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James Russell Lowell (1819-1891). The Pious Editor's Creed. David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays

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James Russell Lowell (1819-1891). The Pious Editor's Creed. David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays Dictionary Biographies Literary Criticism Welcome Terms of Service ⧏ Previous Next ⧐ Contents Bibliographic Record David J. Brewer, et al., eds.  The World’s Best Essays.  1900. The Pious Editor’s Creed
By James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) Complete. Number 6 of “Biglow Papers.”

          [At the special instance of Mr. Biglow, I preface the following satire with an extract from a sermon preached during the past summer, from Ezekiel xxxiv. 2: “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel.” Since the Sabbath on which this discourse was delivered, the editor of the Jaalam Independent Blunderbuss has unaccountably absented himself from our house of worship.

“I KNOW of no so responsible position as that of the public journalist. The editor of our day bears the same relation to his time that the clerk bore to the age before the invention of printing. Indeed, the position which he holds is that which the clergyman should hold even now. But the clergyman chooses to walk off to the extreme edge of the world, and to throw such seed as he has clear over into that darkness which he calls the Next Life. As if next did not mean nearest, and as if any life were nearer than that immediately present one which boils and eddies all around him at the caucus, the ratification meeting, and the polls! Who taught him to exhort men to prepare for eternity, as for some future era of which the present forms no integral part? The furrow which Time is even now turning runs through the Everlasting, and in that must he plant, or nowhere. Yet he would fain believe and teach that we are going to have more of eternity than we have now. This “going” of his is like that of the auctioneer, on which “gone” follows before we have made up our minds to bid,—in which manner, not three months back, I lost an excellent copy of Chappelow on Job. So it has come to pass that the preacher, instead of being a living force, has faded into an emblematic figure at christenings, weddings, and funerals. Or, if he exercise any other function, it is as keeper and feeder of certain theologic dogmas, which, when occasion offers, he unkennels with a staboy! ‘to bark and bite as it is their nature to,’ whence that reproach of odium theologicum has arisen.

1   “Meanwhile, see what a pulpit the editor mounts daily, sometimes with a congregation of fifty thousand within reach of his voice, and never so much as a nodder, even, among them! And from what a Bible can he choose his text,—a Bible which needs no translation, and which no priestcraft can shut and clasp from the laity,—the open volume of the world, upon which with a pen of sunshine or destroying fire, the inspired Present is even now writing the annals of God! Methinks the editor who should understand his calling, and be equal thereto, would truly deserve that title of ποιμὴν λαῶν, which Homer bestows upon princes. He would be the Moses of our nineteenth century, and whereas the old Sinai, silent now, is but a common mountain stared at by the elegant tourist and crawled over by the hammering geologist, he must find his tables of the new law here among factories and cities in this Wilderness of Sin (Numbers xxxiii. 12) called Progress of Civilization, and be the captain of our Exodus into the Canaan of a truer social order.

2   “Nevertheless, our editor will not come so far within even the shadow of Sinai as Mahomet did, but chooses rather to construe Moses by Joe Smith. He takes up the crook, not that the sheep may be fed, but that he may never want a warm woolen suit and a joint of mutton.  Immemor, O, fidei, pecorumque oblite tuorum! For which reason I would derive the name editor not so much from edo, to publish, as from edo, to eat, that being the peculiar profession to which he esteems himself called. He blows up the flames of political discord for no other occasion than that he may thereby handily boil his own pot. I believe there are two thousand of these mutton-loving shepherds in the United States and of these how many have even the dimmest perception of their immense power, and the duties consequent thereon? Here and there, haply, one. Nine hundred and ninety-nine labor to impress upon the people the great principles of Tweedledum, and other nine hundred and ninety-nine preach with equal earnestness the gospel according to Tweedledee.”—H. W.]

  I du believe in Freedom’s cause,   Ez fur away ez Paris is; I love to see her stick her claws   In them infarnal Pharisees: It ’s wal enough agin a king   To dror resolves an’ triggers,— But libbaty’s a kind o’ thing   Thet don’t agree with niggers.    I du believe the people want   A tax on tea an’ coffees, Thet nothin’ ain’t extravygunt,—   Purvidin’ I’m in office; Fer I hev loved my country sence   My eye-teeth filled their sockets An’ Uncle Sam I reverence,   Partic’larly his pockets.    I du believe in any plan   O’ levyin’ the taxes, Ez long ez, like a lumberman,   I git jest wut I axes; I go free-trade thru thick an’ thin,   Because it kind o’rouses The folks to vote,—an’ keeps us in   Our quiet customhouses.    I du believe it’s wise an’ good   To sen’ out furrin missions, Thet is, on sartin understood   An’ orthydox conditions;— I mean nine thousan’ dolls. per ann.,   Nine thousan’ more fer outfit, An’ me to recommend a man   The place ’ould jest about fit.    I du believe in special ways   O’ prayin’ an’ convartin’; The bread comes back in many days,   An’ buttered, tu, fer sartin;— I mean in preyin’ till one busts   On wut the party chooses, An’ in convartin’ public trusts   To very privit uses.    I du believe hard coin the stuff   Fer ’lectioneers to spout on; The people’s oilers soft enough   To make hard money out on; Dear Uncle Sam pervides fer his,   An’ gives a good-sized junk to all, I don’t care how hard money is,   Ez long ez mine’s paid punctooal.    I du believe with all my soul   In the gret Press’s freedom, To pint the people to the goal   An’ in the traces lead ’em; Palsied the arm thet forges yokes   At my fat contracts squintin’, An’ withered be the nose thet pokes   Inter the gov’ment printin’!    I du believe thet I should give   Wut’s his’n unto Cæsar, Fer it’s by him I move an’ live,   Frum him my bread an’ cheese air; I du believe thet all o’ me   Doth bear his souperscription,— Will, conscience, honor, honesty,   An’ things o’ thet description.    I du believe in prayer an’ praise   To him thet hez the grantin’ O’ jobs,—in every thin’ thet pays,   But most of all in Cantin’; This doth my cup with marcies fill,   This lays all thought o’ sin to rest,— I don’t believe in princerple,   But, O, I du in interest.    I du believe in bein’ this   Or thet, ez it may happen One way or t’other hendiest is   To ketch the people nappin’; It ain’t by princerples nor men   My preudunt course is steadied,— I scent wich pays the best, an’ then   Go into it baldheaded.    I du believe thet holdin’ slaves   Comes nat’ral tu a Presidunt, Let ’lone the rowdedow it saves   To hev a wal-broke precedunt; Fer any office, small or gret,   I couldn’t ax with no face, Without I’d ben, thru dry an’ wet,   Th’ unrizzest kind o’ doughface.    I du believe wutever trash   ’ll keep the people in blindness,— Thet we the Mexicuns can thrash   Right inter brotherly kindness, Thet bombshells, grape, an’ powder ’n’ ball   Air good-will’s strongest magnets, Thet peace, to make it stick at all,   Must be druv in with bagnets.    In short, I firmly du believe   In Humbug generally, Fer it’s a thing that I perceive   To hev a solid vally; This heth my faithful shepherd ben,   In pasturs sweet heth led me, An’ this ’ll keep the people green   To feed ez they hev fed me.

