CHAPTER III

Necessity of Religion--The Great Indian One--Image-worship--Shakespeare--The

Pat Answer--Krishna--Amen.

Having told the man in black that I should like to know all the truth

with regard to the Pope and his system, he assured me he should be

delighted to give me all the information in his power; that he had come

to the dingle, not so much for the sake of the good cheer which I was in

the habit of giving him, as in the hope of inducing me to enlist under

the banners of Rome, and to fight in her cause; and that he had no doubt

that, by speaking out frankly to me, he ran the best chance of winning me

over.

He then proceeded to tell me that the experience of countless ages had

proved the necessity of religion; the necessity, he would admit, was only

for simpletons; but as nine-tenths of the dwellers upon this earth were

simpletons, it would never do for sensible people to run counter to their

folly, but, on the contrary, it was their wisest course to encourage them

in it, always provided that, by so doing, sensible people would derive

advantage; that the truly sensible people of this world were the priests,

who, without caring a straw for religion for its own sake, made use of it

as a cord by which to draw the simpletons after them; that there were

many religions in this world, all of which had been turned to excellent

account by the priesthood; but that the one the best adapted for the

purposes of priestcraft was the popish, which, he said, was the oldest in

the world and the best calculated to endure. On my inquiring what he

meant by saying the popish religion was the oldest in the world, whereas

there could be no doubt that the Greek and Roman religion had existed

long before it, to say nothing of the old Indian religion still in

existence and vigour; he said, with a nod, after taking a sip at his

glass, that, between me and him, the popish religion, that of Greece and

Rome, and the old Indian system were, in reality, one and the same.

"You told me that you intended to be frank," said I; "but, however frank

you may be, I think you are rather wild."

"We priests of Rome," said the man in black, "even those amongst us who

do not go much abroad, know a great deal about church matters, of which

you heretics have very little idea. Those of our brethren of the

Propaganda, on their return home from distant missions, not unfrequently

tell us very strange things relating to our dear mother; for example, our

first missionaries to the East were not slow in discovering and telling

to their brethren that our religion and the great Indian one were

identical, no more difference between them than between Ram and Rome.

Priests, convents, beads, prayers, processions, fastings, penances, all

the same, not forgetting anchorites and vermin, he! he! The pope they

found under the title of the grand lama, a sucking child surrounded by an

immense number of priests. Our good brethren, some two hundred years

ago, had a hearty laugh, which their successors have often re-echoed;

they said that helpless suckling and its priests put them so much in mind

of their own old man, surrounded by his cardinals, he! he! Old age is

second childhood."

"Did they find Christ?" said I.

"They found him too," said the man in black, "that is, they saw his

image; he is considered in India as a pure kind of being, and on that

account, perhaps, is kept there rather in the background, even as he is

here."

"All this is very mysterious to me," said I.

"Very likely," said the man in black; "but of this I am tolerably sure,

and so are most of those of Rome, that modern Rome had its religion from

ancient Rome, which had its religion from the East."

"But how?" I demanded.

"It was brought about, I believe, by the wanderings of nations," said the

man in black. "A brother of the Propaganda, a very learned man, once

told me--I do not mean Mezzofanti, who has not five ideas--this brother

once told me that all we of the Old World, from Calcutta to Dublin, are

of the same stock, and were originally of the same language, and--"

"All of one religion," I put in.

"All of one religion," said the man in black; "and now follow different

modifications of the same religion."

"We Christians are not image-worshippers," said I.

"You heretics are not, you mean," said the man in black; "but you will be

put down, just as you have always been, though others may rise up after

you; the true religion is image-worship; people may strive against it,

but they will only work themselves to an oil; how did it fare with that

Greek Emperor, the Iconoclast, what was his name, Leon the Isaurian? Did

not his image-breaking cost him Italy, the fairest province of his

empire, and did not ten fresh images start up at home for every one which

he demolished? Oh! you little know the craving which the soul sometimes

feels after a good bodily image."

"I have indeed no conception of it," said I; "I have an abhorrence of

idolatry--the idea of bowing before a graven figure!"

"The idea, indeed!" said Belle, who had now joined us.

"Did you never bow before that of Shakespeare?" said the man in black,

addressing himself to me, after a low bow to Belle.

"I don't remember that I ever did," said I, "but even suppose I did?"

