網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

And have not the Western churches split on the rock of statements? I have made some study of the Bibles of the great faiths. They are grounded on the same effort, aimed at rather than expressed: the union of the will of man with that of the Divine. The distinctions, perhaps small at first, crystallize into dogma, statement about what cannot be stated, positions which must be untenable to men of other races and times. And then the trouble begins.

Creeds are the prisons of faith and the symbols of battle. Who can really believe that absolute Truth is embodied in any? Or that it has said its last word? Or that the churches have rightly deciphered its first word? 'For Heaven's sake,' said Charles Buller, 'do not destroy the Established Church. It is the only thing which stands between us and Christianity.' Ponder that saying, and the yet bitterer one of Swift: 'Nor do I think it wholly groundless, nor my fears altogether imaginary, that the abolishing of Christianity might bring the Church into some danger.'

If the churches had been a real power in the West, say, like the universal permeation of the Confucian ideal in China, how little could the modern attack on their authority have counted! The harm was there before the scientific attack, and not as its result. The traitor was in the garrison, and men as a whole resented the rise of a cent on the loaf far more than being robbed of what they had been told was their eternal hope. They felt that the religion represented by the churches was not vital to them, and the hue and cry fell comparatively flat. The things which really concern us we do instinctively, because it would make us desperately uncomfortable if we did not do them, and no scientific pronouncement against these things would affect us in the least. But interfere with them-attack them, and see what happens!

IV

The Oriental point of view, chiefly as represented in the Upanishads and the teaching of the Buddha, sets forth that Law is as inherent in the soul as in the body, and the evolutionary life of the soul as instinctive and simple, when realized. It asserts that without certain perfectly natural spiritual processes spiritual disease results; and that this disease does not mean vaguely unpleasant penalties to be encountered in a dubious future life, but a certainly maimed and troubled existence in this, and the inevitable reaping of the sown harvest until the last trace of disease and its consequences to others is worked out one may say, bred out in the long processes of evolution. And that no intercessor, human or divine, can stand between a man and his own sowing and reaping.

It proclaims that religion is not a series of teachings and experiments about life, but life itself; for religion is merely the statement, in spiritual matters, of the Law that guides the migration of the bird and the path of the planet. Also, that man, being a part and manifestation of this Law, cannot be at ease while he is breaking it by living at a lower level of evolution than his upward progress warrants.

It is a magnificent proof of the reality of Plato's World of Ideas that man is compelled by his nature to adapt himself to a Law quite outside the range of all his senses can teach him. Saint Augustine said very truly what all the Founders have taught: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless until it rests in Thee.' This applies to the devotee in his cell where it is possible to be extremely worldly—as well as to the flourishing stockbroker. And the practical knowledge of this is all that really matters. for the evolution of the soul. So great

is the collective power of truth; whereas dogma - which comes later is the greatest separative force we know. So are the simplicity of the Law and the evolution of the soul obscured by theology. The wonderful vibration and flow of life are reduced to formulas; and, because it is not possible that life should be thus bound in fetters, it escapes from them and goes off on its own adventures, since it finds these far more interesting than formulas which in no way express its relation to the universe.

But these piracies are not its natural state. That state is to live by the Law of spiritual evolution, which demands no more from any man than his best, however poor a best it may be, and assures him that that best will with experience and effort develop in other stages into the absolute Best. He must realize that Law of evolution in himself as instinctively as the good citizen obeys the law of the land, never giving it a thought, in one sense, yet invariably obedient and constituent--a thing to be as little evaded or questioned as the process of breathing in a healthy body.

V

To possess a national ethical standard, to be taught as a matter of course, would be a step gained. It has been our misfortune that the ethical standard was tangled up with- indeed, regarded as inseparable from-theology, and denial of or indifference to the latter involved disregard of the former. In other words, the eternal and universal was given the foundation of the local and transitory. Such a standard as Confucius gave China, which has preserved her through the ages and may yet set her in a foremost place, unless it is sapped in her by contact with our spiritual anarchy, was denied to us. Doctrine, on the highest authority in

Christendom, follows practical morality, and we may safely leave theology to find its own level if we adopt that humble and comprehensible beginning; for the ethical standard, when it is based on soul-science, leads to vision, and morality and vision blended are true religion.

