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CHAPTER XX
GOD THE MOTHER
The only other form in which the Christ is presented to popular adoration is as a baby in the Madonna's arms. Out of all the life of Christ, all the varied events of that career which has left such a great mark upon the Western world, only the beginning and the end are pictured. Christ the teacher, Christ the preacher, the restorer of the dead to life, the feeder of the hungry, the newly arisen from the grave, where is He? The great masters have painted Him, but popular thought remembers nothing of all that. There is Christ the sacrificed and Christ the infant with His mother. To the Latin people these two phases represent all that is worth daily remembrance. There are crucifixes and Madonnas in every hill side, by every road, at the street corners, in every house, and of the rest of the story not a sign.
What is the emotion to which the Madonna appeals? Why do she and her Child thus live in Latin thought?
There are historians who tell us that the worship of the Madonna was introduced from Egypt. She is Astarte, Queen of Heaven, the Phœnician goddess of married love or maternity, she is the Egyptian Isis with her son Horus. It is a cult that was introduced through Spain, and took root among the Latin people and grew. There is no question here of Christ, they say; it is the goddess and her son.
It has also absorbed the worship of Venus and Aphrodite. Venus was the tutelary goddess of Rome, she was the goddess of maternity, of production. It was not till the Greek idea of beauty in Aphrodite came to Rome and became confounded with the goddess Venus that her status changed. She was the goddess of married love, she became later the emblem of lust. But it was she who purified marriage to the old Roman faith; she was the purifier, the justifier, the goddess of motherhood, which is the sanction of love and marriage.
It may be that all this is true. It may be possible to trace the worship back through the various changes to Astarte, Ashtoreth, to Isis, to older gods, maybe, than these. All this may be true, and yet be no explanation. The old gods are dead. Why does she alone survive? What is the instinct that requires her, that pictures her on the street corners, that makes her worship a living worship to-day?
And why is it that she appeals not at all to the Teutonic people? Where are her pictures in Protestant Germany, in England, in Scotland, in America? Do you ever hear of her there? Do the preachers tell of her, the picture makers paint her, the people pray to her? Such a worship is impossible. And why? What is the answer that to-day gives to that question? Is the answer difficult? I think not, for it is written in the hearts of the people, it is written in the laws they have made, in the customs they adhere to, in the oaths they take, in their daily lives.
Consider the Roman laws of two thousand and more years ago, the French laws of to-day. What is there most striking to us when we study them? It is, I think, the cult of the family.
The Roman son was his father's slave. He could not own property apart from the father, he could not marry without leave, his father could execute him without any trial. Family life lay outside the law; not Senate, nor Consul nor Emperor could interfere there. The unit in Rome was not the man, but the family.
As it was so it is. The laws are less stringent, but the idea remains. A man belongs not to himself but to his people, to his father and to his mother. In France even now he has to ask their leave to marry. The property is often family property, and his family may restrain a man from wasting it.
There is no bond anywhere stronger than the family bond of the Latin peoples. In mediæval Rome, even often in Rome of to-day, all the sons live with their father and mother even if married. It is the custom, and, like all customs that live, it lives because it is in accord with the feelings of those who obey it.
A man belongs to his family, he clings to it; he is not an individual, but part of an organism.
And although in law it is the father who is the head, it is the father who is the lawgiver, the ruler, is it really he who is that centre, that lode-star, that holds the family together? I think it is not so. It is the mother who is the centre of that affection which is stronger than gravity. We laugh when a Frenchman swears by his mother. But he is swearing by all that he holds most sacred. No Latin would laugh at such a matter. Because he could understand, and we do not. To everyone of Latin race there comes next to God his mother, next to Christ the Madonna, who is the emblem of motherhood.
The Latins do not emigrate. They hate to leave their country. And if they do, if necessity drive them forth, are they ever happy, ever at rest till they can see their way to return? The Americans tell us that Italians are the worst immigrants because they will not settle; because they send their pay to their parents in the old country, and are never happy till they themselves can return. We call it nostalgia, we say it is a longing for their country. It is that and more. It is a longing for their family, their blood. They cling together in a way we have no idea of.
Does an Englishman ever swear by his mother, does he yearn after her as the Latins do from a far country? Does the fear of separation keep our young men at home? It is always the reverse. They want to get away. The home nest tires them, and they would go; and once gone they care not to return, they can be happy far away. The ties of relationship are light and are easily shaken off, they are quickly forgotten.
