Mr. Bodiham was sitting in his study at the Rectory. The
nineteenth-century Gothic windows, narrow and pointed, admitted the
light grudgingly; in spite of the brilliant July weather, the room was
sombre. Brown varnished bookshelves lined the walls, filled with row
upon row of those thick, heavy theological works which the second-hand
booksellers generally sell by weight. The mantelpiece, the over-mantel,
a towering structure of spindly pillars and little shelves, were brown
and varnished. The writing-desk was brown and varnished. So were the
chairs, so was the door. A dark red-brown carpet with patterns covered
the floor. Everything was brown in the room, and there was a curious
brownish smell.
In the midst of this brown gloom Mr. Bodiham sat at his desk. He was the
man in the Iron Mask. A grey metallic face with iron cheek-bones and a
narrow iron brow; iron folds, hard and unchanging, ran perpendicularly
down his cheeks; his nose was the iron beak of some thin, delicate bird
of rapine. He had brown eyes, set in sockets rimmed with iron; round
them the skin was dark, as though it had been charred. Dense wiry hair
covered his skull; it had been black, it was turning grey. His ears
were very small and fine. His jaws, his chin, his upper lip were dark,
iron-dark, where he had shaved. His voice, when he spoke and especially
when he raised it in preaching, was harsh, like the grating of iron
hinges when a seldom-used door is opened.
It was nearly half-past twelve. He had just come back from church,
hoarse and weary with preaching. He preached with fury, with passion,
an iron man beating with a flail upon the souls of his congregation.
But the souls of the faithful at Crome were made of india-rubber, solid
rubber; the flail rebounded. They were used to Mr. Bodiham at Crome. The
flail thumped on india-rubber, and as often as not the rubber slept.
That morning he had preached, as he had often preached before, on the
nature of God. He had tried to make them understand about God, what
a fearful thing it was to fall into His hands. God--they thought of
something soft and merciful. They blinded themselves to facts; still
more, they blinded themselves to the Bible. The passengers on the
“Titanic” sang “Nearer my God to Thee” as the ship was going down. Did
they realise what they were asking to be brought nearer to? A white fire
of righteousness, an angry fire...
When Savonarola preached, men sobbed and groaned aloud. Nothing broke
the polite silence with which Crome listened to Mr. Bodiham--only an
occasional cough and sometimes the sound of heavy breathing. In the
front pew sat Henry Wimbush, calm, well-bred, beautifully dressed. There
were times when Mr. Bodiham wanted to jump down from the pulpit and
shake him into life,--times when he would have liked to beat and kill
his whole congregation.
He sat at his desk dejectedly. Outside the Gothic windows the earth was
warm and marvellously calm. Everything was as it had always been. And
yet, and yet...It was nearly four years now since he had preached that
sermon on Matthew xxiv. 7: “For nation shall rise up against nation, and
kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences,
and earthquakes, in divers places.” It was nearly four years. He had had
the sermon printed; it was so terribly, so vitally important that all
the world should know what he had to say. A copy of the little pamphlet
lay on his desk--eight small grey pages, printed by a fount of type that
had grown blunt, like an old dog’s teeth, by the endless champing and
champing of the press. He opened it and began to read it yet once again.
“‘For nation shall rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:
and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers
places.’
“Nineteen centuries have elapsed since Our Lord gave utterance to those
words, and not a single one of them has been without wars, plagues,
famines, and earthquakes. Mighty empires have crashed in ruin to the
ground, diseases have unpeopled half the globe, there have been vast
natural cataclysms in which thousands have been overwhelmed by flood
and fire and whirlwind. Time and again, in the course of these nineteen
centuries, such things have happened, but they have not brought Christ
back to earth. They were ‘signs of the times’ inasmuch as they were
signs of God’s wrath against the chronic wickedness of mankind, but they
were not signs of the times in connection with the Second Coming.
“If earnest Christians have regarded the present war as a true sign of
the Lord’s approaching return, it is not merely because it happens to
be a great war involving the lives of millions of people, not merely
because famine is tightening its grip on every country in Europe, not
merely because disease of every kind, from syphilis to spotted fever, is
rife among the warring nations; no, it is not for these reasons that we
regard this war as a true Sign of the Times, but because in its origin
and its progress it is marked by certain characteristics which seem
to connect it almost beyond a doubt with the predictions in Christian
Prophecy relating to the Second Coming of the Lord.
“Let me enumerate the features of the present war which most clearly
suggest that it is a Sign foretelling the near approach of the Second
Advent. Our Lord said that ‘this Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached
in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end
come.’ Although it would be presumptuous for us to say what degree of
evangelisation will be regarded by God as sufficient, we may at least
confidently hope that a century of unflagging missionary work has
brought the fulfilment of this condition at any rate near. True, the
larger number of the world’s inhabitants have remained deaf to the
preaching of the true religion; but that does not vitiate the fact that
the Gospel HAS been preached ‘for a witness’ to all unbelievers from the
Papist to the Zulu. The responsibility for the continued prevalence of
unbelief lies, not with the preachers, but with those preached to.
