Gibson's Preservative

 I have a friend, a well-known "scholar", who permits me the use of his extensive library. I stand in the middle and look about me, and see in the dim shadows walls lined from floor to ceiling with decorous and grave-looking books, bound for the most part in black, many of them fading to green with age. There are literally¹ thousands of such, and their theme is the pseudo-science of "divinity". I close my eyes, to make the test fair, and walk to the shelves and put out my hand and take a book. It proves to be a modern work, "A History of the English Prayer-book in Relation to the Doctrine² of the Eucharist". I turn the pages and discover that it is a study of the variations of one minute detail of church doctrine. This learned divine—he has written many such works, as the advertisements inform us—fills up the greater part of his pages with foot-notes from hundreds of authorities, arguments and counter-arguments over supernatural subtleties³. I will give one sample of these footnotes—asking the reader to be patient:

I add the following valuable observation, of Dean Goode: ("On Eucharist", II p 757. See also Archbishop Ware⁴ in Gibson's "Preservative⁵", vol X, Chap II) "One great point for which our divines have contended, in opposition⁶ to Romish errors, has been the reality of that presence of Christ's Body and Blood to the soul of the believer which is affected⁷ through the operation of the Holy Spirit notwithstanding the absence of that Body and Blood in Heaven. Like the Sun, the Body of Christ is both present and absent; present, really and truly present, in one sense—that is, by the soul being brought into immediate⁸ communion with—but absent in another sense—that is, as regards the contiguity⁹ of its substance to our bodies. The authors under review, like the Romanists, maintain that this is not a Real Presence, and assuming their own interpretation¹⁰ of the phrase to be the only true one, press into their service the testimony¹¹ of divines who, though using the phrase, apply it in a sense the reverse of theirs. The ambiguity¹² of the phrase, and its misapplication by the Church of Rome, have induced many of our divines to repudiate¹³ it, etc."

Realize that of the work from which this "valuable observation" is quoted, there are at least two volumes, the second volume containing not less than 757 pages! Realize that in Gibson's "Preservative" there are not less than ten volumes of such writing! Realize that in this twentieth century a considerable portion of the mental energies of the world's greatest empire is devoted¹⁴ to that kind of learning!

I turn to the date upon the volume, and find that it is 1910. I was in England within a year of that time, and so I can tell what was the condition of the English people while printers were making and papers were reviewing and book-stores were distributing this work of ecclesiastical research. I walked along the Embankment and saw the pitiful wretches¹⁵, men, women and sometimes children, clad in filthy¹⁶ rags, starved white and frozen blue, soaked in winter rains and shivering in winter winds, homeless, hopeless, unheeded by the doctors of divinity, unpreserved by Gibson's "Preservative". I walked on Hampstead Heath on Easter day, when the population of the slums turns out for its one holiday; I walked, literally trembling with horror, for I had never seen such sights nor dreamed of them. These creatures were hardly to be recognized as human beings; they were some new grotesque¹⁷ race of apes. They could not walk, they could only shamble; they could not laugh, they could only leer. I saw a hand-organ playing, and turned away—the things they did in their efforts to dance were not to be watched. And then I went out into the beautiful English country; cultured and charming ladies took me in swift, smooth motor-cars, and I saw the pitiful hovels and the drink-sodden, starch-poisoned inhabitants—slum-populations everywhere, even on the land! When the newspaper reporters came to me, I said that I had just come from Germany, and that if ever England found herself at war with that country, she would regret that she had let the bodies and the minds of her people rot; for which expression I was severely¹⁸ taken to task by more than one British divine.

The bodies—and the minds; the rot of the latter being the cause of the former. All over England in that year of 1910, in thousands of schools, rich and poor, and in the greatest centres of learning, men like Dean Goode were teaching boys dead languages and dead sciences and dead arts; sending them out to life with no more conception of the modern world than a monk¹⁹ of the Middle Ages; sending them out with minds, made hard and inflexible²⁰, ignorant of science, indifferent to progress, contemptuous of ideas. And then suddenly, almost overnight, this terrified people finds itself at war with a nation ruled and disciplined by modern experts, scientists and technicians. The awful muddle²¹ that was in England during the first two years of the war has not yet been told in print; but thousands know it, and some day it will be written, and it will finish forever the prestige of the British ruling caste. They rushed off an expedition to Gallipoli, and somebody forgot the water-supply, and at one time they had ninety-five thousand cases of dysentery!

They always "muddle through", they tell you; that is the motto of their ruling caste. But this time they did not "muddle through"—they had to come to America for help. As I write, our Congress is voting billions and tens of billions of dollars, and a million of the best of our young manhood are being taken from their homes—because in 1910 the mind of England was occupied with Dean Goode "On Eucharist", and the ten volumes of Gibson's "Preservative".

