Piccadilly A Fragment of Contemporary Biography — 11 - Part VIb: The ____

"I will accompany you to Lady Broadhem, then, to explain the circumstances.

Be good enough to follow me," and I led the way up-stairs.

Now it so happens that I have a remarkable faculty of remembering faces, and I had been conscious for some weeks past of being familiar with the particularly ill-favoured countenance of Lady Broadhem's butler; but it was not until now that the circumstances under which I had first seen it flashed upon me.

Not many years have elapsed since I achieved considerable renown in Australia as an amateur hunter of bushrangers.

The sport exhilarated me, combining, as it did, an exciting physical with a wholesome moral exercise.

I now remembered distinctly having caught Lady Broadhem's butler with a lasso.

Indeed I had good reason not to forget it, for a shot he fired at me at the moment killed my favourite horse.

That he should have failed to recognise in Lord Frank Vanecourt the notorious Mr Francis who had been the means of capturing not only himself, but a good many of his fraternity, was not wonderful.

The discovery tickled me, and restored my good temper, which had been slightly ruffled.

"What a delightful change you must find it to be in the society of all these good people after having passed so many years in the bush!"

I

said, and my tone of anger suddenly became one of easy familiarity, as I turned sharply upon him, and, leaning against the banisters, benevolently scanned his distorted physiognomy.

The play of his facial muscles, and changes of hue, interested me, so I continued--"But I will venture to say that you have never since paid such attention to any sermon as you did to mine that Sunday morning when I had you and your seven friends strapped to eight trees in a semicircle, and concluded my remarks, you may remember, with a few strokes of 'practical application.'

I should like to hear the story of your escape from prison."

"Oh, my lord," he groaned, and his teeth chattered and his knees trembled, "I'm a reformed character--I am indeed.

Perhaps if your lordship would kindly please to walk this way," and he opened a side door off the landing.

"Knowing your lordship's generosity, and your lordship's interest in the family, and my own unworthiness, your lordship wouldn't be too hard upon a poor man whose repentance is genuine, and I could tell your lordship something of the very highest importance to her ladyship, and to Lady Ursula, and to your lordship, and to the whole family."

I knew the man to be a clever scoundrel, and saw that he evidently had some information which might prove of value.

A mystery did exist--of that I had had abundant evidence.

Was I justified in refusing to find the key?

--besides, if this man really possessed some secret, could it be in more dangerous hands?

This last consideration decided me, and I followed the returned convict to a little sanctum of his own, which opened off the pantry, from which I emerged five minutes later a wiser if not a better man.

"What a time you have been!"

said Broadhem.

"I suppose you have been arguing the point with my mother?"

"No, I left that to Drippings here."

I did not know his name, but my spirits were high, and I gave him the first my imagination suggested.

"You have no idea what a treasure your mother has got in this man.

I

assure you there is no knowing what you may not owe to the influence for good of one devoted Christian servant of this kind--the proof of it is, as you see, that Lady Broadhem is perfectly willing that you should do what you like for the rest of the evening.

Good-night, Drippings," and I passed the bewildered James, who evidently thought that both I and the terrified-looking butler had gone suddenly mad.

"Broadhem," said I, "I have hit upon an entirely new and original idea.

I am thinking of trying it myself, and I want you to try it too."

"Well," said Broadhem, "I am never surprised at anything you say or do;

what is it?"

"It has been suggested to me by what I have seen at your mother's this evening--and you may depend upon it there is a great deal to be said in its favour; it is an odd thing it has not occurred to anybody before, but that leaves all the better opening for you and me."

"Go on," said Broadhem, whose curiosity was getting excited.

"Don't be in a hurry; it is possible you may not like the idea when you hear it, and under no circumstances must you tell it to anybody."

"All right," said Broadhem, "but I hope it has nothing to do with companies--I hate dabbling in companies.

I believe one does more harm to one's name by making it common than one gets good through the money one pockets."

"Well, there is more truth than elegance of expression in that remark: it needs not have to do with companies unless you like."

"Now, if it has anything to do with politics, I am your man."

