Such Is Life Part 21

Chastened by contemplation of levelling mortality, awed into truth by the spectacle of a whole world made kin by that icy touch of nature, the belated soul seeks refuge in a final justice which excludes from natural heirship to the external home not one of earth's weary myriads.

Your conception of heavenly justice is found in the concession of equal spiritual birthright, based on the broad charter of common humanity, and forfeitable only by individual worthlessness or deliberate refusal.

Why is your idea of earthly justice so widely different--since the principle of justice must be absolute and immutable? Yet while the Church teaches you to pray, "Thy will be done on earth, as it is done in heaven,"

she tacitly countenances widening disparity in condition, and openly sanctions that fearful abuse which dooms the poor man's unborn children to the mundane perdition of poverty's thousand penalties. Is G.o.d's will so done in heaven?

While the Church teaches you to pray, "Thy Kingdom come," she strikes with mercenary venom at the first principle of that kingdom, namely, elementary equality in citizen privilege. Better silence than falsehood; better no religion at all--if such lack be possible--than one which concedes equal rights beyond the grave, and denies them here.

I wish you to face the truth frankly (continued the pipe), for, heaven knows, it faces you frankly enough. Ecclesiastical Christianity vies with the effete Judaism of olden time as a failure of the first magnitude.

Pa.s.sing over what was purely local and contemporaneous, there is not one count in the long impeachment of that doomed Eastern city but may be repeated, with sickening exact.i.tude, and added emphasis, over any pseudo-Christian community now festering on earth. Chorasin and Bethsaida have no lack of ant.i.types amongst you. Again has man overruled his Creator's design.

The mustard seed has become a great tree, but the unclean fowls lodge in its branches. The symbol of deepest ignominy has become the proudest insignia of Court--moths and professional a.s.sa.s.sins, but it is no longer the cross of Christ. Eighteen-and-a-half centuries of purblind groping for the Kingdom of G.o.d finds an idealised Messiah shrined in the modern Pantheon, and yourselves "a chosen generation," leprous with the sin of usury; "a royal priesthood," paralysed with the cant of hireling clergy; "a holy nation," rotten with the luxury of wealth, or embittered by the sting of poverty; "a peculiar people," deformed to Lucifer's own pleasure by the curse of caste; while, in this pandemonium of Individualism, the weak, the diffident, the scrupulous, and the afflicted, are thrust aside or trampled down.

And whilst the world's most urgent need is a mission of sternest counsel and warning, from the oppressed to the oppressor, I witness the unspeakable insolence of a Gospel of Thrift, preached by order of the rich man to Lazarus at his gate--a deliberate laying on the shoulders of Lazarus a burden grievous to be borne, a burden which Dives (or Davis, or Smith, or Johnson; anything--anything--but Christ's brutal "rich man") hungry for the promised penalty, will not touch with one of his fingers. The Church quibbles well, and palters well, and, in her own pusillanimous way, means well, by her silky loyalty to the law and the profits, and by her steady hostility to some unresisting personification known as the Common Enemy.

But because of that pernicious loyalty, she has reason to complain that the working man is too rational to imbibe her teachings on the blessedness of slavery and starvation. Meanwhile, as no magnanimous sinner can live down to the pseudo-Christian standard, unprogressive Agnosticism takes the place of demoralised belief, and the Kingdom of G.o.d fades into a myth.

Yet there is nothing Utopian (pleaded the pipe) in the charter of that kingdom--in the sunshiny Sermon on the Mount. It is no fanciful conception of an intangible order of things, but a practical, workable code of daily life, adapted to any stage of civilisation, and delivered to men and women who, even according to the showing of hopeless pessimists, or strenuous advocates for Individualistic force and cunning, were in all respects like ourselves-- delivered, moreover, by One who knew exactly the potentialities and aspirations of man. And, in the unerring harmony of the Original Idea, the outcome of that inimitable teaching is merely the consummation of prophetic forecast in earlier ages. First, the slenderest crescent, seen by eyes that diligently searched the sky; then, a broader crescent; a hemisphere; at last, a perfect sphere, discovered by the Nazarene Artisan, and by him made plain to all who wish to see. But from the dawn of the ages that orb was there, waiting for recognition, waiting with the awful, tireless, all-conquering patience for which no better name has been found than the Will of G.o.d.

History marks a point of time when first the Humanity of G.o.d touched the divine aspiration in man, fulfilling, under the skies of Palestine, the dim, yet infallible instinct of every race from eastern Mongol to western Aztec. "The Soul, naturally Christian," responds to this touch, even though blindly and erratically, and so from generation to generation the mult.i.tudes stand waiting to welcome the Gospel of Humanity with palms and hosannas, as of old; while from generation to generation phylactered exclusiveness takes counsel against the revolution which is to make all things new. And shall this opposition--the opposition by slander, conspiracy, bribery, and force--prevail till the fatal line is once more pa.s.sed, and you await the t.i.tus sword to drown your land in blood, and the Hadrian-plough to furrow your Temple-site?

