CHAPTER XVII.

A MEDIÆVAL SUPERSTITION: THE

FLAGELLANTS.

AMONG the extraordinary delusions of the human mind, none is more

hateful than the conviction cherished among so many sects, that the Supreme
Being can be propitiated by the self-imposed torture of His worshippers. And
nothing more vividly illustrates the difference between the GOD of the Christian
religion and the stern deity of so many human creeds, than the aspect of the
former as man’s Heavenly FATHER, Who requires from him no other offering
than that of a contrite and humble heart,—Who asks not that the Indian Fakir
should cramp his limbs and lacerate his body, or that S. Simeon Stylites should
stand night and day, in the scorching sun of summer, and the freezing cold of
winter, on his lonely pillar. It is a proof of our wider and deeper knowledge of
GOD that we are beginning to emancipate ourselves from the thraldom of this
evil idea, and to recognise in Him a tender, compassionate Guide and Friend,
Who, unto them that love Him, causeth all things to work for the best. In modern
Calvinism the superstition still lingers, and it is supposed that a gloomy life,
unrelieved even by the most innocent pleasures, must needs be acceptable to the
Almighty Love; but this shadow in the Christian’s faith is rapidly receding
before the growing and broadening light. We are sons of GOD, and heirs; and
what He asks from us, what alone He will receive, is the offering of affection
and the sacrifice of fear. And the greatest claim which Christianity puts forward
to the hearts and minds of men is that it has delivered, or will deliver them, when
rightly understood, from the degrading superstition of the ascetic solitary and the
self-torturer. “Its true dignity is, that unseen it has ever gone about doing good.
Link after link has it struck from the chain of every human thraldom; error after
error has it banished; pain after pain has it driven from body or from mind; and
so silently has the blessing come, that (like the sick man whom the SAVIOUR
made to walk) ‘he that was healed wist not who it was.’”