My only admirable qualities at the time were a clear conscience and an honest, godly cast of mind in the context of a noble innocence and simplicity. I knew nothing of sin, except what I’d heard and read, and when I saw a sin actually being committed I found the sight scary and totally unusual. I’d been brought up to think of God as present all the time, and I was used to living in strict obedience to his holy will. Moreover, knowing what God’s will dictated, I gauged a person’s character and conduct accordingly. When I did this out in the world, everything I saw struck me as an abomination. Heavens above! Imagine my surprise when I looked at the law and the prophets, coupled with Christ’s own consistent warnings, and compared them with the actions of his professed disciples and followers. Instead of the straightforwardness that proper Christians ought to show, I saw a lot of hypocrisy, not to say boundless idiocy on the part of everyone I came across. I wondered: are these Christians or not? Obviously, most folk were familiar with God’s solemn will, but where was the solemn determination to bring it about?
That made my head buzz with strange thoughts, and I began to have serious doubts about Christ’s command: ‘Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.’ I recalled Paul’s words in Galatians V, where he writes, ‘Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you now, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.’ It made me think: most people do these things openly, so why shouldn’t I also, in all honesty, conclude from the apostle’s words that not everyone finds salvation?
As well as arrogance and avarice and their esteemed retinue, among the well-to-do the pairs fornication/uncleanness and drunkenness/revellings were practised on a daily basis. But one thing shocked me to the core: the appalling way in which many troopers in particular (the army isn’t famous for coming down hard on sin) tend in their godlessness and by their complete disregard of God’s holy will to treat such matters as a joke. For instance, I once heard an adulterer, keen to show off what he’d done, make this totally profane remark: ‘It serves the gutless cuckold right that he’s wearing horns on my account. Frankly, it was more to hurt the man that I humped the woman. I wanted to take revenge on him.’ ‘Such barefaced spite!’ protested one honest hearer. ‘Fancy staining one’s conscience, solely to gain the shameful name of marriage-breaker!’ ‘What do you mean – “marriage-breaker”?’, the boaster replied with a dry chuckle. ‘That doesn’t make me a marriage-breaker. I may have dented the marriage a little; those who break marriages are the ones the commandment talks about: a person should never climb into another’s garden to pick cherries that belong to the householder himself.’ He promptly went on to say that, according to his devil’s catechism, the same applies to the next commandment, which brings this view out more clearly when it says, ‘Thou shalt not steal’ etc. He said more of the same, making me groan inwardly and think: blasphemous sinner! You’re only a marriage-denter, you say; the good Lord is the actual marriage-breaker in parting husband and wife by death. ‘Don’t you see?’ I asked him in my over-heated, over-zealous state. ‘Your heathen words are an even worse sin than your adultery?’ ‘Pinhead!’ he retorted. ‘Want your ears boxed?’ I think he’d have done it, too, if he hadn’t been scared of my master. It shut me up, though – as well as opening my eyes to how often you see singletons eyeing marrieds and vice versa.
Back when I’d been studying the road to eternal life with my hermit, it had been a mystery to me why God had banned his people quite so harshly from worshipping false gods. Surely, having once come to know the true, eternal God, a person would no longer bow the knee to any other? You see, I’d got it into my thick head that the relevant commandment was unnecessary, ergo superfluous. What a twit I’d been! Since entering society I’d come to see that (despite the relevant commandment) most folk had a special little god of their own. Many had more of these minor deities than the ancient heathens or than latter-day pagans do now, I reckon. Some kept theirs in strongboxes, which they swore by utterly. Others had someone at court who’d made a sweeping offer of shelter in time of trouble but was often a sorrier specimen than the idolater himself. As a mere favourite, this idol stood on dodgy ground, being dependent on the fickle favour of a particular high-up. Other folk worshipped fame, imagining that anyone who became famous was a demigod in human form. Yet others kept theirs upstairs, as it were. If the true God had given them a sound mind and allowed them to shine in some craft or branch of knowledge, they’d soon forget about the kind donor and rely entirely on the gift to bring in all the well-being required. Then there were folk who worshipped their stomachs, sacrificing to them daily as the heathen did to Bacchus and Ceres, and when the belly proved unreceptive or some other human frailty showed itself the poor things deified the doctor, gulping remedies that often hastened their demise. Certain clowns made goddesses of downright whores (calling them by other names, of course). These they adored day and night, sighing deeply and penning eulogies in their honour – eulogies filled with praise, of course, but sometimes including a humble plea that, in the light of the devotee’s clowning, might they consider becoming clownesses themselves? Then again there were women who idolized their own loveliness. This’ll get me a man, they thought – never mind what God says. Such false gods were not sacrificed to so much as smeared with various lotions, ointments, powders, creams and other kinds of slap. I met folk who worshipped houses in nice locations. Ever since moving in, they’d enjoyed happiness and good health, they said, with money blowing in at the window (nonsense I was surprised to hear, knowing where such blessings came from). I came across one bloke who hadn’t slept properly in years, having invested heart and soul (both of which should be dedicated to God) in the tobacco trade. He’d spent entire days and nights working at and worrying about the source of his prosperity, only for what to happen? The man passed away – disappeared in a puff of smoke, you might say. ‘Poor fellow!’ was my reaction. ‘If you’d set as much store by your soul’s bliss and the true God’s honour as you did by the idol (a painting of a Brazilian tobacco farmer with a sheaf of leaves held under one arm and a pipe stuck in his mouth) that graces your shop sign, you’d undoubtedly have worn a magnificent wreath in the afterlife.’ Another bloke had less exalted idols: I’d once, when everyone was boasting how little they’d had to eat when things got really tough, heard him say loud and clear that frogs and snails had been his god; he’d have starved to death otherwise. I asked him what he’d thought of God himself at the time, making him eat such stuff. The fellow had no answer, which truly amazed me. I’d never read of anyone, from the heathen ancient Egyptians to modern-day Americans, placing such filth on a pedestal and bowing and scraping to it the way this twit had.
I recall on one occasion examining a cabinet of curios with its high-born owner. The collection contained some fine rarities, but my favourite was an Ecce homo painted with such pathos that the viewer was quite drawn into it. Hanging beside it was a large painting on paper showing various Chinese idols in all their majesty, some depicted as devils. The nob asked me which piece in his cabinet pleased me most. I pointed to the Ecce homo, but he said I was wrong: the Chinese painting was rarer, ergo more precious; he wouldn’t swap it for ten such Ecce homos. I replied, ‘Sir, does your heart speak as your tongue does?’ ‘Certainly,’ he said. I went on, ‘You mean, the God of your heart is also the one whose portrayal your tongue claims to be worth most?’ ‘Get real!’ he retorted. ‘I’m talking about the rarity value.’ My rejoinder: ‘What could be rarer or more worthy of wonder than that God’s son suffered on our behalf, as depicted here?’