Italian labourers and servants give some of their pay always as a matter of course to their parents. It is a natural duty. And in Latin countries there are no poorhouses. They could not abide such a theory any more than could the Indians. It would seem to a Latin an impossibility that any child would leave his parents in a workhouse. Poor as they might be they would keep together. The great bond that holds a family together is the mother, always the mother. We can see this in England too, even with our weaker instinct. The mother makes the home and not the father.
And now are we not finding that sanction we were searching for? If the Madonna, the type of motherhood, appeals to all the people, men and women, is there not a reason? It is an instinct. These images and pictures of the Madonna sound on their heart-strings a chord that is perhaps the loudest and sweetest; if second to any, second only to that of God. God as father, God as mother, God as son and sacrifice, here is the threefold real Godhead of the Latins.
But with us the family tie is slight, the mother worship is faint. Our Teutonic Trinity is God the Father, God the Son, and now later God the Law. These are the realities.
For with us conduct is more and emotion is less than with the peoples of the South.
CHAPTER XXI
CONDUCT
Of all aspects of religion none is so difficult to understand as the relation of religion and conduct. It is ever varying. There seems to be nothing fixed about it. What does conduct arise from? It takes its origin in an instinct, and this instinct is so strong, so imperious, so almost personal, that of all the instincts it alone has a name. It is conscience.
By conscience our acts are directed.
There are scientific men who tell us that our consciences are the result of experience, partly our own, but principally inherited. That if conscience warns us against any course of action it is because that has been experienced to result in misfortune. It is an unconscious memory of past experiences. Conscience is instinctive, and not affected by teaching to any great extent; and that conscience is the main guide of life no one will deny.
But do the voices of conscience and of God, as stated in the sacred books, agree?
When the savage sees a god in the precipice and is afraid of him, there is no question of right or wrong. Not that the savage has no code of morals. He has a very elaborate one. But it is usually distinct from his religion. What virtue did Odin teach? None but courage in war. Yet the Northmen had codes of conduct fitted to their stage of civilisation. The Greeks had many gods. They had also codes of morals and an extensive philosophy, but practically there was no connection. In fact, the gods were examples not of morality but of immorality. It was the same with the Latins and with all the Celts. Their religions were emotional religions, their codes of conduct were apart, although even here you see now and then an attempt to connect them. And when the Latin people took Christianity and formed it, they put into their creeds no question of conduct. You believed, and therefore you were a Christian. The results of bad conduct would be annulled by confession, and the sinner would receive absolution. To a Latin Christian a righteous unbeliever who had never done anything but good would in the end be damned, whereas the murderer who repented at the last would be saved. "There is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance."
Is the inference that the Latin peoples were wickeder than others? I doubt it. They initiated all European civilisation, and trade and commerce, and law and justice. Probably the highest examples of conduct the world has known have been Latins. They had and have the instinct of conduct, they had and have consciences as good as other people, but only they do not so much connect conduct and religion. You can be saved without conduct.
The Jews, on the contrary, had no instinct of conduct apart from religion. In the Ten Commandments conduct, if it have the second place, has yet the larger share. Righteousness was the keynote of their belief, and if the only righteousness they knew was little better than a noble savagery, it was the best they could do. They included every form of conduct in their religion – sanitary matters, caste observances, and business rules. The Hindu goes even further in the same line. Everything in life is included in his religion.
When in the Reformation the Teutonic people threw off the yoke of Rome, a yoke which was not only religious but political and social, one of their principal arguments against Roman Catholicism was the abominations that had crept in. I think it would be difficult to assert that the people who revolted were in morals generally any better than those they seceded from. Good men in the Latin Church saw equally the necessity for reformation. But bad morals did not seem to them so destructive to faith as it did to the Teutons. There was this difference, that whereas the Latin could and did conceive of religion apart from conduct, the Teuton, like the Jew, could not do so. With the Latin they were distinct emotions, with the Teuton they were connected. One of the principal aspects of the Reformation is the restoration of morality to religion, the abolition of indulgences, of confession and absolution, the insistence on conduct in religious teachers.
The morality of Christ?
The remarkable fact is that it was not the morality of Christ at all. The Reformation was never in any way a revival of the code of the Sermon on the Mount or the imitation of Christ. To a certain extent it went further away from Christ than the Latins. For instance, the Latin priests imitate Christ in being unmarried, the Protestant pastors married. When Calvin burnt Servetus he was not returning to the tenets of the New Testament, and what thought had the Puritans or the French Huguenots, the most masterful of men, of turning the other cheek?
