No God Ever Dies.
Perhaps Of All The Gods Of New England And Of Ancient Greece, I
Am Most Constant At His Shrine.
It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in
civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a
divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability
of mankind combined.
Men reverence one another, not yet God. If
I thought that I could speak with discrimination and impartiality
of the nations of Christendom, I should praise them, but it tasks
me too much. They seem to be the most civil and humane, but I
may be mistaken. Every people have gods to suit their
circumstances; the Society Islanders had a god called Toahitu,
"in shape like a dog; he saved such as were in danger of falling
from rocks and trees." I think that we can do without him, as we
have not much climbing to do. Among them a man could make
himself a god out of a piece of wood in a few minutes, which
would frighten him out of his wits.
I fancy that some indefatigable spinster of the old school, who
had the supreme felicity to be born in "days that tried men's
souls," hearing this, may say with Nestor, another of the old
school, "But you are younger than I. For time was when I
conversed with greater men than you. For not at any time have I
seen such men, nor shall see them, as Perithous, and Dryas, and
," that is probably Washington, sole "Shepherd of
the People." And when Apollo has now six times rolled westward,
or seemed to roll, and now for the seventh time shows his face in
the east, eyes wellnigh glazed, long glassed, which have
fluctuated only between lamb's wool and worsted, explore
ceaselessly some good sermon book. For six days shalt thou labor
and do all thy knitting, but on the seventh, forsooth, thy
reading. Happy we who can bask in this warm September sun, which
illumines all creatures, as well when they rest as when they
toil, not without a feeling of gratitude; whose life is as
blameless, how blameworthy soever it may be, on the Lord's
Mona-day as on his Suna-day.
There are various, nay, incredible faiths; why should we be
alarmed at any of them? What man believes, God believes. Long
as I have lived, and many blasphemers as I have heard and seen, I
have never yet heard or witnessed any direct and conscious
blasphemy or irreverence; but of indirect and habitual, enough.
Where is the man who is guilty of direct and personal insolence
to Him that made him?
One memorable addition to the old mythology is due to this
era, - the Christian fable. With what pains, and tears, and blood
these centuries have woven this and added it to the mythology of
mankind. The new Prometheus. With what miraculous consent, and
patience, and persistency has this mythus been stamped on the
memory of the race! It would seem as if it were in the progress
of our mythology to dethrone Jehovah, and crown Christ in his
stead.
If it is not a tragical life we live, then I know not what to
call it. Such a story as that of Jesus Christ, - the history of
Jerusalem, say, being a part of the Universal History. The
naked, the embalmed, unburied death of Jerusalem amid its
desolate hills, - think of it. In Tasso's poem I trust some
things are sweetly buried. Consider the snappish tenacity with
which they preach Christianity still. What are time and space to
Christianity, eighteen hundred years, and a new world? - that the
humble life of a Jewish peasant should have force to make a New
York bishop so bigoted. Forty-four lamps, the gift of kings, now
burning in a place called the Holy Sepulchre; - a church-bell
ringing; - some unaffected tears shed by a pilgrim on Mount
Calvary within the week. -
"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, when I forget thee, may my right hand
forget her cunning."
"By the waters of Babylon there we sat down, and we wept when we
remembered Zion."
I trust that some may be as near and dear to Buddha, or Christ,
or Swedenborg, who are without the pale of their churches. It is
necessary not to be Christian to appreciate the beauty and
significance of the life of Christ. I know that some will have
hard thoughts of me, when they hear their Christ named beside my
Buddha, yet I am sure that I am willing they should love their
Christ more than my Buddha, for the love is the main thing, and I
like him too. "God is the letter Ku, as well as Khu." Why need
Christians be still intolerant and superstitious? The
simple-minded sailors were unwilling to cast overboard Jonah at
his own request. -
"Where is this love become in later age?
Alas! 'tis gone in endless pilgrimage
From hence, and never to return, I doubt,
Till revolution wheel those times about."
One man says, -
"The world's a popular disease, that reigns
Within the froward heart and frantic brains
Of poor distempered mortals."
Another, that
"all the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players."
The world is a strange place for a playhouse to stand within it.
Old Drayton thought that a man that lived here, and would be a
poet, for instance, should have in him certain "brave,
translunary things," and a "fine madness" should possess his
brain. Certainly it were as well, that he might be up to the
occasion. That is a superfluous wonder, which Dr. Johnson
expresses at the assertion of Sir Thomas Browne that "his life
has been a miracle of thirty years, which to relate, were not
history but a piece of poetry, and would sound like a fable." The
wonder is, rather, that all men do not assert as much. That
would be a rare praise, if it were true, which was addressed to
Francis Beaumont, - "Spectators sate part in your tragedies."
Think what a mean and wretched place this world is; that half the
time we have to light a lamp that we may see to live in it.
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