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Superstition is a name generally given to a few only of those beliefs
for which it is imagined that there is no sufficient support, such as
the belief in ghosts, witches, and, if we are Protestants, in miracles
performed after a certain date. Why these particular beliefs have been
selected as solely deserving to be called superstitious it is not easy
to discover. If the name is to be extended to all beliefs which we have
not attempted to verify, it must include the largest part of those we
possess. We vote at elections as we are told to vote by the newspaper
which we happen to read, and our opinions upon a particular policy are
based upon no surer foundation than those of the Papist on the
authenticity of the lives of the Saints.

Superstition is a matter of RELATIVE evidence. A thousand years ago it
was not so easy as it is now to obtain rigid demonstration in any
department except mathematics. Much that was necessarily the basis of
action was as incapable of proof as the story of St. George and the
Dragon, and consequently it is hardly fair to say that the dark ages
were more superstitious than our own. Nor does every belief, even in
supernatural objects, deserve the name of superstition. Suppose that
the light which struck down St. Paul on his journey to Damascus was due
to his own imagination, the belief that it came from Jesus enthroned in
the heavens was a sign of strength and not of weakness. Beliefs of this
kind, in so far as they exalt man, prove greatness and generosity, and
may be truer than the scepticism which is formally justified in
rejecting them. If Christ never rose from the dead, the women who
waited at the sepulchre were nearer to reality than the Sadducees, who
denied the resurrection.

There is a half-belief, which we find in Virgil that is not
superstition, nor inconstancy, nor cowardice. A child-like faith in the
old creed is no longer possible, but it is equally impossible to
surrender it. I refer now not to those who select from it what they
think to be in accordance with their reason, and throw overboard the
remainder with no remorse, but rather to those who cannot endure to
touch with sacrilegious hands the ancient histories and doctrines which
have been the depositaries of so much that is eternal, and who dread
lest with the destruction of a story something precious should also be
destroyed. The so-called superstitious ages were not merely
transitionary. Our regret that they have departed is to be explained
not by a mere idealisation of the past, but by a conviction that truths
have been lost, or at least have been submerged. Perhaps some day they
may be recovered, and in some other form may again become our religion.

JUDAS ISCARIOT--WHAT CAN BE SAID FOR HIM?

Judas Iscariot has become to Christian people an object of horror more
loathsome than even the devil himself. The devil rebelled because he
could not brook subjection to the Son of God, a failing which was noble
compared with treachery to the Son of man. The hatred of Judas is not
altogether virtuous. We compound thereby for our neglect of Jesus and
His precepts: it is easier to establish our Christianity by cursing the
wretched servant than by following his Master. The heinousness also of
the crime in Gethsemane has been aggravated by the exaltation of Jesus
to the Redeemership of the world. All that can be known of Judas is
soon collected. He was chosen one of the twelve apostles, and received
their high commission to preach the kingdom of heaven, to heal the sick,
raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out devils. He was
appointed treasurer to the community. John in telling the story of the
anointing at Bethany says that he was a thief, but John also makes him
the sole objector to the waste of the ointment. According to the other
evangelists all the disciples objected. Since he remained in office it
could hardly have been known at the time of the visit to Bethany that he
was dishonest, nor could it have been known at any time to Matthew and
Mark, for they would not have lost the opportunity of adding such a
touch to the portrait. The probability, therefore, is that the robbery
of the bag is unhistorical. When the chief priests and scribes sought
how they might apprehend Jesus they made a bargain with Judas to deliver
Him to them for thirty pieces of silver. He was present at the Last
Supper but went and betrayed his Lord. A few hours afterwards, when he
found out that condemnation to death followed, he repented himself and
brought again the thirty pieces of silver to his employers, declared
that he had sinned in betraying innocent blood, cast down the money at
their feet, and went and hanged himself.