We may find that to train children in these common pieties, and in the manners which follow their practice, is of more consequence to themselves and the State than all the ill-taught and illdigested information heaped upon them now; and that the ideal of work, which is certainly a part of the Law of soulevolution, is a better ideal than that of abundant leisure for amusement. It is possible that even the ideal of what really constitutes amusement may be shifted, to our infinite advantage, nationally and individually.

Physicians are beginning to comprehend the law of the body and to set aside their trust in panaceas. Science is unraveling the constituents of personality, on the very lines of the Buddha's teaching more than two millenniums ago. It may be that science, the youngest of the angels, now pluming her wings for flight from the materialisms, may, joining hands with the great Oriental teachings of soul-lore, lead us to knowledge of Law Universal, in terms not to be predicted at the present moment.

These are only scattered thoughts. I beg they may not be taken polemically. I write on New Year's Day, in a sunshine which promises spring. May it herald the freeing of vision from the ice of theology! The churches have built excluding walls to preserve their purity of faith, not remembering the story of the Wise Men of Gotham who thought to preserve eternal summer by building a wall about the cuckoo, and were surprised to find the bird dead in the winter snows.

OUR CONVICT SLAVES

BY CARL CHRISTIAN JENSEN

It is still dark. But the buzzing of the night is disturbed by the bloodhounds howling in their kennels. The saddle horses begin to stamp and snort in the corral. Already the pigs squeal for the leavings of the breakfast table.

The convicts stir in their bunks. Side by side they lie in long rows, four layers high, upon mattresses soaked with sweat and with the sultry mist of the Gulf. Between the two wings of the camp the picket boss peers through the bars at a trusty, who with a lantern in his hand climbs from shelf to shelf on the rickety steel structure in the centre, yelling at and poking the sleeping

men.

Stiff, aching, fatigued from the previous day's work and from the long trips back and forth between the camp and the cotton-field, the convicts finally stand in stuporous silence, waiting to be let into the adjoining diningroom: Negroes, Mexicans, and whites; young boys of eighteen, strong, mature men, feeble seniles; half-wits, psychopaths, normals one hundred or more of them rubbing elbows in each sleepinghall.

The picket boss hands a key between the bars to the turnkey, who is locked in the dining-room. The latter unlocks a heavy padlock on the door of the sleeping-hall, returns the key to the picket boss outside, and opens the door. One by one the men file past him and drop down on seats at a table that is covered with bread, molasses, beans,

I

potatoes, and coffee, prepared outside in the awkwardly placed cookhouse.

The seven haunting hours ahead, before the convicts will be able again to sit down, whet their appetite. Food there is in abundance; but it is coarse and unsavory and often poorly prepared. The men devour their breakfast with gobbling glut, yet not with the relish of hungry creatures. Hurriedly they swill their coffee. Dawn is approaching. At five they must be on their way. They stretch themselves sluggishly like dumb beasts, suck their teeth, lick their lips, and belch. Then they become aware of the picket boss outside the bars. They scowl at him and cringe at sight of his two sixshooters that gleam in the dim lamplight.

In the prison yard fifteen mounted guards face the picket, ready to receive their charges, prepared for a long day's vigil, each with a shotgun resting on his thigh, the barrel in the air, a sixshooter on his hip, a poncho folded across the horse's loins, a coiled lasso and a leather braided quirt hanging on the saddle hook.

In the dusky dawn the horses prance and fret, rearing on their hind legs, getting tangled in the reins and stirrups, and stirring the dust under the heavy dew.

The picket boss unlocks the diningroom door and opens it wide enough for a man to squeeze through sidewise. One by one the convicts scramble

out into the picket and leap down the again. Poor fellow - I know what is steps into the prison yard.

[blocks in formation]

the matter with him! He has twenty licks coming on his bare back tonight. He is always in trouble. Tin Pan is given 'salts.' Both are chased along into the cotton-field with the rest of number one hoe-squad. Snowball is allowed a day's rest in his bunk.

"Two missing,' yells the guard of this He is a bright boy still in his teens, a

particular squad.

'Who?'

The picket boss closes the door on the rest of the convicts until the discrepancy is accounted for.

