XI.—The Unity of the Spirit and the Bond of Peace.
WHEN the committee met, every one discovered
his incongruity with the rest. Each
was disposed to treat Ginx's Baby in a different
way—in other words, each wished to
reflect the views of his particular sect on the
object of their charity. They were a new
"Evangelical Alliance,'' agreed only in hatred
to Popery.
Finding at their first meeting that the
discussion needed to be brought into a focus, the
committee appointed three of their number to
draw up a minute of the matters to be argued.
This committee reported that there arose,
respecting the child, the following questions:—
- "I. As touching the body:
- a. Wherewithal he should be fed and
clothed?
-
- b. In what manner and fashion that
should be done?
- II. As touching the mind and spirit:
- a. Whether he should be educated?
If so,
- b. What were to be the subjects of instruction?
- c. What creed, if any, should be primarily
taught?
- d. Should he be further baptized? If
so,
- 1. Into what communion?
- 2. By what ceremonial?''
This programme, it appeared to its concoctors,
embraced everything that concerned
Ginx's Baby except his death by the act of
God or the Queen's enemies. No sooner was
the report made than adopted. Then a member,
eager for the fray, moved the postponement
of the first division of questions until
the others had been determined. Why should
apostles of truth trouble themselves to serve
tables? These were very subordinate questions
to them—though, I think, of first importance
to Ginx's Baby. It was decided to
discuss little Ginx's future before considering
his present.
The ball was opened by the Venerable Archdeacon
Hotten, who, amid much excitement,
contended that from the earliest buddings of
thought in an infant mind religion should
be engrafted upon it; there could be no education
worth the name that was not religious.
That with the A should be taught the origin,
and with the Z the final destiny and destruction,
of evil. To separate education from
religion was to clip the wings of the heavenly
dove. He asserted that the committee
ought at once to have the child baptized in
Westminster Abbey, though he was rather
of opinion that the previous baptism was
canonically valid; that he should be taught
the truths of our most holy faith, and since
there could be no faith without a creed, and
the only national creed was that of the Church
of England, the baby should be handed over
to the care of a clergyman, and then be sent
to a proper religious school. He need not
say that he excluded Bugby under its then
profane management.
The Church was, however, divided against
itself, for the Dean of Triston said he would
give more latitude than his very reverend
brother. You ought not to define in an infant
mind a rigid outline of creed. In fact,
he did not acknowledge any creed, he was
not obliged to by law and was disinclined
to by his reason. He would rather allow the
inner seeds of natural light—the glorious
all-pervading efflorescence of the Deity in
all men's hearts, to grow within the young
spirit. The Dean was assuredly vague
and far less earnest than his brother
cleric.
The "Rev.'' Mr. Bumpus, Unitarian, met
the suggestions of the Archdeacon with the
scorn they merited. It was impossible to
apply to a representative child of an enlightened
age theories so long exploded. The
Dean had certainly come nearer the truth
with that broad sympathy for which he was
noted. He himself proposed that the child
should be made a model nursling of the
liberalism of a new era. Old things were
passing away;—all things had become new.
Creeds were the discarded banners of a
mediæval past, fit only to be hung up in
the churches, and looked at as historic
monuments; never more to be flaunted in
the front of battle! The education of the
day was that which taught a man the introspection
whereby he recognized the Divine
within himself—under any aspect, under any
tuition, whether of Brahma, Confucius, or
Christ. Truth was kaleidoscopic, and varied
with the media through which it was viewed.
As for the child, every aspect of truth and
error should be allowed to play upon his
mind. Let him acquire ordinary school
learning for fifteen years, and then send him
to the London University.
Here the Chairman, and half-a-dozen members
of the committee, protested that the
said University was a school of the devil,
and several interchanges of discourtesy took
place.
Mr. Shortt, M. P., begged to suggest, as a
matter of business, that for the present the
child was not capable of receiving any ideas
whatever, and might die, or prove to be
dumb, or an idiot, and so require no education.
Ought they not to postpone this
discussion until the subject was old enough
to be worth consideration?
It was Mr. Shortt's habit to show his
practical vein by business-like obstructions
of this kind. He had been able a score of
times to demonstrate to the House of Commons
how silly it was to consider probabilities.
In fact, he was opposed heart and
soul to prophetic legislation; he would live,
legislatively, from hand to mouth.
But the committee would not allow Mr.
Shortt to run away with the bone of contention.
The Rev. Dr. M'Gregor Lucas, of the
National Caledonian Believers, had been
silent too long to contain himself further.
