Human Intercourse

ESSAY XII.

Human intercourse, on equal terms, is difficult or impossible for those who do not belong to that religion which is dominant in the country where they live. The tendency has always been either to exclude such persons from human intercourse altogether (a fate so hard to bear during a whole life-time that they have often compromised the matter by outward conformity), or else to maintain some degree of intercourse with them in placing them at a social disadvantage. In barbarous times such persons, when obstinate, are removed by taking away their lives; or if somewhat less obstinate they are effectually deterred from the profession of heretical opinions by threats of the most pitiless punishments. In semi-barbarous times they are paralyzed, so far as public action is concerned, by political disabilities expressly created for their inconvenience. In times which pride themselves on having completely emerged from barbarism political disabilities are almost entirely removed, but certain class-exclusions still persist, by which it is arranged (whilst avoiding all appearance of persecution) that although heretics are no longer banished from their native land they may be excluded from their native class, and either deprived of human intercourse altogether, or left to seek it in classes inferior to their own.

The religious obstacle differs from all other obstacles in one remarkable characteristic. It is maintained only against honest and truth-speaking persons. Exemption from its operation has always been, and is still, uniformly pronounced in favor of all heretics who will consent to lie. The honorable unbeliever has always been treated harshly; the unbeliever who had no sense of honor has been freely permitted, in every age, to make the best use of his abilities for his own social advancement. For him the religious obstacle is simply non-existent. He has exactly the same chances of preferment as the most orthodox Christian. In Pagan times, when public religious functions were a part of the rank of great laymen, unbelief in the gods of Olympus did not hinder them from seeking and exercising those functions. Since the establishment of Christianity as a State religion, the most stringently framed oaths have never prevented an unscrupulous infidel from attaining any position that lay within reach of his wits and his opportunities. He has sat in the most orthodox Parliaments, he has been admitted to Cabinet councils, he has worn royal crowns, he has even received the mitre, the Cardinal’s hat, and the Papal tiara. We can never sufficiently admire the beautiful order of society by which heretic-plus-liar is so graciously admitted everywhere, and heretic-plus-honest man is so cautiously and ingeniously kept out. It is, indeed, even more advantageous to the dishonest unbeliever than at first sight appears; for not only does it open to him all positions accessible to the orthodox, but it even gives him a noteworthy advantage over honest orthodoxy itself by training him daily and hourly in dissimulation. To be kept constantly in the habit of dissimulation on one subject is an excellent discipline in the most serviceable of social arts. An atheist who reads prayers with a pious intonation, and is exemplary in his attendance at church, and who never betrays his real opinions by an unguarded word or look, though always preserving the appearance of the simplest candor, the most perfect openness, is, we may be sure, a much more formidable person to contend with in the affairs of this world than an honest Christian who has never had occasion to train himself in habitual imposture. Yet good Christians willingly admit these dangerous, unscrupulous rivals, and timidly exclude those truthful heretics who are only honest, simple people like themselves.

After religious liberty has been nominally established in a country by its lawgivers, its enemies do not consider themselves defeated, but try to recover, through the unwritten law of social customs and observances, the ground they have lost in formal legislation. Hence we are never sure that religious liberty will exist within the confines of a class even when it is loudly proclaimed in a nation as one of the most glorious conquests of the age. It is often enjoyed very imperfectly, or at a great cost of social and even pecuniary sacrifice. In its perfection it is the liberty to profess openly, and in their full force, those opinions on religious subjects which a man holds in his own conscience, and without incurring any kind of punishment or privation on account of them, legal or social. For example, a really sincere member of the Church of England enjoys perfect religious liberty in England.[12] He can openly say what he thinks, openly take part in religious services that his conscience approves, and without incurring the slightest legal or social penalty for so doing. He meets with no hindrance, no obstacle, placed in the path of his worldly life on account of his religious views. True liberty is not that which is attainable at some cost, some sacrifice, but that which we can enjoy without being made to suffer for it in any way. It is always enjoyed, to the full, by every one whose sincere convictions are heartily on the side of authority. Sincere Roman Catholics enjoyed perfect religious liberty in Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella, and in England under Mary Tudor. Even a Trappist who loves the rule of his order enjoys the best kind of liberty within the walls of his monastery. He is not allowed to neglect the prescribed services and other obligations; but as he feels no desire to neglect them he is a free agent, as free as if he dwelt in the Abbaye de Thélème of Rabelais, with its one rule, “Fay ce que vouldras.” We may go farther, and say that not only are people whose convictions are on the side of authority perfectly free agents, but, like successful artists, they are rewarded for doing what they themselves prefer. They are always rewarded by the approval of their superiors and very frequently by opportunities for social advancement that are denied to those who think differently from persons in authority.

There are cases in which liberty is less complete than this, yet is still spoken of as liberty. A man is free to be a Dissenter in England and a Protestant in France. By this we mean that he will incur no legal disqualification for his opinions; but does he incur no social penalty? The common answer to this question is that the penalty is so slight that there is nothing to complain of. This depends upon the particular situation of the Dissenter, because the penalty is applied very differently in different cases, and may vary between an unperceived hindrance to an undeveloped ambition and an insurmountable obstacle to an eager and aspiring one. To understand this thoroughly, let us ask whether there are any positions in which a member of the Church of England would incur a penalty for leaving it. Are there any positions that are socially considered to be incompatible with the religious profession of a Dissenter?