"Suppose you did," said the man in black; "shame on you, Mr. Hater of

Idolatry; why, the very supposition brings you to the ground; you must

make figures of Shakespeare, must you? then why not of St. Antonio, or

Ignacio, or of a greater personage still! I know what you are going to

say," he cried, interrupting me, as I was about to speak. "You don't

make his image in order to pay it divine honours, but only to look at it,

and think of Shakespeare; but this looking at a thing in order to think

of a person is the very basis of idolatry. Shakespeare's works are not

sufficient for you; no more are the Bible or the legend of Saint Anthony

or Saint Ignacio for us, that is for those of us who believe in them; I

tell you, Zingara, that no religion can exist long which rejects a good

bodily image."

"Do you think," said I, "that Shakespeare's works would not exist without

his image?"

"I believe," said the man in black, "that Shakespeare's image is looked

at more than his works, and will be looked at, and perhaps adored, when

they are forgotten. I am surprised that they have not been forgotten

long ago; I am no admirer of them."

"But I can't imagine," said I, "how you will put aside the authority of

Moses. If Moses strove against image-worship, should not his doing so be

conclusive as to the impropriety of the practice; what higher authority

can you have than that of Moses?"

"The practice of the great majority of the human race," said the man in

black, "and the recurrence to image-worship where image-worship has been

abolished. Do you know that Moses is considered by the church as no

better than a heretic, and though, for particular reasons, it has been

obliged to adopt his writings, the adoption was merely a sham one, as it

never paid the slightest attention to them? No, no, the church was never

led by Moses, nor by one mightier than he, whose doctrine it has equally

nullified--I allude to Krishna in his second avatar; the church, it is

true, governs in his name, but not unfrequently gives him the lie, if he

happens to have said anything which it dislikes. Did you never hear the

reply which Padre Paolo Segani made to the French Protestant Jean

Anthoine Guerin, who had asked him whether it was easier for Christ to

have been mistaken in his Gospel, than for the Pope to be mistaken in his

decrees?"

"I never heard their names before," said I.

"The answer was pat," said the man in black, "though he who made it was

confessedly the most ignorant fellow of the very ignorant order to which

he belonged, the Augustine. 'Christ might err as a man,' said he, 'but

the Pope can never err, being God.' The whole story is related in the

Nipotismo."

"I wonder you should ever have troubled yourself with Christ at all,"

said I.

"What was to be done?" said the man in black; "the power of that name

suddenly came over Europe, like the power of a mighty wind; it was said

to have come from Judea, and from Judea it probably came when it first

began to agitate minds in these parts; but it seems to have been known in

the remote East, more or less, for thousands of years previously. It

filled people's minds with madness; it was followed by books which were

never much regarded, as they contained little of insanity; but the name!

what fury that breathed into people! the books were about peace and

gentleness, but the name was the most horrible of war-cries--those who

wished to uphold old names at first strove to oppose it, but their

efforts were feeble, and they had no good war-cry; what was Mars as a war-

cry compared with the name of . . . ? It was said that they persecuted

terribly, but who said so? The Christians. The Christians could have

given them a lesson in the art of persecution, and eventually did so.

None but Christians have ever been good persecutors; well, the old

religion succumbed, Christianity prevailed, for the ferocious is sure to

prevail over the gentle."

"I thought," said I, "you stated a little time ago that the Popish

religion and the ancient Roman are the same?"

"In every point but that name, that Krishna and the fury and love of

persecution which it inspired," said the man in black. "A hot blast came

from the East, sounding Krishna; it absolutely maddened people's minds,

and the people would call themselves his children; we will not belong to

Jupiter any longer, we will belong to Krishna, and they did belong to

Krishna; that is in name, but in nothing else; for who ever cared for

Krishna in the Christian world, or who ever regarded the words attributed

to him, or put them in practice?"

"Why, we Protestants regard his words, and endeavour to practise what

they enjoin as much as possible."

"But you reject his image," said the man in black; "better reject his

words than his image: no religion can exist long which rejects a good

bodily image. Why, the very negro barbarians of High Barbary could give

you a lesson on that point; they have their fetish images, to which they

look for help in their afflictions; they have likewise a high priest,

whom they call--"

"Mumbo Jumbo," said I; "I know all about him already."

"How came you to know anything about him?" said the man in black, with a

look of some surprise.

"Some of us poor Protestants tinkers," said I, "though we live in

dingles, are also acquainted with a thing or two."

"I really believe you are," said the man in black, staring at me; "but,

in connection with this Mumbo Jumbo, I could relate to you a comical

story about a fellow, an English servant, I once met at Rome."

