A Thousand Years Hence/Chapter 1
A THOUSAND YEARS HENCE.
As I always say, at our present pace of progress, what will things come to a thousand years hence?—Author, passim.
Having to describe, in these pages, a variety of persons and circumstances, connected with myself or my belongings and surroundings, immediate or otherwise, what so natural and fitting as that I should, first of all, treat
"Business first." That is my motto, and my wife and I are entirely at one there. We agree in a good deal more, I am happy to say. If we don't agree just in everything, that is hardly to be expected even of the best of wives. But, taken altogether, we are a happy family, with a happy home. "Home, sweet home," say I, "there's no place like home."
Here, then, is simply the little bit of ground upon which my wife and I do not exactly pull together. Giving, as I do, all due precedence to business, yet, business over and done with for its time, the mind, as I hold, may betake itself to other, nay, call them even higher things. Thus I have a decided turn for statistics and certain departments of science, the marvels of astronomy in particular. But my wife has not, and makes no secret of her impatience with that sort of thing. "My stars! Nunnie," she will say—my Christian name, by the way, is Nunsowe, after my maternal relations—"leave those other stars to their own courses, and stick you to business; you do best at that." Yes, I flatter myself that I do pretty fairly at business, and in that opinion we are also agreed.
But neither wife nor business are to drive me out of science, and I shall have a deal to say on that high score ere we reach my last chapter. If one friend does not appreciate, another does. Thus an influential customer at our shop got me proposed and passed as a member of the Statistical and Astronomical Societies. My wife growled at first at the heavy subscription money. But presently the letters I could put at the end of my name began to take her fancy; and when, at one of the soirees, a live knight actually helped her to coffee, while she occupied a sofa just vacated by, and still warm from, a real countess, I heard no more objections, even upon the money question.
We are both, as I trust and believe, good Church people. She is somewhat High, at any rate as compared with her husband. She regards him, and perhaps, in a comparative sense, truly enough, as Low and Broad, neither quality very savoury to her mind, especially the first, which she always associates with conventicle and nonconformity outbreak, radicalism, and that general upsetting of the "lower orders" of society, which, as she affirms, is now turning everything in Church and State topsy-turvy. Even the late mitigation in Court dress was not at all to her mind. In these times she would surrender nothing to the enemy.
Her temper was sadly ruffled lately in one of those modern upsetting ways. Having helped to start a servants' home in our district, she was elected on the first committee, and was no little gratified by the distinction. But she was so strict with the inmates, ever reminding them of their proper sphere, and the due recognition of their "betters," that at last a mutiny broke out all over the establishment, and was only with difficulty suppressed. And how could it have been suppressed at all, amongst such naturally perverse people, my wife maintained, but for all her disciplinary care in the first instance! And yet at the next election she was dropped out of the committee, her name being at the bottom of the poll. After that, never speak to my wife of the merits of free elective institutions!
White was an old retired coasting skipper, settled down for his life's short remnant in our part of great London, and with whom, in his business day, I had done many a good stroke in freights, or frights, as he always pronounced the word. He was a hearty old cock, always ready for a yarn, and with a romantic turn about travel by land and sea which I greatly enjoyed. He and I used often to forecast the future of travel, and wonder what travelling might come to, say a thousand years hence. White would assert, in his vehement way, and with a slam of our table that would send the tobacco-pipe out of his mouth, that he should not wonder if our descendants got outside the world altogether, and voyaged far and away upon the ether ocean.
Brown, again, was even a still older friend, a near neighbour, and a brother trader in the same line as myself, although happily sufficiently "round the corner" to save mutual business interference. One of his sons being in a stockbroker's office, we were often amused by accounts of the bulling and bearing that went on in the Stock Exchange, and both of us were curious as to how fortunes were made there. But, as fortunes were also lost, we never risked our money. Our two families had been long intimate; and if there has been anything in my wife's late mysteriously significant looks and hints, as regards our eldest girl and another son of Brown's, the said families are, some day soon, to be more intimate still.
Brown and I agreed in most things to a very hair's-breadth. If not very much ever came out of Brown, the amount that went into him was something marvellous. He was the most exemplary listener within all the range of my acquaintance, and I was bound to reward him abundantly in that way. On our half-holiday Saturday excursions, we used to seek out some suburban solitude, by way of change from busy and noisy London, and there I would pour into Brown's ready ear all my ideas about things in general, and our future progress in particular. We remarked how each successive year we had to go further and further out upon the suburban lines to secure this luxury of solitude. Some day London will have overspread the whole country, and some day all the rest of the world will be equally filled. After that where was the increase to find even footroom? How would it be a thousand years hence? We should be filling up the seas, and excavating second and third surfaces beneath our feet.
Lastly, comes myself, in this trio of intimates with White and Brown. My own name is Green, Nunsowe Green, in the cheesemongering and provisioning line, wholesale and retail, and in a business way always at the reader's service.
The estabhshment of "The Shoreditch and Spitalfields Universal Discussion Society" formed quite an era in our locality, and gained me fresh intimacies which I must presently describe, as those, as well as the others already dealt with, have much to do with my present story. That event is now of some little time ago, and our society has attained, in the interval, no small local fame and usefulness amongst us. We discuss freely all questions. But as my particular bent is the future, I turn the tide in that direction on every opportunity; and many a paper I have read, on the question of what our progress, at the present pace, is to do for us. What will things come to a thousand years on? May I be there to see.
Having been myself a leading promoter of the society, and in consequence elected to the first vice-presidency, I was brought in contact with some few others, who have since become also my intimates. I must now introduce these friends to the reader, in connection with the different questions of discussion which they respectively took up and made specially their own.
Black was a superannuated laboratory assistant to a chemical professor; and as electricity and the spectroscope had suddenly flared out upon science just prior to his retirement, and much aroused his curiosity, he had become, in his old age, quite an enthusiast in these questions, electricity in particular. He had pretty well the whole argument to himself amongst us, and was therefore very bold and free in his views. When I had listened for ten minutes to Black, I was ready to unload again for hours upon Brown. Of course we made Black our president, an honour he has ever since maintained.
Yellowly was a skilled artisan, a sensible and thoughtful fellow in his way, an ardent unionist, and zealous in other ways for the influence and well-being of his class. He was our great authority on the future of the working classes, and of society and government in general.