Protestantism was a return of conduct to religion, but it was not Christ's conduct. It was rather the Old Testament code softened by civilised influence that was revived. It was a revolt against excessive emotionalism, and was, in fact, a combination of two creeds tempered as to conduct by the conduct of the day.
So it continues to-day. The Latin's idea of religious conduct is the imitation of Christ, and when a Latin cultivates religious conduct that is what he does. He becomes a priest or monk, poor, celibate, self-denying and unworldly. But conduct to him is not the great part of religion that it is to a Teuton. With us conduct is the greatest part; the mystical and ceremonious part has decreased, in certain sects almost disappeared. Confession disappeared, and with it absolution from priests. Conduct is part of religion, and the code of conduct to be followed is that which conscience bids, and the code of conscience is, scientific men tell us, the result of experience, personal and inherited. Practically, what conscience tells us to do is what suits the circumstances of the day.
Therefore we may say that the religion of the Latins is mainly emotional, that of the Teutons half emotional and half conduct; and then we come to the Buddhist, which is nearly all conduct.
The Latin would say of an unbeliever, "He cannot be saved; faith is the absolute necessity, and faith even at the last moment by itself is sufficient." The Teuton would say, "I do not know. To be a good man, even if an unbeliever, is very much; it may be that God will accept him."
And the Buddhist? He has no doubt at all. Conduct is everything. Believe what you like as long as you act well. To be a Buddhist is best because there you have the way of life set clearly before you, and it is easy for you to follow. But any man can be saved if he act aright. Conduct is everything. In fact, Buddhism in its inception was in one aspect a revolt against excessive emotionalism, that of the ascetics, and it maintains that attitude to-day.
Or, to put it another way: Roman Catholicism is all emotion, Protestantism is half emotion, Buddhism is the suppression of emotion. These are the theories. And the facts? What effect does this difference make on the lives of the peoples?
It may have some effect. There is sometimes action and reaction. These different views of the relation of religion and conduct come from the instincts of the people, and being held and taught they in turn affect the people. But how much? Personally, I believe very little.
A man's daily conduct is regulated by quite other factors. If the effect was great we should find Buddhists the least criminal of peoples, the Teutons a medium, and the Latins without any idea of conduct at all. But this is certainly not true. The Burman is greatly given to certain crimes, the outcome of his stage of civilisation.
And I have great doubts whether the Protestants generally can show any superiority over the Latins when the circumstances are considered. Are the English Roman Catholics less honest than Protestants in the same class? Are sceptics more criminal than religious people? The inclusion of conduct in religion is astonishingly varied. Some peoples cannot be born or come to maturity, or marry, or die without religion; others do not allow religion to have any part in these matters. But the fact remains that, though conduct may be included more or less in every religion, no religion has a code of conduct for daily life. Priests and monks apart, the codes of conduct are not taken from religion.
But it must not be forgotten that neither Christianity nor Buddhism professes to provide a code of conduct for this life. Judaism knew no future life, and its aim was therefore to ensure success in this. That is the reward offered to the righteous – success for them and their children. There is no hint that this life is not good and worth living, that love and wealth are not good things. On the contrary, they are held out as the reward of the godly. The Judaic code was a good and workable one for its age. But Christianity and Buddhism declare that this life is not good; that it is, in fact, absolutely wicked and unhappy, and that therefore all worldly pleasures and successes are to be eschewed as snares. The codes given are ways to reach heaven, they are by no means codes for ordinary life. Followed to their meaning, every Christian ought to be a monk or nun and every Buddhist the same.
But this teaching of the evil of life is one that no one but a few fanatics accept in its fulness, and heaven or Nirvana are ideas that do not appeal to most men. In Latin and Buddhist countries a few with their higher spiritual powers take their faiths very seriously, but the majority try to make the best of both worlds. In Protestant countries no one at all accepts the doctrine of the worthlessness of life. With the immense majority of men of all nations life is held to be a great and beautiful thing, to be used to its best advantage. The Latins with their keener logic, seeing that the code of Christ is for the next world, not for this, and therefore fit only for monks and nuns and not for men of the world, divorce conduct from religion. Protestants, rejecting the code of Christ for men of the world equally with the Latins, yet feeling a need for a code of conduct, adopt the best current code of the day and call that "Christian conduct." Thus are working religions built up. One religion is all conduct, another half, another hardly at all – in theory. But in fact, for ordinary life, is there any difference between the code of a Latin, a Teuton, or a Buddhist? There is hardly any. Codes of life vary very little, and that variation is due never to religious influences, but always to the stage of civilisation and mental development and the environments. In Scotland and North Germany it is common for peasant girls to have a baby first and marry afterwards. A Hindu or a Burman would be horrified at such a thing, just as a better class Scotchman or German would be. But to the people who do it there is no immorality. How do you explain this from religion?
