XXV THE CHURCH WITH THE WEATHER-VANE

THE synagogue and the church with the cross seemed quite unconscious of any change in wind or weather; although our world moved with those trade winds on the sea of time, which the Germans call the Zeitgeist.

Not so the church with the gray tower, on whose pinnacle its symbol from the barnyard turned and twisted, but always bravely faced the fiercest winds. To judge from its early history, this lean, long-legged bird was a fighting cock. From the time that it was lifted to its exalted position till now, the men above whose temple it “watched for the morning,” were fighting men who worshipped in a fighting mood.

On Sunday morning I watched from our doorway the churchgoers who came from many a surrounding mile; Catholics and Protestants, Magyars and Slavs, filling the gray, monotonous street with a riot of colour.

The Magyar peasants wore broad, white linen trousers, shaggy, sheepskin coats and small, rakish hats, always decorated by a sprig of rosemary, placed there by wife and sweetheart, who, heavy-booted, walked beside them, their full, starched skirts claiming a large part of the sidewalk.

The Slavs were by far more picturesque in their attire. The men wore tight-fitting, blue trousers, braided and embroidered from the knee up to the abbreviated, gorgeous waistcoat, which was always unbuttoned, to allow the still more splendid shirt—the show garment of the Slav—room to display itself. Whether the hat was broad or narrow, chenille braid richly ornamented it to the top, from which hung defiantly, graceful, varicoloured feathers.

The women’s clothing outshone the men’s, and to even catalogue their elaborately trimmed garments would require a sartorial vocabulary which, unfortunately, I do not possess.

On the whole it was a pageant worth seeing, and I watch it with the same interest from the same doorway whenever I have the good fortune to be at home again.

Besides the riot of colour which attracted me, I very early began my ethnographic studies; for there were variations in dress, which denoted the mountaineer, the man from the valley, the peasant and the mechanic. Each locality had some style of its own, each race, occupation and faith was marked.

Those who went to the church of the weather-vane were the most soberly attired. Theological divisions were accentuated by the presence or absence of colour, braid and buttons; for there were Puritans among those worshippers. Their forefathers swore fealty to the faith of Calvin rather than that of Luther, and while all of them worshipped in the same church, the historic division was manifested in clothes, if often in nothing else.

Had not clothes marked the churchgoers, I could easily have detected the difference between faiths by facial expression, posture and gait.

The Catholics walked to church rather more reverently than the others. Rosaries hung from the folded hands of the women, who looked neither to the right nor the left, reserving all abandonment to the passions of youth and life until after the services were over.

The Protestants marched like soldiers, their heavy psalm-books clasped to their breasts. Thus fortified, as if by gun or bayonet, they went to the house of God, erect and defiant. Although the generation that I knew never fought for its right to worship according to the dictates of its conscience, its forefathers fought, killed and were killed; while the weather-vane turned on its rusty hinges to face the storms that raged.

The Reformation came with its good and ill to the Carpathians as it came to the Alps, and it seems strange that the Teutonic Tyrolese submitted to being forcibly rebaptized into the Mother Church, while the more sluggish Slavs fought and retained their faith.

Church historians have taken scant if any notice of these Slavic Protestants, who were as brave as the Huguenots and suffered as much.

There were bishops who forsook mitre and crozier, becoming one with the peasants in suffering imprisonment and martyrdom.

There were priests who followed their example, and, for preaching the new faith, were chained to the block. A group of twenty was sentenced to the galleys and perished miserably at the cruel task.

There were nobles, both men and women, who jeopardized their titles and their lands.

There were peasants innumerable who were wakened out of an age-long slumber and refused to relinquish their freedom in the faith.

The old chronicles of this parish, which but recently fell into my hands, justify my early proclivities for these Protestants. The Chronicle narrates: “The Roman Catholic Bishop, George Barsony, bringing with him a company of Croatians, began forcibly to baptize our members. At the communion, when he placed the wafer on the tongue of the peasant, Stefan Pilarek, the same bit the finger of the Bishop to the bone, and not until the Croatians hit him over the head did he relinquish his hold. The other members who were about to receive the communion refused to take it; they began to fight; the Croatians opened fire at them, and two were killed. Protestants came from the neighbouring villages and surrounded the house of the priest, where the Bishop lodged. They got hold of him and gave him such a beating that he died from its effects.” The Chronicle does not say that they murdered him.

