The excursions of a book-lover

Front matter

il

HE EXCUR.

BOOK- LOVER

Contents

PAGE

I. BOOKS l

II. AN OLD-TIME BIBLIOPHILE . . 39

II

One of the most interesting of the many books that from a Romish point of view explain the liturgies of the Roman Catholic Church is "The Mass and Vestments of the Catholic Church," by the Rt. Rev. Monsignor John Walsh, a learned and conscientious priest who ministers to St. Mary's Church in the city of Troy, N. Y. The book is all the more interesting as well as astonishing because of the unquestioned piety and unusual frankness of the author. Theologians are not as a class conspicuously honest. The amount of hedging and dodging encountered in an ordinary book on divinity or on church history and public worship is enough to demolish the faith of the stoutest believer. If a man would retain the sweet and simple faith of his early days he should leave untouched the apologetics of every school, and keep himself unspotted from theological seminaries. Walsh has given the world a remarkable book. The man himself is profoundly honest. He believes without question or reservation of any kind all the astonishing puerilities and trivialities of the great religious organization of which he is a representative. And speaking as he does, with authority, he endorses and recommends to his fellowmen what he himself holds to be true. He does not see that the very sincerity which he manifests renders only the more absurd the astonishing things which he represents to be of importance in the sight of the Creator of heaven and earth. That the self-existent and eternal Spirit "whose presence bright all space doth occupy" could care anything about the proportion of alcohol allowed in the wine set apart for sacramental purposes, or that it could be of any consequence to that Spirit, whether raisins steeped in water and crushed in a wine press for Eucharistic purposes were to be accounted true wine, seems to me a thing beyond the belief of a sound mind. Think of a God answering to the Westminster Assembly's definition of Deity — "a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth" — think of such a God concerning Himself about a beeswax candle or taking the slightest interest in the head-covering of ecclesiastics. Yet here is a learned and sincere man who thinks these things are worth writing about, and who believes that the Eternal One of whom we can have no adequate conception gives thought to such trivialities.

I honor the man who in an age like this has a real faith, and who stands by it under all circumstances, but I can have no personal interest in a faith that is not reasonable. Some kind of anthropomorphism we must have. The sacred writings of all lands represent the Eternal Spirit as possessed of a body, and they ascribe to Him such physical parts and acts as are proper to man. He is said to hear, speak, come and go. He has eyes, mouth, ears, hands and feet. But all this is represented as analogy. Fundamental knowledge of God as He is in and of Himself, and apart from all His creatures, no man may have. I must think of Him under some form or shape, and yet that form or shape need not belittle His nature. That is to say, it need not fall below the thought and imagination of a cultivated mind. I must think of Him as a person, though an infinite person (attaching to the term its natural meaning) is a self -contradictory phrase. But I am not reduced to the necessity of representing Him as an arranger of altar-lights and a fitter of priests' caps. The anthropomorphism may be at least abreast of the best there is in man and the age.

More and more we are coming to think of God as inseparably associated with nature, as working with it and through it. We would not undervalue the Divine revelation in man — "the Word was made flesh" — but modern science has disclosed Him in nature with new power and beauty. This is a noble view of His presence and activity. In the blush of the morning and in the evening breeze He is present. In Him as in a mirror is reflected the vast universe. You may call this Pantheism if you will, but it remains a noble thought of the Creator. The poet apparels it in something of its own beauty in "Tintern Abbey" :

"I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, — A motion and a spirit which impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things."

Perhaps there is a still higher reverence — a reverence that refuses to discuss what must forever transcend all human knowledge. Have we reason to believe that God bears any real resemblance to our thought of Him? Is there any description that describes Him? The Hebrew Scriptures tell us that "His thoughts are not as our thoughts;" that "His ways are past finding out." No name suffices for Him, nor can any confession encircle Him.

"Who dares express Him?

And who confess Him, Saying, I do believe?

A man's heart bearing, What man has the daring To say: I acknowledge Him not?

The All-enfolder, The All-upholder, Enfolds, upholds He not Thee, me, Himself?"

The Incomprehensible must so remain. Over the vast chasm that sunders the Infinite from the finite no bridge may spring its arch. If I can with my hands make no graven image, am I to make with my mind another image less gross but perhaps not less remote from the unseen Presence? Is there not also this danger, that my life shall be conformed to a pattern having no resemblance to what I would copy ? My thought as such is ductile and tractable, but may it not harden into unyielding dogma? Riding over the hills beyond the little village of Altamont, I saw builded into the walls that mark off different farms and that separate them from the highway, certain stones that contain shells. Once those stones were soft mud on the bottom of a pre-historic ocean. The wet earth, lifted above the water by some tremendous cosmic unheaval, hardened into enduring stone, and there today are the shells that long ages ago held living creatures.