This is all that is discoverable about Judas, and it has been considered
sufficient for a damnation deeper than any allotted to the worst of the
sons of Adam. Dante places him in the lowest round of the ninth or last
of the hellish circles, where he is eternally "champed" by Satan,
"bruised as with ponderous engine," his head within the diabolic jaws
and "plying the feet without." In the absence of a biography with
details, it is impossible to make out with accuracy what the real Judas
was. We can, however, by dispassionate examination of the facts
determine their sole import, and if we indulge in inferences we can
deduce those which are fairly probable. As Judas was treasurer, he must
have been trusted. He could hardly have been naturally covetous, for he
had given up in common with the other disciples much, if not all, to
follow Jesus. The thirty pieces of silver--some four or five pounds of
our money--could not have been considered by him as a sufficient bribe
for the ignominy of a treason which was to end in legal murder. He
ought perhaps to have been able to measure the ferocity of an
established ecclesiastical order and to have known what would have been
the consequence of handing over to it perfect, and therefore heretical,
sincerity and purity, but there is no evidence that he did know: nay,
we are distinctly informed, as we have just seen, that when he became
aware what was going to happen his sorrow for his wicked deed took a
very practical shape.

We cannot allege with confidence that it was any permanent loss of
personal attachment to Jesus which brought about his defection. It came
when the belief in a theocracy near at hand filled the minds of the
disciples. These ignorant Galilean fishermen expected that in a very
short time they would sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of
Israel. The custodian of the bag, gifted with more common sense than
his colleagues, probably foresaw the danger of a collision with Rome,
and may have desired by a timely arrest to prevent an open revolt, which
would have meant immediate destruction of the whole band with women and
children. Can any position be imagined more irritating that that of a
careful man of business who is keeper of the purse for a company of
heedless enthusiasts professing complete indifference to the value of
money, misunderstanding the genius of their chief, and looking out every
morning for some sign in the clouds, a prophecy of their immediate
appointment as vicegerents of a power that would supersede the awful
majesty of the Imperial city? He may have been heated by a long series
of petty annoyances to such a degree that at last they may have ended in
rage and a sudden flinging loose of himself from the society. It is the
impulsive man who frequently suffers what appears to be inversion, and
Judas was impulsive exceedingly. Matthew, and Matthew only, says that
Judas asked for money from the chief priests. "What will ye give me,
and I will deliver Him unto you?" According to Mark, whose account of
the transaction is the same as Luke's, "Judas . . . went unto the chief
priests to betray Him unto them. And when they heard it, they were
glad, and promised to give him money." If the priests were the
tempters, a slight difference is established in favour of Judas, but
this we will neglect. The sin of taking money and joining in that last
meal in any case is black enough, although, as we have before pointed
out, Judas did not at the time know what the other side of the bargain
was. Admitting, however, everything that can fairly be urged against
him, all that can be affirmed with certainty is that we are in the
presence of strange and unaccountable inconsistency, and that an apostle
who had abandoned his home, who had followed Jesus for three years
amidst contempt and persecution, and who at last slew himself in self-
reproach, could be capable of committing the meanest of sins. Is the
co-existence of irreconcilable opposites in human nature anything new?
The story of Judas may be of some value if it reminds us that man is
incalculable, and that, although in theory, and no doubt in reality, he
is a unity, the point from which the divergent forces in him rise is
often infinitely beyond our exploration; a lesson not merely in
psychology but for our own guidance, a warning that side by side with
heroic virtues there may sleep in us not only detestable vices, but
vices by which those virtues are contradicted and even for the time
annihilated. The mode of betrayal, with a kiss, has justly excited
loathing, but it is totally unintelligible. Why should he have taken
the trouble to be so base when the movement of a finger would have
sufficed? Why was any sign necessary to indicate one who was so well
known? The supposition that the devil compelled him to superfluous
villainy in order that he might be secured with greater certainty and
tortured with greater subtlety is one that can hardly be entertained
except by theologians. It is equally difficult to understand why Jesus
submitted to such an insult, and why Peter should not have smitten down
its perpetrator. Peter was able to draw his sword, and it would have
been safer and more natural to kill Judas than to cut off the ear of the
high priest's servant. John, who shows a special dislike to Judas,
knows nothing of the kiss. According to John, Jesus asked the soldiers
whom they sought, and then stepped boldly forward and declared Himself.
"Judas," adds John, "was standing with them." As John took such
particular notice of what happened, the absence of the kiss in his
account can hardly have been accidental. It is a sound maxim in
criticism that what is simply difficult of explanation is likely to be
authentic. An awkward reading in a manuscript is to be preferred to one
which is easier. But an historical improbability, especially if no
corroboration of it is to be found in a better authority, may be set
aside, and in this case we are justified in neglecting the kiss.
Whatever may have been the exact shade of darkness in the crime of
Judas, it was avenged with singular swiftness, and he himself was the
avenger. He did not slink away quietly and poison himself in a ditch.
He boldly encountered the sacred college, confessed his sin and the
innocence of the man they were about to crucify. Compared with these
pious miscreants who had no scruples about corrupting one of the
disciples, but shuddered at the thought of putting back into the
treasury the money they had taken from it, Judas becomes noble. His
remorse is so unendurable that it drives him to suicide.

