The Child of the Dawn. Benson Arthur Christopher

chance into a king, surrounded by obsequious respect and pomp and etiquette, bound by a hundred ceremonious rules, forbidden to do this and that, taught to think that his one duty was to be magnificently attired, to acquire graceful arts of posture and courtesy, subtly and gently prevented from obeying natural and simple impulses, made powerless—a crowned slave; so that, instead of being the freest and sincerest thing in the world, it became the prisoner of respectability and convention, just a part of the social machine."

      "That was only one side of it," said Amroth. "It was often where it was least supposed to be."

      "Yes," I said, "as far as I resent anything now, I resent the conversion of so much religion from an inspiring force into a repressive force. One learnt as a child to think of it, not as a great moving flood of energy and joy, but as an awful power apart from life, rejoicing in petty restrictions, and mainly concerned with creating an unreal atmosphere of narrow piety, hostile to natural talk and laughter and freedom. God's aid was invoked, in childhood, mostly when one was naughty and disobedient, so that one grew to think of Him as grim, severe, irritable, anxious to interfere. What wonder that one lost all wish to meet God and all natural desire to know Him! One thought of Him as impossible to please except by behaving in a way in which it was not natural to behave; and one thought of religion as a stern and dreadful process going on somewhere, like a law-court or a prison, which one had to keep clear of if one could. Yet I hardly see how, in the interests of discipline, it could have been avoided. If only one could have begun at the other end!"

      "Yes," said Amroth, "but that is because religion has fallen so much into the hands of the wrong people, and is grievously misrepresented. It has too often come to be identified, as you say, with human law, as a power which leaves one severely alone, if one behaves oneself, and which punishes harshly and mechanically if one outsteps the limit. It comes into the world as a great joyful motive; and then it becomes identified with respectability, and it is sad to think that it is simply from the fact that it has won the confidence of the world that it gains its awful power of silencing and oppressing. It becomes hostile to frankness and independence, and puts a premium on caution and submissiveness; but that is the misuse of it and the degradation of it; and religion is still the most pure and beautiful thing in the world for all that; the doctrine itself is fine and true in a way, if one can view it without impatience; it upholds the right things; it all makes for peace and order, and even for humility and just kindliness; it insists, or tries to insist, on the fact that property and position and material things do not matter, and that quality and method do matter. Of course it is terribly distorted, and gets into the hands of the wrong people—the people who want to keep things as they are. Now the Gospel, as it first came, was a perfectly beautiful thing—the idea that one must act by tender impulse, that one must always forgive, and forget, and love; that one must take a natural joy in the simplest things, find every one and everything interesting and delightful … the perfectly natural, just, good-humoured, uncalculating life—that was the idea of it; and that one was not to be superior to the hard facts of the world, not to try to put sorrow or pain out of sight, but to live eagerly and hopefully in them and through them; not to try to school oneself into hardness or indifference, but to love lovable things, and not to condemn or despise the unlovable. That was indeed a message out of the very heart of God. But of course all the acrid divisions and subdivisions of it come, not from itself, but from the material part of the world, that determines to traffic with the beautiful secret, and make it serve its turn. But there are plenty of true souls within it all, true teachers, faithful learners—and the world cannot do without it yet, though it is strangely fettered and bound. Indeed, men can never do without it, because the spiritual force is there; it is full of poetry and mystery, that ageless brotherhood of saints and true-hearted disciples; but one has to learn that many that claim its powers have them not, while many who are outside all organisations have the secret."

      "Yes," I said, "all that is true and good; it is the exclusive claim and not the inclusive which one regrets. It is the voice which says, 'Accept my exact faith, or you have no part in the inheritance,' which is wrong. The real voice of religion is that which says, 'You are my brother and my sister, though you know it not.' And if one says, 'We are all at fault, we are all far from the truth, but we live as best we can, looking for the larger hope and for the dawn of love,' that is the secret. The sacrament of God is offered and eaten at many a social meal, and the Spirit of Love finds utterance in quiet words from smiling lips. One cannot teach by harsh precept, only by desirable example; and the worst of the correct profession of religion is that it is often little more than taking out a licence to disapprove."

      "Yes," said Amroth, "you are very near a great truth. The mistake we make is like the mistake so often made on earth in matters of human government—the opposing of the individual to the State, as if the State were something above and different to the individual—like the old thought of the Spirit moving on the face of the waters. The individual is the State; and it is the same with the soul and God. God is not above the soul, seeing and judging, apart in isolation. The Spirit of God is the spirit of humanity, the spirit of admiration, the spirit of love. It matters little what the soul admires and loves, whether it be a flower or a mountain, a face or a cause, a gem or a doctrine. It is that wonderful power that the current of the soul has of setting towards something that is beautiful: the need to admire, to worship, to love. A regiment of soldiers in the street, a procession of priests to a sanctuary, a march of disordered women clamouring for their rights—if the idea thrills you, if it uplifts you, it matters nothing whether other people dislike or despise or deride it—it is the voice of God for you. We must advance from what is merely brilliant to what is true; and though in the single life many a man seems to halt at a certain point, to have tied up his little packet of admirations once and for all, there are other lives where he will pass on to further loves, his passion growing more intense and pure. We are not limited by our circle, by our generation, by our age; and the things which youthful spirits are divining and proclaiming as great and wonderful discoveries, are often being practised and done by silent and humble souls. It is not the concise or impressive statement of a truth that matters, it is the intensity of the inner impulse towards what is high and true which differentiates. The more we live by that, the less are we inclined to argue and dispute about it. The base, the impure desire is only the imperfect desire; if it is gratified, it reveals its imperfections, and the soul knows that not there can it stay; but it must have faced and tested everything. If the soul, out of timidity and conventionality, says 'No' to its eager impulses, it halts upon its pilgrimage. Some of the most grievous and shameful lives on earth have been fruitful enough in reality. The reason why we mourn and despond over them is, again, that we limit our hope to the single life. There is time for everything; we must not be impatient. We must despair of nothing and of no one; the true life consists not in what a man's reason approves or disapproves, not in what he does or says, but in what he sees. It is useless to explain things to souls; they must experience them to apprehend them. The one treachery is to speak of mistakes as irreparable, and of sins as unforgivable. The sin against the Spirit is to doubt the Spirit, and the sin against life is not to use it generously and freely; we are happiest if we love others well enough to give our life to them; but it is better to use life for ourselves than not to use it at all."

      VII

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      One day I said to Amroth, "Are there no rules of life here? It seems almost too good to be true, not to be found fault with and censured and advised and blamed."

      "Oh," said Amroth, laughing, "there are plenty of rules, as you call them; but one feels them, one is not told them; it is like breathing and seeing."

      "Yes," I replied, "yet it was like that, too, in the old days; the misery was when one suddenly discovered that when one was acting in what seemed the most natural way possible, it gave pain and concern to some one whom one respected and even loved. One knew that one's action was not wrong, and yet one desired to please and satisfy one's friends; and so one fell back into conventional ways, not because one liked them but because other people did, and it was not worth while making a fuss—it was a sort of cowardice, I suppose?"

      "Not quite," said Amroth; "you were more on the right lines than