Aleph Bey

“ Is it strange that so many live in vice and sin, when their salvation is made so easy, by getting in a priest at the last moment? How can honest men, as clergymen, bolster up such a flattering delusion? If it is criminal to deceive men about things in this life, how much more so when it is about that which affects their eternal life? If the parsons cannot keep a man from sinning, or make him lead a good life here, how can they, in the hour of death, save him from Hell or fit him for Heaven, when his body is racked with pain and his senses are benumbed? ”

“ The world is shocked at the idolatry of the heathen, but what is there in their systems worse than this deifying a woman and a man, and placing them above God? It is awful, profane, wicked and insulting! “Most holy!” No stronger words could be used of God himself, and these applied to a woman! As if the eternal, infinite God without a beginning, should have a mother, and she a woman, an ordinary finite being! I had rather be a heathen, an infidel, or even an atheist, than to be guilty of such sacrilege and driveling nonsense. ”

“ Going from Vanity Fair to this crowd, was like going from heaven to hell, only a short distance apart; the one a picture of the arrogance of the rich, the other the debasement of the poor. I do not like to compare the church parade to heaven, as it was only a show, a mock heaven at best, but there was no hunger there, nor rags, though, no doubt, plenty of lust, vice and crime under those rich clothes. ”

“ We hold it by might and force, and rule it with a sort of tyranny, a military despotism. We are not here because the people want us. If we did not keep the country by force, not by moral or religious power, but by real brutal force, it would slip out of our hands in a single day. Blink at it as we may, this is the fact and no one can question it. Here then is a force, of one hundred and fifty thousand English soldiers, more or less, sent out at an enormous expense to live by the sweat and blood of these poverty-stricken, overtaxed natives. ”

“ No one can think of vivisection, though for philanthropic purposes, without a sense of pain. I cannot see the slaughter of an animal or bird, even when they are for food, without a feeling of pity. How then can I, though a weak mortal, yet having such feelings, bow down and worship a God who is declared to take pleasure in the destruction of life and offerings of blood! May God forgive me if I am wrong, but I cannot help thinking and feeling as I do. I would rather believe that all mankind are in error than to hold such an idea of the God I love and worship. ”

“ I am in somewhat of the quandary of a man who was born of an English father, a Scotch mother, on an American ship, in African waters.
I had made good use of my time in seeing England. I had studied the solid, smileless, arrogant Englishman, who acts, particularly in India, as if he felt that when God had finished making him and his set, He had but little earth from which to make the rest of mankind. He is born a grumbler and a grasper. He is ever finding faults in other people. ”

“ It is time we cease to be patronized. We have been made slaves, menials, and been done to death by patronage, as if we existed only through the mercy and favor of these haughty over-bearing Europeans who are the sources of our being and the causes of our degradation. Without any further remarks I would suggest that we have no occasion to go outside to solicit any one to honor us with his presence. We have one among us, of our own class, who is our best friend as we all know, and but for whom we would not be assembled here to-night. ”

“ The fish were gone and the big man departed on his high-stepping horse.
Had the big zemindar put us all in some room, closed the door and suffocated us, it would have been an act of mercy compared with what he did. What is the little pain of a sudden death, in comparison with a life of hardship, starvation, suffering, misery, and after all, death sure to come? Better half should go and give the other half a chance, than to prolong the wretchedness of all. Death cannot be escaped by waiting. Much of philanthropy is to prolong misery. The real philanthropist should seek to shorten and end it. ”

“ We might say that the light of the sun, or the rain, or the cooling winds, are among the divinest gifts to mankind. So any good impulse in the hearts of men, and every noble deed, is a divine gift ordained or given from God, our Heavenly Father. Why restrict His divine gifts or ordinances to two mere ceremonies, and not include all that is good? The universe is alive with God. The thing that is natural is none the less divine and worthy of our love and reverence. Every scientific fact, or we might say, everything good, all is of divine origin. ”

“ I doubt if anywhere on the globe the same number of people could have been found making up a community, as in my villages, who were more industrious, honest, truthful, grateful and virtuous than were these people. They were not allured by ambition to be something above their lot. They had not learned anything of the follies, fashions, intrigues, deceptions, seductions and vices of the civilized Christian world. Their natures had never been distorted and deformed by coming in contact with civilized society.
I often doubt if so much education and knowledge is not more of a curse than a blessing. ”

