The Romany Rye

  CHAPTER III

  NECESSITY OF RELIGION--THE GREAT INDIANONE--IMAGE-WORSHIP--SHAKESPEARE--THE PAT ANSWER--KRISHNA--AMEN

  Having told the man in black that I should like to know all the truthwith regard to the Pope and his system, he assured me he should bedelighted to give me all the information in his power; that he had cometo the dingle, not so much for the sake of the good cheer which I was inthe habit of giving him, as in the hope of inducing me to enlist underthe banners of Rome, and to fight in her cause; and that he had no doubtthat, by speaking out frankly to me, he ran the best chance of winning meover.

  He then proceeded to tell me that the experience of countless ages hadproved the necessity of religion; the necessity, he would admit, was onlyfor simpletons, but as nine-tenths of the dwellers upon this earth weresimpletons, it would never do for sensible people to run counter to theirfolly, but, on the contrary, it was their wisest course to encourage themin it, always provided that, by so doing, sensible people could deriveadvantage; 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 itas a cord by which to draw the simpletons after them; that there weremany religions in this world, all of which had been turned to excellentaccount by the priesthood; but that the one the best adapted for thepurposes of priestcraft was the popish, which, he said, was the oldest inthe world and the best calculated to endure. On my inquiring what hemeant by saying the popish religion was the oldest in the world, whereasthere could be no doubt that the Greek and Roman religion had existedlong before it, to say nothing of the old Indian religion still inexistence and vigour, he said, with a nod, after taking a sip at hisglass, that, between me and him, the popish religion, that of Greece andRome, 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 frankyou may be, I think you are rather wild.'

  'We priests of Rome,' said the man in black, 'even those amongst us whodo not go much abroad, know a great deal about church matters, of whichyou heretics have very little idea. Those of our brethren of thePropaganda, on their return home from distant missions, not unfrequentlytell us very strange things relating to our dear mother: for example, ourfirst missionaries to the East were not slow in discovering and tellingto their brethren that our religion and the great Indian one wereidentical, no more difference between them than between Ram and Rome.Priests, convents, beads, prayers, processions, fastings, penances, allthe same, not forgetting anchorites, and vermin, he! he! The Pope theyfound under the title of the Grand Lama, a sucking child surrounded by animmense number of priests. Our good brethren, some two hundred yearsago, had a hearty laugh, which their successors have often re-echoed;they said that helpless suckling and its priests put them so much in mindof their own old man, surrounded by his cardinals, he! he! Old age issecond childhood.'

  'Did they find Christ?' said I.

  'They found him too,' said the man in black, 'that is, they saw Hisimage; He is considered in India as a pure kind of being, and on thataccount, perhaps, is kept there rather in the back-ground, even as He ishere.'

  '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 fromancient Rome, which had its religion from the East.'

  'But how?' I demanded.

  'It was brought about, I believe, by the wanderings of nations,' said theman in black. 'A brother of the Propaganda, a very learned man, oncetold me--I do not mean Mezzofanti, who has not five ideas--this brotheronce told me that all we of the Old World, from Calcutta to Dublin, areof 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 differentmodifications 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 beput down, just as you have always been, though others may rise up afteryou; 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 thatGreek Emperor, the Iconoclast, what was his name, Leon the Isaurian? Didnot his image-breaking cost him Italy, the fairest province of hisempire, and did not ten fresh images start up at home for every one whichhe demolished? Oh! you little know the craving which the soul sometimesfeels after a good bodily image.'

  'I have indeed no conception of it,' said I; 'I have an abhorrence ofidolatry--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 ofIdolatry; why the very supposition brings you to the ground; you mustmake figures of Shakespeare, must you? then why not of St. Antonio, orIgnacio, or of a greater personage still? I know what you are going tosay,' he cried, interrupting me as I was about to speak. 'You don't makehis image in order to pay it Divine honours, but only to look at it, andthink of Shakespeare; but this looking at a thing in order to think of aperson is the very basis of idolatry. Shakespeare's works are notsufficient for you; no more are the Bible or the legend of St. Anthony orSt. Ignacio for us, that is for those of us who believe in them; I tellyou, Zingaro, that no religion can exist long which rejects a good bodilyimage.'

  'Do you think,' said I, 'that Shakespeare's works would not exist withouthis image?'

  'I believe,' said the man in black, 'that Shakespeare's image is lookedat more than his works, and will be looked at, and perhaps adored, whenthey are forgotten. I am surprised that they have not been forgottenlong ago; I am no admirer of them.'

  'But I can't imagine,' said I, 'how you will put aside the authority ofMoses. If Moses strove against image-worship, should not his doing so beconclusive as to the impropriety of the practice; what higher authoritycan you have than that of Moses?'

  'The practice of the great majority of the human race,' said the man inblack, 'and the recurrence to image-worship, where image-worship has beenabolished. Do you know that Moses is considered by the Church as nobetter than a heretic, and though, for particular reasons, it has beenobliged to adopt his writings, the adoption was merely a sham one, as itnever paid the slightest attention to them? No, no, the Church was neverled by Moses, nor by one mightier than he, whose doctrine it has equallynullified--I allude to Krishna in his second avatar; the Church, it istrue, governs in his name, but not unfrequently gives him the lie, if hehappens to have said anything which it dislikes. Did you never hear thereply which Padre Paolo Segani made to the French Protestant, JeanAnthoine Guerin, who had asked him whether it was easier for Christ tohave been mistaken in His Gospel, than for the Pope to be mistaken in hisdecrees?'