Two regiments of Croatians appeared the next week; the preacher, teacher and sexton were hanged in proper order, while the peasants were broken over the wheel, impaled or quartered. The Chronicle concludes this part of the narrative: “From that time the free exercise of religion ceased in this parish.”

Besides their fighting mood and the struggle for liberty which drew me to the Protestants, their sober house of prayer as well as the simplicity and order of their worship, appealed to the Puritan within me, and did not offend my aesthetic feelings.

From the bell-tower I could look down upon the congregation (having bought this privilege from the mendic). On the straight-backed benches sat these stiff Puritans, praying with heads erect, singing hymns which had in them the ring of battle. There were no images to offend a mind trained to see in them an insult to Jehovah; no dark corners or dimly lighted altars to suggest mystery; no incense to artificially arouse the desire for worship. Green fields and acres of swaying poppies and bearded barley were visible from the windows, and when the people sang it seemed to me as if all nature were in tune with their psalmody.

That of which I am now most conscious as having appealed to me was, that I understood every word of the service which floated up to me; and even those broken and stolen snatches were to me the first bits of religion rationally interpreted.

There were certain texts which remained in my memory, and when later in life great social questions pressed for solution, the words that had been so eagerly listened to by the little Jewish boy, hidden in the belfry, came back to the struggling man with promises of hope.

When, finally, on this side the Atlantic, I united with the Protestant Church, no struggle preceded it, no reaction was necessary; mind and soul were merely coming home.

In reality, I have found in the church of the Puritans the best that my race has bequeathed to the world. The prophets and seers are more at home, I think, in the meeting-house than in the synagogue or the cathedral. To me at least, the really great, vital notes of religion which they have struck were not revealed by the rabbi or the priest; but by the great Puritans, who spoke to me out of English literature and here and there from pulpit and platform.

I cared but little, if at all, for the salvation which Christianity promised or the theology over which it quarrelled.

When Protestantism becomes rabbinical, and when it holds or withholds the keys of Heaven, I shall feel myself as much a stranger to it as I felt to the synagogue or the cathedral. In its cry for righteousness and personal purity, in its emphasis upon a Christian democracy, in its demand for rational self-sacrifice to achieve great, social ends, it appeals to me and claims my allegiance.

Its creeds, even the most historic, leave me untouched; its sectarian quarrels I cannot comprehend and its dogmatism repels me. When it proclaims the supreme value of the human soul, and demands for it a right to seek its God, unhindered; when it pleads for protection of the child and the woman, and labours for the day when they shall not need protection from a rapacious society; when it struggles to bring to earth the Kingdom of Heaven, I am one with it and am among mine own. Then I hear the voices of my Fathers speaking as they were moved to speak by the Holy Spirit.

I do not wish to imply that I hold lightly the salvation which Christianity offers to the individual. It is a goal and a prize worth striving for; but for some reason I have lost the sense of self, at least in these higher reaches of the soul.

When I “got religion,” to use a well-worn phrase, I did not want the isolation of a “chosen people,” even if, to be a Jew, had meant the plaudits of the world instead of its derision. I did not consider the security of my soul from the pains of Purgatory or the torments of Hell, promised by an infallible church. What I wanted and am fairly confident that I have obtained, was: a fellowship with a God whose chief attributes are social; who, when He revealed Himself to man, made the revelation through His Son, who came to save a world.

Out of all the many confusing interpretations of Christ’s teachings, this is clear to me: That He meant to bring together the alienated, to harmonize the discordant, to heal the ancient wounds caused by the mere struggle for self, and that into the world’s disorder He intended to bring a new order, which He called: The Kingdom of Heaven.

The most valuable possession which Christianity holds for me is this conviction: That the task is unfinished, that the conflict is still on and that it is my business to invest my life in such a way as to make true the dream of the Son of Man.