"You would make a great _coup_ in politics with it; it is especially adapted for politics, and has never been tried."

"You don't say so," said Broadhem, delighted; "don't go on making one guess as if it was a game.

Has it anything to do with the suffrage?"

"It has to do with everything," I said; "I don't think I can do it myself; I made a lamentable failure just now by way of a start," and I paused suddenly--"Who am I," I thought, "that I should venture to preach?

What act have I done in life which should give weight to my words?"

but the fervour was on me, and I could no more check the burning thoughts than the trumpet can control the sound it emits.

"Well," he said impatiently.

"LIVE THE LIFE."

"I don't understand you," said Broadhem.

"If you did," I said, "do you suppose I should feel my whole nature yearning as it is?

What better proof could I desire that the life has yet to be lived than that you don't understand me?

Supposing, now, that you and I actually put into practice what all these friends of your mother profess, and, instead of judging people who go to plays, or play croquet on Sunday, or dance, we tried to live the _inner_ life ourselves.

Supposing, in your case, that your own interest never entered your head in any one thing you undertook; supposing you actually felt that you had nothing in common with the people around you, and belonged neither to the world of publicans and sinners, nor to the world of scribes and Pharisees, but were working on a different plane, in which self was altogether ignored--that you gave up attempting to steer your own craft any longer, but put the helm into other hands, and could complacently watch her drive straight on to the breakers, and make a deliberate shipwreck of every ambition in life,--don't you think you would create rather a sensation in the political world?

Supposing you could arrive at the point of being as indifferent to the approval as to the censure of your fellow-men, of caring as little for the highest honours which are in their power to bestow now, as for the fame which posterity might award to you hereafter; supposing that wealth and power appeared equally contemptible to you for their own sakes, and that you had no desire connected with this earth except to be used while upon it for divine ends, and that all the while that this motive was actuating you, you were striving and working and toiling in the midst of this busy world, doing exactly what every man round you was doing, but doing it all from a different motive,--it would be curious to see where you would land--how you would be abused and misunderstood, and what a perplexity you would create in the minds of your friends, who would never know whether you were a profound intriguer or a shallow fool.

How much you would have to suffer, but what a balance there would be to the credit side!

For instance, as you could never be disappointed, you would be the only free man among slaves.

There is not a man or woman of the present day who is not in chains, either to the religious world or the other, or to family or friends, and always to self.

Now, if we could get rid of the bonds of self first, we could snap the other fetters like packthread.

What a grand sensation it would be to expand one's chest and take in a full, free, pure breath, and uplift the hands heavenward that have been pinioned to our sides, and feel the feeble knees strong and capable of enabling us to climb upwards!

With the sense of perfect liberty we should lose the sense of fear, no man could make us ashamed, and the waves of public opinion would dash themselves in vain against the rock upon which we should then be established.

The nations of the earth are beating the air for freedom, and inventing breech-loaders wherewith to conquer it, and they know not that the battlefield is self, and the weapons for the fight not of fleshly make.

Have you ever been in an asylum for idiots, Broadhem?"

I asked, abruptly.

"No," he said, timidly.

"Then you are in one now.

Look at them; there is the group to which you belong playing at politics.

Look at the imbecile smile of gratified vanity with which they receive the applause that follows a successful hit.

That poor little boy has just knocked a political tobacco-pipe out of Aunt Sally's mouth, and he imagines himself covered with a lasting glory.

There is another going to try a jump: he makes a tremendous effort before he gets to the stick, but balks, and carries it off in his hand with a grin of triumph.

Look, there is a man with a crotchet; he keeps on perpetually scratching his left ear and his right palm alternately, and then touching the ground with the tips of his fingers.

He never varies the process.

Look at the gluttons who would do nothing but eat if they were allowed, like men who have just got into office, and see how spiteful they are, and what faces they make at each other, and how terribly afraid they are of their masters, and how they cringe for their favour, and how naughty they are when their backs are turned.

Look, again, at these groups drawing, and carpentering, and gardening, imagining that they are producing results that are permanently to benefit mankind; but they are drawing with sticks, and carpentering with sham tools, and planting stones.

