He paused and looked quizzically at Jose. He seemed to be studying the length to which he could go in his criticism of the ancient faith of the house of Rincon. But Jose remained in expectant silence.
"Speaking of missionaries," the man resumed, "I shall never forget an experience I had in China. My wealthy and ultra-aristocratic congregation decided that I needed rest, and so sent me on a world tour. It was a member of that same congregation, by the way, a stuffy old dame whose wealth footed up to millions, who once remarked to me in all confidence that she had no doubt the aristocracy of heaven was composed of Presbyterians. Poor, old, empty-headed prig! What could I do but a.s.sure her that I held the same comforting conviction! Well, through influential friends in Pekin I was introduced to the eminent Chinese statesman, w.a.n.g Fo, of delightful memory. Our conversation turned on religion, and then I made the most inexcusable _faux pas_ that a blithering Yankee could make, that of expressing regret that he was not of our faith. Good heavens! But he was the most gracious gentleman in the world, and his biting rebuke was couched in tones of silken softness.
""What is it that you offer me?" he said mildly. "Blind opinion?
Undemonstrated and undemonstrable theory? Why, may I ask, do you come over here to convert us heathen, when your own Christian land is rife with evil, with sedition, with religious hatred of man for man, with bloodshed and greed? If your religious belief is true, then you can demonstrate it--prove it beyond doubt. Do you say that the wonderful material progress which your great country manifests is due to Christianity? I answer you, no. It is due to the unfettering of the human mind, to the laying off of much of the mediaeval superst.i.tion which in the past ages has blighted mankind. It is due largely to the abandonment of much of what you are still pleased to call Christianity. The liberated human mind has expanded to a degree never before seen in the world. We Chinese are still mentally fettered by our stubborn resistance to change, to progression. Your great inventors and your great men of finance are but little hampered by religious superst.i.tion. Hence the mental flights which they so boldly undertake, and the stupendous achievements they attain. Is it not so?"
"What could I say? He had me. But he hadn"t finished me quite.
""I once devoted much time to the study of Chemistry," he went on blandly, "and when I tell you that there is a law to the effect that the volume of a gas is a function of its pressure I do so with the full knowledge that I can furnish you indisputable proof therefor. But when you come to me with your religious theories, and I mildly request your proofs, you wish to imprison or hang me for doubting the absurdities which you cannot establish!"
"He laughed genially, then took me kindly by the arm. "Proof, my zealous friend, proof," he said. "Give me proof this side of the grave for what you believe, and then you will have converted the heathen.
And can your Catholic friend--or, shall I say enemy?--prove his laughable doctrine of purgatory? The dead in purgatory dependent upon the living! Why, I tell him, that smacks of Shintoism, wherein the living feed the dead! Then he points in holy indignation to the Bible.
Bah! Cannot I prove anything I may wish from your Bible? What will you have? Polygamy? Incest? Murder? Graft? Hand me your Bible, and I will establish its divinity. No, my good friend. When you come to me with proofs that you really do the works of him whom you profess to follow, then will I gladly listen, for I, too, seek truth. But in the present deplorable absence of proofs I take much more comfort in the adoration of my amiable ancestors than I could in your laughable and undemonstrable religious creeds."
"I left his presence a saddened but chastened man, and went home to do a little independent thinking. When I approached my Bible without the bias of the Westminster Confession I discovered that it did serve admirably as a wardrobe in which to hang any sort of religious prejudice. Continued study made me see that religious faith is generally mere human credulity. I discovered that in my pitying contempt for those of differing belief I much resembled the Yankee who ridiculed a Chinaman for wearing a pig-tail. "True," the Celestial replied, "we still wear the badge of our former slavery. But you emanc.i.p.ated Americans, do you not wear the badge of a present and much worse form of slavery in your domination by Tammany Hall, by your corrupt politicians, and your organizers and protectors of crime?"
"As time pa.s.sed I gradually began to feel much more kindly toward Matthew Arnold, who said, "Orthodox theology is an immense misunderstanding of the Bible." And I began likewise to respect his statement that our Bible language is "fluid and pa.s.sing"--that much of it is the purest poetry, beautiful and inspiring, but symbolical."
"But," broke in Jose, "you must admit that there is something awfully wrong with the world, with--"
"Well," interrupted Hitt, "and what is it? As historical fact, that story about Adam and Eve eating an apple and thereby bringing down G.o.d"s curse upon the whole innocent human race is but a figment of little minds, and an insult to divine intelligence. But, as symbolizing the dire penalty we pay for a belief in the reality of both good and evil--ah, that is a note just beginning to be sounded in the world at large. And it may account for the presence of the world"s evil."