Reed was a merchant of our neighbourhood, a superior sort of man, of good education, and latterly very successful in his business. But although all this and more, he always stuck to his old friends, and continued his leading part in the society's discussions. If somewhat Broad, he was yet, like my wife and self, a good Churchman. This double quality of his—the bad Broad with the good Church, as my wife put it—might have quite neutralized her regards in that direction, were it not for Reed's good social position, which made her always very proud of his and his family's acquaintance. Besides, Reed was a zealous and very successful Sunday-school teacher, and in such high repute in the parish for his method of teaching, that it deserves here a passing notice.
His method was this, that in reading Scripture with his class, he always did it dramatically; that is to say, as though the various parties in the narrative were actually addressing us. The reading in any case was always as though spoken, instead of the monotonous drone of ordinary reading. The boys and girls were each in turn assigned their part, and they were exhorted respectively to perfect themselves so as to deliver their parts naturally and fluently and without the book. The consequence was an intense emulation in all the class, and a fresh interest in the Bible narratives under this natural treatment. Our friend's Sunday evening Scripture readings became quite famous in the district; and his juvenile troupe of actors and actresses, as he purposely called them, would give off the story of Joseph and his brethren, of Ruth, of Esther, and many others, with an effect that sent a thrill through the large audience that at times witnessed the performance.
I have said that Reed purposely called the young pupils his acting troupe. He was wont to deplore the neglect amongst us of the lifelike dramatic method, alike in instruction, recreation, and mere amusement, and the disrepute and injurious and absurd prejudice attaching to everything theatrical. No doubt there had been some good cause in the low quality of most of the past and current theatrical entertainment, and the consequent secondary position of the acting world in general. He advocated even the direct intervention of the State to lift the drama effectually out of the mire into which it had so long fallen, so as to make the profession perfectly respectable, and thus restore to society one of its very best and most powerful resources.
There was lately another incident, characteristic of Reed, at the marriage of one of his daughters. He was for everybody being fully and usefully occupied in the world, and would speak poetically of The Crown of Labour, as that which was to excel and outlive all other earthly crowns. My wife, who had been much gratified by the invitation she received on this happy occasion, had a mind to specially please Reed and the young bride, by saying, in their hearing, something, as she thought, extremely complimentary. Watching, therefore, her opportunity, she dropped the remark that the young lady, with all her expectations, might fairly have aspired even to marry a title. The fair bride was, in fact, to marry only an intelligent young merchant, who had still his way to fight in the world, and who sought a wife to fight it along with him. But judge of the amazement of my better half when Reed replied that he both approved and preferred the choice the girl had made for herself. There were three classes, he went on to say, whom he would rather his daughters avoided, in their laudable efforts to mate themselves suitably. These were—blood relations, soldiers, and noblemen. Not, certainly, that these were worse than other people. But the first involved deterioration of breed, while the others were exposed, in perhaps most instances, to a comparatively unemployed or idling life—a condition which was not favourable either to married happiness or to life's highest or best enjoyment.
Electricity was, as I have said. Black's great hobby. He had a notable theory on the subject, which was entirely his own, as he constantly and proudly assured us; and this was to the effect, that by crossing the electric current, in ways hereafter to be discovered, we should enormously increase the power and quality of the work done by the electric agency. We might some day be able to cross and re-cross and cross yet again, with ever-increasing powers, until our dynamics could send us on the wings of light itself over space, and our chemistry could synthesise, as he learnedly worded it, all the organic as well as the inorganic world, and turn out for us, from the laboratory, a savoury beef-steak as readily as an acid or an alkali.
Our social condition, said Yellowly, was in a course of quiet but really rapid change, and in a direction inevitably democratic. He explained, in accordance, that word of disturbing associations, "Progress." What was the real meaning of the term? It meant substantially the suiting and smoothing of the way to the many who were ill-off, in their everlasting struggle to rise some little towards the condition of the few who were well off. If the hundred of the one class were wearied and worried by its incessant dust and noise, the hundred thousand of the other were refreshed and helped onwards to an improved condition.
Democracy and Progress, then, meant the great social and economic change towards a less unequal condition. Instinctively the ill-off masses called out to expedite the progress, while the comparative few, who were already well-off, as instinctively shirked or deferred the ordeal. In this grudging spirit our upper and well-off classes were liable to lose the lead which they might otherwise retain. All our hereditary preferences are for gentlemen in position, manners, and education to lead us socially and politically, if they will only show the due courage, and not be scared by the shadows of inevitable things. If our leading classes would still lead, they must not grudge the disturbance of progress. But if these will not head the inevitable progress, others must push them aside and take their place. It has been sagely said, "Educate the masses first, and enfranchise them afterwards." But in practice it has been found that the only way to secure the progress was to enfranchise first. Thus an unprecedented race has set in since the great franchise extension of 1832. The further extension of 1867 brought us our General Education Act of 1870, and its succeeding improvements; and the impending still further franchise extension may be expected to give a marked further impetus to society's advance.
Yellowly was an ardent unionist, but he was quite alive to certain vices and defects in unionist views. He was, for instance, utterly opposed to the whole coercion system, which doubtless both prejudiced and limited union life. He thought that unions might be so regulated, that membership would be a privilege, pecuniary and otherwise, of sufficient value to prove self-attractive, and, at the same time, to give the effective whiphand over members in regard to union discipline or personal conduct. One of his great aims was the institution of a permanent great National Representative Union, composed of selected delegates from all the other unions—a sort of Upper House or Senate in union life. Such a body, serving as a final Court of Appeal, might be expected to reject or annul such narrow, selfish, and erroneous views and rules as still lingered in the separate unions. He was encouraged in this idea by the decided progress towards better and more correct views within the unions, even during the last few years.