And see, there is a fire-balloon going up; how delighted they all are, and how they clap their hands as the gaudy piece of tissue-paper inflated with foul gas sails over their heads.

Is there one of the noisy crowd that knows what its end will be or that thinks of to-morrow?

Is there one of them, I wonder, that suspects he is an idiot?

If you find out, Broadhem, that you are not one of them, they will call you an idiot--be prepared for that.

The life of a sound and sane man in such company cannot be pleasant.

Every act of it must be an enigma to those around him.

If he is afraid of them, they will turn and rend him; if he is fearless, they will hate him, because 'he testifies of the evil.'

His life will be a martyrdom, but his spirit will be free, his senses new-born; and think you he would exchange the trials and labours which his sanity must entail upon him for the drivelling pleasures which he has lost?

Tell me, Broadhem, what you think of my idea?"

"It is not altogether new to me, though I did not exactly understand what you meant at first," said Broadhem, who spoke with more feeling than I gave him credit for possessing.

"I have never heard it put in such strong language before, but I have seen Ursula practise it, and I was wondering all the time you were talking whether you did."

"I never have yet," I said.

"I began by telling you that the idea only occurred to me lately in its new form.

I had often thought of it as a speculation.

I began by assuming that purely disinterested honesty might pay, because an original idea well applied generally succeeds; but when I came to work the thing out, I found that there was a practical difficulty in the way, and that you could not be unselfish from a selfish motive a bit more than you could look like a sane man while you were really still an idiot.

And so the fact is, I have talked the notion out to you as it has been suggested to me, though Drippings nearly drove it out of my head.

I think the reason I felt impelled to do so was, that had it not been for your sister I should never have thought upon such subjects as I do now.

I know her love for you, and the value of her influence over you.

Even now she is devoting herself to guarding your interests in the most important step of a man's life, and I seem instinctively to feel how I can best please her.

Don't you think she agrees in what I have said to-night, and would approve of the conversation we have had?"

"Yes," said Broadhem.

"Do you know you are quite a different sort of fellow from what I imagined.

I always thought that you did not believe in anything."

"That was because I lived exactly like my neighbours, without adding to my daily life the sin of professing belief in a religion to which it was diametrically opposed.

Most of the sceptics of the present day are driven to their opinions by their consciences, which revolt against the current hypocrisy and glaring inconsistencies that characterise the profession of the popular theology.

As a class I have found them honester, and in every way better men than modern Christians."

"Do you know why?"

"No," said Broadhem.

"Because modern Christians don't really believe much more than sceptics--a man's life is the result of his internal, not his external belief.

There can be no life separate from internal belief, and the lives of men are imperfect because their belief is external.

The right thing believed the right way must inevitably produce the perfect life.

Either, then, the civilised world believes the wrong thing, or it believes the right thing the wrong way.

In other words, faith and charity are inseparable, and when one is perfect the other is too.

That is what I mean by 'living the life.'

" "According to that, you would make out that nobody rightly believes the Christian religion who is not perfect; that, you know, is ridiculous," said Broadhem.

"That is, nevertheless, exactly what I do mean.

To know the doctrine, it is necessary to do the will.

Christians of the present day adopt certain theological dogmas intellectually and call them their religious belief.

This has a superficial and varying influence upon their lives, for it consists merely of opinions which are liable to change.

The only kind of faith which is inseparable from life is a divine conviction of truth imparted to the intellect through the heart, and which becomes as absolute to the internal conscience as one's existence, and as impossible of proof.

It may be added to, but what has once been thus accepted can never be changed.

Such a faith cannot be selfish, for it has been derived from the affections, hence the life must be charitable.

But the modern Christian belief, received by an effort of pure reason directly through the intellect, is not a divine intuition, which, if embodied, would result in a perfect life and a united Church, but a theological problem which professors of religion, unlike professors of mathematics, are at liberty to solve for their own benefit, according to their own taste, and to quarrel about incessantly, thereby giving occasion to the thoughtless to scoff, and to the thoughtful to reject all revelation as 'foolishness'--since it is incapable of demonstration by the Baconian method,--the only one known to these 'wise and prudent' philosophers, but one by which, fortunately for them, 'babes' are not expected to prove their relationship before believing in their mothers."