It will be generally admitted that royal personages do not enjoy any religious liberty at all. A royal personage must profess the State religion of his country, and it is so well understood that this is obligatory and has nothing to do with the convictions of the conscience that such personages are hardly expected to have any conscience in the matter. They take up a religion as part of their situation in the world. A princess may abjure her faith for that of an imperial lover, and if he dies before marriage she may abjure her adopted faith; and if she is asked again in marriage she may abjure the religion of her girlhood a second time without exciting comment, because it is well understood that her private convictions may remain undisturbed by such changes, and that she submits to them as a necessity for which she has no personal responsibility.[13] And whilst princes are compelled to take up the religion which best suits their worldly interests, they are not allowed simply to bear the name of the State Church but must also conform to its services with diligent regularity. In many cases they probably have no objection to this, as they may be really conscientious members of the State Church, or they may accept it in a general way as an expression of duty towards God (without going into dogmatic details), or they may be ready and willing to conform to it for political reasons, as the best means of conciliating public opinion; but however this may be, all human fellowship, so far as religion is concerned, must, for them, be founded on deference to the State religion and a conciliatory attitude towards its ministers. The Court circulars of different countries register the successive acts of outward conformity by which the prince acknowledges the power of the national priesthood, and it would be impossible for him to suspend these acts of conformity for any reason except illness. The daily account of the life of a French sovereign during the hunting season used to be, “His Majesty heard mass; His Majesty went out to hunt.” Louis XVIII. had to hear mass like his ancestors; but after the long High Mass which he was compelled to listen to on Sundays, and which he found extremely wearisome, he enjoyed a compensation and a consolation in talking impiously to his courtiers, and was maliciously pleased in shocking pious people and in forcing them to laugh against their conscience, as by courtly duty bound, at the blasphemous royal jests. This is one of the great evils of a compulsory conformity. It drives the victim into a reaction against the religion that tyrannizes over him, and makes him anti-religious, when without pressure he would have been simply and inoffensively non-religious. To understand the pressure that weighs upon royal personages in this respect, we have only to remember that there is not a sovereign in the whole world who could venture to say openly that he was a conscientious Unitarian, and would attend a Unitarian place of worship. If a King of England held Unitarian opinions, and was at the same time scrupulously honest, he would have no resource but abdication, for not only is the King a member of the Anglican Church, but he is its living head. The sacerdotal position of the Emperor of Russia is still more marked, and he can no more avoid taking part in the fatiguing ceremonies of the orthodox Greek religion than he can avoid sitting on horseback and reviewing troops.

The religious slavery of princes is, however, exclusively in ceremonial acts and verbal professions. With regard to the moral side of religion, with regard to every religious doctrine that is practically favorable to good conduct, exalted personages have always enjoyed an astonishing amount of liberty. They are not free to hold themselves aloof from public ceremonies, but they are free to give themselves up to every kind of private self-indulgence, including flagrant sexual immoralities, which are readily forgiven them by a loyal priesthood and an admiring populace, if only they show an affable condescension in their manners. Surely morality is a part of Christianity; surely it is as unchristian an act to commit adultery as to walk out during service-time on Sunday morning; yet adultery is far more readily forgiven in a prince, and far easier for him, than the merely negative religious sin of abstinence from church-going. Amongst the great criminal sovereigns of the world, the Tudors, Bourbons, Bonapartes, there has never been any neglect of ceremonies, but they have treated the entire moral code of Christianity as if it were not binding on persons of their degree.

Every hardship is softened, at least in some measure, by a compensation; and when in modern times a man is so situated that he has no outward religious liberty it is perfectly understood that his conformity is official, like that of a soldier who is ordered to give the Host a military salute without regard for his private opinion about transubstantiation. This being understood, the religious slavery of a royal personage is far from being the hardest of such slaveries. The hardest cases are those in which there is every appearance of liberty, whilst some subtle secret force compels the slave to acts that have the appearance of the most voluntary submission. There are many positions of this kind in the world. They abound in countries where the right of private judgment is loudly proclaimed, where a man is told that he may act in religious matters quite freely according to the dictates of his conscience, whilst he well knows, at the same time, that unless his conscience happens to be in unison with the opinions of the majority, he will incur some kind of disability, some social paralysis, for having obeyed it.

The rule concerning the ceremonial part of religion appears to be that a man’s liberty is in inverse proportion to his rank. A royal personage has none; he must conform to the State Church. An English nobleman has two churches to choose from: he may belong to the Church of England or the Church of Rome. A simple private gentleman, a man of good family and moderate independent fortune, living in a country where the laws are so liberal as they are in England, and where on the whole there is so little bitterness of religious hatred, might be supposed to enjoy perfect religious liberty, but he finds, in a practical way, that it is scarcely possible for him to do otherwise than the nobility. He has the choice between Anglicanism and Romanism, because, though untitled, he is still a member of the aristocracy.

As we go down lower in the social scale, to the middle classes, and particularly to the lower middle classes, we find a broader liberty, because in these classes the principle is admitted that a man may be a good Christian beyond the pale of the State Churches. The liberty here is real, so far as it goes, for although these persons are not obliged by their own class opinion to be members of a State Church, as the aristocracy are, they are not compelled, on the other hand, to be Dissenters. They may be good Churchmen, if they like, and still be middle-class Englishmen, or they may be good Methodists, Baptists, Independents, and still be respectable middle-class Englishmen. This permits a considerable degree of freedom, yet it is still by no means unlimited freedom. The middle-class Englishman allows dissent, but he does not encourage honesty in unbelief.

There is, however, a class in English society in which for some time past religious liberty has been as nearly as possible absolute,—I mean the working population in the large towns. A working-man may belong to the Church of England, or to any one of the dissenting communities; or, if he does not believe in Christianity, he may say so and abstain from religious hypocrisy of all kinds. Whatever his opinions, he will not be regarded very coldly on account of them by persons of his own class, nor prevented from marrying, nor hindered from pursuing his trade.

We find, therefore, that amongst the various classes of society, from the highest to the humblest, religious liberty increases as we go lower. The royal family is bound to conform to whatever may be the dominant religion for the time being; the nobility and gentry have the choice between the present dominant faith and its predecessor; the middle class has, in addition, the liberty of dissent; the lower class has the liberty, not only of dissent, but also of abstinence and negation. And in each case the increase of liberty is real; it is not that illusory kind of extension which loses in one direction the freedom that it wins in another. All the churches are open to the plebeian secularist if he should ever wish to enter them.

We have said that religious liberty increases as we go lower in the social scale. Let us consider, now, how it is affected by locality. The rule may be stated at once. Religious liberty diminishes with the number of inhabitants in a place.

However humble may be the position of the dweller in a small village at a distance from a town, he must attend the dominant church because no other will be represented in the place. He may be in heart a Dissenter, but his dissent has no opportunity of expressing itself by a different form of worship. The laws of his country may be as liberal as you please; their liberality is of no practical service in such a case as this because religious profession requires public worship, and an isolated family cannot institute a cult.