This man needs some particular description
whenever his name is made public. Nay,
for this he lives, and by it, some think. At
all events, he appears to be equally eager
for rebuke and applause; they both involve
notoriety, and notoriety is sure to pay. Few
absurdities had been overlooked by his shallow
ingenuity. Simply to have invested his
limited mental endowments in trying to make
the world believe him a genius, would have
been only so like what many thousands are
doing as to have absolved him from too
harsh a judgment; but he traded in perilous
stuff. Cheap prophecy was his staple.
It was his wont to give out about once
in five years, that the world would shortly
come to an end, and, like Mr. Zadkiel,
he found people who thought their inevitable
disappointment a proof of his inspiration.
Had you heard the honeyed words dropping
from his lips, you would have taken him for
a Scotch angel, and, consequently, a rarity.
Could such lips utter harsh sayings, or distil
vanities? Show him a priest, and you would
hear! The Pope was his particular born foe;
Popery his enemies' country—so he said. It
was safe for him to stand and throw his darts.
No one could say whether they hit or did
not; while most spectators had the good will
to hope that they did. How he would have
lived if Daniel and St. John had dreamed no
dreams, one cannot conjecture. As it was,
they provided the doctor with endless
openings for his fancy. Since no one could
solve the riddle of their prophecies, it was
certain that no one could disprove his
solutions. Yet these came so often to their
own disproof by lapse of time, that I can
only think that the good doctor hoped to die
before his critical periods came, or was so
clever as to trust the infallibility of human
weakness.
I describe Dr. Lucas at so great a length,
because it will be easier and more edifying to
the reader to conceive what he said, than for
me to recount it. He showed the Baby to be
one of seven mysteries. He was in favor of
teaching him at once to hate idolatry, music,
crosses, masses, nuns, priests, bishops, and
cardinals. The "humanities,'' the Shorter
Catechism, the Confession of Faith, and "The
whole Duty of Man,'' would, in his opinion,
be the books to lay the groundwork in the
child's mind of a Christian character of the
highest type.
Mr. Ogle, M. P., here vigorously intervened.
Said he:—
"I can't, with all deference, agree to any
of these suggestions. They involve hand-to-hand fighting over this baby's body. No
one of us is entitled to take charge of him.
Else why did we all unite to rescue him from
the nunnery? He will be torn to pieces
among contending divines! I think a purely
secular education is all that as a committee
we should aim at. We have, but just withdrawn
the child from the shadow of a single
ecclesiastical influence—would you transfer
it to another? Every Protestant denomination
is contributing to his support, how can
you devote their gifts to rearing him for one?
You would have no peace; better at once
treat him as the man of Benjamin treated
his wife, cut him up into enough pieces to
send to all the tribes of Israel, summoning
them to the fight. I say we have nothing
to do with this just now; let him be educated
in a secular academy, and let each sect
be free to send its agents to instruct him out
of school hours as they please.''
The Rev. Theodoret Verity, M.A., rose in
anger.
"Surely, sir, you cannot seriously
propound such a scheme! Would you leave
this precious waif to be buffeted between the
contending waves of truth and error, in the
vague hope that by some lucky wind he
might finally be cast upon a rock of safety?
I protest against all these educational heresies
—they are redolent of brimstone. Truth
is truth, or there is none at all. If there
be any, it is our duty to impart it to this
immortal at the outset of his existence.
Secular education! What do you mean by
it? Who shall sever one question from
another, and call one secular and the other
religious? Is not every relation and every
truth in some way or other connected with
religion?'' &c. &c. Mr. Verity has been
saying the same thing any time these forty
years.
"Forgive me,'' replied Mr. Ogle, "if I say
that this is very vague talking. I have not
proposed to sever one question from another.
I only propose to do in a different way that
which is being done now by the most rigid
of Mr. Verity's friends. It is impossible to
comprehend what is meant by such a statement
as that every truth is somehow connected
with religion. It may be that the
notion—if it really is not, as I suspect it to
be, mere verbiage and clap-trap, used by certain
fools to mislead others—means that there
is some such coherency between all truths as
there is, for instance, between the elements of
the body. I would admit that, but is not
blood a different and perfectly severable
thing from bone? Each has its place, office,
relation. But who would say that one could
not be regarded by a physicist in the largest
variety of its aspects apart from the other?
Yet the physicist comes back again to consider
with respect to each its relations to all
the rest! The separate study has rather
prepared him for more profound insight
into those relations. Thus it is with the
body of truth. In spite of Mr. Verity I
affirm that there are truths that have not in
themselves any element of religion whatever.