A voice answers hesitatingly from the waiting plough-squad: 'Black Jack and Little Louse.' They all have nicknames. The picket boss calls out the two names, and from somewhere within the crowded dining-room the two belated members of number one ploughsquad force themselves to the door and pass out.

'Fourteen fifteen.'

'Right,' replies the guard. And off the fifteen men run as fast as their legs are able to carry them, to fetch the plough mules in the corral, while their guard comes galloping behind, holding the shotgun in his right hand and the reins in his left.

Despite many halts, the checking is done as quickly as sheep are counted in a corral. Each squad with its guard, starting off, shakes the ground like a faint earthquake. The five ploughsquads are on their way, each man crouching sleepily never straddling - on the back of a mule.

'Number one hoe-squad!' The picket boss unlocks the door of the second dining-room.

Again some of the convicts are missing, this time Tin Pan, Dirty Yellow, and Snowball, whom the captain calls the best little nigger in camp.' The three are found finally among the waiting prisoners. They say that they are sick. Dirty Yellow is malingering

[merged small][ocr errors]

'My best friend aks me for a match, and I done hab no matches on me, so he goes mad and shoots me three times. I runs and he don't hit me at all. So I gets mad and turns around and shoots him once only. And I done hit him right here,' pointing a regretful finger at the middle of his forehead.

'Snowball! You mean to tell me that your best friend shot at you three times because you did n't happen to have a match on you?' I asked, dubiously.

'No, sah. It was the way I say, "I don't hab no match," dat gets him so mad.'

The five hoe-squads are all accounted for and are marched out to the fields, each with a guard riding behind, and each man with a long-handled hoe on his shoulder.

'Pull-do-squad!' yells the picket

boss.

Cripples of all ages limp out of the dining-room and descend the steps into the prison yard, where they begin their work around the farm grounds.

All the trusties are counted. At night they are locked up in the sleepinghall with the rest: turnkeys, housetenders, dining-room trusties, cooks, the captain's servants, the hospital steward, bookkeeper, dog man, water

[blocks in formation]

It is evening. The convicts are returning to camp. White dust-clouds dry up the sweat on their brows like blotting-sand on wet ink. As they pass the captain's bungalow the Negroes tip their caps; the whites do not. They reach the prison yard. The ploughsquads ride their mules into the corral. The hoe-squads drop their hoes along the fence. One by one they all pass through the picket into the diningroom and from there into the sleepinghall. For the fourth time that day they are counted.

'Two hundred and two!' 'Right!'

Along the walls of each sleeping-hall the house-tenders are lighting the kerosene lanterns. The convicts rush to the drinking-faucet, to the shower, and to the bathing-pool beside their bunks. There they snort and splash like wild bronchos at a water hole. VOL. 137- NO. 5

The captain enters the picket, solemnly, quietly, frowning. He holds something in his hand that instantly throws a tomblike hush over the two prison wings. The Negro convicts cluster together, paralyzed with fear, drooping their heads, rolling their eyes at the black whip dangling from his right hand. It is a leather strap, two feet long, two and one-half inches wide, three-eighths of an inch thick, fastened to a heavy wooden handle long enough to be held by two large hands. At the tip of the strap the leather is worn rough and shredded. The whip is well seasoned.

Five guards enter the picket to hold Dirty Yellow down flat, by his head, arms, and legs. . . . Το spare the reader, allow me to skip this picture.

Four kinds of penalty are inflicted upon the prison offender, and many of the present convicts have paid the full penalty in each kind. The type called 'the chains' is the most brutal of the four, though the convicts unanimously prefer it to the flogging. Physically it is certainly the most harmful. The offender's wrists are interlocked by one end of a chain, and he is hoisted into the air until his toes barely touch the ground. There he hangs for three, six, sometimes twelve hours. One convict told me that he had hung in the chains from sunrise to sunrise.

a

The chains and the dark cell milder form of punishment — have both been abandoned recently, the first for humanitarian reasons, the latter because it was found that the convicts prefer to starve and thirst in the damp cellar rather than work in the cotton-field.

"The mule' is a contrivance erected in front of the picket inside the sleepinghall, and is similar in principle to the 'wooden horse' that was popular in Northern Europe during the period of Pietism. It consists of a narrow plank,

« 上一頁繼續 »