"It would be quite unnecessary," said I; "I would much sooner hear you

talk about Krishna, his words and image."

"Spoken like a true heretic," said the man in black; "one of the faithful

would have placed his image before his words; for what are all the words

in the world compared with a good bodily image!"

"I believe you occasionally quote his words?" said I.

"He! he!" said the man in black; "occasionally."

"For example," said I, "upon this rock I will found my church."

"He! he!" said the man in black; "you must really become one of us."

"Yet you must have had some difficulty in getting the rock to Rome?"

"None whatever," said the man in black; "faith can remove mountains, to

say nothing of rocks--ho! ho!"

"But I cannot imagine," said I, "what advantage you could derive from

perverting those words of Scripture in which the Saviour talks about

eating his body."

"I do not know, indeed, why we troubled our heads about the matter at

all," said the man in black; "but when you talk about perverting the

meaning of the text, you speak ignorantly, Mr. Tinker; when he whom you

call the Saviour gave his followers the sop, and bade them eat it,

telling them it was his body, he delicately alluded to what it was

incumbent upon them to do after his death, namely, to eat his body."

"You do not mean to say that he intended they should actually eat his

body?"

"Then you suppose ignorantly," said the man in black; "eating the bodies

of the dead was a heathenish custom, practised by the heirs and legatees

of people who left property; and this custom is alluded to in the text."

"But what has the New Testament to do with heathen customs," said I,

"except to destroy them?"

"More than you suppose," said the man in black. "We priests of Rome, who

have long lived at Rome, know much better what the New Testament is made

of than the heretics and their theologians, not forgetting their Tinkers;

though I confess some of the latter have occasionally surprised us--for

example, Bunyan. The New Testament is crowded with allusions to heathen

customs, and with words connected with pagan sorcery. Now, with respect

to words, I would fain have you, who pretend to be a philologist, tell me

the meaning of Amen."

I made no answer.

"We of Rome," said the man in black, "know two or three things of which

the heretics are quite ignorant; for example, there are those amongst

us--those, too, who do not pretend to be philologists--who know what Amen

is, and, moreover, how we got it. We got it from our ancestors, the

priests of ancient Rome; and they got the word from their ancestors of

the East, the priests of Buddh and Brahma."

"And what is the meaning of the word?" I demanded.

"Amen," said the man in black, "is a modification of the old Hindoo

formula, Omani batsikhom, by the almost ceaseless repetition of which the

Indians hope to be received finally to the rest or state of forgetfulness

of Buddh or Brahma; a foolish practice you will say, but are you heretics

much wiser, who are continually sticking Amen to the end of your prayers,

little knowing when you do so, that you are consigning yourselves to the

repose of Buddh! Oh, what hearty laughs our missionaries have had when

comparing the eternally-sounding Eastern gibberish of Omani batsikhom,

Omani batsikhom, and the Ave Maria and Amen Jesus of our own idiotical

devotees."

"I have nothing to say about the Ave Marias and Amens of your

superstitious devotees," said I; "I dare say that they use them

nonsensically enough, but in putting Amen to the end of a prayer, we

merely intend to express, 'So let it be.'"

"It means nothing of the kind," said the man in black; "and the Hindoos

might just as well put your national oath at the end of their prayers, as

perhaps they will after a great many thousand years, when English is

forgotten, and only a few words of it remembered by dim tradition without

being understood. How strange if, after the lapse of four thousand

years, the Hindoos should damn themselves to the blindness so dear to

their present masters, even as their masters at present consign

themselves to the forgetfulness so dear to the Hindoos; but my glass has

been empty for a considerable time; perhaps, Bellissima Biondina," said

he, addressing Belle, "you will deign to replenish it?"

"I shall do no such thing," said Belle, "you have drunk quite enough, and

talked more than enough, and to tell you the truth I wish you would leave

us alone."

"Shame on you, Belle," said I; "consider the obligations of hospitality."

"I am sick of that word," said Belle, "you are so frequently misusing it;

were this place not Mumpers' Dingle, and consequently as free to the

fellow as ourselves, I would lead him out of it."

"Pray be quiet, Belle," said I. "You had better help yourself," said I,

addressing myself to the man in black, "the lady is angry with you."

"I am sorry for it," said the man in black; "if she is angry with me, I

am not so with her, and shall be always proud to wait upon her; in the

meantime, I will wait upon myself."