Yellowly hoped, in short, to see the last prejudices against such inevitable results as the piece-work system die finally away, and along with it that unreasonable and unreasoning fancy about giving to all hands, good, bad, and indifferent, the same rate of wages. More than anything else did he deprecate the narrow and unjust monopoly involved in the apprentice limitation principle, and in other respects also the ungenerous and unbrotherly walls of mutual exclusion which the different trades too jealously built up against each other. As to picketing, rattening, and such like, they were with Yellowly beneath contempt, and hardly to be even spoken of with common patience. At a Brickmakers' Union one evening, when one of the members was recounting his success in so disabling the hands of certain non-unionists, by putting needles into the clay, that their families were likely to starve for some weeks to come, Yellowly, as he told us, could with difficulty resist smashing the teeth of the vulgar ruffian, as he leered complacently over his ghastly and traitorous story.
Yellowly was full of other schemes for the advance of his class, and that of society generally. He had large hopes from the effects of the universal education now being enforced; and again he had further hopes in other directions from all kinds of co-operation, by which, in brief, the present scant comfort of working-class life might be doubled, and at one-half the present expense of working-class living. He fully expected that the unions, under the better regulations of the future, would promote more of a sentiment of honour in regard to conduct and character, and particularly as to the prevalent evil of intemperance. On this subject, he would fain that his class, as the party chiefly affected, took a more leading charge of the great public-house question. His own view was that the public-house proper should not open till the workman's dinnertime. This decision was upon a balance of considerations, in which the temptations and evils that were avoided far outweighed any or all others. He knew the power of the temptation, from having himself formerly given way to it. What rescued him was a friend's advice, always first to quench actual thirst with water. By adopting that practice he recovered completely his self-control, and thus gave new motives and a new joy to his whole life. He would therefore have water at hand everywhere—a tap of the pure element to confront every tap of strong drink, and on such equal terms, to fight sobriety's great battle. Yellowly, however, sympathized far too heartily with his fellows, in their rough and hard life, to set up any mere moralizing on this latter subject. He had more material aims, as he would fain save their hard-earned money, thus so profusely dissipated, for better uses, and for building up the power, credit, and influence of all his class.
He exhorted all his class to honour and respect woman, even if for no higher aim than their credit and influence with society generally. He was a strong advocate of woman's rights. The woman should be equally free with the man to help herself, and help on the world, in all ways suitable to her. The world would advance at a quicker pace by help of her head and hand. He wanted to see the establishment of women's as well as men's clubs; and he once bearded the Lord Mayor himself, in order to get his countenance for clubs of domestic servants, his lordship, however, asserting that unless the day could be prolonged to twenty-five hours he had not a spare moment for further duty. Society would gain in political steadiness, he would say, by extending the franchise to woman. Society would certainly gain moral strength by woman tending her own sex in those delicate medical emergencies, where the intrusion of the other sex is never without sacrifice, and has hitherto been tolerated only as a supposed inevitable necessity.
Yellowly had equally pronounced views on other social questions. He was a strong advocate for every one getting married. If each young man, he would say, were early engaged to each young woman, with purpose of marriage as soon as the respective conditions allowed, society would be, socially and morally, at its very best. Any apprehended difficulties about large families and over population weighed with him as nothing in the scales against the improved morality, and the consequent economy and general vigour of life.
The present aspect of society was in terrible contrast with such a picture. But much of this evil condition was even now somewhat remediable. For instance, he blamed our authorities for their laxity as to the wide prevalence of all kinds of begging, with tramping, gipsying, and vagabondage in general, by which such a huge mass of people were allowed to lapse into idle, useless, and at last, in many cases, criminal life. He considered it a most serious wrong to the poorer classes that they could slip so easily into mendicancy or other useless ways of life, and thus become a nuisance instead of a help to society. This particular evil was now so great and universal, that high government intervention was needed for its thorough cure.
We needed, in fact, quite a new departure, both in this and in criminal jurisdiction. The hardened and hopeless professional criminal, when taken red-handed, should be permanently locked up, as long as he continued such, and for his own good as well as for the due protection of society. Others, of whom there was more or less hope, should be treated with comparative leniency. We should aim, as far as humanity and decency will permit, to prevent the criminal and worthless from leaving families behind, and thus maintaining for society an everlasting battle with professional and hereditary crime.
Yet another subject, and then I have done, for the present, with Yellowly. Discoursing on his great topic, Progress, he would remark that the most necessary and advantageous class of works were those which would surely reimburse all their cost by the lapse of mere value-raising time. This was the now well-known "unearned increment of value" in the country's real estate; and all experience had now proved it so reliable a feature, that he was more than astonished that no one of our successive Governments should as yet have, to any noticeable extent, applied any of its boundless capabilities to the public good. He instanced the crying case of the thorough resanitation of London, which had hitherto been attempted, with such utter inefficiency, by private enterprise, and latterly, but hardly to much better purpose, by the Board of Works. During any thirty years of this century, the complete sanitary reconstruction might have been accomplished, and the cost entirely covered by the rise of value in the interval.
Yellowly's view, in this important direction, was, that the State should undertake the larger works of such progress, and that this would be done too without involving the country in any public debt or direct liability. He was opposed to national debts, as serious hindrances to progress, and gave us at times his ideas about reducing the interest of our present debt and finally extinguishing the principal. His plan for financing the great works in question was by "special trusts," such as that lately proposed in the abortive London Water Works scheme.
Then again, the "Parliamentary block," which rendered any great general progress, such as he contemplated, perfectly hopeless, even under the new prospect of the clôture, as well as anything else in the old ordinary way, he proposed to remove bodily, by substituting for viva voce debate a special parliamentary publication of written views. In this way he thought that opinions and views would be expressed more freely and generally, as well as more calmly and carefully than before, while measure after measure could be quietly, but with all due expedition, told off as the public needs required. As Yellowly was still in the prime of life, and already something of a leading man in his union, and amongst his class, I hardly doubted that, if he lived long enough, he might yet leave his mark, in his own way, amongst his fellows, and upon his time.
Reed, as I have said, took the lead in religious discussion. Churchman as he was, he was opposed to all privilege, and hoped there would some day be realized a great inclusive national Church, based directly and wholly on Scripture, and free alike from any political pecuniary or ecclesiastical privilege or endowment, which other religious bodies could not equally attain. Eeligious interests represented, at best, only sections of the people. The State alone was representative of the whole people, and therefore the State was and ought to be supreme. In those various senses he approved an "Established" Church, and its ultimate appeal to the impartial and consistent dealing of the high national courts. The practice of dissenting bodies of, so to say, contracting themselves out of the ordinary law was, in Reed's view, greatly to be deprecated, as being a disadvantage to all parties, productive of tyrannical and unsteady ways, and promotive of religious dissension generally.