If a record could be kept of those who have abjured Jesus through love
of gold, through fear of the world or of the scribes and Pharisees, we
should find many who are considered quite respectable, or have even been
canonised, and who, nevertheless, much more worthily than Iscariot, are
entitled to "champing" by the jaws of Sathanas. Not a single scrap from
Judas himself has reached us. He underwent no trial, and is condemned
without plea or excuse on his own behalf, and with no cross-examination
of the evidence. No witnesses have been called to his character. What
would his friends at Kerioth have said for him? What would Jesus have
said? If He had met Judas with the halter in his hand would He not have
stopped him? Ah! I can see the Divine touch on the shoulder, the
passionate prostration of the repentant in the dust, the hands gently
lifting him, the forgiveness because he knew not what he did, and the
seal of a kiss indeed from the sacred lips.

SIR WALTER SCOTT'S USE OF THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE "BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR"

The supernatural machinery in Sir Walter Scott's Monastery is generally
and, no doubt, correctly, set down as a mistake. Sir Walter fails, not
because the White Lady of Avenel is a miracle, but because being
miraculous, she is made to do what sometimes is not worthy of her.
This, however, is not always true, for nothing can be finer than the
change in Halbert Glendinning after he has seen the spirit, and the
great master himself has never drawn a nobler stroke than that in which
he describes the effect which intercourse with her has had upon Mary.
Halbert, on the morning of the duel between himself and Sir Piercie
Shafton, is trying to persuade her that he intends no harm, and that he
and Sir Piercie are going on a hunting expedition. "Say not thus," said
the maiden, interrupting him, "say not thus to me. Others thou may'st
deceive, but me thou can'st not. There has been that in me from the
earliest youth which fraud flies from, and which imposture cannot
deceive." The transforming influence of the Lady is here just what it
should be, and the consequence is that she becomes a reality.

But it is in the Bride of Lammermoor more particularly that the use of
the supernatural is not only blameless but indispensable. We begin to
rise to it in that scene in which the Master of Ravenswood meets Alice.
"Begone from among them," she says, "and if God has destined vengeance
on the oppressor's house, do not you be the instrument. . . . If you
remain here, her destruction or yours, or that of both, will be the
inevitable consequence of her misplaced attachment." A little further
on, with great art, Scott having duly prepared us by what has preceded,
adds intensity and colour. He apologises for the "tinge of
superstition," but, not believing, he evidently believes, and we justly
surrender ourselves to him. The Master of Ravenswood after the insult
received from Lady Ashton wanders round the Mermaiden's Well on his way
to Wolf's Crag and sees the wraith of Alice. Scott makes horse as well
as man afraid so that we may not immediately dismiss the apparition as a
mere ordinary product of excitement. Alice at that moment was dying,
and had "prayed powerfully that she might see her master's son and renew
her warning." Observe the difference between this and any vulgar ghost
story. From the very first we feel that the Superior Powers are against
this match, and that it will be cursed. The beginning of the curse lies
far back in the hereditary temper of the Ravenswoods, in the intrigues
of the Ashtons, and in the feuds of the times. When Love intervenes we
discover in an instant that he is not sent by the gods to bring peace,
but that he is the awful instrument of destruction. The spectral
appearance of Alice at the hour of her departure, on the very spot "on
which Lucy Ashton had reclined listening to the fatal tale of woe . . .
holding up her shrivelled hand as if to prevent his coming more near,"
is necessary in order to intimate that the interdict is pronounced not
by a mortal human being but by a dread, supernal authority.