If, indeed, there were the liberty of abstinence the evil would not be so great. The liberty of rejection is a great and valuable liberty. If a particular kind of food is unsuited to my constitution, and only that kind of food is offered me, the permission to fast is the safeguard of my health and comfort. The loss of this negative liberty is terrible in convivial customs, when the victim is compelled to drink against his will.

The Dissenter in the country can be forced to conform by his employer or by public opinion, acting indirectly. The master may avoid saying, “I expect you to go to Church,” but he may say, “I expect you to attend a place of worship,” which attains precisely the same end with an appearance of greater liberality. Public opinion may be really liberal enough to tolerate many different forms of religion, but if it does not tolerate abstinence from public services the Dissenter has to conform to the dominant worship in places where there is no other. In England it may seem that there is not very much hardship in this, as the Church is not extreme in doctrine and is remarkably tolerant of variety, yet even in England a conscientious Unitarian might feel some difficulty about creeds and prayers which were never intended for him. There are, however, harder cases than those of a Dissenter forced to conform to the Church of England. The Church of Rome is far more extreme and authoritative, far more sternly repressive of human reason; yet there are thousands of rural places on the Continent where religious toleration is supposed to exist, and where, nevertheless, the inhabitants are compelled to hear mass to avoid the imputation of absolute irreligion. A man like Wesley or Bunyan would, in such a position, have to choose between apparent Romanism and apparent Atheism, if indeed the village opinion did not take good care that he should have no choice in the matter.

It may be said that people should live in places where their own form of worship is publicly practised. No doubt many do so. I remember an Englishman belonging to a Roman Catholic family who would not spend a Sunday in an out-of-the-way place in Scotland because he could not hear mass. Such a person, having the means to choose his place of residence, and a faith so strong that religious considerations always came first with him, would compel everything to give way to the necessity for having mass every Sunday, but this is a very exceptional case. Ordinary people are the victims of circumstances and not their masters.

If a villager has little religious freedom he does not greatly enlarge it when he becomes a soldier. He has the choice between the Church of England and the Church of Rome. In some countries even this very moderate degree of liberty is denied. Within the present century Roman Catholic soldiers were compelled to attend Protestant services in Prussia. The truth is that the genuine military spirit is strongly opposed to individual opinion in matters of religion. Its ideal is that every detail in a soldier’s existence should be settled by the military authorities, his religious belief amongst the rest.

What may be truly said about military authority in religious matters is that as the force employed is perfectly well known,—as it is perfectly well known that soldiers take part in religious services under compulsion,—there is no hypocrisy in their case, especially where the conscription exists, and therefore but slight moral hardship. Certainly the greatest hardship of all is to be compelled to perform acts of conformity with all the appearance of free choice. The tradesman who must go to mass to have customers is in a harder position than the soldier. For this reason, it is better for the moral health of a nation, when there is to be compulsion of some kind, that it should be boldly and openly tyrannical; that its work should be done in the face of day; that it should be outspoken, uncompromising, complete. To tyranny of that kind a man may give way without any loss of self-respect, he yields to force majeure; but to that viler and meaner kind of tyranny which keeps a man in constant alarm about the means of earning his living, about the maintenance of some wretched little peddling position in society, he yields with a sense of far deeper humiliation, with a feeling of contempt for the social power that uses such miserable means, and of contempt for himself also.

ESSAY XIII.

Women hate the Inexorable. They like a condition of things in which nothing is so surely fixed but that the rule may be broken in their favor, or the hard decision reversed. They like concession for concession’s sake, even when the matter is of slight importance. A woman will ask a favor from a person in authority when a man will shrink from the attempt; and if the woman gains her point by entreaty she will have a keen and peculiar feminine satisfaction in having successfully exercised what she feels to be her own especial power, to which the strong, rough creature, man, may often be made to yield. A woman will go forth on the most hopeless errands of intercession and persuasion, and in spite of the most adverse circumstances will not infrequently succeed. Scott made admirable use of this feminine tendency in the “Heart of Mid-Lothian.” Jeanie Deans, with a woman’s feelings and perseverance, had a woman’s reliance on her own persuasive powers, and the result proved that she was right. All things in a woman combine to make her mighty in persuasion. Her very weakness aids her; she can assume a pitiful, childlike tenderness. Her ignorance aids her, as she seems never to know that a decision can be fixed and final; then she has tears, and besides these pathetic influences she has generally some magnetism of sex, some charm or attraction, at least, in voice or manner, and sometimes she has that marvellous—that all but irresistible—gift of beauty which has ruled and ruined the masters of the world.

Having constantly used these powers of persuasion with the strongest being on this planet, and used them with such wonderful success that it is even now doubtful whether the occult feminine government is not mightier than the open masculine government, whilst it is not a matter of doubt at all, but of assured fact, that society is ruled by queens and ladies and not by kings and lords,—with all these evidences of their influence in this world, it is intelligible that women should willingly listen to those who tell them that they have similar influence over supernatural powers, and, through them, on the destinies of the universe. Far less willingly would they listen to some hard scientific teacher who should say, “No, you have no influence beyond this planet, and that which you exercise upon its surface is limited by the force that you are able to set in motion. The Empress Eugénie had no supernatural influence through the Virgin Mary, but she had great and dangerous natural influence through her husband; and it may be true, what is asserted, that she caused in this way a disastrous war.” An exclusively originating Intelligence, acting at the beginning of Evolution,—a setter-in-motion of a prodigious self-acting machinery of cause producing effect, and effects in their turn becoming a new complexity of causes,—an Intelligence that we cannot persuade because we are born millions of years too late for the first impulse that started all things,—this may be the God of the future, but it will be a distant future before the world of women will acknowledge him.

