By the Christmas Fire | Page 4

wild beasts, or a rebounding echo from the
hollow mountains; these things made them swoon for fear." For, says
the author, "fear is nothing else than a betraying of the succours that
reason offers."
We have pretty generally risen above the primitive forms of this
superstition. We do not fear that a rock or tree will go out of its way to
harm us. We are not troubled by the suspicion that some busybody of a
planet is only waiting its chance to do us an ill turn. We are inclined to
take the dark of the moon with equanimity.
But when it comes to moral questions we are still dominated by the
idea of the fatalistic power of inanimate things. We cannot think it
possible to be just or good, not to speak of being cheerful, without
looking at some physical fact and saying humbly "By your leave." We
personify our tools and machines, and the occult symbols of trade, and

then as abject idolaters we bow down before the work of our own hands.
We are awe-struck at their power, and magnify the mystery of their
existence. We only pray that they may not turn us out of house and
home, because of some blunder in our ritual observance. That they will
make it very uncomfortable for us, we take for granted. We have
resigned ourselves to that long ago. They are so very complicated that
they will make no allowance for us, and will not permit us to live
simply as we would like. We are really very plain people, and easily
flurried and worried by superfluities. We could get along very nicely
and, we are sure, quite healthfully, if it were not for our Things. They
set the pace for us, and we have to keep up.
We long for peace on earth, but of course we can't have it. Look at our
warships and our forts and our great guns. They are getting bigger
every year. No sooner do we begin to have an amiable feeling toward
our neighbors than some one invents a more ingenious way by which
we may slaughter them. The march of invention is irresistible, and we
are being swept along toward a great catastrophe.
We should like very much to do business according to the Golden Rule.
It strikes us as being the only decent method of procedure. We have no
ill feeling toward our competitors. We should be pleased to see them
prosper. We have a strong preference for fair play. But of course we
can't have it, because the corporations, those impersonal products of
modern civilization, won't allow it. We must not meddle with them, for
if we do we might break some of the laws of political economy, and in
that case nobody knows what might happen.
We have a great desire for good government. We should be gratified if
we could believe that the men who pave our streets, and build our
school-houses, and administer our public funds, are well qualified for
their several positions. But we cannot, in a democracy, expect to have
expert service. The tendency of politics is to develop a Machine. The
Machine is not constructed to serve us. Its purpose is simply to keep
itself going. When it once begins to move, it is only prudent in us to
keep out of the way. It would be tragical to have it run over us.
So, in certain moods, we sit and grumble over our formidable fetiches.

Like all idolaters, we sometimes turn iconoclasts. In a short-lived fit of
anger we smash the Machine. Having accomplished this feat, we feel a
little foolish, for we don't know what to do next.
Fortunately for the world there are those who are neither idolaters nor
iconoclasts. They do not worship Things, nor fear them, nor despise
them,--they simply use them.
In the Book of Baruch there is inserted a letter purporting to be from
Jeremiah to the Hebrew captives in Babylon. The prophet discourses on
the absurdity of the worship of inanimate things, and incidentally draws
on his experience in gardening. An idol, he says, is "like to a white
thorn in an orchard, that every bird sitteth upon." It is as powerless, he
says, to take the initiative "as a scarecrow in a garden of cucumbers that
keepeth nothing." In his opinion, one wide-awake man in the cucumber
patch is worth all the scarecrows that were ever constructed. "Better
therefore is the just man that hath none idols."
What brave air we breathe when we join the company of the just men
who have freed themselves from idolatry! Listen to Governor Bradford
as he enumerates the threatening facts which the Pilgrims to New
England faced. He mentions all the difficulties which they foresaw, and
then