I think not (added the pipe, after a pause). I think not. For a revolt undreamt of by your forefathers is in progress now--a revolt of enlightenment against ignorance; of justice and reason against the domination of the manifestly unworthy. The world's brightest intellects are answering one by one to the roll-call of the New Order, and falling into line on the side championed by every prophet, from Moses to the "agitator"

that died o' Wednesday. Inconceivably long and cruel has the bondage been, hideous beyond measure the degradation of the disinherited; but I think the cycle of soul-slaying loyalty to error draws near its close; for the whole armoury of the Father of Lies can furnish no shield to turn aside the point of the tireless and terrible PEN--that Ithuriel-spear which, in these latter days, scornfully touches the mail-clad demon of Privilege, and discloses a swelling frog.

Contemporaneous literature (continued the pipe thoughtfully) is our surest register of advance or retrogression; and, with few exceptions indeed, the prevailing and conspicuous element in all publications of more than a century ago is a tacit acceptance of irresponsible lordship and abject inferiority as Divine ordinances. Brutal indifference, utter contempt, or more insulting condescension, toward the rank and file, was an article of the fine old English gentleman's religion-- "a point of our faith," as the pious Sir Thomas Browne seriously puts it-- the complementary part being a loathsome servility toward n.o.bility and royalty.

In that era, the most amiable of English poets felt constrained to weave into his exquisite Elegy an undulating thread of modest apology for bringing under notice the short and simple annals of the Vaisya caste. Later, Cowper thought poverty, humility, industry, and piety a beautiful combination for the wearer of the smock frock. Even Crabbe blindly accepted the sanctified lie of social inequality. And this a.s.sumption was religiously acquiesced in by the lower animal himself--who doubtless glorified G.o.d for the distinctly unsearchable wisdom and loving-kindness manifested in those workhouse regulations which separated his own toil-worn age from the equal feebleness of the wife whose human rights he should have died fighting for when he was young. And, as might be expected, this strictly gentlemanly principle looms larger in your forefathers' prose than in their poetry. At last, Burns and Paine flashed their own strong, healthy personalities on the community, marking an epoch; and from that day to this, the Apology of Humanity acquires ever-increasing momentum, and ever-widening scope. Now, if social-economic conditions fail to keep abreast with the impetuous, uncontrollable advance of popular intelligence, the time must come when, with one tiger-spring, the latter shall a.s.sail the former; and the scene of this unpleasantness (concluded the infatuated pipe) is called in the Hebrew tongue, Armageddon.

The swagman approached, plodding steadily along, with his billy in one hand and his water-bag in the other; on his shoulder, horse-shoe fashion, his forty years' gathering; and in his patient face his forty years' history, clearly legible to me by reason of a gift which I happily possess.

I was roused from my reverie by some one saying:

"How fares our cousin Hamlet? Come and have a drink of tea, and beggar the expense."

"Good day," responded Hamlet, still pursuing his journey.

"Come on! come on! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"

"Eh?" And he stopped, and faced about.

"Come and have a feed!" I shouted.

"I'll do that ready enough," said he, laying his fardel down in the shade, and seating himself on it with a satisfied sigh.

I rooted my damper out of its matrix, flogged the ashes off it with a saddle-cloth, and placed it before my guest, together with a large wedge of leathery cheese, a sheath-knife, and the quart pot and pannikin.

"Eat, and good dich thy good heart, Apemantus," said I cordially. Then, resuming my seat, I took leisure to observe him. He was an everyday sight, but one which never loses its interest to me--the bent and haggard wreck of what should have been a fine soldierly man; the honest face sunken and furrowed; the neglected hair and matted beard thickly strewn with grey.

His eyes revealed another victim to the scourge of ophthalmia. This malady, by the way, must not be confounded with sandy blight. The latter is acute; the former, chronic.

"Coming from Moama?" I conjectured, at length.

"Well, to tell you the truth, I ain't had anything since yesterday afternoon.

Course, you of'en go short when you're travellin'; but I'm a man that don't like to be makin' a song about it."

"Would n't you stand a better show for work on the other side of the river?"

"Eh?"

"Is n't the Vic. side the best for work?" I shouted.

"Yes; takin' it generally. But there's a new saw-mill startin' on this side, seven or eight mile up from here; an' I know the two fellers that owns it-- two brothers, the name o' H----. Fact, I got my eyes cooked workin'

at a thresher for them. I'm not frightened but what I'll git work at the mill.