“ Persecution, imprisonment, crucifixion, burning at the stake, pouring molten lead into the ears, bursting people with water poured into their mouths, tearing them limb from limb, in short, no tortures that devilish ingenuity could invent but were inflicted, and the wars, desolating countries, the destruction of cities, the outrage and murder of helpless women and children, fire and the sword, the fiendish passions of men unrestrained, a greater destruction of property and human life by the Christian religious wars, than in all the wars of the world put together, and for what purpose? ”

“ He could not move without knocking his head against a stamp, and before he could arrive at any station of responsibility, he must have paid more money for stamps than would have set him up for life. The stamp penetrates everywhere, it seizes upon all things, and fixes its claws wherever there is a tangible substance. Sometimes, indeed, it flies to the intangible, and quarters itself upon the air, the imagination of man, his avocations, his insanity, his hopes and prospects, his pleasures and his pains, and does not scruple to fasten upon his affections. Even love is stamped. ”

“ We believe in the rights of man, that as an individual he should be free to act for himself, for his own good, the only restriction that he should not interfere with the rights of his neighbor. We believe that all men are equal, with the same political and social privileges, that each should govern himself, and all acting together, the majority to rule for the good of all, or, as President Lincoln tersely put it, ‘a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.’
“For ages it was supposed that mankind were not capable of self-government. ”

“ I would be like a tall bamboo, a great, awkward pole of a boy and man. I thought of our sahib; a tall, lean, lanky man, who seemed as if he never got enough to eat. Years afterward, when I could think more naturally, I concluded that he had stretched himself so much trying to look into heaven to learn about God’s decrees that he neglected broadening himself toward his fellowmen, for his religion was such a straight up and down thing that it lacked all breadth. He had so much theology, that it made him lean to carry it. ”

“ Memory is God’s judgment-day book, or rather men’s, for each one keeps his own daily and eternal record, and this he will take with him when he departs this life, and he will possess it, for it is a part of his soul, and carry it with him for ever; and this record will be a constant and perpetual witness for or against himself and make his heaven or his hell. This record is as indestructible as the soul itself; nothing of it can be lost, for nothing in the memory can ever be forgotten. Man is the architect of his own fortune, not only in this life, but for the life to come. ”

“ I would belie myself and not be true to my manhood, if I did not admit that I also wept. What could give me a greater joy than to have been the means of saving a soul, and she an innocent helpless girl, from the jaws of a monster vice, and from a life of the foulest degradation, misery and eternal death? ”

“ The status of a country is shown by the condition of its poor people and not by that of its few grasping rich. The glamour of India in its great cities and scenery in the cold season, seen by the racing globe-trotters, no more conveys an idea of the real condition of its vast millions, than a peasant’s holiday attire does of his everyday clothing and impoverished life. We heard the stories of poverty and oppression, and they were not Irish exaggeration for the one fact alone of the exorbitant rents they had to pay, was proof sufficient of the truth of their stories. ”

“ He may never sin again, but he cannot obliterate the wounds and scars he made upon his own soul by his sinning. Neither the forgiveness of his father nor the prayers of his loving mother can ever make him what he would have been had he not sinned. Nor can God do away with the violation of His laws. A man’s deeds become a part or all of himself. Destroy the remembrance of those deeds and so far you annihilate the man himself. The only thing for a sinner to do is to sin no more and make the most of the rest of his life. ”

“ Am I to blame for what my father, a Christian gentleman, made me, an Eurasian? Are not these poor people made what they are by no fault of their own, and to be pitied rather than cursed and shunned? Do they not of all people in India need sympathy and help? Would it not be the will of God that we should give them assistance and lift them out of the pit into which they have been cast?”
“Yes, yes, Japhet, you are right, and I am pleased to hear you talk as you do. ”

“ I halted at a village several miles from the station, telling the sais that I was ill, and very ill I was, too. How long the hours were! How slowly the minutes crept! I held my watch in my hand, counted the tick, ticks, as if every one was taunting me with my wretchedness. So I waited and ate grief for my dinner. Eleven o’clock came, and I turned towards home. Home! How suddenly it had changed to Hell! I formed no plans. I doubted, I feared, I hoped. Nearing the station I went by a back lane to the stables, and taking the luggage myself, went through the garden to the arbor. ”

