The Catholic Message Board

still his philanthropy was of that gunpowderous sort that the difference between it and animosity was hard to determine. You were to abolish military force, but you were first to bring all commanding officers who had done their duty, to trial by court-martial for that offence, and shoot them. You were to abolish war, but were to make converts by making war upon them, and charging them with loving war as the apple of their eye. You were to have no capital punishment, but were first to sweep off the face of the earth all legislators, jurists, and judges, who were of the contrary opinion. You were to have universal concord, and were to get it by eliminating all the people who wouldn’t, or conscientiously couldn’t, be concordant. You were to love your brother as yourself, but after an indefinite interval of maligning him (very much as if you hated him), and calling him all manner of names.

...the new rebel is a sceptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book (about the sex problem) in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself.

Mr. Crisparkle was so completely lost in musing on these similarities and dissimilarities, at the same time watching the crowd which came and went by, always, as it seemed, on errands of antagonistically snatching something from somebody, and never giving anything to anybody, that his name was called before he heard it. On his at length responding, he was shown by a miserably shabby and underpaid stipendiary Philanthropist (who could hardly have done worse if he had taken service with a declared enemy of the human race) to Mr. Honeythunder’s room.

“Sir,” said Mr. Honeythunder, in his tremendous voice, like a schoolmaster issuing orders to a boy of whom he had a bad opinion, “sit down.”

Mr. Crisparkle seated himself.

Mr. Honeythunder having signed the remaining few score of a few thousand circulars, calling upon a corresponding number of families without means to come forward, stump up instantly, and be Philanthropists, or go to the Devil, another shabby stipendiary Philanthropist (highly disinterested, if in earnest) gathered these into a basket and walked off with them.

“Now, Mr. Crisparkle,” said Mr. Honeythunder, turning his chair half round towards him when they were alone, and squaring his arms with his hands on his knees, and his brows knitted, as if he added, I am going to make short work of you: “Now, Mr. Crisparkle, we entertain different views, you and I, sir, of the sanctity of human life.”

“Do we?” returned the Minor Canon.

“We do, sir.”

“Might I ask you,” said the Minor Canon: “what are your views on that subject?”

“That human life is a thing to be held sacred, sir.”

“Might I ask you,” pursued the Minor Canon as before: “what you suppose to be my views on that subject?”

“By George, sir!” returned the Philanthropist, squaring his arms still more, as he frowned on Mr. Crisparkle: “they are best known to yourself.”

“Readily admitted. But you began by saying that we took different views, you know. Therefore (or you could not say so) you must have set up some views as mine. Pray, what views have you set up as mine?”

“Here is a man—and a young man,” said Mr. Honeythunder, as if that made the matter infinitely worse, and he could have easily borne the loss of an old one, “swept off the face of the earth by a deed of violence. What do you call that?”

“Murder,” said the Minor Canon.

“What do you call the doer of that deed, sir?

“A murderer,” said the Minor Canon.

“I am glad to hear you admit so much, sir,” retorted Mr. Honeythunder, in his most offensive manner; “and I candidly tell you that I didn’t expect it.” Here he lowered heavily at Mr. Crisparkle again.

“Be so good as to explain what you mean by those very unjustifiable expressions.”

“I don’t sit here, sir,” returned the Philanthropist, raising his voice to a roar, “to be browbeaten.”

“As the only other person present, no one can possibly know that better than I do,” returned the Minor Canon very quietly. “But I interrupt your explanation.”

“Murder!” proceeded Mr. Honeythunder, in a kind of boisterous reverie, with his platform folding of his arms, and his platform nod of abhorrent reflection after each short sentiment of a word. “Bloodshed! Abel! Cain! I hold no terms with Cain. I repudiate with a shudder the red hand when it is offered me.”

Instead of instantly leaping into his chair and cheering himself hoarse, as the Brotherhood in public meeting assembled would infallibly have done on this cue, Mr. Crisparkle merely reversed the quiet crossing of his legs, and said mildly: “Don’t let me interrupt your explanation—when you begin it.”

“The Commandments say, no murder. NO murder, sir!” proceeded Mr. Honeythunder, platformally pausing as if he took Mr. Crisparkle to task for having distinctly asserted that they said: You may do a little murder, and then leave off.

He (Mr. Chrisparkle) was simply and staunchly true to his duty alike in the large case and in the small. So all true souls ever are. So every true soul ever was, ever is, and ever will be. There is nothing little to the really great in spirit.