“Again, it has been generally recognised that ‘the drying up of the
waters of the great river Euphrates,’ mentioned in the sixteenth chapter
of Revelation, refers to the decay and extinction of Turkish power, and
is a sign of the near approaching end of the world as we know it. The
capture of Jerusalem and the successes in Mesopotamia are great strides
forward in the destruction of the Ottoman Empire; though it must be
admitted that the Gallipoli episode proved that the Turk still possesses
a ‘notable horn’ of strength. Historically speaking, this drying up of
Ottoman power has been going on for the past century; the last two years
have witnessed a great acceleration of the process, and there can be no
doubt that complete desiccation is within sight.
“Closely following on the words concerning the drying up of Euphrates
comes the prophecy of Armageddon, that world war with which the Second
Coming is to be so closely associated. Once begun, the world war can
end only with the return of Christ, and His coming will be sudden and
unexpected, like that of a thief in the night.
“Let us examine the facts. In history, exactly as in St. John’s Gospel,
the world war is immediately preceded by the drying up of Euphrates, or
the decay of Turkish power. This fact alone would be enough to connect
the present conflict with the Armageddon of Revelation and therefore to
point to the near approach of the Second Advent. But further evidence of
an even more solid and convincing nature can be adduced.
“Armageddon is brought about by the activities of three unclean spirits,
as it were toads, which come out of the mouths of the Dragon, the Beast,
and the False Prophet. If we can identify these three powers of evil
much light will clearly be thrown on the whole question.
“The Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet can all be identified in
history. Satan, who can only work through human agency, has used these
three powers in the long war against Christ which has filled the last
nineteen centuries with religious strife. The Dragon, it has been
sufficiently established, is pagan Rome, and the spirit issuing from its
mouth is the spirit of Infidelity. The Beast, alternatively symbolised
as a Woman, is undoubtedly the Papal power, and Popery is the spirit
which it spews forth. There is only one power which answers to the
description of the False Prophet, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, the
agent of the devil working in the guise of the Lamb, and that power is
the so-called ‘Society of Jesus.’ The spirit that issues from the mouth
of the False Prophet is the spirit of False Morality.
“We may assume, then, that the three evil spirits are Infidelity,
Popery, and False Morality. Have these three influences been the real
cause of the present conflict? The answer is clear.
“The spirit of Infidelity is the very spirit of German criticism. The
Higher Criticism, as it is mockingly called, denies the possibility of
miracles, prediction, and real inspiration, and attempts to account for
the Bible as a natural development. Slowly but surely, during the last
eighty years, the spirit of Infidelity has been robbing the Germans
of their Bible and their faith, so that Germany is to-day a nation of
unbelievers. Higher Criticism has thus made the war possible; for it
would be absolutely impossible for any Christian nation to wage war as
Germany is waging it.
“We come next to the spirit of Popery, whose influence in causing the
war was quite as great as that of Infidelity, though not, perhaps, so
immediately obvious. Since the Franco-Prussian War the Papal power has
steadily declined in France, while in Germany it has steadily increased.
To-day France is an anti-papal state, while Germany possesses a powerful
Roman Catholic minority. Two papally controlled states, Germany and
Austria, are at war with six anti-papal states--England, France, Italy,
Russia, Serbia, and Portugal. Belgium is, of course, a thoroughly papal
state, and there can be little doubt that the presence on the Allies’
side of an element so essentially hostile has done much to hamper the
righteous cause and is responsible for our comparative ill-success. That
the spirit of Popery is behind the war is thus seen clearly enough in
the grouping of the opposed powers, while the rebellion in the Roman
Catholic parts of Ireland has merely confirmed a conclusion already
obvious to any unbiased mind.
“The spirit of False Morality has played as great a part in this war as
the two other evil spirits. The Scrap of Paper incident is the nearest
and most obvious example of Germany’s adherence to this essentially
unchristian or Jesuitical morality. The end is German world-power, and
in the attainment of this end, any means are justifiable. It is the true
principle of Jesuitry applied to international politics.
“The identification is now complete. As was predicted in Revelation,
the three evil spirits have gone forth just as the decay of the Ottoman
power was nearing completion, and have joined together to make the world
war. The warning, ‘Behold, I come as a thief,’ is therefore meant for
the present period--for you and me and all the world. This war will lead
on inevitably to the war of Armageddon, and will only be brought to an
end by the Lord’s personal return.
“And when He returns, what will happen? Those who are in Christ, St.
John tells us, will be called to the Supper of the Lamb. Those who are
found fighting against Him will be called to the Supper of the Great
God--that grim banquet where they shall not feast, but be feasted on.