Fine, off-handed, reasonable fellers."

"Would n't it suit you better to look out for some steady work on a farm?"

"Very carm. Sort o' carm heat. I think there's a thunderstorm hangin' about.

We'll have rain before this moon goes out for a certainty. She come in on her back--I dunno whether you noticed?"

"I did n't notice. Don't you find this kind of weather making your eyes worse?"

"My word, you're right. Not much chance of a man makin' a rise the way things is now. Dunno what the country's comin' to. I don't blame people for not givin' work when they got no work to give, but they might be civil"

he paused, and went on with his repast in silence for a minute.

It required no great prescience to read his thought. Man must be subject to sale by auction, or be a wearer of Imperial uniform, before the susceptibility to insult perishes in his soul. "I been carryin' a swag close on twenty year," he resumed; "but I never got sich a divil of a blaggardin' as I got this mornin'. Course, I'm wrong to swear about it, but that's a thing I ain't in the habit o' doin'. It was at a place eight or ten mile down the river, on the Vic. side. I wasn't cadging, nyther.

I jist merely ast for work--not havin' heard about the H----s till after-- an' I thought the bloke was goin' to jump down my throat. I didn't ketch the most o' what he said, but I foun' him givin' me rats for campin' about as fur off of his place as from here to the other side o' the river; an' a lagoon betwixt; an' not a particle o' gra.s.s for the fire to run on.

Fact, I'm a man that's careful about fire. Mind you, I did set fire to a bit of a dead log on the reserve, but a man has to get a whiff o' smoke these nights, on account o' the muskeeters; an' there was no more danger nor there is with this fire o' yours. Called me everything but a gentleman."

"Possess your soul in patience. You have no remedy and no appeal till we gather at the river."

"O, I was in luck there. Jist after I heard about this saw-mill--bein' then on the Vic. side--I foun' a couple o' swells goin' to a picnic in a boat; an' I told them I wanted to git across, an' they carted me over, an' no compliment. Difference in people."

"I know the H----s," I shouted. "When did you hear about them starting this saw-mill?"

"O! this forenoon. I must ast you to speak loud. I got the misfortune to be a bit hard o' hearin'. Most people notices it on me, but I was thinkin'

p'r'aps you did n't remark it. It come through a cold I got in the head, about six year ago, spud-diggin' among the Bungaree savages."

"I'm sorry for you."

"Well, it was this way. After the feller hunted me off of his place this mornin', who should I meet but a young chap an' his girl, goin' to this picnic, with a white horse in the buggy. Now, that's one o' these civil, good-hearted sort o' chaps you'll sometimes git among the farmers. Name o' Archie M----. I dunno whether you might n't know him; he's superintender o' the E---- Sunday School. Fact, I'd bin roun'

with the H----'s thresher at his ole man's place four years runnin'; so when he seen me this mornin', it was, 'h.e.l.lo, Andy!--lookin' for work?'

An' the next word was, 'Well, I'm sorry we ain't got no work for you'-- or words to that effect--'but,' says he, 'there's the H----s startin'

a saw-mill fifteen or twenty mile up the river, on the other side.

They won't see you beat,' says he, 'but if you don't git on with them,'

says he, 'come straight back to our place, an' we'll see about something,'

says he. So I'm makin' my way to the saw-mill."

"Well, I hope you'll get on there, mate."

"You're right. It's half the battle. Wust of it is, you can't stick to a mate when you got him. I was workin' mates with a raw new-chum feller las' winter, ringin' on the Yanko. Grand feller he was--name o' Tom--but, as it happened, we was workin' sub-contract for a feller name o' Joe Collins, an' we was on for savin', so we on'y drawed tucker-money; an' beggar me if this Joe Collins did n't git paid up on the sly, an' travelled.

So we fell in. Can't be too careful when you're workin' for a workin' man.

But I would n't like to be in Mr. Joe Collins's boots when Tom ketches him.

Scotch chap, Tom is. Well, after bin had like this, we went out on the Lachlan, clean fly-blowed; an' Tom got a job boundary ridin', through another feller goin' to Mount Brown diggin's; an' there was no work for me, so we had to shake hands. I'd part my last sprat to that feller."

"I believe you would. But I'm thinking of Joe Collins. To a student of nominology, this is a most unhappy combination. Joseph denotes sneaking hypocrisy, whilst Collins is a guarantee of probity. Fancy the Broad Arrow and the Cross of the Legion of Honour woven into a monogram!"

"Rakin' style o' dog you got there. I dunno when I seen the like of him.