There is another element in the feminine nature that urges women in the same direction. They have a constant sense of dependence in a degree hardly ever experienced by men except in debilitating illness; and as this sense of dependence is continual with them and only occasional with us, it becomes, from habit, inseparable from their mental action, whereas even in sickness a man looks forward to the time when he will act again freely for himself. Men choose a course of action; women choose an adviser. They feel themselves unable to continue the long conflict without help, and in spite of their great patience and courage they are easily saddened by solitude, and in their distress of mind they feel an imperious need for support and consolation. “Our valors are our best gods,” is a purely masculine sentiment, and to a woman such self-reliance seems scarcely distinguishable from impiety. The feminine counterpart of that would be, “In our weakness we seek refuge in Thy strength, O Lord!”

A woman is not satisfied with merely getting a small share in a vast bounty for the general good; she is kind and affectionate herself, she is personally attentive to the wants of children and animals, and cares for each of them separately, and she desires to be cared for in the same way. The philosopher does not give her any assurance of this whatever; but the priest, on the contrary, gives it in the most positive form. It is not merely one of the doctrines of religion, but the central doctrine, the motive for all religious exercises, that God cares for every one of us individually; that he knows Jane Smith by name, and what she is earning a week, and how much of it she devotes to keeping her poor paralyzed old mother. The philosopher says, “If you are prudent and skilful in your conformity to the laws of life you will probably secure that amount of mental and physical satisfaction which is attainable by a person of your organization.” There is nothing in this about personal interest or affection; it is a bare statement of natural cause and consequence. The priest holds a very different language; the use of the one word love gives warmth and color to his discourse. The priest says, “If you love God with all your soul and with all your strength He will love and cherish you in return, and be your own true and tender Father. He will watch over every detail and every minute of your existence, guard you from all real evil, and at last, when this earthly pilgrimage shall be over, He will welcome you in His eternal kingdom.” But this is not all; God may still seem at too unapproachable a distance. The priest then says that means have been divinely appointed to bridge over that vast abyss. “The Father has given us the Son, and Christ has instituted the Church, and the Church has appointed me as her representative in this place,—me, to whom you may come always for guidance and consolation that will never be refused you.”

This is the language for which the ears of a woman thirst as parched flowers thirst for the summer rain. Instead of a great, blank universe with fixed laws, interesting to savans but not to her, she is told of love and affection that she thoroughly understands. She is told of an affectionate Creator, of His beloved and loving Son, of the tender care of the maternal Church that He instituted; and finally all this chain of affectionate interest ends close to her in a living link,—a man with soft, engaging manners, with kind and gentle voice, who takes her hand, talks to her about all that she really cares for, and overflows with the readiest sympathy for all her anxieties. This man is so different from common men, so very much better and purer, and, above all, so much more accessible, communicative, and consolatory! He seems to have had so much spiritual experience, to know so well what trouble and sorrow are, to sympathize so completely with the troubles and sorrows of a woman! With him, the burden of life is ten times easier to bear; without his precious fellowship, that burden would be heavy indeed!

It may be objected to this, that the clergy do not entirely teach a religion of love; that, in fact, they curse as well as bless, and foretell eternal punishment for the majority. All this, it may be thought, must be as painful to the feelings of women as Divine kindness and human felicity must be agreeable to them. Whoever made this objection would show that he had not quite understood the feminine nature. It is at the same time kinder and tenderer than the masculine nature, and more absolute in vindictiveness. Women do not generally like the infliction of pain that they believe to be undeserved;[14] they are not generally advocates for vivisection; but as their feelings of indignation against evil-doers are very easily aroused, and as they are very easily persuaded that severe punishments are just, they have often heartily assented to them even when most horrible. In these cases their satisfaction, though it seems to us ferocious, may arise from feeling themselves God’s willing allies against the wicked. When heretics were burnt in Spain the great ladies gazed calmly from their windows and balconies on the grotesque procession of miserable morituri with flames daubed on their tabards, so soon to be exchanged for the fiery reality. With the influence that women possess they could have stopped those horrors; but they countenanced them; and yet there is no reason to believe that they were not gentle, tender, affectionate. The most relentless persecutor who ever sat on the throne of England was a woman. Nor is it only in ages of fierce and cruel persecution that women readily believe God to be on the side of the oppressor. Other ages succeed in which human injustice is not so bold and bloodthirsty, not so candid and honest, but more stealthily pursues its end by hampering and paralyzing the victim that it dares not openly destroy. It places a thousand little obstacles in his way, the well-calculated effect of which is to keep him alive in impotent insignificance. In those ages of weaker malevolence the heretic is quietly but carefully excluded from the best educational and social advantages, from public office, from political power. Wherever he turns, whatever he desires to do, he feels the presence of a mysterious invisible force that quietly pushes him aside or keeps him in shadow. Well, in this milder, more coldly cruel form of wrong, vast numbers of the gentlest and most amiable women have always been ready to acquiesce.[15]

I willingly pass from this part of the subject, but it was impossible not to make one sad reference to it, for of all the sorrowful things in the history of the world I see none more sorrowful than this,—that the enormous influence of women should not have been more on the side of justice. It is perhaps too much to expect that they should have placed themselves in advance of their age, but they have been innocent abettors and perpetuators of the worst abuses, and all from their proneness to support any authority, however corrupt, if only it can succeed in confounding itself with goodness.

As the representatives of a Deity who tenderly cares for every one of His creatures, the clergy themselves are bound to cultivate all their own powers and gifts of sympathy. The best of them do this with the important result that after some years spent in the exercise of their profession they become really and unaffectedly more sympathetic than laymen generally are. The power of sympathy is a great power everywhere, but it is so particularly in those countries where the laity are not much in the habit of cultivating the sympathetic feelings, and timidly shrink from the expression of them even when they exist. I remember going with a French gentleman to visit a lady who had very recently lost her father; and my friend made her a little speech in which he said no more than what he felt, but he said it so elegantly, so delicately, so appropriately, and in such feeling terms, that I envied him the talent of expressing condolence in that way. I never knew an English layman who could have got through such an expression of feeling, but I have known English clergymen who could have done it. Here is a very great and real superiority over us, and especially with women, because women are exquisitely alive to everything in which the feelings are concerned, and we often seem to them dead in feeling when we are only awkward, and dumb by reason of our awkwardness.

