Kabanata Kabanata 52 · 第52章

. “You know, my dear Pontifex,” said Pryer to him, some few weeks after

Ernest had become acquainted with him, when the two were taking a

constitutional one day in Kensington Gardens, “You know, my dear

Pontifex, it is all very well to quarrel with Rome, but Rome has

reduced the treatment of the human soul to a science, while our own

Church, though so much purer in many respects, has no organised system

either of diagnosis or pathology—I mean, of course, spiritual diagnosis

and spiritual pathology. Our Church does not prescribe remedies upon

any settled system, and, what is still worse, even when her physicians

have according to their lights ascertained the disease and pointed out

the remedy, she has no discipline which will ensure its being actually

applied. If our patients do not choose to do as we tell them, we cannot

make them. Perhaps really under all the circumstances this is as well,

for we are spiritually mere horse doctors as compared with the Roman

priesthood, nor can we hope to make much headway against the sin and

misery that surround us, till we return in some respects to the

practice of our forefathers and of the greater part of Christendom.”

Ernest asked in what respects it was that his friend desired a return

to the practice of our forefathers.

“Why, my dear fellow, can you really be ignorant? It is just this,

either the priest is indeed a spiritual guide, as being able to show

people how they ought to live better than they can find out for

themselves, or he is nothing at all—he has no _raison d’être_. If the

priest is not as much a healer and director of men’s souls as a

physician is of their bodies, what is he? The history of all ages has

shown—and surely you must know this as well as I do—that as men cannot

cure the bodies of their patients if they have not been properly

trained in hospitals under skilled teachers, so neither can souls be

cured of their more hidden ailments without the help of men who are

skilled in soul-craft—or in other words, of priests. What do one half

of our formularies and rubrics mean if not this? How in the name of all

that is reasonable can we find out the exact nature of a spiritual

malady, unless we have had experience of other similar cases? How can

we get this without express training? At present we have to begin all

experiments for ourselves, without profiting by the organised

experience of our predecessors, inasmuch as that experience is never

organised and co-ordinated at all. At the outset, therefore, each one

of us must ruin many souls which could be saved by knowledge of a few

elementary principles.”

Ernest was very much impressed.

“As for men curing themselves,” continued Pryer, “they can no more cure

their own souls than they can cure their own bodies, or manage their

own law affairs. In these two last cases they see the folly of meddling

with their own cases clearly enough, and go to a professional adviser

as a matter of course; surely a man’s soul is at once a more difficult

and intricate matter to treat, and at the same time it is more

important to him that it should be treated rightly than that either his

body or his money should be so. What are we to think of the practice of

a Church which encourages people to rely on unprofessional advice in

matters affecting their eternal welfare, when they would not think of

jeopardising their worldly affairs by such insane conduct?”

Ernest could see no weak place in this. These ideas had crossed his own

mind vaguely before now, but he had never laid hold of them or set them

in an orderly manner before himself. Nor was he quick at detecting

false analogies and the misuse of metaphors; in fact he was a mere

child in the hands of his fellow curate.

“And what,” resumed Pryer, “does all this point to? Firstly, to the

duty of confession—the outcry against which is absurd as an outcry

would be against dissection as part of the training of medical

students. Granted these young men must see and do a great deal we do

not ourselves like even to think of, but they should adopt some other

profession unless they are prepared for this; they may even get

inoculated with poison from a dead body and lose their lives, but they

must stand their chance. So if we aspire to be priests in deed as well

as name, we must familiarise ourselves with the minutest and most

repulsive details of all kinds of sin, so that we may recognise it in

all its stages. Some of us must doubtlessly perish spiritually in such

investigations. We cannot help it; all science must have its martyrs,

and none of these will deserve better of humanity than those who have

fallen in the pursuit of spiritual pathology.”

Ernest grew more and more interested, but in the meekness of his soul

said nothing.

