RELIGIOUS AUSTERITY.

It is quite deplorable to see how many rational creatures (or, at least, who are thought so) mistake suffering for sanctity, and think a sad face and a gloomy habit of mind, propitious offerings to that deity, whose works are all light, and lustre, and harmony, and loveliness.

I have just had a visit from a pair of papistical pietists, in such a state of attenuation, that they look as if they had escaped from a besieged town after a month’s famine. They had been keeping black lent (a fast, I believe, now peculiar to Ireland) which it would be difficult to persuade a Roman cardinal to observe. I began to quote Swift’s well known stanza—

This was an impertinent interference; and they answered me very sensibly, by alleging that a special providence is a dogma in all religions; and that, at all events, they were bound to obey their church, or leave it! They had made their election. As they took their leave, Mrs. —— came in from early service, with her prayer book in her hand, and all the anathemas of exclusive perfection in her sour face. Mrs. —— is a high-church-evangelical protestant-ascendancy lady—once well known in the caste of Dublin gaiety, though now no less distinguished in the album sanctorum of “the serious.” What a look she cast on my poor little papists, as they passed her! Excommunication by bell, book, and candle-light, and death without benefit of clergy, in every scowling lineament.

“I did not know these little bigots visited you,” said the good Mrs. ——; “you are such a notorious heretic, to say the least.”

“O! I assure you the Catholic saints are much more tolerant than you Protestant saints. My attacks on Catholicism, as I found it restored in Italy by the holy alliance, have not lost me a single Catholic friend in Ireland.”

“Because, after all, the papists don’t care for their religion as a religion. Theirs is a church without a religion, you know.”

“I don’t answer for their zeal,” (I said carelessly, for I hate religious discussions) “but I do for their sincerity, which the appearance of those poor girls attests; they are worn to shadows by this hard lent: they do not even eat eggs or butter.”

“What absurdity!” said my petulant and well-fed evangelical; “I have no patience with it.”

“But you rigid protestants fast sometimes, when your church bids you?”

“Oh! that is a different thing.”

“No further different, than that you fast only to draw down divine vengeance on your political enemies, while they mortify their bodies for the sake of their own souls. How Buonaparte’s victories must have raised the price of salt fish! Do you remember what a number of general fasts we had during the war? I have often thought that we owed our success at Waterloo as much to dried ling, as to Wellington.”

“Oh! Lady M——! how can you joke on such solemn subjects?”

“Joke! why, if we are ordered to eat fish for the purpose of abating the pride and assuaging the malice of our enemies, there must, I suppose, be some efficacy in cockle sauce, and oyster pâtés—or why is meat proscribed?”

“The intention of fasts is mortification, and we should abstain on such occasions from everything that administers to our appetites.”

“Then you come back to the black fasts of my poor half starved little friends, which you deem an absurdity.”

“But these Catholics,” said Mrs. —— with true lady’s logic, “abstain from no pleasure that comes in their way, even on Sundays. I hear they attend your Sunday evening parties.”

“I give no Sunday evening parties, my dear Mrs. ——; but when the duties of the day are over, and every one has been at mass, church, or meeting, as opinion may lead them, I surround myself with the members of my own dear family; and if some kind and intimate friend drop in to enjoy a pleasant, rational conversation, he is sure of a place at my cheerful hearth amongst its affectionate habitués.”

“But the sabbath is appointed to be kept holy.”

“And is it not to keep the sabbath holy, to cultivate the kindliest affections, and to encourage those genial sensations which lead us to live in peace with all mankind? He, whose first divine manifestation was at a wedding feast, and whose last was at the supper of the disciples he loved, has left us this, not more as a precept than a command.”

“Aye, but what are your poor servants doing below stairs?”

“Precisely what their masters are doing above—enjoying innocently, and soberly, round a good fire, the rest which the sabbath brings with it—reaping the fruits of their industry in the comforts it provides them, and neither driven to a sectarian meeting nor a public house, to pass their Sunday evenings in making bile or drinking whisky.”

My saint sneered, and shook her head.

“I will not argue with you, Lady M——, but I will tell you what the world says;” and so having proved to me that I was considered by all the “really religious” people of Dublin as no better than one of the wicked, she made her exit, with a new accession of gall circulating through her system, and more than ever convinced, that to be happy is to be wicked!

It is strange that man, who suffers so severely from the violence of the elements, “who hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery,” should go so far out of his way to multiply uneasy sensations, and should so often dash aside the enjoyment which reason sanctifies, to court the privation which nature rejects. In strong defiance of animal instinct, there has existed, at all times, a marked disposition to make a merit of self-denial and mortification, and to consider it a virtue to outrage those senses, and sadden that imagination, which were bestowed on man by the Deity, for the promotion of his happiness.