Such was Reed's motto. No religion, he would say, could afford to dispense with either. He regarded extremes in religious doctrine, sentiment, and ritual as mainly answerable for the prevailing scepticism in this age of education, with its inevitable attendants, free thought and criticism, because of their tendency to impart a moral and scientific improbability to religion. The Roman Church he regarded as the great transgressor in that way, as it had succeeded at last, by accumulated superstitious traditions, in making Religion incredible to a vast multitude of educated and thoughtful minds. Even still more hurtful was the ridicule to religion (Rome, however, not being the only offender in that way) by retaining an obsolete lackadaisical phraseology, worthy of the impenetrable serenity of the Dark Ages' mind, as though thus to force the way by defying the ready sense of humour, as well as the ordinary common sense, of modern society. The religion which had satisfied Newton might satisfy ordinary mortals. But this great question in particular could least dispense with judicious presentation. If we would judge surely of the reasonableness of our own religious ways and views, we should transfer them to some other and opposing creed, and see how they looked in that changed light. Our religion—the Protestant section at least—was professedly based exclusively on Scripture; and the open and simple doctrinal statements of Scripture were not wisely recast into hard creeds and confessions, which had ever divided and kept asunder the Christian people. Reed would abolish all creeds, even back to the so-called Apostle's, with its Godhead falling as much short of that of Scripture statement, as that of the so-called Athanasian passed speculatively ahead of it. The terms Trinity and Trinitarian, which now resounded so incessantly through all our faith, were not Scriptural, and should therefore be disused.
The end in religion, as in all else for man in this world, Reed asserted, was righteousness and usefulness of life. The simple doctrinal language of Christ constantly alternated in this practical direction. Amongst the advantages, indispensable indeed to modern society, of a great staff or order of trained clergy, was this one disadvantage, that they were ever apt, by the instincts of their position, to make doctrine supreme, and thus turn the means into the end. And thus we had a permanent heritage of antagonistic religious sects, with the discouraging and almost hopeless feature that each was far more concerned for its hereditary differences, than for the substantial truth of religion.
Although reasonableness and common sense were already decidedly on the advance in religious views, Reed regarded certain extremes of popular orthodoxy as still answerable for much discredit and hindrance to religion. Take, for instance, the future of a literal eternal torment. Was our religion really weighted with so extreme a moral improbability? If we had not been used to such a doctrine in our own religion, what would we have thought of any other religion that possessed it? The most formidable opponent to this dogma, to begin with, is the Bible itself, in the equity, reasonableness, and mercy of its general spirit and tenour. The question here is, how far the exact literal is always to be assumed in the Bible, highly Oriental and figurative as it is throughout, and addressed directly to the Oriental mind. The most effective argument is perhaps to show that we have not hesitated repeatedly to set aside the literal in other directions. Thus nearly all Christendom has resisted the Calvinistic view, in spite of the strong passages in the Epistle to the Romans; while the Real Presence doctrine is, on the ground of patent fact and common sense, summarily dismissed by all sound Protestants, notwithstanding the strongly literal terms in St. John's Gospel. And, again, while but two centuries ago witchcraft and an eternal hell were equally orthodox teaching, humanity and common sense have happily already quite rid us of the former. The laity first dropped it, and finally and grudgingly the clergy; and now, when for like reasons the laity have begun to throw off the latter belief, we must hope that the tenacity of the clergy will prove, as before, but a temporary hindrance.
But let us, continued Reed, directly confront the two great pillars of the dogma in question, namely, the stories of the Sheep and the Goats, and of the Rich Man and Lazarus. In the former we have Heaven and Hell respectively awarded for the performance or neglect of ordinary charities. Well, we have made no scruple whatever to relegate all this charity doctrine to the realm of figure, but we still retain all the literal Hell fire. One might surely say here, with the noble poet, in a slight modification of his words:—
The nobler and the likelier one."
Then, again, as to the second story, we have the rich man in want and misery hereafter, simply because he enjoyed his abundance in this life; while the poor and miserable in this life was rich and happy in the next. "Son, thou, in thy lifetime, receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented." Here then, if we are bound to the literal, is quite a new religion, by which the conditions in this life and the next are to be simply and exactly reversed. Such a religion might be called the Nemesis of the Grave, and it might possibly exist, as our President Black has suggested, in coloured sun systems or other eccentric parts of the universe. We have dismissed, even without a hearing, all this Nemesis part of the case, but once more we have picked out, and clung to, the everlasting fire.
Reed strongly opposed the Sabbatarian view, regarding it even as a serious stumbling-block in the Christian pathway to the great body of the Christian people. The view that good, honest, necessary labour could be sinful at any time or on any day of the week, placed us, at once, at variance with common sense. The Judaic idea was special, inferior, and, as regarded Christians, past and done with. The Christian ideal had superseded the old Israelitish division into secular and sacred days, because, whether in the shop, the field, or the Church, Saturday or Sunday, we were alike in the service of God. Nor should we lower this high standard because there are still many minds which do not, or cannot, rise to it. The portentous. all but total, silence of the New Testament and the early Church upon the Jewish Sabbath, together with the prompt change of the day, seem enough to settle this question for us Christians. But, in fact, this contentious modern Sabbath question is really in the main an outcome of the Puritanism of the last three or four centuries. And here, once more, the instincts of an order of clergy are apt to be against us; for naturally enough their tendency must be to regard the special day of their own ministrations as the best of the week. Inheriting that view, they must naturally be loth to disinherit themselves.
Bat the Sabbath is part of the Decalogue! Well, but the Decalogue itself is special, early Israelitish, and perfected only by the higher and wider law, recognized by Christ, of the love of God and the love of our neighbour. Its special character is shown by "the third and fourth generation" doctrine of the second commandment, which later Scripture of wider application has superseded; by the coercive fourth commandment itself; by the special allusions of the fifth; and, lastly, by the tenth, which, among covetable things, classes the wife with the slaves and chattels of her husband. In the same special category is the free polygamy and concubinage of those earlier Old Testament times; and the highest authority has similarly stamped the "eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth" doctrine. All this special case is still a high theological question, to which the best and perhaps the only answer has been given by Christ himself, on the occasion of yet one more characteristic instance of it, when he replied to the inquiring Jews, that "Moses, for your hardness of heart, suffered you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it hath not been so."