"Then," said Broadhem, "you actually mean to say that the whole of Christendom is wanting in this faith?"

"I fear that almost universally they mistake a bare belief for faith.

Their theology thus becomes an _act_ of memory instead of a rule of life, and Christianity is reduced to a superstition.

The only way of distinguishing superstition from true religion is by an examination of results.

But where are the fruits of modern Christianity?

If it be absolutely true, and all-sufficient for purposes of regeneration, how am I to account for the singular fact that there is as much wickedness in London in the year 1865 A. D.

, as there was in Jerusalem in the year 1 B.

C.?

If the object of the last revelation was to take the place of the one before it, and to reform the world, why are the best modern Christians of my acquaintance no holier than the best modern Jews whom I have the honour to know?"

"But the object of the last revelation was not to reform the world, but to save it," he replied.

"Thanks, Broadhem, for having put in rather too epigrammatic a form, perhaps, to please those who believe it, the most diabolical sophism that was ever invented to beguile a Church--the doctrine that men can be saved by opinion without practice: that a man's practice may be bad, and yet because his faith is good his salvation is sure--that he can, by such a miserable philosophy as would disgrace the justice of the earth, escape the just sentence to be passed upon all his deeds.

The results of so fatal a dogma must be a Church that tends to atheism, and that loves corruption.

There is in every heart a something that speaks against this, and speaks with a burning language that sweeps the invisible chords of the inmost consciousness, and awakens a torrent of indignant denial of the shallow sophistry that a man can be saved if his thoughts and life are bad.

If he cherish self-love, and the love of ruling others, though he intrench the intellect in the midst of all creeds, and span the reason with all faiths, making a sacred public profession before all men, he but adds to the heinousness of his crime, and makes more terrible the fast-coming and final judgment."

Broadhem stopped suddenly in the street as I finished in a somewhat excited tone, and gasped rather than spoke, "Frank, you literally astound me.

I could never have believed it possible you would have come out in that line.

Are those your own ideas or another's?"

"Another's," I replied, coolly.

"I believe they are rather unsound, but I commend them to your notice, because, if they are not correct, Christianity will soon cease to exist, even in name; but if they are, then it contains within it a regenerating power hitherto undeveloped, whereby the world may be absolutely reformed.

I will venture to assert that Christian nations will make no moral progress so long as they continue to cherish the pagan superstition that religion consists in trying to save themselves by virtue of a creed, instead of in trying to save others by the virtues of a life."

"But that's works," said Broadhem.

"Yes," I repeated, "that's works, but of a kind only possible when accompanied by intuitive living faith, which I have just endeavoured to describe.

There is a promise that 'greater works than these shall they do' who 'believe.'

Why, I want to know, have these 'works,' greater than any that were then accomplished, and which would reform the world, never been attempted?

Because people don't believe in the tremendous power of disinterestedness, and they can't face the severe training which the perfection of self-sacrifice involves.

So one set of 'worldly-holies' regard all personal discipline as a tempting snare to be avoided, and entertain a great horror of what they conceitedly term 'their own merits.'

This very superfluous sentiment, combined with a selfish belief in certain doctrinals (of which they usually do make a merit), is enough, they imagine--the 'works' will follow; and so they do, and take the form we have just seen in your mother's drawing-room.

Another set delight in a mild aesthetic sort of training, to be performed in a particular costume, according to the obsolete ceremonial rules of a Church 'which is divided against itself,' and their works take the fatuous form of ecclesiastical high art.

Others, again, go to a still further extreme, and consider discipline not the means but the end.

Hence they go through their drill in seclusion, exclusively for their own benefit, and their works take the form of scourgings and horse-hair shirts, and other mortifications of the flesh, which do no good to themselves nor to anybody else.