This absurd and cruel fanaticism has succeeded in masking itself alike beneath the cowl of religion, and the mantle of philosophy; and it has allied itself, with equal plausibility, to the pride of the stoic, and to the humility of the saint. After all that we talk of the march of mind, the world has made but little progress in moral philosophy. In all ages it has been “par les mêmes propos le même jargon;” and it is curious to find, in Lucian’s treatise on dancing, (which is a defence of theatrical exhibitions against some sour-craut Prynne of the Porch,) precisely the same war between pleasure and pride, between nature and opinion, as is at this day waged in the conventicles of the sectarian zealots.

That the same practical errors, which proceeded from the self-abasement of the ascetics in the desert, should have flowed also from the stoic’s lofty conceptions of human nature, is, however, more startling than unnatural. The fanaticism of honour and virtue is not less fanaticism, than that of religion; it is not less exaggeration and irrationality. In both alike, temperament is more influential than argument, feeling more concerned than opinion; and both are alike founded on ignorance of the real nature of man, his organization, and his destiny.

In the earlier epochs of civilization, when the aspect of nature is rude and forbidding, and when social intercourse is replete with jealousies and dissensions, the conservative principle of life—aroused by the rough excitement to a proportionate resistance—arms itself with a corresponding insensibility to the attacks of externals. Wherever suffering habitually outweighs enjoyment, an effeminate susceptibility to trifling sensations is destroyed by the frequency of heavier miseries: and necessity develops in the mind a conscious superiority to fortune, founded on the pride of opposition, and on an intimate conviction of its own energies. The incessant warfare of savage life renders the contempt of pain and death an indispensable virtue; and by a sophistry familiar under all circumstances, the animal forms for himself a system of notions, which strengthens him in the disposition congenial to the position of the moment. The philosophy of savages is stern, as their religion is gloomy: and education and example are both brought to bear upon this desired case-hardening of the soul. The qualities which school-boys are taught to admire in the heroes of Roman story, exist in greater intensity among the red tribes of North America, than in the descendants of the wolf-suckled Romulus.

In the history of a campaign in Canada, mention is made of a tribe, called The Devoted, whose ultra-stoical notions would gain credit for the story of a Scævola or a Regulus. One of this tribe, to prove to the British officers his contempt for pain, cut a large piece from his own flesh, and flung it to the dogs. Yet these men were in the lowest condition of barbarism and social rudeness.

The external circumstances, which, by opposing man to natural evils, elevate and exalt his character, produce a very contrary effect, when they act through his misconceptions of their mysterious causes. Of physical evil the senses can judge with precision; and the individual, measuring his sufferings by his powers of resistance, acquires courage through the conviction of internal strength. But between man, and the intangible and inscrutable agents with which fear and ignorance people the universe, to “ride the whirlwind and direct the storm,” there is no measurement, no comparison. An intimate feeling of feebleness debases and degrades him; and there is nothing so absurd and revolting that he will not attempt, in the anguish of his despair, to appease the phantom with which he cannot contend. Confidence in the wisdom and benevolence of the Godhead is the slow growth of developed civilization, and habitual security and ease. The divinities of barbarians are ever cruel, vindictive, and capricious; and sanguinary and painful expiations, both personal and vicarious, are adopted, to purchase from heaven a reluctant abandonment of its threatened severity.⁠[1] The religion of savages, under whatever specious names it is covered, has ever been essentially and practically a pure diabolism. The Scandinavians alone have been able to ally the belief in powerful and malignant deities, with the courage to oppose their wrath, by an heroic daring in acting and in suffering, boundless as the power with which it ventured to dispute.

With an improvement in the destinies of the species, a change occurs both in the philosophical and the religious sentiments of nations. Upon the immense influx of wealth into Rome, which followed the conquest of Greece and Asia, vast amelioration ensued in the social condition of the people. The usurpation of Augustus was followed by a long period of peace; and the sterner virtues became unfashionable, because they were no longer compatible with external circumstances. A sudden revulsion took place in popular feeling; and the Epicurean philosophy alone found favour in the eyes of those who had the means and the leisure for enjoyment. “Thessalian portents” ceased to alarm; the Augur laughed openly in the face of his brother impostor; and the clumsy state deities gave place, in the private creed of nobler spirits, to a speculative theism; while the corrupt and the vicious (misunderstanding the language of Epicurus) were, upon system, what the vicious and corrupt have been, and ever will be, “upon instinct.”⁠[2]⁠

This connexion of cause and effect triumphs even over the permanence of dogma: and a practical relaxation of morose and austere discipline has uniformly attended the improvement of the social condition, even under the prevalence of the most rigorous creeds. Christianity, emerging from the deserts of the Thebaid, to take its place on the thrones of emperors, was no more the same austere and forbidding rule, than it was the simple Spencean democracy of its first Essenian proselytes; and the sturdy Calvinist of the north, in our own times, is a “boon companion” and a “good fellow,” in comparison with his fanatical ancestors of the third generation.