"Yet, our experience certainly shows that evil is just as real and just as immanent as good! And, indeed, more powerful in this life."
"If so," replied the explorer gravely, "then G.o.d created or inst.i.tuted it. And in that case I must break with G.o.d."
"Then you think it is all a question of our own individual idea of G.o.d?"
"Entirely. And human concepts of Him have been many and varied. But that worst of Old Testament interpreters of the first century, Philo, came terribly close to the truth, I think, when, in a burst of inspiration, he one day wrote: "Heaven is mind, and earth is sensation." Matthew Arnold, I think, likewise came very close to the truth when he said that the only G.o.d we can recognize is "that something not ourselves that makes for righteousness." And, as for evil, up in the United States there are some who are now lumping it all under the head of "mortal mind," considering it all but the "one lie" which Jesus so often referred to, and regarding it as the "suppositional opposite" of the mind that is G.o.d, and so, powerless.
Not a bad idea, I think. But whether the money-loving Yankee will ever leave his mad chase for gold long enough to live this premise and so demonstrate it, is a question. I"m watching its development with intense interest. We in the States have wonderful, exceptional opportunities for study and research. We ought to uncover the truth, if any people should."
He fell into thoughtfulness again. Jose drew a long sigh. "I wish--I wish," he murmured, "that I might go there--that I might live and work and search up there."
The explorer roused up. "And why not?" he asked abruptly. "Look here, come with me and spend a year or so digging around for buried Inca towns. Then we will go back to the States. Why, man! it would make you over. I"ll take you as interpreter. And in the States I"ll find a place for you. Come. Will you?"
For a moment the doors of imagination swung wide, and in the burst of light from within Jose saw the dreams of a lifetime fulfilled.
Emanc.i.p.ation lay that way. Freedom, soul-expansion, truth. It was his G.o.d-given privilege. Who had the right to lay a detaining hand upon him? Was not his soul his own, and his G.o.d"s?
Then a dark hand stole out from the surrounding shadows and closed the doors. From the blackness there seemed to rise a hollow voice, uttering the single word, _Honor_. He thrust out an arm, as if to ward off the a.s.saults of temptation. "No, no," he said aloud, "I am bound to the Church!"
"But why remain longer in an inst.i.tution with which you are quite out of sympathy?" the explorer urged.
"First, to help the Church. Who will uplift her if we desert her? And, second, to help this, my ancestral country," replied Jose in deep earnestness.
"Worthy aims, both," a.s.sented Hitt. "But, my friend, what will you accomplish here, unless you can educate these people to think? I have learned much about conditions in this country. I find that the priest in Colombia is even more intolerant than in Ireland, for here he has a monopoly, no compet.i.tion. He is absolute. The Colombian is the logical product of the doctrines of Holy Church. It is so in Mexico. It is so wherever the curse of a fixed mentality is imposed upon a people. For that engenders determined opposition to mobility. It quenches responsiveness to new concepts and new ideas. It throttles a nation.
The bane of mental progress is the _Semper Idem_ of your Church."
"Christianity will remove the curse."
"I have no doubt whatever of that. It probably is the future cure for all social ills and evils of every sort. But if so, it must be the Christianity which Jesus taught and demonstrated--not the theological chaff now disseminated in his name. Do not forget that we no longer know what Christianity is. It is a lost science."
"It can and will be recovered!" cried Jose warmly.
"I have said that is foreshadowed. But we must have the whole garment of the Christ, without human _addenda_. He is reported as having said, "The works that I do bear witness of me." Now the works of the Christian Church bear ample witness that she has not the true understanding of the Christ. Nor has that eminent Protestant divine, now teaching in a theological seminary in the States, who recently said that, although Jesus ministered miraculously to the physical man, yet it was not his intention that his disciples should continue that sort of ministry; that the healing which Jesus did was wholly incidental, and was not an example to be permanently imitated. Good heavens! how these poor theologians hide their inability to do the works of the Master by taking refuge in such ridiculously unwarranted a.s.sertions. To them the rule seems to be that, if you can"t do a thing you must deny the possibility of its being done. Great logic, isn"t it?