I think it probable that most readers of this page will find, on consulting their own recollections, that they have received warmer and kinder expressions of sympathy from clerical friends than from laymen. It is certainly so in my own case. On looking back to the expressions of sympathy that have been addressed to me on mournful occasions, and of rejoicing on happy ones, I find that the clearest and most ample and hearty utterances of these feelings have generally come either from clergymen of the Church of England, or priests of the Church of Rome.

The power of sympathy in clergymen is greatly increased by their easy access to all classes of society. They are received everywhere on terms which may be correctly defined as easily respectful; for their sacred character gives them a status of their own, which is neither raised by association with rich people nor degraded by friendliness with the poor or with that lower middle class which, of all classes, is the most perilous to the social position of a layman. They enter into the joys and sorrows of the most different orders of parishioners, and in this way, if there is any natural gift of sympathy in the mind of a clergyman, it is likely to be developed and brought to perfection.

Partly by arrangements consciously devised by ecclesiastical authorities, and partly by the natural force of circumstances, the work of the Church is so ordered that her representatives are sure to be present on the most important occasions in human life. This gives them some influence over men, but that which they gain by it over women is immeasurably greater, because the minds of women are far more closely and exclusively bound up in domestic interests and events.

Of these the most visibly important is marriage. Here the priest has his assured place and conspicuous function, and the wonderful thing is that this function seems to survive the religious beliefs on which it was originally founded. It seems to be not impossible that a Church might still survive for an indefinite length of time in the midst of surrounding scepticism simply for the purpose of performing marriage and funeral rites. The strength of the clerical position with regard to marriage is so great, even on the Continent, that, although a woman may have scarcely a shred of faith in the doctrines of the Church, it is almost certain that she will desire the services of a priest, and not feel herself to be really married without them. Although the civil ceremony may be the only one recognized by the law, the woman openly despises it, and reserves all her feelings and emotions for the pompous ceremony at the church. On such occasions women laugh at the law, and will even sometimes declare that the law itself is not legal. I once happened to say that civil marriage was obligatory in France, but only legal in England; on which an English lady attacked me vehemently, and stoutly denied that civil marriage was legal in England at all. I asked if she had never heard of marriages in a Registrar’s office. “Yes, I have,” she answered, with a shocked expression of countenance, “but they are not legal. The Church of England does not recognize them, and that is the legal church.”

As soon as a child is born the mother begins to think about its baptism; and at a time of life when the infant is treated by laymen as a little being whose importance lies entirely in the future the clergyman gives it consequence in the present by admitting it, with solemn ceremony, to membership in the Church of Christ. It is not possible to imagine anything more likely to gratify the feelings of a mother than this early admission of her unconscious offspring to the privileges of a great religious community. Before this great initiation it was alone in the world, loved only by her, and with all its prospects darkened by original sin; now it is purified, blessed, admitted into the fellowship of the holy and the wise. A certain relationship of a peculiar kind is henceforth established between priest and infant. In after years he prepares it for confirmation, another ceremony touching to the heart of a mother when she sees her son gravely taking upon himself the responsibilities of a thinking being. The marriage of a son or daughter renews in the mother all those feelings towards the friendly, consecrating power of the Church which were excited at her own marriage.

Then come those anxious occasions when the malady of one member of the family casts a shadow on the happiness of all. In these cases any clergyman who unites natural kindness of heart with the peculiar training and experience of his profession can offer consolation incomparably better than a layman; he is more accustomed to it, more authorized. A friendly physician is a great help and a great stay so long as the disease is not alarming, but when he begins to look very grave (the reader knows that look), and says that recovery is not probable, by which physicians mean that death is certain and imminent, the clergyman says there is hope still, and speaks of a life beyond the grave in which human existence will be delivered from the evils that afflict it here. When death has come, the priest treats the dead body with respect and the survivors with sympathy, and when it is laid in the ground he is there to the last moment with the majesty of an ancient and touching form of words already pronounced over the graves of millions who have gone to their everlasting rest.[16]

Part II. Art.

I have not yet by any means exhausted the advantages of the priestly position in its influence upon women. If the reader will reflect upon the feminine nature as he has known it, especially in women of the best kind, he will at once admit that not only are women more readily moved by the expression of sympathy than men, and more grateful for it, but they are also more alive to poetical and artistic influences. In our sex the æsthetic instinct is occasionally present in great strength, but more frequently it is altogether absent; in the female sex it seldom reaches much creative force, but it is almost invariably present in minor degrees. Almost all women take an interest in furniture and dress; most of them in the comfortable classes have some knowledge of music; drawing has been learned as an accomplishment more frequently by girls than by boys. The clergy have a strong hold upon the feminine nature by its æsthetic side. All the external details of public worship are profoundly interesting to women. When there is any splendor in ritual the details of vestments and altar decorations are a constant occupation for their thoughts, and they frequently bestow infinite labor and pains to produce beautiful things with their own hands to be used in the service of the Church. In cases where the service itself is too austere and plain to afford much scope for this affectionate industry, the slightest pretext is seized upon with avidity. See how eagerly ladies will decorate a church at Christmas, and how they will work to get up an ecclesiastical bazaar! Even in that Church which most encourages or permits æsthetic industry, the zeal of ladies sometimes goes beyond the desires of the clergy, and has to be more or less decidedly repressed. We all can see from the outside how fond women generally are of flowers, though I believe it is impossible for us to realize all that flowers are to them, as there are no inanimate objects that men love with such affectionate and even tender solicitude. However, we see that women surround themselves with flowers, in gardens, in conservatories, and in their rooms; we see that they wear artificial flowers in their dress, and that they paint flowers in water-color and on china. Now observe how the Church of Rome and the Ritualists in England show sympathy with this feminine taste! Innumerable millions of flowers are employed annually in the churches on the Continent; they are also used in England, though in less lavish profusion, and a sermon on flowers is preached annually in London, when every pew is full of them.

It is well known that women take an unfailing interest in dress. The attention they give to it is close, constant, and systematic, like an orderly man’s attention to order. Women are easily affected by official costumes, and they read what great people have worn at levees and drawing-rooms. The clergy possess, in ecclesiastical vestments, a very powerful help to their influence. That many of them are clearly aware of this is proved by their boldness and perseverance in resuming ornamental vestments; and (as might be expected) that Church which has the most influence over women is at the same time the one whose vestments are most gorgeous and most elaborate. Splendor, however, is not required to make a costume impressive. It is enough that it be strikingly peculiar, even in simplicity, like the white robe of the Dominican friars.