SEPTEMBER, 1798. "THE LYRICAL BALLADS."

The year 1798 was a year of great excitement: England was alone in the
struggle against Buonaparte; the mutiny at the Nore had only just been
quelled: the 3 per cent. Consols had been marked at 49 or 50; the
Gazettes were occupied with accounts of bloody captures of French ships;
Ireland may be said to have been in rebellion, and horrible murders were
committed there; the King sent a message to Parliament telling it that
an invasion might be expected and that it was to be assisted by
"incendiaries" at home; and the Archbishop of Canterbury and eleven
bishops passed a resolution declaring that if the French should land, or
a dangerous insurrection should break out, it would be the duty of the
clergy to take up arms against an enemy whom the Bishop of Rochester
described as "instigated by that desperate malignity against the Faith
he has abandoned, which in all ages has marked the horrible character of
the vile apostate."

In the midst of this raving political excitement three human beings were
to be found who although they were certainly not unmoved by it, were
able to detach themselves from it when they pleased, and to seclude
themselves in a privacy impenetrable even to an echo of the tumult
around them.

In April or May, 1798, the Nightingale was written, and these are the
sights and sounds which were then in young Coleridge's eyes and ears:-

"No cloud, no relique of the sunken day
Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip
Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.
Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!
You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,
But hear no murmuring: it flows silently,
O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still,
A balmy night! and tho' the stars be dim,
Yet let us think upon the vernal showers
That gladden the green earth, and we shall find
A pleasure in the dimness of the stars."

We happen also to have Dorothy Wordsworth's journal for April and May.
Here are a few extracts from it:-

April 6th.--"Went a part of the way home with Coleridge. . . . The
spring still advancing very slowly. The horse-chestnuts budding, and
the hedgerows beginning to look green, but nothing fully expanded."

April 9th.--"Walked to Stowey . . . The sloe in blossom, the hawthorns
green, the larches in the park changed from black to green in two or
three days. Met Coleridge in returning."

April 12th.--" . . . The spring advances rapidly, multitudes of
primroses, dog-violets, periwinkles, stitchwort."

April 27th.--"Coleridge breakfasted and drank tea, strolled in the wood
in the morning, went with him in the evening through the wood,
afterwards walked on the hills: the moon; a many-coloured sea and sky."

May 6th, Sunday.--"Expected the painter {101} and Coleridge. A rainy
morning--very pleasant in the evening. Met Coleridge as we were walking
out. Went with him to Stowey; heard the nightingale; saw a glow-worm."

What was it which these three young people (for Dorothy certainly must
be included as one of its authors) proposed to achieve by their book?
Coleridge, in the Biographia Literaria, says (vol. ii. c. 1): "During
the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our
conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry,
the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence
to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty
by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm, which
accidents of light and shade, which moonlight or sunset diffused over a
known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability
of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought
suggested itself--(to which of us I do not recollect)--that a series of
poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the agents and
incidents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence
aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the
dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such
situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been
to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any
time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the second class,
subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and
incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and its
vicinity, where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after
them, or to notice them, when they present themselves.

"In this idea originated the plan of the LYRICAL BALLADS; in which it
was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and
characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer
from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth
sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing
suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.
Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his
object, to give the charm of novelty to things of everyday and to excite
a feeling ANALOGOUS TO THE SUPERNATURAL, {103} by awakening the mind's
attention to the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness
and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but
for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish
solicitude we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts
that neither feel nor understand.