"And yet," he went on, "the Church has had nearly two thousand years in which to learn to do the works of the Master. Pretty dull pupil, I think. And we"ve had nearly two thousand years of theology from this slow pupil. Would that she would from now on give us a little real Christianity! Heavens! the world needs it. And yet, do you know, sectarian feeling is still so bitter in the so-called Church of G.o.d that if a Bishop of the Anglican Church should admit Presbyterians, Methodists, or members of other denominations to his communion table a scream of rage would go up all over England, and a mighty demand would be raised to impeach the Bishop for heresy! Think of it! G.o.d above!
the puny human mind. Do you wonder that the dogma of the Church has lost force? That, despite its thunders, thinking men laugh? I freely admit that our great need is to find an adequate subst.i.tute for the authority which others would like to impose upon us. But where shall we find such authority, if not in those who demonstrate their ability to do the works of the Master? Show me your works, and I"ll show you my faith. This is my perpetual challenge.
"But, now," he said, "returning to the subject so near your heart: the condition of this country is that of a large part of South America, where the population is unsettled, even turbulent, and where a priesthood, fanatical, intolerant, often unscrupulous, pursue their devious means to extend and perpetuate unhindered the sway of your Church. Colombia is struggling to remove the blight which Spain laid upon her, namely, mediaeval religion. It is this same blighting religion, coupled with her remorseless greed, which has brought Spain to her present decrepit, empty state. And how she did strive to force that religion upon the world! Whole nations, like the Incas, for example, ruthlessly slaughtered by the papal-benisoned riffraff of Spain in her attempts to foist herself into world prestige and to bolster up the monstrous a.s.sumptions of Holy Church! The Incas were a grand nation, with a splendid mental viewpoint. But it withered under the touch of the mediaeval narrowness fastened upon it. Whole nations wasted in support of papal a.s.sumptions--and do you think that the end is yet? Far from it! War is coming here in Colombia. It may come in other parts of this Western Hemisphere, certainly in Mexico, certainly in Peru and Bolivia and Chili, rocked in the cradle of Holy Church for ages, but now at last awaking to a sense of their backward condition and its cause. If ever the Church had a chance to show what she could do when given a free hand, she has had it in these countries, particularly in Mexico. In all the nearly four centuries of her unmolested control in that fair land, oppressed by sword and crucifix, did she ever make an attempt worth the name to uplift and emanc.i.p.ate the common man? Not one. She took his few, hard-earned _pesos_ to get his weary soul out of an imagined purgatory--but she left him to rot in peonage while on earth! But, friend, I repeat, the struggle is coming here in Colombia. And look you well to your own escape when it arrives!"
"And can I do nothing to help avert it?" cried the distressed Jose.
"Well," returned the explorer meditatively, "such bondage is removable either through education or war. But in Colombia I fear the latter will overtake the former by many decades."
"Then rest a.s.sured that I shall in the meantime do what in me lies to instruct my fellow-countrymen, and to avoid such a catastrophe!"
"Good luck to you, friend. And--by the way, here is a little book that may help you in your work. I"m quite sure you"ve never read it. Under the ban, you know. Renan"s _Vie de Jesus_. It can do you no harm, and may be useful."
Jose reached out and took the little volume. It was _anathema_, he knew, but he could not refuse to accept it.
"And there is another book that I strongly recommend to you. I"m sorry I haven"t a copy here. It once created quite a sensation. It is called, "Confessions of a Roman Catholic Priest." Published anonymously, in Vienna, but unquestionably bearing the earmarks of authenticity. It mentions this country--"
Without speaking, Jose had slowly risen and started down the musty corridor, his thought aflame with the single desire to get away. Down past the empty barracks and gaping cells he went, without stopping to peer into their tenebrous depths--on and on, skirting the grim walls that typified the mediaevalism surrounding and fettering his restless thought--on to the long incline which led up to the broad esplanade on the summit. Must he forever flee this pursuing Nemesis? Or should he hurl himself from the wall, once he gained the top? At the upper end of the incline he heard the low sound of voices. A priest and a young girl who sat there on the parapet rose as he approached. He stopped abruptly in front of them. "Wenceslas!" he exclaimed. "And Maria!"
"Ah, _amigo_, a quiet stroll before retiring? It is a sultry night."
"Yes," slowly replied Jose, looking at the girl, who drew back into the shadow cast by the body of her companion. Then, bowing, he pa.s.sed on down the wall and disappeared in the darkness that shrouded the distance.
A few minutes later the long form of the explorer appeared above the incline. Wenceslas and the girl had departed. Seeing no one, the American turned and descended to the ground, shaking his head in deep perplexity.