 

1 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

2 doctrine   

n.教义；主义；学说

参考例句：

• He was impelled to proclaim his doctrine.他不得不宣扬他的教义。
• The council met to consider changes to doctrine.宗教议会开会考虑更改教义。

3 subtleties   

细微( subtlety的名词复数 )； 精细； 巧妙； 细微的差别等

参考例句：

• I think the translator missed some of the subtleties of the original. 我认为译者漏掉了原著中一些微妙之处。
• They are uneducated in the financial subtleties of credit transfer. 他们缺乏有关信用转让在金融方面微妙作用的知识。

4 ware   

n.(常用复数)商品，货物

参考例句：

• The shop sells a great variety of porcelain ware.这家店铺出售品种繁多的瓷器。
• Good ware will never want a chapman.好货不须叫卖。

5 preservative   

n.防腐剂；防腐料；保护料；预防药

参考例句：

• New timber should be treated with a preservative.新采的圆木应进行防腐处理。
• Salt is a common food preservative.盐是一种常用的食物防腐剂。

6 opposition   

n.反对，敌对

参考例句：

• The party leader is facing opposition in his own backyard.该党领袖在自己的党內遇到了反对。
• The police tried to break down the prisoner's opposition.警察设法制住了那个囚犯的反抗。

7 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

8 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

• His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
• We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。

9 contiguity   

n.邻近，接壤

参考例句：

• The contiguity of the house and the garage was a convenience in bad weather.住宅和车库毗邻，这在天气不好的时候是很方便的。
• Scientists want to investigate the relation between xerophthalmia occurrence and smut contiguity.科学家们打算探讨干眼症与煤尘接触之间的关系。

10 interpretation   

n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理

参考例句：

• His statement admits of one interpretation only.他的话只有一种解释。
• Analysis and interpretation is a very personal thing.分析与说明是个很主观的事情。

11 testimony   

n.证词；见证，证明

参考例句：

• The testimony given by him is dubious.他所作的证据是可疑的。
• He was called in to bear testimony to what the police officer said.他被传入为警官所说的话作证。

12 ambiguity   

n.模棱两可；意义不明确

参考例句：

• The telegram was misunderstood because of its ambiguity.由于电文意义不明确而造成了误解。
• Her answer was above all ambiguity.她的回答毫不含糊。

13 repudiate   

v.拒绝，拒付，拒绝履行

参考例句：

• He will indignantly repudiate the suggestion.他会气愤地拒绝接受这一意见。
• He repudiate all debts incurred by his son.他拒绝偿还他儿子的一切债务。

14 devoted   

adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的

参考例句：

• He devoted his life to the educational cause of the motherland.他为祖国的教育事业贡献了一生。
• We devoted a lengthy and full discussion to this topic.我们对这个题目进行了长时间的充分讨论。

15 wretches   

n.不幸的人( wretch的名词复数 )；可怜的人；恶棍；坏蛋

参考例句：

• The little wretches were all bedraggledfrom some roguery. 小淘气们由于恶作剧而弄得脏乎乎的。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• The best courage for us poor wretches is to fly from danger. 对我们这些可怜虫说来，最好的出路还是躲避危险。 来自辞典例句

16 filthy   

adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的

参考例句：

• The whole river has been fouled up with filthy waste from factories.整条河都被工厂的污秽废物污染了。
• You really should throw out that filthy old sofa and get a new one.你真的应该扔掉那张肮脏的旧沙发，然后再去买张新的。

17 grotesque   

adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物）

参考例句：

• His face has a grotesque appearance.他的面部表情十分怪。
• Her account of the incident was a grotesque distortion of the truth.她对这件事的陈述是荒诞地歪曲了事实。

18 severely   

adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地

参考例句：

• He was severely criticized and removed from his post.他受到了严厉的批评并且被撤了职。
• He is severely put down for his careless work.他因工作上的粗心大意而受到了严厉的批评。

19 monk   

n.和尚，僧侣，修道士

参考例句：

• The man was a monk from Emei Mountain.那人是峨眉山下来的和尚。
• Buddhist monk sat with folded palms.和尚合掌打坐。

20 inflexible   

adj.不可改变的，不受影响的，不屈服的

参考例句：

• Charles was a man of settled habits and inflexible routine.查尔斯是一个恪守习惯、生活规律不容打乱的人。
• The new plastic is completely inflexible.这种新塑料是完全不可弯曲的。

21 muddle   

n.困惑，混浊状态；vt.使混乱，使糊涂，使惊呆；vi.胡乱应付，混乱

参考例句：

• Everything in the room was in a muddle.房间里每一件东西都是乱七八糟的。
• Don't work in a rush and get into a muddle.克服忙乱现象。