The susceptibility of individuals to these external causes is, however, exceedingly various. In the most relaxed, and even corrupt, periods of moral sentiment and religious indifference, there have always been found persons, whose organization of mind has alone been satisfied by an indulgence of the most gloomy views of Nature and Providence. Fanaticism is very frequently a constitutional disease. An unknown and undefined, but a very sensible impediment in the play of the more intimate functions of life, deprives the individual of that “pleased alacrity and cheer of mind” which renders the bare state of existence delightful. There is a general insusceptibility to the minor pleasures of sense; and the imagination is less excited by the innocent and amiable enjoyments of life. A mind thus constituted, ill at ease within itself, looks out on the world for objects congenial with its own feelings. Fear and disgust are its predominating sentiments; and while it fabricates its deity in its own image, it is pained by the aspect of enjoyments in which it cannot participate. The hopes of another world can alone compensate for the miseries such beings inflict on themselves in this: and while their speculative diabolism finds its account in self-tormenting, their misanthropy is indulged by imposing a similar austerity of manners, under the notion of strictness in religion, upon those who are more happily framed by nature for cheerfulness and enjoyment.

In England and Germany the prevalent disposition in religion is to gloom and mysticism; while no effort can inoculate the French with a deep sentiment on the subject. The Irish differ, also, materially from the English in this respect. Notwithstanding the strong influence of political degradation, and the example of rigour exhibited by the prevailing methodism of the Saxon population, the Irish catholics are, for the most part, devoid of austerity of temper, though not always indisposed to needless self-denial; and this circumstance doubtless contributes to render the people more catholic, and to indispose them for the reception of the gloomy, abstract idealism of the “new reformation.”

Temperament operates widely and decidedly in preventing an uniform sentiment respecting the boundary between innocent and vicious indulgence; and if that point were susceptible of a precise determination, the naturally morose would still continue to make inroads upon the liberty of their gayer compatriots, for no other reason than because it is their will and pleasure to do so. The most rigorous sectarians, indeed, are not consistent on this point, but are prone to relaxation in behalf of their own favourite indulgences. Those among them who are for “tenderness framed,” have a patient indulgence for weaknesses, which are almost redeemed by the orthodoxy of their object; and all excesses in the pleasures of the table, short of shameless inebriety, are permitted to the elect: while the uncharitableness preached in the pulpit does not the less find its way to the tea-table, and calumny and invective against all uncongenial offences, are doled out under the guise of zeal for uniformity of doctrine.

In England, the theoretical morality of the saints is so far above concert pitch, that humanity cannot sustain it in practice: and the result is, despair of acting up to duty, a consequent indifference to slight aberrations, and a proneness to take refuge in the pre-eminence of faith and the worthlessness and nothingness of all works.

An undue severity of life is much encouraged by the doctrine, that the intellectual pleasures are alone conducive to happiness, and that reason and religion alike require the submission and mortification of the senses. The intellectual pleasures do not lie sufficiently within the reach of all mankind, to render them a common object of ambition and cultivation; and it is not fair in the educated and refined to draw conclusions from their own conceptions, applicable to those of their fellow-creatures who are less fortunately situated. To the mere labouring classes, and to many who fill a higher part in the drama of society, the pleasures of sense are the great resources against ennui; and even the most fanciful sentimentalists, in enhancing the value of intellectual delights, always understand (as the grammarians phrase it) an abundant table, warm clothing, and comfortable dwellings, which form no inconsiderable part of those pleasures of sense, which they who preach take care to enjoy.

However low mere sensations may rank in the scale of enjoyment, they are important from their frequent recurrence, and it is only in a certain sense that the rigorist despises them. The anchorite, who feeds on roots and water, stipulates that the former should be well boiled, and the latter pure; and few are prepared to imitate the monkish fanaticism of mingling objects of disgust with their food, to mortify the senses. The great error, then, in comparing the intellectual and the sensitive pleasures, is the setting the use of the former against the abuse of the latter. The true sensualist, or Epicurean, is as averse from excess as the stoic; for he knows that excess is incompatible with health and with happiness. The senses are the creation of the same power as the intellect, and they are subservient to ends no less important in the human economy. To forbid their exercise and enjoyment, is to oppose the will and intention of Him, who made not man in his own image for the sole purpose of suffering and privation.

An old Irish woman, walking with her naked feet over some flinty stones instead of the green-sward, which offered itself to her acceptance, was asked why she chose this painful path. She replied, “Och! sure, I’d do more than that for sweet Jasus!” The world is full of such old women.