Costume naturally leads our minds to architecture. I am not the first to remark that a house is only a cloak of a larger size. The gradation is insensible from a coat to a cathedral: first, the soldier’s heavy cloak which enabled the Prussians to dispense with the little tent, then the tent, hut, cottage, house, church, cathedral, heavier and larger as we ascend the scale. “He has clothed himself with his church,” says Michelet of the priest; “he has wrapped himself in this glorious mantle, and in it he stands in triumphant state. The crowd comes, sees, admires. Assuredly, if we judge the man by his covering, he who clothes himself with a Notre Dame de Paris, or with a Cologne Cathedral, is, to all appearance, the giant of the spiritual world. What a dwelling such an edifice is, and how vast the inhabitant must be! All proportions change; the eye is deceived and deceives itself again. Sublime lights, powerful shadows, all help the illusion. The man who in the street looked like a village schoolmaster is a prophet in this place. He is transfigured by these magnificent surroundings; his heaviness becomes power and majesty; his voice has formidable echoes. Women and children are overawed.”

To a mind that does not analyze but simply receives impressions, magnificent architecture is a convincing proof that the words of the preacher are true. It appears inconceivable that such substantial glories, so many thousands of tons of masonry, such forests of timber, such acres of lead and glass, all united in one harmonious work on which men lavished wealth and toil for generations,—it appears inconceivable that such a monument can perpetuate an error or a dream. The echoing vaults bear witness. Responses come from storied window and multitudinous imagery. When the old cosmogony is proclaimed to be true in York Minster, the scientists sink into insignificance in their modern ordinary rooms; when the acolyte rings his bell in Rouen Cathedral, and the Host is lifted up, and the crowd kneels in silent adoration on the pavement, who is to deny the Real Presence? Does not every massive pillar stand there to affirm sturdily that it is true; and do not the towers outside announce it to field and river, and to the very winds of heaven?

The musical culture of women finds its own special interest in the vocal and instrumental parts of the church service. Women have a direct influence on this part of the ritual, and sometimes take an active share in it. Of all the arts music is the most closely connected with religion, and it is the only one that the blessed are believed to practise in a future state. A suggestion that angels might paint or carve is so unaccustomed that it seems incongruous; yet the objection to these arts cannot be that they employ matter, since both poets and painters give musical instruments to the angels,—

“And angels meeting us shall sing
To their citherns and citoles.”

Worship naturally becomes musical as it passes from the prayer that asks for benefits to the expression of joyful praise; and though the austerity of extreme Protestantism has excluded instruments and encouraged reading instead of chanting, I am not aware that it has ever gone so far as to forbid the singing of hymns.

I have not yet touched upon pulpit eloquence as one of the means by which the clergy gain a great ascendency over women. The truth is that the pulpit is quite the most advantageous of all places for any one who has the gift of public speaking. He is placed there far more favorably than a Member of Parliament in his place in the House, where he is subject to constant and contemptuous interruptions from hearers lounging with their hats on. The chief advantage is that no one present is allowed either to interrupt or to reply; and this is one reason why some men will not go to church, as they say, “We may hear our principles misrepresented and not be permitted to defend them.” A Bishop, in my hearing, touched upon this very point. “People say,” he remarked, “that a preacher is much at his ease because no one is allowed to answer him; but I invite discussion. If any one here present has doubts about the soundness of my reasoning, I invite him to come to me at the Episcopal Palace, and we will argue the question together in my study.” This sounded unusually liberal, but how the advantages were still on the side of the Bishop! His attack on heresy was public. It was uttered with long-practised professional eloquence, it was backed by a lofty social position, aided by a peculiar and dignified costume, and mightily aided also by the architecture of a magnificent cathedral. The doubter was invited to answer, but not on equal terms. The attack was public, the answer was to be private, and the heretic was to meet the Bishop in the Episcopal Palace, where, again, the power of rank and surroundings would be all in the prelate’s favor.

Not only are clergymen privileged speakers, in being as secure from present contradiction as a sovereign on the throne, but they have the grandest of all imaginable subjects. In a word, they have the subject of Dante,—they speak to us del Inferno, del Purgatorio, del Paradiso. If they have any gift of genius, any power of imagination, such a subject becomes a tremendous engine in their hands. Imagine the difference between a preacher solemnly warning his hearers that the consequences of inattention may be everlasting torment, and a politician warning the Government that inattention may lead to a deficit! The truth is, that however terrible may be the earthly consequences of imprudence and of sin, they sink into complete insignificance before the menaces of the Church; nor is there, on the other hand, any worldly success that can be proposed as a motive comparable to the permanent happiness of Paradise. The good and the bad things of this world have alike the fatal defect, as subjects for eloquence, that they equally end in death; and as death is near to all of us, we see the end to both. The secular preacher is like a man who predicts a more or less comfortable journey, which comes to the same end in any case. A philosophic hearer is not very greatly elated by the promise of comforts so soon to be taken away, nor is he overwhelmed by the threat of evils that can but be temporary. Hence, in all matters belonging to this world only, the tone of quiet advice is the reasonable and appropriate tone, and it is that of the doctor and lawyer; but in matters of such tremendous import as eternal happiness and misery the utmost energy of eloquence can never be too great for the occasion; so that if a preacher can threaten like peals of thunder, and appal like flashes of lightning, he may use such terrible gifts without any disproportionate excess. On the other hand, if he has any charm of language, any brilliancy of imagination, there is nothing to prevent him from alluring his hearers to the paths of virtue by the most lavish and seductive promises. In short, his opportunities in both directions are of such a nature that exaggeration is impossible; and all his power, all his charm, are as free to do their utmost as an ocean wave in a tempest or the nightingale in the summer woods.

