It took me a long time, as a man, a foreigner, and a species of —I was that as much as anything—to get any clear understanding of the religion of Herland.
Its deification of motherhood was obvious enough; but there was far more to it than that; or, at least, than my first of that.
I think it was only as I grew to love Ellador more than I believed anyone could love anybody, as I grew faintly to appreciate her inner attitude and state of mind, that I began to get some glimpses of this faith of theirs.
When I asked her about it, she tried at first to tell me, and then, seeing me flounder, asked for more information about ours. She soon found that we had many, that they widely, but had some points in common. A clear methodical mind had my Ellador, not only reasonable, but swiftly .
She made a sort of chart, superimposing the different religions as I described them, with a pin run through them all, as it were; their common basis being a Power or Powers, and some Special Behavior, mostly , to please or . There were some common features in certain groups of religions, but the one always present was this Power, and the things which must be done or not done because of it. It was not hard to trace our human imagery of the Divine Force up through successive stages of bloodthirsty, sensual, proud, and cruel gods of early times to the conception of a Common Father with its corollary of a Common .
This pleased her very much, and when I on the , , Omnipresence, and so on, of our God, and of the loving kindness taught by his Son, she was much impressed.
The story of the birth naturally did not astonish her, but she was greatly puzzled by the Sacrifice, and still more by the Devil, and the theory of Damnation.
When in an inadvertent moment I said that certain had believed in infant damnation—and explained it—she sat very still indeed.
“They believed that God was Love—and Wisdom—and Power?”
“Yes—all of that.”
Her eyes grew large, her face ghastly pale.
“And yet that such a God could put little new babies to burn—for ?” She fell into a sudden and left me, running swiftly to the nearest temple.
Every smallest village had its temple, and in those gracious retreats sat wise and noble women, quietly busy at some work of their own until they were wanted, always ready to give comfort, light, or help, to any .
Ellador told me how easily this grief of hers was , and seemed ashamed of not having helped herself out of it.
“You see, we are not accustomed to horrible ideas,” she said, coming back to me rather apologetically. “We haven’t any. And when we get a thing like that into our minds it’s like—oh, like red pepper in your eyes. So I just ran to her, blinded and almost screaming, and she took it out so quickly—so easily!”
“How?” I asked, very curious.
“‘Why, you blessed child,’ she said, ‘you’ve got the wrong idea altogether. You do not have to think that there ever was such a God—for there wasn’t. Or such a happening—for there wasn’t. Nor even that this false idea was believed by anybody. But only this—that people who are ignorant will believe anything—which you certainly knew before.’”
“Anyhow,” pursued Ellador, “she turned pale for a minute when I first said it.”
This was a lesson to me. No wonder this whole nation of women was peaceful and sweet in expression—they had no horrible ideas.
“Surely you had some when you began,” I suggested.
“Oh, yes, no doubt. But as soon as our religion grew to any height at all we left them out, of course.”
From this, as from many other things, I grew to see what I finally put in words.
“Have you no respect for the past? For what was thought and believed by your foremothers?”
“Why, no,” she said. “Why should we? They are all gone. They knew less than we do. If we are not beyond them, we are unworthy of them—and unworthy of the children who must go beyond us.”
This set me thinking in good earnest. I had always imagined—simply from hearing it said, I suppose—that women were by nature conservative. Yet these women, quite unassisted by any masculine spirit of enterprise, had ignored their past and built daringly for the future.
Ellador watched me think. She seemed to know pretty much what was going on in my mind.
“It’s because we began in a new way, I suppose. All our folks were swept away at once, and then, after that time of despair, came those wonder children—the first. And then the whole breathless hope of us was for THEIR children—if they should have them. And they did! Then there was the period of pride and triumph till we grew too numerous; and after that, when it all came down to one child apiece, we began to really work—to make better ones.”
“But how does this account for such a difference in your religion?” I persisted.
She said she couldn’t talk about the difference very intelligently, not being familiar with other religions, but that theirs seemed simple enough. Their great Mother Spirit was to them what their own motherhood was—only magnified beyond human limits. That meant that they felt beneath and behind them an upholding, unfailing, serviceable love—perhaps it was really the accumulated mother-love of the race they felt—but it was a Power.
“Just what is your theory of worship?” I asked her.
“Worship? What is that?”
I found it singularly difficult to explain. This Divine Love which they felt so strongly did not seem to ask anything of them—“any more than our mothers do,” she said.
“But surely your mothers expect honor, , , from you. You have to do things for your mothers, surely?”