‘For,’ as St. John says, ‘I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he
cried in a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of
heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the Great
God; that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and
the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit
on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and
great.’ All the enemies of Christ will be slain with the sword of him
that sits upon the horse, ‘and all the fowls will be filled with their
flesh.’ That is the Supper of the Great God.
“It may be soon or it may, as men reckon time, be long; but sooner or
later, inevitably, the Lord will come and deliver the world from its
present troubles. And woe unto them who are called, not to the Supper
of the Lamb, but to the Supper of the Great God. They will realise
then, but too late, that God is a God of Wrath as well as a God of
Forgiveness. The God who sent bears to devour the mockers of Elisha,
the God who smote the Egyptians for their stubborn wickedness, will
assuredly smite them too, unless they make haste to repent. But perhaps
it is already too late. Who knows but that to-morrow, in a moment even,
Christ may be upon us unawares, like a thief? In a little while, who
knows? The angel standing in the sun may be summoning the ravens and
vultures from their crannies in the rocks to feed upon the putrefying
flesh of the millions of unrighteous whom God’s wrath has destroyed. Be
ready, then; the coming of the Lord is at hand. May it be for all of
you an object of hope, not a moment to look forward to with terror and
trembling.”
Mr. Bodiham closed the little pamphlet and leaned back in his chair. The
argument was sound, absolutely compelling; and yet--it was four years
since he had preached that sermon; four years, and England was at peace,
the sun shone, the people of Crome were as wicked and indifferent
as ever--more so, indeed, if that were possible. If only he could
understand, if the heavens would but make a sign! But his questionings
remained unanswered. Seated there in his brown varnished chair under the
Ruskinian window, he could have screamed aloud. He gripped the arms of
his chair--gripping, gripping for control. The knuckles of his hands
whitened; he bit his lip. In a few seconds he was able to relax the
tension; he began to rebuke himself for his rebellious impatience.
Four years, he reflected; what were four years, after all? It must
inevitably take a long time for Armageddon to ripen to yeast itself up.
The episode of 1914 had been a preliminary skirmish. And as for the war
having come to an end--why, that, of course, was illusory. It was still
going on, smouldering away in Silesia, in Ireland, in Anatolia; the
discontent in Egypt and India was preparing the way, perhaps, for a
great extension of the slaughter among the heathen peoples. The Chinese
boycott of Japan, and the rivalries of that country and America in the
Pacific, might be breeding a great new war in the East. The prospect,
Mr. Bodiham tried to assure himself, was hopeful; the real, the genuine
Armageddon might soon begin, and then, like a thief in the night...But,
in spite of all his comfortable reasoning, he remained unhappy,
dissatisfied. Four years ago he had been so confident; God’s intention
seemed then so plain. And now? Now, he did well to be angry. And now he
suffered too.
Sudden and silent as a phantom Mrs. Bodiham appeared, gliding
noiselessly across the room. Above her black dress her face was pale
with an opaque whiteness, her eyes were pale as water in a glass, and
her strawy hair was almost colourless. She held a large envelope in her
hand.
“This came for you by the post,” she said softly.
The envelope was unsealed. Mechanically Mr. Bodiham tore it open.
It contained a pamphlet, larger than his own and more elegant in
appearance. “The House of Sheeny, Clerical Outfitters, Birmingham.” He
turned over the pages. The catalogue was tastefully and ecclesiastically
printed in antique characters with illuminated Gothic initials. Red
marginal lines, crossed at the corners after the manner of an Oxford
picture frame, enclosed each page of type, little red crosses took the
place of full stops. Mr. Bodiham turned the pages.
“Soutane in best black merino. Ready to wear; in all sizes. Clerical
frock coats. From nine guineas. A dressy garment, tailored by our own
experienced ecclesiastical cutters.”
Half-tone illustrations represented young curates, some dapper, some
Rugbeian and muscular, some with ascetic faces and large ecstatic eyes,
dressed in jackets, in frock-coats, in surplices, in clerical evening
dress, in black Norfolk suitings.
“A large assortment of chasubles.
“Rope girdles.
“Sheeny’s Special Skirt Cassocks. Tied by a string about the waist...When
worn under a surplice presents an appearance indistinguishable from that
of a complete cassock...Recommended for summer wear and hot climates.”
With a gesture of horror and disgust Mr. Bodiham threw the catalogue
into the waste-paper basket. Mrs. Bodiham looked at him; her pale,
glaucous eyes reflected his action without comment.
“The village,” she said in her quiet voice, “the village grows worse and
worse every day.”
“What has happened now?” asked Mr. Bodiham, feeling suddenly very weary.
“I’ll tell you.” She pulled up a brown varnished chair and sat down. In
the village of Crome, it seemed, Sodom and Gomorrah had come to a second
birth.