3     [I subjoin here another passage from my before-mentioned discourse:—

          “Wonderful to him that has eyes to see it rightly, is the newspaper. To me, for example, sitting on the critical front bench of the pit, in my study here in Jaalam, the advent of my weekly journal is as that of a strolling theatre, or rather of a puppet show, on whose stage, narrow as it is, the tragedy, comedy, and farce of life are played in little. Behold the whole huge earth sent to me hebdomadally in a brown paper wrapper!   “Hither to my obscure corner, by wind or steam, on horseback or dromedary back, in the pouch of the Indian runner, or clicking over the magnetic wires, troop all the famous performers from the four quarters of the globe. Looked at from a point of criticism, tiny puppets they seem all, as the editor sets up his booth upon my desk and officiates as showman. Now I can truly see how little and transitory is life. The earth appears almost as a drop of vinegar, on which the solar microscope of the imagination must be brought to bear in order to make out anything distinctly. That animalcule there, in the pea-jacket, is Louis Philippe, just landed on the coast of England. That other, in the gray surtout and cocked hat, is Napoleon Bonaparte Smith, assuring France that she need apprehend no interference from him in the present alarming juncture. At that spot, where you seem to see a speck of something in motion, is an immense mass meeting. Look sharper, and you will see a mite brandishing his mandibles in an excited manner. That is the great Mr. Soandso, defining his position amid tumultuous and irrepressible cheers. That infinitesimal creature, upon whom some score of others as minute as he are gazing in open-mouthed admiration, is a famous philosopher, expounding to a select audience their capacity for the Infinite. That scarce discernible pufflet of smoke and dust is a revolution. That speck there is a reformer, just arranging the lever with which he is to move the world. And lo, there creeps forward the shadow of a skeleton that blows one breath between its grinning teeth, and all our distinguished actors are whisked off the slippery stage into the dark Beyond.   “Yes, the little show box has its solemner suggestions. Now and then we catch a glimpse of a grim old man, who lays down a scythe and hour glass in the corner while he shifts the scenes. There, too, in the dim background, a weird shape is ever delving. Sometimes he leans upon his mattock, and gazes, as a coach whirls by, bearing the newly married on their wedding jaunt, or glances carelessly at a babe brought home from christening. Suddenly (for the scene grows larger and larger as we look) a bony hand snatches back a performer in the midst of his part, and him, whom yesterday two infinities (past and future) would not suffice, a handful of dust is enough to cover and silence forever. Nay, we see the same fleshless fingers opening to clutch the showman himself, and guess, not without a shudder, that they are lying in wait for spectator also.   “Think of it: for three dollars a year I buy a season ticket to this great Globe Theatre, for which God would write the dramas (only that we like farces, spectacles, and the tragedies of Apollyon better), whose scene shifter is Time, and whose curtain is rung down by Death.   “Such thoughts will occur to me sometimes as I am tearing off the wrapper of my newspaper. Then suddenly that otherwise too often vacant sheet becomes invested for me with a strange kind of awe. Look! deaths and marriages, notices of inventions, discoveries, and books, lists of promotions, of killed, wounded, and missing, news of fires, accidents, of sudden wealth and as sudden poverty;—I hold in my hand the ends of myriad invisible electric conductors, along which tremble the joys, sorrows, wrongs, triumphs, hopes, and despairs of as many men and women everywhere. So that upon that mood of mind which seems to isolate me from mankind as a spectator of their puppet pranks, another supervenes, in which I feel that I, too, unknown and unheard of, am yet of some import to my fellows. For, through my newspaper here, do not families take pains to send me, an entire stranger, news of a death among them? Are not here two who would have me know of their marriage? And, strangest of all, is not this singular person anxious to have me informed that he has received a fresh supply of Dimitry Bruisgins? But to none of us does the Present (even if for a moment discerned as such) continue miraculous. We glance carelessly at the sunrise, and get used to Orion and the Pleiades. The wonder wears off, and to-morrow this sheet, in which a vision was let down to me from heaven, shall be the wrappage to a bar of soap or the platter for a beggar’s broken victuals.”—H. W.]

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