RELIGION

There once was an Evangelical lady who had a Latitudinarian daughter and a Ritualistic son. On Sunday morning, when they were forsaking the family pew and setting out for their respective places of objectionable worship, these graceless young people used to join hands and exclaim, "Look at us, dear mamma! Do we not exemplify what you are so fond of saying, 'Infidelity and superstition, those kindred evils, go hand in hand'?"

The combination thus flippantly stated is a conspicuous sign of the present times. The decay of religion and the increase of superstition are among the most noteworthy of the social changes which I have seen.

When I speak of the decay of religion, of course I must be understood to refer only to external observances. As to interior convictions, I have neither the will nor the power to investigate them. I deal only with the habits of religious practice, and in this respect the contrast between Then and Now is marked indeed.

In the first place, grace was then said before and after dinner. I do not know that the ceremony was very edifying, but it was traditional and respectable. Bishop Wilberforce, in his diary, tells of a greedy clergyman who, when asked to say grace at a dinner-party, used to vary the form according to the character of the wine-glasses which he saw before him on the table. If they were champagne-glasses, he used to begin the benediction with "Bountiful Jehovah"; but, if they were only claret-glasses, he said, "We are not worthy of the least of Thy mercies."

Charles Kingsley, who generally drew his social portraits from actual life, described the impressive eloquence of the Rev. Mr. O'Blareaway, who inaugurated an exceptionally good dinner by praying "that the daily bread of our less-favoured brethren might be mercifully vouchsafed to them."

There was a well-remembered squire in Hertfordshire whose love of his dinner was constantly at war with his pietistic traditions. He always had his glass of sherry poured out before he sat down to dinner, so that he might get it without a moment's delay. One night, in his generous eagerness, he upset the glass just as he dropped into his seat at the end of grace, and the formula ran on to an unexpected conclusion, thus: "For what we are going to receive the Lord make us truly thankful—D—— n!"

But, if the incongruities which attended grace before dinner were disturbing, still more so were the solemnities of the close. Grace after dinner always happened at the moment of loudest and most general conversation. For an hour and a half people had been stuffing as if their lives depended on it—"one feeding like forty." After a good deal of sherry, the champagne had made its tardy appearance, had performed its welcome rounds, and had in turn been succeeded by port and home-brewed beer. Out of the abundance of the mouth the heart speaketh, and every one was talking at once, and very loud. Perhaps the venue was laid in a fox-hunting country, and then the air was full of such voices as these: "Were you out with the squire to-day?" "Any sport?" "Yes, we'd rather a nice gallop." "Plenty of the animal about, I hope?" "Well, I don't know. I believe that new keeper at Boreham Wood is a vulpicide. I don't half like his looks." "What an infernal villain! A man who would shoot a fox would poison his own grandmother." "Sh! Sh!" "What's the matter?" "For what we have received," &c.

Or perhaps we are dining in London in the height of the season. Fox-hunting is not the theme, but the conversation is loud, animated, and discursive. A lyrical echo from the summer of 1866 is borne back upon my memory—

Agreeable Rattle.

This news from abroad is alarming;
You've seen the Pall Mall of to-day!

Oh! Ilma di Murska was charming
To-night in the Flauto, they say.

Not a ghost of a chance for the Tories,
In spite of Adullam and Lowe;

By the bye, have you heard the queer stories
Of Overend, Gurney and Co.?

Lively Young Lady. Do you know you've been talking at the top of your voice all the time grace was going on?

Agreeable Rattle. Not really? I'm awfully sorry. But our host mumbles so, I never can make out what he's saying.

Lively Young Lady. I can't imagine why people don't have grace after dessert. I know I'm much more thankful for strawberry ice than for saddle of mutton.

And so on and so forth. On the whole, I am not sure that the abolition of grace is a sign of moral degeneracy, but I note it as a social change which I have seen.

Another such change is the disuse of Family Players. In the days of my youth, morning prayers at least formed part of the ritual of every well-ordered household. The scene recurs vividly to the mental eye—the dining-room arranged for breakfast, and the master of the house in top-boots and breeches with the family Bible in close proximity to the urn on the table. Mamma very often breakfasted upstairs; but the sons and daughters of the house, perhaps with their toilettes not quite complete, came in with a rush just as the proceedings began, and a long row of maid-servants, headed by the housekeeper and supported by the footmen, were ranged with military precision against the opposite wall. In families of a more pronouncedly religious tone, evening prayers were frequently superadded; and at ten o'clock the assembled guests were aroused from "Squails" or "Consequences" by the entrance of the butler with "Thornton's Family Prayers" on a silver salver. In one very Evangelical house which I knew in my youth, printed prayers were superseded by extempore devotions, and, as the experiment seemed successful, the servants were invited to make their contributions in their own words. As long as only the butler and the housekeeper voiced the aspirations of their fellows, all was well; but, in an evil moment, a recalcitrant kitchenmaid uttered an unlooked-for petition for her master and mistress—"And we pray for Sir Thomas and her Ladyship. Oh! may they have now hearts given them." And the bare suggestion that there was room for such an improvement caused a prompt return to the lively oracles of Henry Thornton.

I note the disappearance of the domestic liturgy; and here again, as in the matter of grace, I submit that, unless the rite can be decently, reasonably, and reverently performed, it is more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

Much more significant is the secularization of Sunday. This is not merely a change, but a change conspicuously for the worse. The amount of church-going always differed in different circles; religious people went often and careless people went seldom, but almost every one went sometimes, if merely from a sense of duty and decorum. Mr. Gladstone, whose traditions were Evangelical, thought very poorly of what he called a "once-er," i.e. a person who attended divine service only once on a Sunday. He himself was always a "twice-er," and often a "thrice-er"; but to-day it would puzzle the social critic to discover a "twice-er," and even a "once-er" is sufficiently rare to be noticeable.

But far more serious than the decay of mere attendance at church is the complete abolition of the Day of Rest. People, who have nothing to do but to amuse themselves, work at that entrancing occupation with redoubled energy on Sundays. If they are in London, they whirl off to spend the "week-end" amid the meretricious splendours of the stockbroker's suburban paradise; and, if they are entertaining friends at their country houses, they play bridge or tennis or croquet; they row, ride, cycle, and drive, spend the afternoon in a punt, and wind up the evening with "The Washington Post."

All this is an enormous change since the days when the only decorous amusement for Sunday was a visit after church to the stables, or a walk in the afternoon to the home farm or the kitchen garden; and, of course, it entails a corresponding amount of labour for the servants. Maids and valets spend the "week-end" in a whirl of packing and unpacking, and the whole staff of the kitchen is continuously employed.

In old days people used to reduce the meals on Sunday to the narrowest dimensions, in order to give the servants their weekly due of rest and recreation, and in a family with which I am connected the traditional bill of fare for Sunday's dinner, drawn by a cook who lived before the School Board, is still affectionately remembered—

Soup.

---

Cold Beef.

---

Salad.

---

Cold Sweats.

In brief, respectable people used to eat and drink sparingly on Sunday, caused no unnecessary work, went a good deal to church, and filled up their leisure time by visiting sick people in the cottages or teaching in the Sunday School. No doubt there was a trace of Puritan strictness about the former practice, and people too generally forgot that the First Day of the week is by Christian tradition a feast. Society has rediscovered that great truth. It observes the weekly feast by over-eating itself, and honours the day of rest by over-working its dependants.

---