But seeing that man, who is born to toil, needs a periodical recreative rest, we have wisely retained the ancient and suitable seventh day, while, for Christian reasons, it is also specially honoured as the Lord's Day. This, rather than the misleading term Sabbath, is properly for us its name. And again, whilst dissociating all idea of sin from useful and necessary work on any day whatever (for if any one fails, on occasion, adequately to provide for his household in the six days, what more appropriate or meritorious than to sacrifice also the seventh?), yet the needs of society at large require some common understanding and purpose, and even the authoritative intervention of the State, to promote and maintain a universally recognized day of rest. It is the recreative day of rest and leisure, and as such all the well-disposed will gladly and naturally avail of its opportunities for a still larger share of religious exercise and thought. But as to this we should bear in mind that neither coercive nor hypocritical religion can be either edifying to man or acceptable to God. Nor should we forget that "rest," in the sense of mere inaction, is not the most acceptably recreative agency to large sections of modern society. The great want is a freely cheerful recreative day, in which, with a large mutual charity and forbearance, every one may be left to do himself all the good he can, without disturbing his neighbour. "Let every one be persuaded in his own mind."
Nothing is more proper to man, or more enjoined by Scripture, than prayer to God. But there prevailed widely a very free and easy assumption of special and direct "answers to prayer," which, from the devout general or monarch on the battle-field, down to the devout leaders in more ordinary scenes of all kinds, were but too apt to involve the Divine Being in a perpetual succession of contradictory and impossible events and statistics. It is always good to pray, and every one gets good by so doing. But it is never safe, in modern experience, to assume special and direct answers. Even the apparently happiest hits, in this interpreting way, are apt to be the most laughed at, by religious people themselves, where there is variance in religious views.
The idea underlying "the worship of praise" is wholly at variance with modern advanced thought and moral perception. To praise any one, in order to please him or receive his favour, is too gross to the modern sense to be even thought of, and the higher the person thus addressed, the greater perhaps would be the affront. But by force of long unchallenged habit we can literally rant and bellow the praises of God without sense of the ludicrous grossness of the procedure. The words and example of Christ do not sustain this low ideal. The hymns our modern Churches are substituting for the old praising psalms, are a movement in the right direction. The praising as the cursing psalms belong alike to the religious past.
Although opposed to gross forms of religious excitement, Reed was ready to acknowledge that the masses might not be reached by the decorous quietude of religious ministration, suited to more refined and educated life; and thus he freely recognized the valuable co-operative aid of active and zealous non-conformity with the efforts of his own Church in the religious leavening of the people. But he was opposed to that extravagance that might be called the scare system, in popular preaching and conversion efforts. No doubt some few natures were aroused—scared, so to say—into better ways, but usually at the serious cost of an unhealthy and alienating effect upon all the rest. Suppose, for example, some great school where the master's system was to threaten the children indiscriminately all round, to the effect that if the naturally vicious little "varmints," as he held them all to be, did not do all he ordered them, and believe all he told them, down they should drop into some place of torment. No doubt some few specially unruly spirits might be cowed into good conduct, but what, on the other hand, would be the moral effect upon the whole school? Then, again, even if revivals and conversions in the scare way had at times such good practical results, we must remember that this sensational feature does not belong to any one religion in particular, but is the indiscriminate heritage even of opposing creeds. There is, in short, always a grotesque side of the case which is damaging to religion in the public feeling by its suggestive aspect of moral and mental instability.
For discussional purposes Reed took some of us one evening lately to a popular revival meeting. The preacher on the occasion, as he himself was fain to boast, was as destitute of human "orders" as he was of human learning. His orders, he said, were direct from Heaven. He told us he had been converted from a life of vice, and with complacent but unsavoury effusion recounted his having broken well-nigh every law, human and divine. But as, withal, he had sought and had found pardon, so no one need be discouraged on account of personal depravity. Heaven, he said, was full of pardoned depravity. The blessed angels rejoiced most over those who had been the most depraved. But some might say, "Live on as you like, only take care at the end to repent and secure pardon and Heaven." Well, it might all come right at the last moment, no doubt; but he must warn all such that they played a risky game, for they might be suddenly cut off unprepared, and thus inherit everlasting fire instead of eternal bliss.
He truly pitied all those people, so worthy in their own eyes, who led what the world called good moral lives; because all their weary and protracted efforts and restraints in that self-righteous way would not bring them, by one jot or one tittle, nearer to Heaven. He then passed to the final and terrible day of judgment, when all these people, in their helpless rags of self-righteousness, were to come up to receive their eternal doom. Here then they are, all arrayed now on the left hand of the great Judge, and plentifully amongst them are scattered earthly judges, magistrates, long files of policemen—all of them possibly quite respectable in this world's view. These had it all their own way upon the earth, and a merciless way too. But now the judges of this world are to be themselves judged. On the right hand, again, is arrayed another group, equal to the first, but, in the world's view, of a very different quality—burglars, wife-smashers, murderers, but who had sought and obtained that mercy and pardon from Heaven, which the inferior authorities of earth had denied them. Those on the left are passed downwards into everlasting fire; while those on the right move upwards into eternal bliss, singing as they go, out of lovely angels' bosoms, their alleluiahs of holy triumph and sanctified revenge.
Another of Reed's religious questions concerned the hereafter of our many eminent but sceptical philosophers. What was to befall this legion of able, useful, and otherwise excellent men, after their busy life here below was ended? Not a few of them might fairly dispute the high palm awarded to David Hume, after his death, by his sorrowing friend, Adam Smith, "as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit." Reed was guided in this contentious question by the moral and equitable spirit equally pervading Scripture with the dogmatic, and demanding equal consideration. To all, therefore, whose life and conduct had been worthy, the impartial Judge would say, "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into that higher and more enduring life, for which thou, whilst on earth, hast so diligently qualified." Besides, added Reed, those worthy people will have such a sheepish look when that unexpected day comes upon them, that it will be impossible to mistake them for goats.