“ What a virtue is the chastity of brutes in comparison to the lusts of those who are said to have been created in the image of God? Blessed is the innocent, ignorant man who knoweth none of these things. Surely, it is folly to be wise when ignorance is bliss. Far better and happier for my heathen villagers to live, and toil, and die in their ignorant simplicity, than to have their souls scarred by the vices and knowledge of a corrupt world and of society. ”

“ The English of the fashionable world make business an enjoyment, and enjoyment a business; they are born without a smile; they rove about public places like so many easterly winds—cold, sharp and cutting; or like a group of fogs on a frosty day, sent out of his hell by Boreas, for the express purpose of looking black at one another. ”

“ You always told me that I was your bibi, your own dear wife, that you would never leave me, and now you are going and will throw me away as the skin of the mango you have eaten, or as an old coat that you have worn out. You will leave me and go to Wilayat, where you will marry a young mem sahib as all the sahibs do, and she will never know that I am your wife. O Allah! Why did I ever listen to your soft words and become your pyari? Pyari, I have been and true to you in all things. Will you go away and leave me to be called a kusbi by all these people? O Allah! ”

“ Impurity is the greatest evil of this age. It is worse than cholera, or any pestilence, for these only destroy the bodies, but this undermines the moral nature, and destroys the souls of mankind. We give little attention to this sin of all sins. Fathers and mothers let their children grow up without a word of advice or warning. ‘It is such a delicate subject, you know,’ is the excuse. The clergy discourse on everything, but are as dumb as mummies about this devil of lust. ”

“ The whole story is a muddle, evolved from superstition and ignorance, in fact, the whole scheme is of man’s invention, not from the highest ideals of mankind, but from the lowest instincts of the human race. It degrades the character of the Almighty, and places Him on a level with the most ignorant human brute of a tyrant. They make their god, not mine, in the likeness of sinful men, fashion him, giving him their hates and revenges, and in their arrogance, assuming that they know all about him, demand that all the world should bow down and worship this image of their own manufacture. ”

“ I had no thought of encouraging that Oxford and Cambridge fad of giving the higher education to people to whom it is more of a curse than a blessing. I have often thought of writing a book denouncing the government scheme of giving the sons of the rich natives a classical education at the expense of taxing the groans, sweat and life blood of the poor to pay for it. ”

“ I wandered towards the railway station. I almost cursed my insatiable curiosity for leading me to that wretched place, of which I always had such a dread of seeing. We can see evil enough, and misery to the full, as we pass along, without rummaging around to find it. I had taken the bit in my teeth in spite of my reason, of my good sense, and I was wilfully making my own evil destiny. We are all mostly fools at times, and most of us all the time. ”

“ When a man has wasted his life, sucked the sweets from every flower to gratify his pampered appetite, and the fires of his passions have gone out, he becomes devout, builds a church, endows a hospital, says his prayers, and is cock sure of heaven, as if the eyes of justice were blind and the record of his misspent life could be erased by a few donations of money or the mumbling of a few prayers! ”

“ Better this than to be a hero in the greatest battle of the world. Such a deed, I can but think it, has an eternal record of good, while even the destruction of one fellow mortal in war, bears with it an everlasting stain and remorse, though it may win a medal or an empty plaudit to perish with this life. ”

“ Marriage has always seemed to me such a sacred thing as to be a solemn matter rather than something to be treated in a joking manner. It is next to birth and death, the most important event in a person’s life, and I never could understand how a young woman or a man could talk about their marriage as triflingly as they would about their chances in a lottery or a game of cards. ”

“ But what of the officers of Government, intelligent men, calling themselves Christians, representing a civilized Christian people, deliberately planning a scheme with the all-powerful, despotic, brute force of Government to debauch and degrade the ignorant, simple-minded people of India? The devil himself, if there be one, as the 314Christians devoutly believe, must have made hell ring with laughter when he saw what these Christian officers of a Christian nation were doing to help him damn the world. ”