I cannot quit the subject of clerical oratory without noticing one of its marked characteristics. The priest is not in a position of disinterested impartiality, like a man of science, who is ready to renounce any doctrine when he finds evidence against it. The priest is an advocate whose life-long pleading must be in favor of the Church as he finds her, and in opposition to her adversaries. To attack adversaries is therefore one of the recognized duties of his profession; and if he is not a man of uncommon fairness, if he has not an inborn love of justice which is rare in human nature, he will not only attack his adversaries but misrepresent them. There is even a worse danger than simple misrepresentation. A priest may possibly be a man of a coarse temper, and if he is so he will employ the weapons of outrage and vituperation, knowing that he can do so with impunity. One would imagine that these methods must inevitably repel and displease women, but there is a very peculiar reason why they seldom have this effect. A highly principled woman is usually so extremely eager to be on the side of what is right that suspension of judgment is most difficult for her. Any condemnation uttered by a person she is accustomed to trust has her approval on the instant. She cannot endure to wait until the crime is proved, but her feelings of indignation are at once aroused against the supposed criminal on the ground that there must be clear distinctions between right and wrong. The priest, for her, is the good man,—the man on the side of God and virtue; and those whom he condemns are the bad men,—the men on the side of the Devil and vice. This being so, he may deal with such men as roughly as he pleases. Nor have these men the faintest chance of setting themselves right in her opinion. She quietly closes the avenues of her mind against them; she declines to read their books; she will not listen to their arguments. Even if one of them is a near relation whose opinions inflict upon her what she calls “the deepest distress of mind,” she will positively prefer to go on suffering such distress until she dies, rather than allow him to remove it by a candid exposition of his views. She prefers the hostile misrepresentation that makes her miserable, to an authentic account of the matter that would relieve her anguish.

The association of clergymen with ladies in works of charity affords continual opportunities for the exercise of clerical influence over women. A partnership in good works is set up which establishes interesting and cordial relations, and when the lady has accomplished some charitable purpose she remembers for long afterwards the clergyman without whose active assistance her project might have fallen to the ground. She sees in the clergyman a reflection of her own goodness, and she feels grateful to him for lending his masculine sense and larger experience to the realization of her ideas. There are other cases of a different nature in which the self-esteem of the lady is deeply gratified when she is selected by the clergyman as being more capable of devoted effort in a sacred cause than women of inferior piety and strength of mind. This kind of clerical selection is believed to be very influential in furthering clerical marriages. The lady is told that she will serve the highest of all causes by lending a willing ear to her admirer. Every reader will remember how thoroughly this idea is worked out in “Jane Eyre,” where St. John urges Jane to marry him on the plain ground that she would be a valuable fellow-worker with a missionary. Charlotte Brontë was, indeed, so strongly impressed with this aspect of clerical influence that she injured the best and strongest of her novels by an almost wearisome development of that episode.

Clerical influence is immensely aided by the possession of leisure. Without underrating the self-devotion of hard-working clergymen (which is all the more honorable to them that they might take life more easily if they chose), we see a wide distinction, in point of industry, between the average clergyman and the average solicitor, for example. The clergyman has leisure to pay calls, to accept many invitations, and to talk in full detail about the interests that he has in common with his female friends. The solicitor is kept to his office by strictly professional work requiring very close application and allowing no liberty of mind.

Much might be said about the effect of clerical leisure on clerical manners. Without leisure it is difficult to have such quiet and pleasant manners as the clergy generally have. Very busy men generally seem preoccupied with some idea of their own which is not what you are talking about, but a leisurely man will give hospitality to your thought. A busy man wants to get away, and fidgets you; a man of leisure dwells with you, for the time, completely. Ladies are exquisitely sensitive to these differences, and besides, they are generally themselves persons of leisure. Overworked people often confound leisure with indolence, which is a great mistake. Leisure is highly favorable to intelligence and good manners; indolence is stupid, from its dislike to mental effort, and ill-bred, from the habit of inattention.

The feeling of women towards custom draws them strongly to the clergy, because a priesthood is the instinctive upholder of ancient customs and ceremonies, and steadily maintains external decorum. Women are naturally more attracted by custom than we are. A few men have an affectionate regard for the sanctities of usage, but most men only submit to them from an idea that they are generally helpful to the “maintenance of order;” and if women could be supposed absent from a nation for a time, it is probable that external observances of all kinds would be greatly relaxed. Women do not merely submit passively to custom; they uphold it actively and energetically, with a degree of faith in the perfect reasonableness of it which gives them great decision in its defence. It seems to them the ultimate reason from which there is no appeal. Now, in the life of every organized Church there is much to gratify this instinct, especially in those which have been long established. The recurrence of holy seasons, the customary repetition of certain forms of words, the observance at stated intervals of the same ceremonies, the adherence to certain prescribed decencies or splendors of dress, the reservation of sacred days on which labor is suspended, give to the religious life a charm of customariness which is deeply gratifying to good, order-loving women. It is said that every poet has something feminine in his nature; and it is certainly observable that poets, like women, are tenderly affected by the recurrence of holy seasons, and the observance of fixed religious rites. I will only allude to Keble’s “Christian Year,” because in this instance it might be objected that the poet was secondary to the Christian; but the reader will find instances of the same sentiment in Tennyson, as, for example, in the profoundly affecting allusions to the return of Christmas in “In Memoriam.” I could not name another occupation so closely and visibly bound up with custom as the clerical profession, but for the sake of contrast I may mention one or two others that are completely disconnected from it. The profession of painting is an example, and so is that of literature. An artist, a writer, has simply nothing whatever to do with custom, except as a private man. He may be an excellent and a famous workman without knowing Sunday from week-day or Easter from Lent. A man of science is equally unconnected with traditional observances.

It may be a question whether a celibate or a married clergy has the greater influence over women.

