and as it was a " fashion " rooted in a feehng of honour for the dead, and more deeply still in natural selfishness — for by its observance a man did as he hoped to be done by, and sent off his chief or relative with a fitting retinue, so that in his turn he himself might not be left to o^o into the dark alone — it was hard to kill outright. In that fashion the black man laid up for himself treasure in the world to come; and in my time the custom still claimed its victims, if not so openly as formerly, yet in places that were not beyond a day's walk, by means of a charge of witchcraft, followed by the ordeal of the poison bean (4s&4), which was just as fatal in the result as the old style by club or spear.

But it would be a mistake to take this superstitious custom as conclusive proof that the people were " wholly savage " and uncivilised. It would be easy to make out a strong case against any civilisation by presenting only its dark side for judgment. And because that method is easy and, moreover, effective with the majority, it is the method commonly adopted in platform appeals on behalf of missionary enterprise. The dark and childish superstition, the evil and bloody custom, are alone set forth on the one side ; and on the other not only the good work really done by the Mission, but also much of the good which was before its time, and for which it can properly claim no credit. Not that I think little of what the Missions really do, or that I have not a very high regard for the spirit of self-sacrifice and devotion to noble ideals in which much of it is done : but, after all, work of a like nature and equally good is done by thousands of Englishmen in India, Africa, and other places, without advertisement or recognition as Christian ; and the only thing by which the endeavour of Christian missionaries is to be properly distinguished from that of the others, and by which it must be judged apart, is the preaching of the Gospel, and the success or failure of that.

In Old Calabar I may premise that the Gospel was preached in spirit and in truth ; and was exemplified by purity of life and charitable works on the part of the missionaries. There was no sectarian difference — like to that in Uganda, for example, of which we read — fruitful of bitter jealousy and strife between the French Catholic and the English Protestant native churches ; and from which the mind recoils in amazement at the utter folly and treason of it ; for it is more than childish, it is simian ; and worse than simian, devilish ! This is to feed the little ones of the Master, not with the milk of human kindness and the manna of divine compassion ; but with a devil's broth of pride, enmity, and all iincharitableness. But here, on the side of Christianity, all were of one faith and one spirit united and helpful ; and on the other hand, while the people were heathen, they were not so low in the human scale, so brutal of heart, and so void of understanding as to be beyond hope of conversion and regeneration. On the contrary, they were a kindly folk, affectionate in their domestic relations, just in their dealings with each other, well disposed and friendly towards the white man. They were intelligent, quick to apprehend new things, keen and energetic traders, and were skilled somewhat in metal working, dyeing and weaving, building and agriculture. Their canoes were of noble size and shapely proportion ; their houses were not mere beehive huts, but were squarely built, enclosing a courtyard much after the manner of a modern Egyptian village. Decorous in behaviour, courteous in greeting, dignified and grave, with a classified society, an industrial life that recognised the value of division of labour, and a system of exchange including equivalents for barter, they seemed to me to have a good claim to be considered a civilised people.

Therefore I think the condition of things here, both on the Christian and the heathen side, could hardly have been more favourable for judgment of the Christian claims. The situation embraced all the factors essential to an impartial conclusion. Here was the Gospel in direct contact with its declared purpose — what of its power ? And at the outset of our essay we may be assured of this, that while we must rejoice in all the success of the Mission, nothing of its failure will need apology.