This discussion proved all the more interesting to us at the time, as occurring simultaneously with the expression of a very different view on the same subject from a right reverend prelate of our Church, who had once more nailed the red flag to the mast, in declaring that Plume and Voltaire would now be experiencing that eternity and eternal fire, which, while in this life, they had ventured to disbelieve.
Another active and intelligent member of our society was my foreman, Gray. For business purposes there could be no better man. But Gray was a zealous Mormon, having been converted by a mission of that persuasion some years before. His wife, although disliking the Mormonism for more reasons than one, yet admitted that the conversion had given herself a better husband, and her children a better father. When my offended wife would have had me turn him off forthwith, I explained that certainly that orthodox course meant a reduced credit at the year's profit and loss account, and consequently reduced possibilities of milliner's bills. So her opposition in that direction ceased.
Gray would say that religion had its rotten-egg stage. The early Christians had to encounter it, and so now have the early Mormons. But if he had to be prudent and guarded outside the society's walls, his zeal did not spare us within. The future, he would assert, belonged to Mormon truth, and he would like, of all things, to witness the spread and triumphs of his Church five hundred or a thousand years hence. Until his conversion he had been negligent in the religious sense; but now he was himself full of converting zeal, and, with a solemn and adroit way he had, he was not unsuccessful. For instance, standing at his own door one evening, when a person passing in the street inquired of him the way, he got him inside, promising with serious manner to show him the true way. There he succeeded in engaging his visitor in earnest discussion and prayer; and the man, who frankly admitted that he had not previously attended much to religion, was so struck by Gray's words and manner, that he called repeatedly afterwards for further insight, and ended by conversion to Mormonism.
Gray had great faith in getting people to their knees. He would say that half conversion's battle was over at that stage. An odd incident once happened to him, in that converting way, on meeting accidentally, in the railway train, an equally zealous rival missionary of one of the smaller and more active religious bodies, who was, like himself, a great scare converter. The particular method of this latter party was to run up to people passing on the highway, and demand of them, in all anxiety and alarm of expression, if they were yet saved. Both missionaries had enjoyed converting successes that day, and each was returning home more or less satisfied, when they happened to meet in the same compartment of the train. As the saying is, "When Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war." Each, catching in the other's eye the sinister glance of religious diversity or unbelief, seized upon the other to bring him to his knees. But neither party expecting the other's attack, and misunderstanding its harmless meaning, there were immediate and loud calls from both simultaneously for guard and police; and it was only after due explanation from either side that they were both discharged from custody.
Gray had full belief in eternal punishment, and would solemnly declare that everlasting fire awaited all who rejected Mormon truth. If people wilfully accepted the alternative, he would say, how was God cruel to leave them to their own will and choice? The heart was at fault in unbelief rather than the head. If any one pleaded the impossibility of believing Mormonism, he would sharply ask if it was impossible for him to fall upon his knees and pray for true faith, which, if prayed for honestly and in earnest, would certainly be given. And again he would urge people to believe, if only on prudential grounds, for even if religion, after all, proved to be a myth, they lost nothing, whereas if true they lost everything. Above all, he earnestly exhorted converts to abstain from reading or listening to the profane attacks of the outside Gentile world, however plausible, upon Mormon truth.
Violet, another active member of our society, was one of Gray's hardest opponents. Violet in religion was Unitarian, and in his phlegmatic way, which was so irritating to Gray's sincerely hot zeal, he would argue that God must be as greatly dishonoured by believing too much as too little. The "peculiar domestic institution" did not, of course, escape Violet's sarcastic animadversion. But the already well-practised Gray was not unprepared for the enemy on this delicate point. He would remark, with an off-hand but lofty reserve, that if he must condescend to defend what God himself had, by direct intimation, sanctioned and even enjoined upon the saints, he would ask what was man that he should presume to set up his mere human notions of morality against God? God was infinite, and infinite morality might well be, and doubtless really was, something different from the finite.
All this "measure for measure" was well enough in its way; but my over-zealous converting foreman was as nearly as possible in a serious scrape lately, which came about in this way. There were two young Scotch girls, sisters, and servants next door to us, whom Gray thus got slightly to know, and on whose conversion he had set his heart. They had, however, very much taken my wife's fancy by their quiet and humble ways; and accordingly she never rested till she had got them out of their wrong northern Presbyterianism—a religion in her eyes no better than it should be—and had them both securely confirmed at our parish church. As the great organ was pealing all through the building when the girls first entered it, a cold shiver ran through them, because, as they said, it seemed like entering a playhouse on the Sabbath. My wife, however, succeeded in laughing them out of this nonsense, as she called it. But, alas, for those area stairs in our city houses, so useful to pass food to the body, they facilitate also poison to the soul. Two Catholic sisters, on a conversion mission, found their way down. They were gentleness and meekness personified. When they exhorted to pray preferentially to the Holy Virgin, who, as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, had more influence for people's good or ill than any other member of the Godhead; when they expatiated further on the all but super-mortal Infallible earthly Head of their only true Church; and finally upon everlasting fire in reserve hereafter for all who refused to be saved through the Catholic Church, the girls were at last reconverted; and as they had to attend mass by stealth, for fear of losing their places, they became all the more zealous about their new faith.
But now opens another and final scene in this little drama. One of the girls is taken seriously ill. She had caught severe cold some time before, in attending a protracted midnight revival meeting, to bring in the new year; and now a galloping consumption had set in, and the young life must so prematurely close. Deathbeds were always Gray's grand opportunity. He contrived to gain access to' the patient, and when the excitement and alarm, into which he succeeded in throwing her, threatened immediately fatal results, he was only all the more pressing to secure the conversion during the last possible and precious moments. A fit came on in consequence, from which there was no subsequent rally; but he could assure the surviving sister that the last sparkle of the eye looked that of true faith. The sister was thus also converted; and she afterwards emigrated to Utah, to be safely sealed for Mormon paradise as thirteenth wife of a Mormon elder.