The forty-seventh proposition of Euclid will
be taught by a Jesuit precisely as it is taught
in the London University; geography will
affirm certain principles and designate places,
rivers, mountains—that no faith can remove
and cast into unknown seas. These subjects
and others are taught in our most bigoted
schools in separate hours and relations from
religion. What then do you mean by affirming
that there can be no secular education
of this child—apart from religious teaching?
We are not likely to agree, if I may judge
from what I have seen, on any one method of
religious instruction for it, therefore I wish first
to fix common bounds within which our common
benevolence may work. Well, we all go to
the Bible. We agree that between its covers
lies religious truth somewhere. If you like
let him have that—and let him have some
kindly and holy influences about him in the
way of practice and example, such as many
of our sects can supply many instances of.
Give him no catechism—let him read a creed
in our daily life. The articles of faith strongest
in his soul will be those which have crystallized
there from the combined action of truth
and experience, and not as it were been pasted
on its walls by ecclesiastical bill-posters.
`What is truth?' he must ask and answer for
himself, as we all must do before God. Don't
mistake me; I hope I am not more indifferent
to religion than any here present—but I differ
from them on the best method of imbuing
the mind and heart with it. Surely we need
not, we cannot—it would be an exquisite
absurdity—pass a resolution in this committee
that the child is to be a Calvinist!
Who then would agree to secure him from any
taint of Arminian heresy in years to come?
Dare you even resolve that he shall be a
Christian and a Protestant! I would not insure
the risk. But, with so many of Christ's
followers about me, surely, surely without
providing any ecclesiastical mechanism, there
will be testified to him simply how he may
be saved. Your prayers, your visits, your
kindly moral influence and talk, your living
example of a goodness derived not from dogmas
but from affectionate following of a holy
pattern and trust in revealed mercies, your
pointing to that pattern and showing the
daily passage of these mercies will prompt
his search after the truth that has made you
what you are. Let some good woman do for
him a mother's part, but choose her for her
general goodness and not for the dogmas of
her church. The simpler her piety the better
for him I should say!''
This straightforward speech fell like a new
apple of discord in the midst of the committee.
Angry knots were formed, and the noble
chairman found that he could not restore
order. An adjournment was agreed to.
Luckily for the body of Ginx's Baby, he had
been meanwhile sent to a home where Protestant
money secured to him for the time
good living, while his benefactors were
discussing what to do with his soul.
—
Surely, it were no impertinence to interrupt
this history and advert to the fact, that,
in the discussion just related, every one was to
some extent right and to some extent agreed.
That religious teaching was due to an immortal
spirit—some notion and evidence of
the Divine and the Great Hereafter to be conveyed
to it—scarce was disputed. Nor was
there collision over the necessity of what is
called intellectual cultivation. The boy must
be taught something of the world in which he
was to live; nay, this latter knowledge seemed
to be most immediately practical. As each
disputant fixed his eye on one or the other
aim that end appeared to him to be the most
important. Hence, by a natural lapse, they
came to treat subjects as antagonistic which
were, in fact, parallel and quite consistent.
The one called the others godless—the others
threw back the aspersion of bigotry. Then
came complication. What was "religion?''
Intellectual culture they could agree about—
it embraced well-known areas; but this religion
divided itself into many disputable
fields. These brother Protestants were like
country neighbors who must encounter each
other at fairs, markets, meets, and balls, and
smile and greet, though each, at heart, is looking
savagely at the other's landmarks, and
most are very likely fighting bitter lawsuits
all the while. It was because religion meant
CREED to most members of the committee,
and because it so implies to the vast bodies
they represented, that they could not come to
terms about Ginx's Baby or any other
infantile immortal. Not always, perhaps, but
often, they fought for futile distinctions. Had
Mahomet's creed consisted of but one article,
There is one God, the blood of many nations
might never have given testimony against
the creed they resented when to it he tacked
and Mahomet is His prophet. Could Protestants
but consent to agree in their agreement
and peacefully differ in their petty differences,
how would the aggregated impulse of
a simple faith roll down before it all the
impediments of error!
When Ginx's Baby had grown to a discretionary
age, and was at all able to know
truth from error—supposing that to be
knowable—there were in the country fifty thousand
reverend gentlemen of every tincture of religious
opinion who might ply him with their
various theories, yet few of these would be
contented unless they could seize him while
his young nature was plastic, and try to
imprint on immortal clay the trade-mark of
some human invention.
