Is God Angry, Think You, With This
Pretty Deviation From The Letter Of Strict Accuracy?
Or was it not
He who whispered to her to tell the falsehood - to tell it with a
circumstance,
Without conscientious scruple, not once only, but to
make a practice of it, so as to be a plausible, habitual, and
professional liar for some six weeks or so in the year? I imagine
so. When I was young I used to read in good books that it was God
who taught the bird to make her nest, and if so He probably taught
each species the other domestic arrangements best suited to it. Or
did the nest-building information come from God, and was there an
evil one among the birds also who taught them at any rate to steer
clear of priggishness?
Think of the spider again - an ugly creature, but I suppose God
likes it. What a mean and odious lie is that web which naturalists
extol as such a marvel of ingenuity!
Once on a summer afternoon in a far country I met one of those
orchids who make it their business to imitate a fly with their
petals. This lie they dispose so cunningly that real flies,
thinking the honey is being already plundered, pass them without
molesting them. Watching intently and keeping very still,
methought I heard this orchid speaking to the offspring which she
felt within her, though I saw them not. "My children," she
exclaimed, "I must soon leave you; think upon the fly, my loved
ones, for this is truth; cling to this great thought in your
passage through life, for it is the one thing needful; once lose
sight of it and you are lost!" Over and over again she sang this
burden in a small still voice, and so I left her. Then straightway
I came upon some butterflies whose profession it was to pretend to
believe in all manner of vital truths which in their inner practice
they rejected; thus, asserting themselves to be certain other and
hateful butterflies which no bird will eat by reason of their
abominable smell, these cunning ones conceal their own sweetness,
and live long in the land and see good days. No: lying is so
deeply rooted in nature that we may expel it with a fork, and yet
it will always come back again: it is like the poor, we must have
it always with us; we must all eat a peck of moral dirt before we
die.
All depends upon who it is that is lying. One man may steal a
horse when another may not look over a hedge. The good man who
tells no lies wittingly to himself and is never unkindly, may lie
and lie and lie whenever he chooses to other people, and he will
not be false to any man: his lies become truths as they pass into
the hearers' ear. If a man deceives himself and is unkind, the
truth is not in him, it turns to falsehood while yet in his mouth,
like the quails in the Wilderness of Sinai. How this is so or why,
I know not, but that the Lord hath mercy on whom He will have mercy
and whom He willeth He hardeneth.
My Italian friends are doubtless in the main right about the
priests, but there are many exceptions, as they themselves gladly
admit. For my own part I have found the curato in the small
subalpine villages of North Italy to be more often than not a
kindly excellent man to whom I am attracted by sympathies deeper
than any mere superficial differences of opinion can counteract.
With monks, however, as a general rule I am less able to get on:
nevertheless, I have received much courtesy at the hands of some.
My young friend the novice was delightful - only it was so sad to
think of the future that is before him. He wanted to know all
about England, and when I told him it was an island, clasped his
hands and said, "Oh che Provvidenza!" He told me how the other
young men of his own age plagued him as he trudged his rounds high
up among the most distant hamlets begging alms for the poor. "Be a
good fellow," they would say to him, "drop all this nonsense and
come back to us, and we will never plague you again." Then he
would turn upon them and put their words from him. Of course my
sympathies were with the other young men rather than with him, but
it was impossible not to be sorry for the manner in which he had
been humbugged from the day of his birth, till he was now incapable
of seeing things from any other standpoint than that of authority.
What he said to me about knowing that Handel was a Catholic by his
music, put me in mind of what another good Catholic once said to me
about a picture. He was a Frenchman and very nice, but a devot,
and anxious to convert me. He paid a few days' visit to London, so
I showed him the National Gallery. While there I pointed out to
him Sebastian del Piombo's picture of the raising of Lazarus as one
of the supposed masterpieces of our collection. He had the proper
orthodox fit of admiration over it, and then we went through the
other rooms. After a while we found ourselves before West's
picture of "Christ healing the sick." My French friend did not, I
suppose, examine it very carefully, at any rate he believed he was
again before the raising of Lazarus by Sebastian del Piombo; he
paused before it and had his fit of admiration over again: then
turning to me he said, "Ah! you would understand this picture
better if you were a Catholic." I did not tell him of the mistake
he had made, but I thought even a Protestant after a certain amount
of experience would learn to see some difference between Benjamin
West and Sebastian del Piombo.
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