Other People's Miseries

1895

The Man of Letters Heeds Them More Than Does the Orthodox Religionist.

It is quite extraordinary how callous even the most religious persons in the past have often been to the miseries of their fellow creatures, both in this world and the next. They have indeed expressed their gratitude for being safe and sound themselves, but not without a feeling of complacency that others are not so fortunate. It is this callousness, writes James Payn, in the Cornhill Magazine, which has rendered the man of letters — impulsive and sensitive, soft hearted, yet easily moved to indignation and charitable even toward the sins he is not inclined to — unorthodox and something more. There may be in him a want of submissiveness to the divine will and certainly of that unquestioning faith which is the comfort of so many souls, but there is no lack of human love and sympathy, and the man who loves his fellows, we are told, is very near to loving his Creator.

At all events, the feeling I have described seems to me to have more or less pervaded the minds of almost all men of letters with whom I have conversed upon spiritual things. Because literary men are not, as a rule, churchgoers they are often considered irreligious or as complete Gallios in the matter, but this is not at all my experience of them, and I have lived in their midst for nearly half a century.

A very distinguished member of the clergy used to say, with those half shut eyes that always showed when his vein of humor was touched and which caused it to be said of him that he "never saw a happy moment," "What strikes one as so queer is that belief in their particular dogma is made the essential point of all sects, all of which, save one — and perhaps even that — must be wrong."

Who damns every creed but his own
Must look for a limited heaven
And is like a man laying long odds
When the long odds to him should be given.

It never seems to strike a theologian that his calculation is contrary to the doctrine of chances.