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

  'The answer was pat,' said the man in black, 'though he who made it wasconfessedly the most ignorant fellow of the very ignorant order to whichhe belonged, the Augustine. Christ might err as a man,' said he, 'butthe Pope can never err, being God. The whole story is related in theNipotismo.'

  'I wonder you should ever have troubled yourselves with Christ at all,'said I.

  'What was to be done?' said the man in black; 'the power of that namesuddenly came over Europe, like the power of a mighty wind; it was saidto have come from Judea, and from Judea it probably came when it firstbegan to agitate minds in these parts; but it seems to have been known inthe remote East, more or less for thousands of years previously. Itfilled people's minds with madness; it was followed by books which werenever much regarded, as they contained little of insanity; but the name!what fury that breathed into people! the books were about peace andge
ntleness, but the name was the most horrible of war-cries--those whowished to uphold old names at first strove to oppose it, but theirefforts were feeble, and they had no good war-cry; what was Mars as awar-cry compared with the name of ---? It was said that they persecutedterribly, but who said so? The Christians. The Christians could havegiven them a lesson in the art of persecution, and eventually did so.None but Christians have ever been good persecutors; well, the oldreligion succumbed, Christianity prevailed, for the ferocious is sure toprevail over the gentile.'

  'I thought,' said I, 'you stated a little time ago that the Popishreligion and the ancient Roman are the same?'

  'In every point but that name, that Krishna and the fury and love ofpersecution which it inspired,' said the man in black. 'A hot blast camefrom the East, sounding Krishna; it absolutely maddened people's minds,and the people would call themselves his children; we will not belong toJupiter any longer, we will belong to Krishna; and they did belong toKrishna, that is in name, but in nothing else; for who ever cared forKrishna in the Christian world, or who ever regarded the words attributedto him, or put them in practice?'

  'Why, we Protestants regard his words, and endeavour to practise whatthey enjoin as much as possible.'

  'But you reject his image,' said the man in black; 'better reject hiswords than his image: no religion can exist long which rejects a goodbodily image. Why, the very negro barbarians of High Barbary could giveyou a lesson on that point; they have their fetish images, to which theylook 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 alook of some surprise.

  'Some of us poor Protestant 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 comicalstory about a fellow, an English servant, I once met at Rome.'

  'It would be quite unnecessary,' said I; 'I would much sooner hear youtalk about Krishna, his words and image.'

  'Spoken like a true heretic,' said the man in black; 'one of the faithfulwould have placed his image before his words; for what are all the wordsin 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, tosay nothing of rocks--ho! ho!'

  'But I cannot imagine,' said I, 'what advantage you could derive fromperverting those words of Scripture in which the Saviour talks abouteating His body.'

  'I do not know, indeed, why we troubled our heads about the matter atall,' said the man in black; 'but when you talk about perverting themeaning of the text, you speak ignorantly, Mr. Tinker. When He whom youcall the Saviour gave His followers the sop and bade them eat it, tellingthem it was His body, He delicately alluded to what it was incumbent uponthem to do after His death, namely, to eat His body.'

  'You do not mean to say that He intended they should actually eat Hisbody?'

  'Then you suppose ignorantly,' said the man in black; 'eating the bodiesof the dead was a heathenish custom, practised by the heirs and legateesof 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, whohave long lived at Rome, know much better what the New Testament is madeof than the heretics and their theologians, not forgetting their Tinkers,though I confess some of the latter have occasionally surprised us--forexample, Bunyan. The New Testament is crowded with allusions to heathencustoms, and with words connected with pagan sorcery. Now, with respectto words, I would fain have you who pretend to be a philologist, tell methe meaning of Amen?'

  I made no answer.

  'We of Rome,' said the man in black, 'know two or three things of whichthe heretics are quite ignorant. For example, there are those amongstus--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 ancestorsof 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 Hindooformula, Omani batsikhom, by the almost ceaseless repetition of which theIndians hope to be received finally to the rest or state of forgetfulnessof Buddh or Brahma. A foolish practice, you will say, but are youheretics much wiser, who are continually sticking amen to the end of yourprayers, little knowing when you do so that you are consigning yourselvesto the repose of Buddh? Oh, what hearty laughs our missionaries have hadwhen comparing the eternally sounding Eastern gibberish of Omanibatsikhom, Omani batsikhom, and the Ave Maria and Amen Jesus of our ownidiotical devotees.'

  'I have nothing to say about the Ave Marias and Amens of yoursuperstitious devotees,' said I; 'I dare say that they use themnonsensically enough, but in putting amen to the end of a prayer wemerely intend to express, "So let it be."'

  'It means nothing of the kind,' said the man in black, 'and the Hindoosmight just as well put your national oath at the end of their prayers, asperhaps they will after a great many thousand years, when English isforgotten, and only a few words of it remembered by dim tradition withoutbeing understood. How strange if, after the lapse of four thousandyears, the Hindoos should damn themselves to the blindness so dear totheir present masters, even as their masters at present consignthemselves to the forgetfulness so dear to the Hindoos. But my glass hasbeen empty for a considerable time, perhaps, Bellissima Biondina,' saidhe, addressing Belle, 'you will deign to replenish it?'

  'I shall do no such thing,' said Belle, 'you have drank quite enough, andtalked more than enough, and to tell you the truth, I wish you wouldleave 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 thefellow 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, Iam not so with her, and shall be always proud to wait upon her; in themeantime I will wait upon myself.'