Reed was furious when he heard of this business, and spoke freely of the benefit of diverting such murderous zeal by twelve months of the treadmill. He even called upon the coroner to consider about having Gray arrested, with the view of having him tried for manslaughter. The coroner stood aghast at the new field of work thus opened out to himself, and asked where, in the discrimination of such doings, he was to stop; for Reed had clearly enough intimated that he had no idea of limiting his action to Mormonism.
White was Wesleyan, while Brown was Calvinist. Quiet old Brown held the stern and iron faith, while that of love and gentleness had fallen to vehement old White. Yet in religious matters Brown was anything but quiet, and was ever seeking a fling at White, whom he usually and easily discomfited by throwing at him a ready succession of Scripture texts. A remark of Reed's one day, that the only effectual way to settle an extreme sectary was to bring down upon him another sectary still more extreme, was duly treasured up, for defensive purposes, in White's mind. Accordingly, the next time he argued with Brown, White had provided the company of a neighbour and acquaintance of his own, who was also Calvinistic, but in a decidedly more advanced degree than Brown. Poor Brown was soon effectually smashed, and White's future peace secured. We nicknamed this terrible fellow the Unmitigated Calvinist, while Brown was only the Mitigated, or mere Reason-Reconciliation Calvinist.
In accordance with my own particular hobby, I would, on every possible occasion in our society, turn the discussion upon the forecasting of the future. Our present progress was in geometric ratio, to use a common phrase. Every ten or twenty years' advance exceeded that of any previous like interval, and where shall we be after fifty or a hundred more such intervals and such advances? I presented my own ideas on this subject to the Society, and I persuaded some of our other leading members to present theirs also, for successive discussion. Thus we had, in particular, a scientific forecast from Black, as to what might be the world's attainments and condition, through the advances of science over another thousand years. This was followed by Yellowly, on the social and political changes impending upon the inevitable progress of our country and of the world in general. And lastly came Reed's forecast of the religious future, in which the Church of reasonableness and good common sense would have made a more effective development. Let me, then, in this looking-forward direction, begin with—
My great subject was the crowd of the future of the world's population. Nationalities would be merged in those days. But how were they all to be fed, how even to find foot-room? Supposing the food question solved in the direction indicated by Black, a very moderate rate of increase, such as that of the doubling of the numbers every third of a century, would give, in a few centuries hence, a thousand times the present population, and in a few fm-ther centuries a thousand times that again, and so on. Then, again, there was the sanitary question. What would be the health-condition with all this crowd? Here I rather prided myself on a project of the future, which was entirely my own, and which was suggested to my mind in the way I shall now describe.
Returning from business one afternoon, I came upon some little street Arabs, who were still sporting in the gutter with all the freedom of which our great Education Act has since happily deprived them. One of these children had a form and beauty so strikingly perfect, shining through all his rags and dirt, that I stood a while to muse over such striking social contrarieties; and while so engaged I developed a project which I was fain to put conspicuously into my forecast of our future. Suppose, as I argued, we were to gather together all such perfect forms of health and beauty, in order to bring up these nature-favoured persons in an educational and training way comparable with the other superiorities already theirs. Obviously we might have here the beginnings of a superior race, which might not only come to the front, but eventually even resanitate and reconstitute the whole society. I came at last to be quite full of this idea, and even to express a willingness, at some trifle of pecuniary cost, to give a hand to see it practically commenced, on however small a scale at the first. But I got no help in this practical direction. My wife called it the sheer nonsense of these upsetting times. Even my fail-me-never old Brown, who enjoyed the theory of the thing, declared that, in going further, he could not see business in any part of it. And so, on this subject, at any rate, I was always left in a minority of one.
But to return to world-population estimates, even if we supposed only the Anglo or Kelto-German races to survive in the future squeeze, and "survival of the fittest," the multiplication, ere a thousand years, would not leave even foot-room on the world's surface. What a curious spectacle must be our world with all this population, and their striving and ingenuity to secure mutual and comfortable accommodation! As I often say, might I but be there to see.
Black dealt largely and sagely with the new phrase Energy. All forces were convertible into energy. We were to have dealers and traders in energy, and our money itself would some day be energy. Black's predominating idea was that electricity, which was one of the forms of energy, was at the bottom of everything. And then there was his peculiar notion about crossing and recrossing the electric current, by means of which, in successive grand eras of future discovery, we should attain to knowledge and power as yet undreamt of. This cross-electric power would be efficacious alike to pour out unlimited food from our chemical laboratories, and to propel us at incalculable speed over the outside universe. The science of the future was to carry us far outside our pigmy world, on the wings of cross-electrified energy, and at or beyond the lightning's pace. And, again, Black's idea was that life and mind reign all over the universe, at least in all those worlds which possess an aerial or liquid medium, or both, in which life might develop, after the various primitive forces, originally convulsive, to use his learned phrase, had subsided into equilibrium. What may seem to our constitutions impossible extremes of heat or cold, may not prevent this universal life, but only perhaps vary the substances taken up into the vital structure, or affect the pace or the particular direction of physical or mental development. Thus, it was not impossible that the sun itself might be peopled. There might possibly be a solid and settled, albeit, to our feeling, a somewhat hot world of life and mind beneath, perhaps far beneath, the still mysterious photosphere. We might indulge this view, at any rate, as long as this striking photospheric feature remained unexplained. Indeed, Black would add, the photosphere itself might be just this cross-electricity ever staring us every day in the face.
Then, again, Black would throw out some curious speculations upon coloured suns and coloured-light systems. The stars, of course, were all suns, with their respective planets and moons whirling round them, and their organized life throughout, ascending gradually in the scale, according to more or less favouring conditions, and culminating in man. The coloured suns had their planetary and lunar system like the white suns; and, doubtless, the populations of coloured light exhibited, mentally as well as physically, some of those striking effects which science has lately begun to notice as the result of colour. Indeed, Black made no secret of looking upon colour, in this grand department of its application, as tantamount to the aberration or eccentricity, or, to put it more plainly, to the insanity of the heavens.
Yellowly gave us a forecast of the future of our social and political condition, in view of the race of change and progress upon which society had now entered. The future of his own class's large section of society had, of course, especial interest for him. The effects of universal education, and of the rapid and general application of machinery to supersede more and more the deadening and exhausting toil of working-class life, must alike elevate this class and equalize the condition of the whole body of society. The day might come, and not perhaps be so very far off, when every man, woman, and child would come up to the social front well-dressed, well-mannered, well-educated, and well-off.