There are two sides to this question. The Church of Rome is, from the worldly point of view, the most astute body of men who have ever leagued themselves together in a corporation; and that Church has decided for celibacy, rejecting thereby all the advantages to be derived from rich marriages and good connections. In a celibate church the priest has a position of secure dignity and independence. It is known from the first that he will not marry, so there is no idle and damaging gossip about his supposed aspirations after fortune, or tender feelings towards beauty. Women can treat him with greater confidence than if he were a possible suitor, and then can confess to him, which is felt to be difficult with a married or a marriageable clergy. By being decidedly celibate the clergy avoid the possible loss of dignity which might result from allying themselves with families in a low social position. They are simply priests, and escape all other classification. A married man is, as it were, made responsible for the decent appearance, the good manners, and the proper conduct of three different sets of people. There is the family he springs from, there is his wife’s family, and, lastly, there is the family in his own house. Any one of these may drag a man down socially with almost irresistible force. The celibate priest is only affected by the family he springs from, and is generally at a distance from that. He escapes the invasion of his house by a wife’s relations, who might possibly be vulgar, and, above all, he escapes the permanent degradation of a coarse and ill-dressed family of his own. No doubt, from the Christian point of view, poverty is as honorable as wealth; but from the worldly point of view its visible imperfections are mean, despicable, and even ridiculous. In the early days of English Protestants the liberty to marry was ruinous to the social position of the clergy. They generally espoused servant-girls or “a lady’s maid whose character had been blown upon, and who was therefore forced to give up all hope of catching the steward.”[17] Queen Elizabeth issued “special orders that no clergyman should presume to marry a servant-girl without the consent of the master or mistress.” “One of the lessons most earnestly inculcated on every girl of honorable family was to give no encouragement to a lover in orders; and if any young lady forgot this precept she was almost as much disgraced as by an illicit amour.” The cause of these low marriages was simply poverty, and it is needless to add that they increased the evil. “As children multiplied and grew, the household of the priest became more and more beggarly. Holes appeared more and more plainly in the thatch of his parsonage and in his single cassock. His boys followed the plough, and his girls went out to service.”

When clergymen can maintain appearances they gain one advantage from marriage which increases their influence with women. The clergyman’s wife is almost herself in holy orders, and his daughter often takes an equally keen interest in ecclesiastical matters. These “clergywomen,” as they have been called, are valuable allies, through whom much may be done that cannot be effected directly. This is the only advantage on the side of marriage, and it is but relative; for a celibate clergy has also its female allies who are scarcely less devoted; and in the Church of Rome there are great organized associations of women entirely under the control of ecclesiastics. Again, there is a lay element in a clergyman’s family which brings the world into his own house, to the detriment of its religious character. The sons of the clergy are often anything but clerical in feeling. They are often strongly laic, and even sceptical, by a natural reaction from ecclesiasticism. On the whole, therefore, it seems certain that an unmarried clergy more easily maintains both its own dignity and the distinction between itself and the laity.

Auricular confession is so well known as a means of influencing women that I need scarcely do more than mention it; but there is one characteristic of it which is little understood by Protestants. They fancy (judging from Protestant feelings of antagonism) that confession must be felt as a tyranny. A Roman Catholic woman does not feel it to be an infliction that the Church imposes, but a relief that she affords. Women are not naturally silent sufferers. They like to talk about their anxieties and interests, especially to a patient and sympathetic listener of the other sex who will give them valuable advice. There is reason to believe that a good deal of informal confession is done by Protestant ladies; in the Church of Rome it is more systematic and leads to a formal absolution. The subject which the speaker has to talk about is that most interesting of all subjects, self. In any other place than a confessional to talk about self at any length is an error; in the confessional it is a virtue. The truth is that pious Roman Catholic women find happiness in the confessional and try the patience of the priests by minute accounts of trifling or imaginary sins. No doubt confession places an immense power in the hands of the Church, but at an incalculable cost of patience. It is not felt to weigh unfairly on the laity, because the priest who to-day has forgiven your faults will to-morrow kneel in penitence and ask forgiveness for his own. I do not see in the confessional so much an oppressive institution as a convenience for both parties. The woman gets what she wants,—an opportunity of talking confidentially about herself; and the priest gets what he wants,—an opportunity of learning the secrets of the household.

Nothing has so powerfully awakened the jealousy of laymen as this institution of the confessional. The reasons have been so fully treated by Michelet and others, and are in fact so obvious, that I need not repeat them.

The dislike for priests that is felt by many Continental laymen is increased by a cause that helps to win the confidence of women. “Observe,” the laymen say, “with what art the priest dresses so as to make women feel that he is without sex, in order that they may confess to him more willingly. He removes every trace of hair from his face, his dress is half feminine, he hides his legs in petticoats, his shoulders under a tippet, and in the higher ranks he wears jewelry and silk and lace. A woman would never confess to a man dressed as we are, so the wolf puts on sheep’s clothing.”

Where confession is not the rule the layman’s jealousy is less acrid and pungent in its expression, but it often manifests itself in milder forms. The pen that so clearly delineated the Rev. Charles Honeyman was impelled by a layman’s natural and pardonable jealousy. A feeling of this kind is often strong in laymen of mature years. They will say to you in confidence, “Here is a man about the age of one of my sons, who knows no more concerning the mysteries of life and death than I do, who gets what he thinks he knows out of a book which is as accessible to me as it is to him, and yet who assumes a superiority over me which would only be justifiable if I were ignorant and he enlightened. He calls me one of his sheep. I am not a sheep relatively to him. I am at least his equal in knowledge, and greatly his superior in experience. Nobody but a parson would venture to compare me to an animal (such a stupid animal too!) and himself to that animal’s master. His one real and effective superiority is that he has all the women on his side.”

You poor, doubting, hesitating layman, not half so convinced as the ladies of your family, who and what are you in the presence of a man who comes clothed with the authority of the Church? If you simply repeat what he says, you are a mere echo, a feeble repetition of a great original, like the copy of a famous picture. If you try to take refuge in philosophic indifference, in silent patience, you will be blamed for moral and religious inertia. If you venture to oppose and discuss, you will be the bad man against the good man, and as sure of condemnation as a murderer when the judge is putting on the black cap. There is no resource for you but one, and that does not offer a very cheering or hopeful prospect. By the exercise of angelic patience, and of all the other virtues that have been preached by good men from Socrates downwards, you may in twenty or thirty years acquire some credit for a sort of inferior goodness of your own,—a pinchbeck goodness, better than nothing, but not in any way comparable to the pure golden goodness of the priest; and when you come to die, the best that can be hoped for your disembodied soul will be mercy, clemency, indulgence; not approbation, welcome, or reward.