Conduct is an instinct. It evolves according to the civilisation and idiosyncrasy of the people. It is influenced by many causes. People, for instance, who are not pleased by acting call theatres wrong, and so on. Experience is also a factor. And the connection of conduct with religion varies. Some people make it a great part of their religion just as sanitary and social measures are included, other peoples make it less prominent. But conduct does not proceed from religious creeds any more than prayer or confession does. It may be slowly influenced by religious teaching, but it has its own existence, and religious teaching is only one of many influences.
CHAPTER XXII
MEN'S FAITH AND WOMEN'S FAITH
There is a faith – Judaism – which originated so far back that we have only a legendary account of it. It was the cult of a warrior nation whose ideal was bravery and whose glory was war, who considered the rest of the world as Philistines and treated them ruthlessly, who kept themselves as a nation apart.
Nineteen hundred years ago there arose among them a prophet, said to be of the ancient kingly house. He preached a doctrine which prescribed as the rule of life mildness and self-denial, renunciation of this world; who denounced war and conquest, and held out as a goal for attainment heaven, which is the peace of God.
This Prophet, The Christ, was executed, but He left behind Him disciples who spread His religion widely. Amongst His own people it never attained great strength, and in time it died away and disappeared. There are no Christians among the Jews. All Semitic nations have rejected this faith. But it spread far to the west, and is now in one form or another the accepted faith of the half world to the west of Palestine. It never spread east.
There is a faith – Brahminism – which originated so far back that we have but legendary accounts of it. It was the cult of a warrior nation whose ideal was courage and whose glory was war, who considered the rest of the world as outcasts and treated them ruthlessly, who kept themselves as a nation apart.
Two thousand five hundred years ago there arose among them a prophet, the son of the Royal House. He preached a doctrine which prescribed as a rule of life meekness and self-denial, renunciation of the world. He denounced war and conquest, and held out as a goal for attainment the Great Peace.
This prophet, the Buddha, was rejected by all the higher castes and he died, having made but little way. But his disciples spread his religion widely. Amongst his own people it never attained great strength, and in time it died away and disappeared. There are no Buddhists in Oude, and, with perhaps a slight exception, there are no Buddhists at all in India. But it has spread far to the east, and is now in one form or another the accepted faith of nearly all people east of the Bay of Bengal, and also of Ceylon. It never spread west.
I do not say that Christianity and Buddhism are the same, for although in some ways, especially in conduct, their teaching is almost identical, and in others – such as Heaven and Nirvana – though differently expressed, the idea is almost the same, yet in certain theories they differ very greatly. Yet, however they may differ, the above parallel cannot but strike one as extraordinary. Indeed, the parallel might have been very largely augmented, but it suffices for the purpose of this chapter; and that is to enquire why each teacher's doctrine was rejected by his own people and accepted by others.
It is no answer to say that no one is a prophet in his own country. All the Jewish prophets, from Moses to Isaiah, were prophets in their own country. Christ alone was not. Mahommed was a prophet to the Arabs, Zoroaster to the Persians, Confucius and Laotze to the Chinese. All teachers of Hinduism have been native born Hindus. In Buddhist countries it is the same. Luther was a prophet to the Germans, Loyola to the Spaniards. The rule is otherwise. A prophet is never a prophet to any but his own people, except the two greatest Prophets in the world, Christ and Buddha. They alone were rejected by their own and accepted elsewhere. They almost divide the world between them. Hinduism, from which Buddhism arose, still exists untouched by either; Judaism, from which Christianity arose, and its near kin Mahommedanism, exist untouched by either; but most of the rest of the world is either Christian or Buddhist. These are very astonishing facts, and must have some very strong reasons to cause them. The question is, What are the reasons, and are they the same in each case? Was it a similar cause that occasioned such similar effects? What quality was it in the Jews and Hindus that led them to reject their prophets, and what are the qualities in the converted nations that led them to accept these prophets?
It might seem at first as if the clue was contained in the first sentence of each paragraph, that the reason was because both Jews and Hindus, especially the higher caste Hindus, were warrior nations. The rule of life preached by each teacher was absolutely against all that they had revered so far, hence that each rejected it. The fact, of course, is true. Each nation had up to the coming of the Teacher learned a rule of life hopelessly in contrast to the new teaching. The ideals of Christ and Buddha were absolutely opposed to those a fierce, warlike, exclusive people could maintain. They could not accept them without throwing to the winds all their past. This is true, but is it an explanation? It is certainly not a full one. The Jews were warriors, bitter, terrible, ruthless fighters, and they rejected Christ. But they are no longer a nation of warriors, and they still reject Him.