“Oh, no,” she insisted, smiling, shaking her soft brown hair. “We do things FROM our mothers—not FOR them. We don’t have to do things FOR them—they don’t need it, you know. But we have to live on—splendidly—because of them; and that’s the way we feel about God.”
I again. I thought of that God of Battles of ours, that Jealous God, that Vengeance-is-mine God. I thought of our world-nightmare—Hell.
“You have no theory of eternal punishment then, I take it?”
Ellador laughed. Her eyes were as bright as stars, and there were tears in them, too. She was so sorry for me.
“How could we?” she asked, fairly enough. “We have no punishments in life, you see, so we don’t imagine them after death.”
“Have you NO punishments? Neither for children nor criminals—such mild criminals as you have?” I urged.
“Do you punish a person for a broken leg or a fever? We have preventive measures, and cures; sometimes we have to ‘send the patient to bed,’ as it were; but that’s not a punishment—it’s only part of the treatment,” she explained.
Then studying my point of view more closely, she added: “You see, we recognize, in our human motherhood, a great tender limitless uplifting force—patience and wisdom and all of delicate method. We credit God—our idea of God—with all that and more. Our mothers are not angry with us—why should God be?”
“Does God mean a person to you?”
This she thought over a little. “Why—in trying to get close to it in our minds we personify the idea, naturally; but we certainly do not assume a Big Woman somewhere, who is God. What we call God is a Power, you know, an Indwelling Spirit, something inside of us that we want more of. Is your God a Big Man?” she asked innocently.
“Why—yes, to most of us, I think. Of course we call it an Indwelling Spirit just as you do, but we insist that it is Him, a Person, and a Man—with whiskers.”
“Whiskers? Oh yes—because you have them! Or do you wear them because He does?”
“On the contrary, we shave them off—because it seems cleaner and more comfortable.”
“Does He wear clothes—in your idea, I mean?”
I was thinking over the pictures of God I had seen—rash advances of the mind of man, representing his as an old man in a flowing robe, flowing hair, flowing beard, and in the light of her frank and innocent questions this concept seemed rather unsatisfying.
I explained that the God of the Christian world was really the ancient Hebrew God, and that we had simply taken over the patriarchal idea—that ancient one which quite clothed its thought of God with the attributes of the patriarchal ruler, the grandfather.
“I see,” she said eagerly, after I had explained the genesis and development of our religious ideals. “They lived in separate groups, with a male head, and he was probably a little—domineering?”
“No doubt of that,” I agreed.
“And we live together without any ‘head,’ in that sense—just our chosen leaders—that DOES make a difference.”
“Your difference is deeper than that,” I assured her. “It is in your common motherhood. Your children grow up in a world where everybody loves them. They find life made rich and happy for them by the love and wisdom of all mothers. So it is easy for you to think of God in the terms of a similar diffused and competent love. I think you are far nearer right than we are.”
“What I cannot understand,” she pursued carefully, “is your of such a very ancient state of mind. This patriarchal idea you tell me is thousands of years old?”
“Oh yes—four, five, six thousand—every so many.”
“And you have made wonderful progress in those years—in other things?”
“We certainly have. But religion is different. You see, our religions come from behind us, and are by some great teacher who is dead. He is supposed to have known the whole thing and taught it, finally. All we have to do is believe—and obey.”
“Who was the great Hebrew teacher?”
“Oh—there it was different. The Hebrew religion is an accumulation of extremely ancient traditions, some far older than their people, and grew by down the ages. We consider it inspired—‘the Word of God.’”
“How do you know it is?”
“Because it says so.”
“Does it say so in as many words? Who wrote that in?”
I began to try to recall some text that did say so, and could not bring it to mind.
“Apart from that,” she pursued, “what I cannot understand is why you keep these early religious ideas so long. You have changed all your others, haven’t you?”
“Pretty generally,” I agreed. “But this we call ‘revealed religion,’ and think it is final. But tell me more about these little temples of yours,” I urged. “And these Temple Mothers you run to.”
Then she gave me an extended lesson in religion, which I will endeavor to concentrate.
They developed their central theory of a Loving Power, and assumed that its relation to them was motherly—that it desired their welfare and especially their development. Their relation to it, similarly, was filial, a loving and a glad fulfillment of its high purposes. Then, being nothing if not practical, they set their keen and active minds to discover the kind of conduct expected of them. This worked out in a most admirable system of . The principle of Love was universally recognized—and used.
Patience, gentleness, courtesy, a............