“I do not desire this martyrdom for myself,” continued the other, “on

the contrary I will avoid it to the very utmost of my power, but if it

be God’s will that I should fall while studying what I believe most

calculated to advance his glory—then, I say, not my will, oh Lord, but

thine be done.”

This was too much even for Ernest. “I heard of an Irish-woman once,” he

said, with a smile, “who said she was a martyr to the drink.”

“And so she was,” rejoined Pryer with warmth; and he went on to show

that this good woman was an experimentalist whose experiment, though

disastrous in its effects upon herself, was pregnant with instruction

to other people. She was thus a true martyr or witness to the frightful

consequences of intemperance, to the saving, doubtless, of many who but

for her martyrdom would have taken to drinking. She was one of a

forlorn hope whose failure to take a certain position went to the

proving it to be impregnable and therefore to the abandonment of all

attempt to take it. This was almost as great a gain to mankind as the

actual taking of the position would have been.

“Besides,” he added more hurriedly, “the limits of vice and virtue are

wretchedly ill-defined. Half the vices which the world condemns most

loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than

total abstinence.”

Ernest asked timidly for an instance.

“No, no,” said Pryer, “I will give you no instance, but I will give you

a formula that shall embrace all instances. It is this, that no

practice is entirely vicious which has not been extinguished among the

comeliest, most vigorous, and most cultivated races of mankind in spite

of centuries of endeavour to extirpate it. If a vice in spite of such

efforts can still hold its own among the most polished nations, it must

be founded on some immutable truth or fact in human nature, and must

have some compensatory advantage which we cannot afford altogether to

dispense with.”

“But,” said Ernest timidly, “is not this virtually doing away with all

distinction between right and wrong, and leaving people without any

moral guide whatever?”

“Not the people,” was the answer: “it must be our care to be guides to

these, for they are and always will be incapable of guiding themselves

sufficiently. We should tell them what they must do, and in an ideal

state of things should be able to enforce their doing it: perhaps when

we are better instructed the ideal state may come about; nothing will

so advance it as greater knowledge of spiritual pathology on our own

part. For this, three things are necessary; firstly, absolute freedom

in experiment for us the clergy; secondly, absolute knowledge of what

the laity think and do, and of what thoughts and actions result in what

spiritual conditions; and thirdly, a compacter organisation among

ourselves.

“If we are to do any good we must be a closely united body, and must be

sharply divided from the laity. Also we must be free from those ties

which a wife and children involve. I can hardly express the horror with

which I am filled by seeing English priests living in what I can only

designate as ‘open matrimony.’ It is deplorable. The priest must be

absolutely sexless—if not in practice, yet at any rate in theory,

absolutely—and that too, by a theory so universally accepted that none

shall venture to dispute it.”

“But,” said Ernest, “has not the Bible already told people what they

ought and ought not to do, and is it not enough for us to insist on

what can be found here, and let the rest alone?”

“If you begin with the Bible,” was the rejoinder, “you are three parts

gone on the road to infidelity, and will go the other part before you

know where you are. The Bible is not without its value to us the

clergy, but for the laity it is a stumbling-block which cannot be taken

out of their way too soon or too completely. Of course, I mean on the

supposition that they read it, which, happily, they seldom do. If

people read the Bible as the ordinary British churchman or churchwoman

reads it, it is harmless enough; but if they read it with any

care—which we should assume they will if we give it them at all—it is

fatal to them.”

“What do you mean?” said Ernest, more and more astonished, but more and

more feeling that he was at least in the hands of a man who had

definite ideas.

“Your question shows me that you have never read your Bible. A more

unreliable book was never put upon paper. Take my advice and don’t read

it, not till you are a few years older, and may do so safely.”

“But surely you believe the Bible when it tells you of such things as

that Christ died and rose from the dead? Surely you believe this?” said

Ernest, quite prepared to be told that Pryer believed nothing of the

kind.

“I do not believe it, I know it.”

“But how—if the testimony of the Bible fails?”

“On that of the living voice of the Church, which I know to be

infallible and to be informed of Christ himself.”