Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 November 1886 — RELIGIOUS BENEFITS OF SUPERSTITION. [ARTICLE]

RELIGIOUS BENEFITS OF SUPERSTITION.

How It Hiw Helped Out Religious Sentlment In the Past. j v ‘“ • [Atlantia Monthly, j But superstition, it is claimed, begets cruelty, and cruelty is a vice now most rigorously frowned down bv polite society. Daring spirits like Mr. Besant may still urge its claims upon our reluctant consideration. Mr. Andrew Lang may pronounce it an essential element of humor, or a purely speculative genius like Mr. Pater, may venture to show how adroitly it eau he used as a help to religious sentiment; but every age has vet vices of its own, and, being singularly intolerant of those it has discarded, is not inclined to listen to any arguments in thoir favor. Superstition burned old women for witches, dotards for warlocks, and idiots for werewolves; hut in its gentle aspect, it often threw a vail of charity over man and beast. The Greek rustic, who found a water newt wriggling in his gourd, tossed the little creature hack into the stream, remembering that it was the unfortunate Asealapius, wliom the wrath of Demeter hath consigned to this loathsome doom. The mediaeval housewife, when startled by a gaunt wolf gazing through her kitchen window, bethought her that this might be her lost husband, roaming helpless and bewitched, and so gave the starving creature food. O was it war wolf in the wood? Or was it mermaid in the sea? Or was it man, or vile woman? Mj ain true love, that misshaped thee? The West Indian negress still bestows chicken soup instead of scalding water on the invading army of black ants, believing that if kindly treated they will show their gratitude in the only way that ants can manifest it —by taking their departure. Granted that in these acts of gentleness there are traces of fear and selfconsideration ; but who shall say that all our good deeds are not built upon some such trestle work of foibles ? “La virlu n’iroitpas si loin, si la vanite ne luitenoitpas compagnie.” And what universal politeness has been fostered by the terror that superstition breeds, what delicate euphemisms containing the very soul of courtesy! Consider the Greeks, who christened the dread furies “Eumenides,”or “gracious ones ;”' the Scotch who warily spoke of the devil as the “good man,” lest his sharp ears should catch a more unflattering title; the Dvak, who respectfully mentions the small-pox as “the chief;” the East Indian who calls the tiger “lord” or “grandfather;” and the Laplander, who gracefully alludes to the white bear as “the fur-clad one,” arid then realize what perfection of breeding was involved in what we are wont to call ignorant credulity. Again, in the stress of Modern life, how little room is lsft for that most comfortable vanity which whispers in our ears that failures are not faults! Now we are taught from infancy that yce must rise or fall upon our own merits; that vigilance wins success, and incapacity means ruin. But before the world had grown so pitilessly logical there was no lack of excuses for the defeated, and of unflattering comments for the strong. Did some shrewd Cornish miner open a rich vein of ore; then it was apparent to his fellow toilers that the knackers had been at work, leading him on by their mysterious tapping to this more fruitful field. But let him proceed warily, for the knacker, like its German brother, the kobold, is but a capricious sprite, and some day may beguile him into a mysterious passage or long forgotten chairiber in the mine, whence he shall never more return. His bones will whiten in their prison, while his spirit, wandering restlessly among the subterranean corridors, will be heard on Christmas eve, hammering wearily away till the gray dawn brightens in the east. Or did some prosperous farmer save his crop while his neighbor’s corn was blighted, and raise upon liis small estate more than their broader was no opportunity afforded him for pride or self-congratulation. Only the witch’s art could bring about such strange results, and the same sorceries that jhad aided him had, doubtless, been the ruin of his friends. He was a lucky man if their indignation went no further than muttered phrases and averted heads. Does not Pliny tell us the story of Cuius Furius Cresius, whoseheavy crops awoke such mingled anger and suspicion in his neighbors’ hearts that he was accused in the courts of conjuring their grain and fruit into his own scanty ground? If a woman aspired to be neater than her gossips, or to spin more wool than they were able to display, it was only because the pixies labored for her, at night; turning her wheel briskly in the moonlight, splitting the wood and drawing the water, while she drowsed idly in her bed. - / *■’■ •- V’ Anl every night the pixieo good Drive round the wheel%ith sound subduel, And leave—in thfs they never fail—- _ A silver penny in the pail. Even to the clergy this engaging theory brought -its consolations. When tl/e Reverend Lucas Jacobson Debes, pastor of Thorsliaven in 1670, found that liis congregation was growing slim, ha was not forced, in bitterness of spirit, to ask himself were his sermons dull, but promptly laid all the blame upon the biergentrold, the specters of the mountains, whom he angrily accused in a lengthy homily, of disturbing his flock, and even pushing their discourtesy so far as to carry them off bodily before bis discourse was completed.