The world has never seen keener soldiers than those of western Europe, but these nations accept Him.
The Hindu warrior caste are warriors to the bitter end. They rejected Buddha, but so did many peoples of India; the Bengalees, for instance, who are not fighters.
Where can you find stronger warrior spirit than has always existed in Japan? Yet Buddhism is the prevailing religion there. It is evident, I think, that this explanation will not suffice. It may in addition be asserted that the men of Latin nations are usually frankly atheistic, and the Teutonic nations, though theoretically Christian, yet practically when they want to fight they forget Christ and fall back to the Jehovah of the Jews. The Puritans and the Boers are cases in point. They get their fighting faith out of the Old Testament, not the New. But still they accept Christ, and though they may find it impossible, like all nations, to follow His teaching, they do not reject it, or deny it. With Buddhism in the further East the parallel does not last, because Buddhism in ethical teaching stands alone. The Buddhist who wants to fight cannot fall back on the original faith. He has simply to go without a faith at all. He has not the advantage of a double set of conduct, one of which can always be trusted to fit anything he wants to do He has to go without a faith when he fights. Still he does so.
I confess that for a long time I seemed to find no answer, and at length it came not through studying out this question, but in observing other phenomena of religion altogether.
To one coming to Europe after years in the East and visiting the churches nothing is more striking than the enormous preponderance of women there. It is immaterial whether the church be in England or in France, whether it be Anglican or Roman Catholic or Dissenter. The result is always the same. Women outnumber the men as two to one, as three to one, sometimes as ten to one. Even of the men that are there, how many go there from other motives than personal desire to hear the service? Men go because their wives take them, boys go with their mothers or sisters, old men with their daughters. Professional men are there because it would injure them among their women clients to be absent. Women go because they desire to do so; nine out of ten even of these few men who do go are taken by their women folk. They admit it readily. And more, when they are away from these women they do not enter the churches. It is borne in upon an observer, especially an observer who has been long enough away from Europe to become depolarised, to what an enormous extent the observance of religious duty in Europe among Christian nations is due to women. It is they only who care for, who are in full sympathy with the teaching of Christ; for men when they are religious, and in certain cases they are so, take their religion of conduct much more from the Old Testament than the New.
In Burma it is not otherwise. The deeper the tenets of Buddhism are observed, the more the women are concerned in it. Who lights the candles at the pagoda, who contribute the daily food to the monks, who attend the Sunday meetings in the rest houses? Nearly all of them are women. Even in Burma, where the devotional instinct is so strong and so deeply held, the immense influence of women is manifest. In Christian and Buddhist countries the women are free to attend the services; they are free, to a greater or lesser extent, in all matters, and in religion they are conspicuous – they rule it, they form it to suit themselves.
But in the races that rejected Christianity, that rejected Buddhism, it is otherwise. The Hindu women keep themselves in zenanas. They are not allowed in the temples, or only in special parts. They can take no part in the public services. They cannot combine to influence religious matters. At the time the Buddha lived women were very much freer than they are now, and this accounts for its initial partial success at home. But as waves of conquest, the incessant rigorous struggle for existence deepened and circumstances contracted that liberty, so as it contracted did Buddhism die. Till at length the women remained immured, and Buddhism fled to countries where women had still some freedom.
It is the same with Christianity. The Jewish women, if not quite so secluded as Hindu women, were yet never openly allowed to join in the synagogues. They, too, as the Mahommedan even, had their "grille" apart. The Jewish men and the Mahommedan men kept their religion for themselves, a virile religion, where women had little place. It may be the fact – I think in another chapter I have shewn that it is a fact – that women seek after religion far more than men But they must have a religion to suit them. The tenets of Christ and of Buddha do appeal to them, do come nearer to them than they do to the generality of men. And so where women have been free to make their influence felt, to impress their views upon the faith of a country, the mild beliefs of non-resistance, of peace, of meekness and submission have obtained. Whereas in the countries and nations where for one cause or another women are not free to make their combined influence felt, where they remain under the greater dominance of man in all matters, the faiths that retain the stronger and more virile codes of conduct have remained.
I am not sure that there have not been other influences also at work. I can, I think, see another strong influence that has worked to the same end. There may be many reasons. But that would not alter the fact that the influence of women has been a main force, that they have greatly been concerned in the change of faith.