"With this view I wrote THE ANCIENT MARINER, and was preparing, among
other poems, THE DARK LADIE and the CHRISTABEL, in which I should have
more nearly have realised my ideal, than I had done in my first
attempt."

Coleridge, when he wrote to Cottle offering him the Lyrical Ballads,
affirms that "the volumes offered to you are, to a certain degree, ONE
WORK IN KIND" {104a} (Reminiscences, p. 179); and Wordsworth declares,
"I should not, however, have requested this assistance, had I not
believed that the poems of my Friend would in a great measure HAVE THE
SAME TENDENCY AS MY OWN, {104b} and that though there would be found a
difference, there would be found no discordance in the colours of our
style; as our opinions on the subject of poetry do almost entirely
coincide" (Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1800).

It is a point carefully to be borne in mind that we have the explicit
and contemporary authority of both poets that their aim was the same.

There are difficulties in the way of believing that The Ancient Mariner
was written for the Lyrical Ballads. It was planned in 1797 and was
originally intended for a magazine. Nevertheless, it may be asserted
that the purpose of The Ancient Mariner and of Christabel (which was
originally intended for the Ballads) was, as their author said, TRUTH,
living truth. He was the last man in the world to care for a story
simply as a chain of events with no significance, and in these poems the
supernatural, by interpenetration with human emotions, comes closer to
us than an event of daily life. In return the emotions themselves, by
means of the supernatural expression, gain intensity. The texture is so
subtly interwoven that it is difficult to illustrate the point by
example, but take the following lines:-

"Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.

The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.

* * * *

The self-same moment I could pray:
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.

* * * *

And the hay was white with silent light
Till rising from the same,
Full many shapes, that shadows were,
In crimson colours came.

A little distance from the prow
Those crimson shadows were:
I turned my eyes upon the deck -
Oh, Christ! what saw I there!

Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat,
And, by the holy rood!
A man all light, a seraph-man,
On every corse there stood."

Coleridge's marginal gloss to these last stanzas is "The angelic spirits
leave the dead bodies, and appear in their own forms of light."

Once more from Christabel:-

"The maid, alas! her thoughts are gone,
She nothing sees--no sight but one!
The maid, devoid of guile and sin,
I know not how, in fearful wise,
So deeply had she drunken in
That look, those shrunken serpent eyes,
That all her features were resigned
To this sole image in her mind:
And passively did imitate
That look of dull and treacherous hate."

What Wordsworth intended we have already heard from Coleridge, and
Wordsworth confirms him. It was, says the Preface of 1802, "to present
ordinary things to the mind in an unusual way." In Wordsworth the
miraculous inherent in the commonplace, but obscured by "the film of
familiarity," is restored to it. This translation is effected by the
imagination, which is not fancy nor dreaming, as Wordsworth is careful
to warn us, but that power by which we see things as they are. The
authors of The Ancient Mariner and Simon Lee are justified in claiming a
common object. It is to prove that the metaphysical in Shakespeare's
sense of the word interpenetrates the physical, and serves to make us
see and feel it.

Poetry, if it is to be good for anything, must help us to live. It is
to this we come at last in our criticism, and if it does not help us to
live it may as well disappear, no matter what its fine qualities may be.
The help to live, however, that is most wanted is not remedies against
great sorrows. The chief obstacle to the enjoyment of life is its
dulness and the weariness which invades us because there is nothing to
be seen or done of any particular value. If the supernatural becomes
natural and the natural becomes supernatural, the world regains its
splendour and charm. Lines may be drawn from their predecessors to
Coleridge and the Wordsworths, but the work they did was distinctly
original, and renewed proof was given of the folly of despair even when
fertility seems to be exhausted. There is always a hidden conduit open
into an unknown region whence at any moment streams may rush and renew
the desert with foliage and flowers.

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