A Tramp's Sketches Part 20

"'Behold the eyes of yonder gambler; his soul is asphyxied with gold.

He pays that homage to the base gleam of a metal that I do to the light of the stars. He is an idolater.'

"In the centre of the city a terrible fear troubled my soul, for it realised that it alone in all this great city of souls preserved its conscience and its wakefulness. By the glare of men's eyes it understood how all were somnambulists. We walked among millions who walked in their sleep. And in their sleep they committed terrible crimes. They looked at me with eyes that saw not; at the bidding of strange dreams they went forward secretly.

"I beheld the thousand mockeries, and chief among them the mockery of our eternal mystery. Instead of the church that is the dome of heaven itself they had built churches of stone. And the people, urged by their dreams, congregated themselves in these churches and were ministered unto by false priests. And dreams of truth conflicted with nightmare enacted themselves. The churches fell out among themselves, and the people fought one another. False priests stood by irresolute, their soft, shapeless lips having been smoothed away by maxims and old words. And they stood in front of idols in a semblance of defence.

"I pushed many priests aside; I thrust my sword through many idols.

"'Come,' I said, 'your town is terrible. Let me away into my mountain again. You wish me to consider this world worthy of me; you offer me its small things in exchange for my great thing. You have not even small things to offer. Farewell!'

"'And what is your doctrine?' he said to me at parting. As if we had a doctrine!

"'For you,' I said, 'the worship of the explained; for us the remembrance of the inexplicable.'"

V. HIS CONVERSION

"'But your religion?' said the townsman. 'You spoke of your religion.

What do you mean by religion?'

"'Religion is to have charity: never to condemn, never to despair, never to believe that the finite can ever quite cover up the infinite, never to believe that anything is wholly explained, to see the inexplicable in all things, and to remember that words are idols and judgments are blasphemies. For words are the naming of things that are without name, and judgments are the limiting of the wonder of G.o.d.

And what we call G.o.d is the inexplicable, the indefinable, the great Unknown to whom in the midst of the idolatry of Athens an altar was once erected.'

"'As a child I learnt that G.o.d was He who made the world in six days,'

said the townsman. 'G.o.d was He who delivered unto Moses the ten commandments. Is not this the same which you profess?'

"'The same,' I answered. 'But you worship Him idolatrously. You limit the wonder of G.o.d by words. You limit G.o.d's fruitfulness to six days: and you say the world is finished and made. But for us the world is never finished; every spring is a new creation, every day G.o.d adds or takes away. And you limit G.o.d's laws to ten: you limit the Everlasting Wisdom to ten words. Words are your idols, the bricks out of which your idols and oracles are built. Listen, I will tell you what I have always found in towns. I have found words worshipped as something holy in themselves. Words were used to limit G.o.d, debase man. So is it in your town. Once man thought words; now words are beginning to think man. Once man conceived future progress; now your idol Progress is beginning to conceive future man. It is the same as with money; once man made money, but now in your idolatry money makes the man. Once man entered commerce that he might have more life; now he enters life that he may have more commerce. Of women, the very vessels and temples of human life, you have made clerks; of priestesses unto the Living G.o.d you have made vestals of the dead gold calf. You have insulted the dignity of man.'

"I waited, but the townsman was silent.

"'Is that not so?' I urged.

"'You have your point of view; we have ours. You have your religion and we ours,' said the townsman obstinately. 'And _you_ use words, do you not? You have your terminology; you have your idols, just as we have. If not, then how do you use your words?'

"Then I answered him: 'When I found myself upon the world I soon came under the sway of your words. Progress tempted me; commerce promised me happiness. I obeyed commandments and moral precepts, and eagerly swallowed rules of life. I prostrated myself before the great high public idols, I bowed to the little household G.o.ds, and cherished dearly your little proverb-idols and maxim-idols. The advice of Polonius to his son and such literature was to me the ancient wisdom.

I became an idolater, and my body a temple of idolatry.'

"'How then did you escape?' asked my companion.

"'In this wise,' I answered. 'In my temple, as in ancient Athens, in the midst of the idols was an altar to the Unknown G.o.d, which altar from the first was present. That altar was to the mystery and beauty of life.

"'By virtue of this altar I discovered my idolatry, and I recognised the forces of death to which I had bound myself. I broke away and escaped, and in place of all my idols I subst.i.tuted my aspiring human heart, and it beat like a sacred presence in the clear temple of my being.

"'Then words I degraded from their fame, and trampling them under my feet, I sang triumphantly to the limitless sky.'

"'But still you use words,' said the townsman, 'you irreconcilables.'

"'Yes. When we had degraded their fame and humbled them so that they came to us fawningly, asking to be used, we exalted them to be our servants. Now we are masters over them, and not they over us. They are content to be used, if but for a moment, and then forgotten for ever.

We use them to reproduce in other minds the thoughts that are in our own. Woe if they ever get out of hand and become our masters again!

They are our exchange metals. Woe if ever again we melt down those metals and recast them as idols!

"'Come with me into the country,' I urged; and the townsman, as if foreseeing release from the bondage of his soul, allowed my flowing life to float him away from the haunts of his idolatry. Then as we pa.s.sed from under the canopy of smoke and entered into the bright outside universe, I went on:

"'Words are become but a small part of our language. We converse in more ways and with more people than of yore. All nature speaks to us; mountain and sea, river and plain, valley and forest; and we reveal our hearts to them, our longing, our hope, our happiness. And yet never entirely reveal. Not with words only do we converse, but with pictures, with music, with scent, with ... but words cannot name the sacred nameless mediums. And man speaks to man without words; with his eyes, with his hands, with his love...."