CHAPTER 15
The next day was one of the Church"s innumerable feast-days, and Jose was free to utilize it as he might. He determined on a visit to the suburb of Turbaco, some eight miles from Cartagena, and once the site of Don Ignacio"s magnificent country home. Although he had been some months in Cartagena, he had never before felt any desire to pa.s.s beyond its walls. Now it seemed to him that he must break the limitation which those encircling walls typified, that his restless thought might expand ere it formulated into definite concepts and plans for future work. This morning he wanted to be alone. The old injury done to his sensitive spirit by the publication of his journal had been unwittingly opened anew. The old slowness had crept again into his gait since the evening before. Over night his countenance had resumed its wonted heaviness; and his slender shoulders bent again beneath their former burden.
When Jose arrived in Cartagena he had found it a city of vivid contrasts. There mediaevalism still strove with the spirit of modern progress; and so it suited well as an environment for the dilation of his shrunken soul-arteries. The lethal influence of the monastery long lay over him, beneath which he continued to manifest those eccentric habits which his prolonged state of loneliness had engendered. He looked askance at the amenities which his a.s.sociates tentatively held out to him. He sank himself deep in study, and for weeks, even months, he shunned the world of people and things. He found no stimulus to a search for his ancestral palace within the city, nor for a study of the Rincon records which lay moldering in the ancient city"s archives.
But, as the sunlit days drifted dreamily past with peaceful, unvarying monotony, Jose"s faculties, which had always been alert until he had been declared insane, gradually awakened. His violently disturbed balance began to right itself; his equilibrium became in a measure restored. The deadening thought that he had accomplished nothing in his vitiated life yielded to a hopeful determination to yet retrieve past failure. The pride and fear which had balked the thought of self-destruction now served to fan the flame of fresh resolve. He dared not do any writing, it was true. But he could delve and study.
And a thousand avenues opened to him through which he could serve his fellow-men. The papal instructions which his traveling companion, the Apostolic Delegate, had brought to the Bishop of Cartagena, evidently had sufficed for his credentials; and the latter had made no occasion to refer to the priest"s past. An order from the Vatican was law; and the Bishop obeyed it with no other thought than its inerrancy and inexorability. And with the lapse of the several months which had slipped rapidly away while he sought to forget and to clear from his mind the dark clouds of melancholia which had settled over it, Jose became convinced that the Bishop knew nothing of his career prior to his arrival in Colombia.
And it is possible that the young priest"s secret would have died with him--that he would have lived out his life amid the peaceful scenes of this old, romantic town, and gone to his long rest at last with the consciousness of having accomplished his mite in the service of his fellow-beings; it is possible that Rome would have forgotten him; and that his uncle"s ambitions, to which he knew that he had been regarded as in some way useful, would have flagged and perished over the watery waste which separated the New World from the Old, but for the intervention of one man, who crossed Jose"s path early in his new life, found him inimical to his own worldly projects, and removed him, therefore, as sincerely in the name of Christ as the ancient _Conquistadores_, with priestly blessing, hewed from their paths of conquest the simple and harmless aborigines.
That man was Wenceslas Ortiz, trusted servant of Holy Church, who had established himself in Cartagena to keep a watchful eye on anticlerical proceedings. That he was able to do this, and at the same time turn them greatly to his own advantage, marks him as a man of more than usually keen and resourceful mentality. He was a native son, born of prosperous parents in the riverine town of Mompox, which, until the erratic Magdalena sought for itself a new channel, was the chief port between Barranquilla and the distant Honda. There had been neither family custom nor parental hopes to consider among the motives which had directed him into the Church. He was a born worldling, but with unmistakable talents for and keen appreciation of the art of politics. His love of money was subordinate only to his love of power. To both, his talents made access easy. In the contemplation of a career in his early years he had hesitated long between the Church and the Army; but had finally thrown his lot with the former, as offering not only equal possibilities of worldly preferment and riches, but far greater stability in those periodic revolutions to which his country was so addicted. The Army was frequently overthrown; the Church, never. The Government changed with every successful political revolution; the Church remained immovable. And so with the art of a trained politician he cultivated his chosen field with such intensity that even the Holy See felt the glow of his ardor, and in recognition of his marked abilities, his pious fervor and great influence, was constrained to place him just where he wished to be, at the right hand of the Bishop of Cartagena, and probable successor to that aged inc.u.mbent, who had grown to lean heavily and confidingly upon him.
As coadjutor, or suffragan to the Bishop of Cartagena, Wenceslas Ortiz had at length gathered unto himself sufficient influence of divers nature as, in his opinion, to ensure him the See in case the bishopric should, as was contemplated, be raised eventually to the status of a Metropolitan. It was he, rather than the Bishop, who distributed parishes to ambitious pastors and emoluments to greedy politicians.