Other things than mud harden, and become firm, solid, and compact. In man conduct tends in the direction of character, and mental habits become permanent. Opinions solidify into doctrines, and these after a time we no longer recognize as bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh — they seem to us Divine, and it comes to pass that we fall down and worship them. Our only safety is to be found in the cultivation of an open mind ever ready to welcome and entertain truth from whatever quarter.

Narrow and puerile ideas of the Divine Presence destroy the power of that Presence. The God who concerns Himself with religious trifles and trinkets will be found to concern Himself with nothing more important. Here lies the danger of every kind of Ritualism. The toy and the child go together, alike in cradle and pew. Vestments, processions, incense, altar-cloth, mitre, the pastoral staff, and candles — what are these but the sacred tops, balls, and kites of children who long ago should have developed into full-grown men and women?

This thought of God as transcending all human relationships, — as not only more than man, but different from him in every way, — was the highest thought of the Greek mind. iEschylus wrote of Zeus, "He exists in Himself." Solon invoked Zeus as "the source of life and death." Thus ran the ancient Dodonian inscription according to Pausanias, "Zeus was, and is, and is to be." Everywhere in ancient literature we are charmed and captivated by this wonderful thought of God which represents Him as "all in all." This was the great message of the Hebrew Scriptures, "God is not a man." He was "The Self-existent One" — He was Jahveh — "I am that I am." And Jesus taught in the same direction, "God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." Everywhere in the Hebrew writings, and in the words of Jesus, is this grandeur of inaccessible solitude lighted by an Infinite Love. Is it not, then, pitiable that God should be represented by any church, creed, or book as not only a man, but as a trivial man, — one who concerns himself with ecclesiastical regalia, candles, and things of that kind?

III

This is the inscription which Dr. Edward Everett Hale makes Philip Nolan ask to have cut into the stone that was to preserve his memory, and with it the delightful writer brings to an end his striking and strange story of "The Man Without a Country."

IN MEMORY OF PHILIP NOLAN,

LIEUTENANT

IN THE ARMY OF

THE UNITED STATES.

" He loved his country as no other man has loved her ; but no man deserved less at her hands."

Nonsense ! sheer nonsense, good Dr. Hale ! No sane man could love such a country as you have described — a country that could treat any man, to say nothing of one of its own soldiers, in the way you have represented the United States as having treated Philip Nolan in the story of which we are now writing. Love for such a country would be immoral, were it possible, and possible it certainly is not. Nolan was a young officer who in a moment of exasperation cried out: "Damn the United States ! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!" The wish, if it really was a wish, was beyond question not patriotic, and "damn" is not exactly a Sunday School word. Perhaps the young man might have been punished as a traitor, but in that case, while the United States would have gained no glory, we should be the losers of a charming story. Think of allowing a foolish court-martial to wipe out "The Man Without a Country" as you would erase with a wet sponge some mark from a slate. Of course that is what would have happened had the author of that picturesque oath been shot. Dr. Hale entertains a strange idea of what it would be right and just for the United States Government to do with an indiscreet and hot-headed young soldier. Think of returning in these days to the cold-blooded brutality of Torquemada ! And then again, think of a normally constructed man cherishing anything like respect, to say nothing of love, for the kind of country Dr. Hale has pictured. There are in this world better things than even one's country — God, justice, and the love and service every man owes to our human race, these come first. The noblest patriotism does not fling its cap in air, and shout, "My country, right or wrong!"

Philip Nolan was, notwithstanding his temporary lapse from loyalty, a very good sort of man; in fact, he was an unusually desirable citizen. His extreme conscientiousness, which, since there was in truth no such man as Nolan, must have been Dr. Hale's conscientiousness, was just the peculiar moral quality we as a people stand most in need of. All the time that our unfortunate soldier was the victim of a cruelty which we are asked to believe was a reasonable punishment, fat politicians of all political complexions were swindling the public treasury and plundering it without shame. It is fair to believe, if we are to listen to Dr. Hale, that had those politicians got the word "damn" and the name of their country into anything like close proximity, the one with the other, they would have been treated to the fearful punishment of a life-long cruise. But surely their more than damnable rascality and corruption were worse than a passionate oath soon repented of. Dr. Hale's book is everywhere praised for what men call its patriotic teaching, but to my mind its instructions are wrong and its story immoral.