And then, in strong contrast, are those who train enough in all conscience with 'gloves,' single-stick, sculls, and all suchlike appliances, and whose works take the form of tubbing, volunteering, and a general jovial philanthropy.

I am not sure that they are not the most hopeful set after all; they believe in severe muscular training as necessary to produce great physical results.

Get them to accept, the possibility of the world's regeneration by a divinely-directed effort of heroic spiritual discipline on the part of its inhabitants, and you might convert them from 'physical' into 'moral force' Christians.

They understand the efficacy of 'a long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull all together;' and they might be shown that the real place for a 'biceps' is the will, not the arms; and instead of a body 'as hard as nails,' the chief aim of one's life should be to bring one's spirit to that condition--'hard,' be it understood, in the sense of being impervious to the influences which weaken and demoralise it--hard in its resistance to the tyranny of society, to the claims of family or friends, and to the force of 'natural' ties, where any of these things interfere with the 'spiritual' training.

It is only by thus remaining in the world, and yet refusing to concede a jot to it upon any pretence, however plausible, that it is possible to acquire the internal isolation and strength of will necessary to the achievement of 'these greater works.'

Depend upon it, the task of performing them is not hopeless because it seems stupendous.

There are spiritual forces now latent in humanity powerful enough to restore a fallen universe; but they want to be called into action by fire.

They are in a cold fluid state, and must be turned into stone.

Sublime moment!

when, conscious of the Titanic agency within them, and burning with desire to give it expression, men first unite to embody, and then with irresistible potency to impart to others that 'Life' which is 'the Light of men.'

" As I was thus speaking, we turned into Piccadilly, and an arm was passed through mine.

"Why is it," asked Broadhem, "that men are not yet at all conscious of possessing this spiritual agency?"

"Why is it, ask you?"

--and the clear solemn voice of my new companion startled Broadhem, who had not seen him join me, so that I felt his arm tremble upon mine.

"Ask rather why sects are fierce and intolerant; why worship is formal and irreverent; why zealots run to fierce frenzies and react to atheistic chills; why piety is constrained and lifeless, like antique pictures painted by the old Byzantines upon a golden ground; why Puseyism tries to whip piety to life with scourges, and starve out sin with fasts; why the altar is made a stage where Ritualists delight a gaping crowd, and the pulpit a place where the sleek official drones away the sleepy hour; why religious books are the dullest; why the clergyman is looked upon by the millions as a barrel-organ, whom the sect turns like the wandering Savoyard, unable to evolve a free-born note.

There is but one answer----" and he stopped abruptly.

"What is it?"

I said, timidly, for I was overwhelmed by the torrent of his eloquence.

"We have lost our God!

That is why men are unconscious of His force within them.

It is a terrible thing for a nation to lose its God.

History shows that all nations wherein the religious inspiration has gone down beneath formalism, infidelity, a warlike spirit, an enslaving spirit, or a trading spirit, have burst like so many gilded bubbles, most enlarged and gorgeous at the moment of their close.

Think of the old Scripture, 'The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.'

" "Who is that?"

whispered Broadhem.

"I never saw him before."

"I want to be alone with him," I replied.

"Good night, Broadhem.

You had better go back now, or you will find your friends gone.

Think over what I have said.

Once realise the '_mystery_ of godliness,' and the martyrdom which it must entail will lose its terrors."

"Let him sacrifice us if He will," said he who had before spoken.

"The true man is but a cannon-shot, rejoicing most of all when the Divine Artillerist shall send him irresistible and flaming against some foeman of the race risen from Pandemonium.

Man--the true man--is like the Parthian's arrow, kindling into fiery flames as it leaves the bow.

Man--the true man--is the Spirit-sword, but the sword-arm is moved by the heart of the Almighty."

Ah Piccadilly!

hallowed recollections may attach to those stones worn by the feet of the busy idiots in this vast asylum, for one sane man has trodden them, and I listened to the words of wisdom as they dropped from the lips of one so obscure that his name is still unknown in the land, but I doubted not who at that moment was the greatest man in Piccadilly.

[Illustration] CONCLUSION.