The time must come, too, when the follies and miseries of war must cease amongst nations. But it was as yet to be sadly confessed that our advancing civilization had not hitherto backed this hope, but had rather converted hope into despair. Yellowly's idea of the solution of this problem took the direction of imparting a military drill to all the youth of the country, so as to enable the whole people afterwards, at shortest notice, to turn out, to all the extent needful, in defence of the fatherland, thus rendering practically impossible the mutual invasion of nations.
The general political forecast was also freely treated by Yellowly. There were great political changes ahead for us, in substance, at least, if not in form. We had our own peculiar political ways, and would probably keep to them to the last, unless unforeseen incidents gave the political machine any revolutionary upset. We were already in a course of actual change, and at no dilatory pace, although the political surface, in point of external form, remained undisturbed. Thus our government had passed already into what was called a "constitutional" monarchy, in which the hereditary monarchy survived, but at the expense of the surrender of any independent views or will of the personal monarch. It was not difficult to foresee what must be the end of that in democratic progress. "The Crown" would gradually pale out of sight as regarded practical government. Queens, by force of the natural courtesies of sex, and of that more exemplary life which circumstances help to give to the other sex, would protract this result more successfully than kings; and, again, queens who were also super-excellent women would protract it still further. The hereditary element must everywhere die out amongst us as an actual political power. Nevertheless if, as said above, our normal development remain undisturbed by revolutionary incidents, we shall not lapse into a republic, which is a term politically foreign to us. We shall continue to possess a Parliament, headed, in the country's actual government, by a premier who is dependent on a parliamentary majority. We shall be a commonwealth, as, indeed, we have already been, and still are—the great Commonwealth of England.
As Yellowly's chief sympathies lay in forecasting the future of his class, so Reed's lay in that of his Church. He foresaw the progress of religion generally in reaonableness and good common sense, and he was persuaded that his national Church would, as became her, head the movement far more effectively than she had yet been able to do. But in order to ascend to all this honoured position, she must throw off various worldly incumbrances, and betake herself much more to the simplicity and the open and inclusive doctrinal teaching of Scripture. The bishops must surrender the stumblingblock of their political power. He would not abandon the convenience and defensive strength of a learned, exemplary, and honoured episcopate; but the Church must drop out Apostolico-Episcopal Succession, that cherished myth of the past, which history has at length dissipated. In these ways might a great national Church be reconstituted, attracting into its wide and generous fold the great body of the people, and reducing outside dissenting extremes to a comparatively small surrounding, whose antagonisms, mutual and general, might well form the best set-off to the moderation and good sense of the main body.
Lastly, our friend and associate, Gray, of course, suggested a very different forecast—one in which, as he asserted. Mormon truth would take its rightful possession of the earth; and old Brown, too, would still put in a word for the future resurrection of now expiring Calvinism.
How often it happens that a whole busy lifetime seems to pass before the mind during some short interval in a dream! Brown has been full of this idea of late, and he recounts to me how, during a short after-dinner snooze, his mind had pieced together, in most magnificent order, all the marvels of progress I had so often poured into it. He dreamt the other day that he had survived into a thousand years hence, and was revelling in all the accumulated progress of that far-off time. Here truly was for me a full harvest for all my long and patient seed-sowing in the field of old Brown's knowledge-box. At any rate, the affair made a strong impression upon Brown, his great regret being, as he repeatedly said, that he had not my ready pen to have jotted down at once everything just as it appeared while the vision was still fresh in his mind. "If I had but your knack of writing, Green," he would say, "I would have had out a volume on the subject, and might possibly have turned a good penny out of it too." And many a joke we all had over the old fellow's remarkable dream.
We always give ourselves a holiday trip on Easter Mondays, and the very last occasion was, in a comparative way, memorable, for we had company with us, and we went somewhat further afield than usual. In short, we went as far as Brighton, and our company comprised the oldest son of our old friend Brown. Our oldest girl looked particularly happy under these circumstances. That affair of hers is as good as settled now, and, indeed, from the very first I regarded it favourably; for the youth seemed a prudent, sensible fellow—a true chip, in fact, of the old Brown block, and likely to push his way fairly in the world. But my wife, whose maternal matrimonial eyes have been rather upwards ever since our business began to graduate into the wholesale, had not been quite so satisfied, and at first rather looked down on the Brown connection, cheesemongering and provisioning, just like our own as it was, and wholesale, too, as well as retail. But then that was entirely between her and myself. She afterwards got accustomed to the young fellow, then pronounced the event inevitable, and ended by a strong liking for her prospective son-in-law.
So we were all at one last Easter, and we did enjoy ourselves on that occasion. I had promised my young friend, who was about to set up in the hardware line, not only to procure him useful introductions, but also to accompany him personally next morning in his preliminary business tour to our central iron districts. The fact is, and between ourselves, good reader, I was ever on the alert for the chance of a jaunt anywhere, as my wife would allege of both old White and myself, notwithstanding all the usual sobering of years to both of us. My foreman, Gray, was quite trustworthy in one's absence, and I felt that a little bit of travel at times did one good.
I hardly know whether it was the fresh sea air during our protracted saunter over the Brighton beach, or that the excellent Allsopp had been even more than ordinarily relished, but any way I confess to having felt unusually comfortable so soon as I was once more at home, and was bundled into my accustomed easy chair by the bright fire. I had already spread before me my favourite studies for holiday snatches, and other leisure moments, so as never to be losing precious time. Before me lay the last Statistical Society issue, with the population increase for the last decade, together with some ingenious calculations as to that for centuries further ahead. There were also some last weekly numbers of Nature, with, amongst others, some articles on sunspots and red flames, which I had proposed to dip into till tea time. There was quite a buzz of tea preparation through the room, with the pleasant clatter of cups and saucers. The last sounds that fell distinctly on my ears were the fuffings of the tea-urn, as our Biddy-of-all-work put it upon the table behind me. After that, all my thoughts were galloping off to suns and systems far outside of our poor little earth, of which, none the less, we are ever apt to think so much, although it is truly of the very essence of littleness in the grand comparison.