"With that we walked some way together silently till at last the townsman put his arm in mine and said: 'In my temple also is an altar with an effaced inscription, methinks to the Ever-Living G.o.d. By your words you have revealed it to me. Let me accompany you into the beauty of the world, and interpret thou to me the mystery of its beauty.'

"As if I could interpret!

"'Behold,' I said, 'forest and mountain, the little copse and the gra.s.s under it, and delicate little flowers among the gra.s.s. List to the lark's song in the heavens, the wind soughing in the trees, the whispering of the leaves. In the air there is a mysterious incense spread from G.o.d's censers, the very language of mystery. Now you see far into the beauty of the world and hear tidings from afar. All the horizons of your senses have been extended. Are you not glad for all these impressions, these pictures and songs and perfumes? Every impression is a shrine, where you may kneel to G.o.d.'

"'It is a beautiful world,' said he.

"'It is beautiful in all its parts and beautiful every moment,' I replied. 'My soul constantly says "_Yes_" to it. Its beauty is the reminder of our immortal essence. The town is dangerous in that it has little beauty. It causes us to forget. It is exploring the illusion of trade, and its whole song is of trade. If you understand this, you have a criterion for Life--

"'_The sacred is that which reminds us; the secular is that which bids us forget_.

"'When you have impressions of sight, noise, and smell, and these impressions have no shrine where one may kneel to G.o.d, it is a sure sign that you have forgotten Him, that you are dwelling in the courts of idols.'

"'But it is painful to remember,' said my companion, 'and even now I have great pain. It is hard to leave the old, and painful to receive the new. My heart begins to ache for loneliness, and I long for the gaiety of the town and its diversions. I should like once more to drown my remembrances.'

"I bade him have courage, for he was in the pains of birth. The old never lets out the new without pain and struggle, but when the new is born it is infinitely worthy. And my new friend was comforted. We spent many days upon the road, looking at beauty, conversing with one another, worshipping and marvelling. Along the country paths flowers looked up, and beautiful suns looked out of strange skies. Often it seemed we had been together upon the same road a thousand years before. Was it a remembrance of the time before my entering into the coach? The flowers by the roadside tried to whisper a word of the answer to my question. It seemed that we were surrounded by mysteries just about to reveal themselves. Or, anon, it seemed as if we had missed our chance, as if an unseen procession had just filed by and we had not distinguished it.

"My friend was leaving behind all his idols. We sat upon a ridge together, and looked back upon the valley and the city which we had left. There was what my soul abhorred, and what I feared his soul might be too weak to face--the kaleidoscope of mean colours turning in the city, tickling our senses, striving to bind our souls and to mesmerise. Some colours would have drawn our tears, some would have persuaded smiles over our lips. Combinations of colours, groupings, subtle movements and shapings sought to interest and absorb our intellects.

"'Behold,' said I. 'In the city which calls itself the world, the townsmen are casting up dice! Is it possible we shall be stricken with woe, or immensely uplifted in joy because of the falling of a die? Oh world too sordid to be opposed to us! Oh world too poor to be used by us! Is not the world's place under our feet, for it is of earth and we of spirit?'

"But my friend was not with me. He wavered as if intoxicated, and wished to return to the city. 'Oh glorious world,' said he, and sighed himself towards the gates we had left.

"Then seeing the brightness of my face, which just then reflected a great brightness in the sky, and remembering that his pain was only a bridge into the new, he gained possession of himself and turned his eyes away from the town.

"'More than my old self and its weak flesh do I value the new young life that is to be,' said he. 'Though I am a man and a creature of pleasure, I am become as a woman that bears children. For the time is coming when I shall give birth to one younger than myself, later than myself....'

"'Your old self will reappear more beautiful, new-souled, transfigured,' I replied.

"Then my companion looked at me with eyes that were full both of yearning and of pain, and he said, 'Though I would fain stay with you, yet must I go apart. For I have one battle yet to fight, and that I can only fight alone. Farewell, dear friend, husband of the woman that is in me!'

"Then said I farewell and we embraced and parted, for I saw that it was meet for him to commune alone with G.o.d and gain strength to win his victory.

"The town lay in the west; he went into the north and I into the east.

Once more I was alone."

"Come, let us devise new means of happiness," said my companion. "Let us wander up-stream to the silent cradle of the river. For all day long I hear the river calling my name."

And we journeyed a three days' tramp into the mountains, following the silver river upward and upward to the pure fountain of its birth. And on the way, moved by the glow of intercourse, I told my companion the story of Zen.o.bia, and also that of the old pilgrim whom I met at New Athos. It was strange to us that the peasants in the country should live and die so much more worthily than the educated folk who live in the towns. G.o.d made the country, man made the town, and the devil made the country town, was not for us an idle plat.i.tude but a burning fact, though we agreed that man was often a much more evil creator than the devil, and that the great capitals of Europe and America were the worst places for Man's heavenly spirit that Time had ever known.

Imagine our three days' journeying, the joy of the lonely one who has found a companion, the sharing of happiness that is doubling it; the beauty to live in, the little daintinesses and prettinesses of Nature to point out; the morning, sun-decked and dewy, the wide happiness of noon, the shadows of the great rocks where we rested, and the flash of the green and silver river tumbling outside in the sunshine; quiescent evening and the old age of the day, sunset and the remembrance of the day's glory, the pathos of looking back to the golden morning.

The first night we made our bed where the plover has her nest, in a gra.s.sy hollow on the shelf of a mountain.