Byron’s lines—Carnegie’s description—Parsee nature-worship—English Sunday—The sermon—Appeals to reason misplaced—Music better than words—The Mass—Zoroastrianism brings religion into daily life—Sanitation—Zoroastrian prayer—Religion of the future—Sermons in stones and good in everything. Not vainly did the early Persian make
His altar the high places and the peak
Of earth-o’ergazing mountains, and thus take
A fit and unwall’d temple, where to seek
The spirit, in whose honour shrines are weak,
Uprear’d of human hands. Come, and compare
Columns and idol-dwellings, Goth or Greek,
With nature’s realms of worship, earth and air,
Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy prayer!
Childe Harold, iii. 91.
A shrewd Scotch-American ironmaster—Andrew Carnegie—in an interesting and instructive record of experiences during a voyage round the world, gives the following description of the worship of the modern Parsees, as actually witnessed by him at Bombay:—
‘This evening we were surprised to see, as we strolled along the beach, more Parsees than ever before, and more Parsee ladies richly dressed, all wending their way towards the sea. It was the first of the new moon, a period sacred to these worshippers of the elements; and here on the shore of the ocean, as the sun was sinking in the sea, and the slender silver thread of the[220] crescent moon was faintly shining on the horizon, they congregated to perform their religious rites.
‘Fire was there in its grandest form, the setting sun, and water in the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean outstretched before them. The earth was under their feet, and wafted across the sea the air came laden with the perfumes of “Araby the blest.” Surely no time or place could be more fitly chosen than this for lifting up the soul to the realms beyond sense. I could not but participate with these worshippers in what was so grandly beautiful. There was no music save the solemn moan of the waves as they broke into foam on the beach. But where shall we find so mighty an organ, or so grand an anthem?
‘How inexpressibly sublime the scene appeared to me, and how insignificant and unworthy of the unknown seemed even our cathedrals “made with human hands,” when compared with this looking up through nature unto nature’s God! I stood and drank in the serene happiness which seemed to fill the air. I have seen many modes and forms of worship—some disgusting, others saddening, a few elevating when the organ pealed forth its tones, but all poor in comparison with this. Nor do I ever expect in all my life to witness a religious ceremony which will so powerfully affect me as that of the Parsees on the beach at Bombay.’
I say Amen with all my heart to Mr. Carnegie. Here is an ideal religious ceremony combining all that is most true, most touching, and most sublime, in the attitude of man towards the Great Unknown. Compare it with the routine of an ordinary English Sunday, and how poor and prosaic does the latter appear! There is nothing which seems to me to have fallen more completely[221] out of harmony with its existing environment than our traditional form of church service. The sermon has been killed by the press and has become an anachronism. There was a time when sermons like those of Latimer and John Knox were living realities; they dealt with all the burning political and personal questions of the day, and to a great extent did the work now done by platform speeches and leading articles. If there are national dangers to be denounced, national shortcomings to be pointed out, iniquity in high places to be rebuked, we look to our daily newspaper, and not to our weekly sermon. The sermon has in a great majority of cases become a sort of schoolboy theme, in which traditional assumptions and conventional phrases are ground out, with as little soul or idea behind them as in the Thibetan praying-mill. In the course of a long life I have gained innumerable ideas and experienced innumerable influences, from contact with the world, with fellow-men, and with books; but although I have heard a good many sermons, I cannot honestly say that I ever got an idea or an influence from one of them which made me wiser or better, or different in any respect from what I should have been if I had slept through them. And this from no fault of the preachers. I have heard many who gave me the impression that they were good men, and a few who impressed me as being able and liberal-minded men—nor do I know that, under the conditions in which they are placed, I could have done any better myself. But they were dancing in fetters, and so tied down by conventionalities that it was simply impossible for them to depart from the paths of a decorous routine.
The fact is that the whole point of view of our[222] religious services, especially in Protestant countries, has become a mistaken one. It is far too much an appeal to the intellect and to abstract dogmas, and too little, one to the realities of actual life and to the vague emotions and aspirations which constitute the proper field of religion. In the great reaction of the Reformation it was perhaps inevitable that an appeal should be made to reason against the abuses of an infallible Church; and as long as the literal inspiration of the Bible and other theological premises were held to be undoubted axioms by the whole Christian world, there might be a certain interest in hearing them repeated over and over again in becoming language, and in listening to sermons which explained shortly conclusions which might be drawn from these admitted axioms. But this is no longer the case. It is impossible to touch the merest fringe of the questions now raised by the intellectual side of religion in discourses of half an hour’s length; even if the preacher were perfectly free, and not hampered by the fear of scandalising simple, pious souls by plain language. Spoken words have to a great extent ceased to be the appropriate vehicle for appealing either to religious reason or to religious emotion—books for the former, music for the latter, are infinitely more effective. Music especially seems made to be the language of religion. Not only its beauty and harmony, but its vagueness, and its power of exciting the imagination and stirring the feelings, without anything definite which has............