With the entry of Angela's great picture "The Coming of Christ" into
London, where it became at once the centre of admiration, contention
and general discussion, one of the most singular "religious" marriage
ceremonies ever known, took place in a dreary out-lying district of the
metropolis, where none but the poorest of the poor dwell, working from
dawn till night for the merest pittance which scarcely pays them for
food and lodging. It was one of Aubrey Leigh's "centres," and to serve
his needs for a church he had purchased a large wooden structure
previously used for the storing of damaged mechanical appliances, such
as worn-out locomotives, old railway carriages, and every kind of
lumber that could possibly accumulate anywhere in a dock or an engine
yard. The building held from three to four thousand people closely
packed, and when Leigh had secured it for his own, he was as jubilant
over his possession as if the whole continent of Europe had subscribed
to build him a cathedral. He had the roof mended and made rainproof,
and the ground planked over to make a decent flooring,--then he had it
painted inside a dark oak colour, and furnished it with rows of
benches. At the upper end a raised platform was erected, and in the
centre of that platform stood a simple Cross of roughly carved dark
wood, some twelve or fifteen feet in height. There was no other
adornment in the building,--the walls remained bare, the floor
unmatted, the seats uncushioned. No subscriptions were asked for its
maintenance; no collection plate was ever sent around, yet here,
whenever Leigh announced a coming "Address," so vast a crowd assembled
that it was impossible to find room for all who sought admittance. And
here, on one cold frosty Sunday morning, with the sun shining brightly
through the little panes of common glass which had been inserted to
serve as windows, he walked through a densely packed and expectant
throng of poor, ill-clad, work-worn, yet evidently earnest and reverent
men and women, leading his fair wife Sylvie, clad in bridal white, by
the hand, up to the platform, and there stood facing the crowd. He was
followed by Cardinal Bonpre and--Manuel. The Cardinal wore no outward
sign of his ecclesiastical dignity,--he was simply attired in an
ordinary priest's surtout, and his tall dignified figure, his fine
thoughtful face and his reverend age, won for him silent looks of
admiration and respect from many who knew nothing of him or of the
Church to which he belonged, but simply looked upon him as a friend of
their idolized teacher, Aubrey Leigh. Manuel passed through the crowd
almost unnoticed, and it was only when he stood near the Cross, looking
down upon the upturned thousands of faces, that a few remarked his
presence. The people had assembled in full force on this occasion, an
invitation having gone forth in Leigh's name asking them "to be
witnesses of his marriage," and the excitement was intense, as Sylvie,
veiled as a bride, obeyed the gentle signal of her husband, and took
her seat on the platform by the side of the Cardinal on the left hand
of the great Cross, against which Manuel leaned lightly like a child
who is not conscious of observation, but who simply takes the position
which seems to him most natural. And when the subdued murmuring of the
crowd had died into comparative silence, Aubrey, advancing a little to
the front of the Cross, spoke in clear ringing tones, which carried
music to the ears and conviction to the heart.
"My friends! I have asked you all here in your thousands, to witness
the most sacred act of my human life--my marriage! By the law of this
realm,--by the law of America, the country of my birth,--that marriage
is already completed and justified,--but no 'religious' ceremony has
yet been performed between myself and her whom I am proud and grateful
to call wife. To my mind however, a 'religious' ceremony is necessary,
and I have chosen to hold it here,--with you who have listened to me in
this place many and many a time,--with you as witnesses to the oath of
fidelity and love I am about to take in the presence of God! There is
no clergyman present--no one to my knowledge of any Church denomination
except a Cardinal of the Church of Rome who is my guest and friend, but
who takes no part in the proceedings. The Cross alone stands before you
as the symbol of the Christian faith,--and what I swear by that symbol
means for me a vow that shall not be broken either in this world, or in
the world to come! I need scarcely tell you that this is not the usual
meaning of marriage in our England of to-day. There is much blasphemy
in the world, but one of the greatest blasphemies of the age is the
degradation of the sacrament of matrimony,--the bland tolerance with
which an ordained priest of Christ presumes to invoke the blessing of
God upon a marriage between persons whom he knows are utterly unsuited
to each other in every way, who are not drawn together by love, but
only by worldly considerations of position and fortune. I have seen
these marriages consummated. I have seen the horrible and often tragic
results of such unholy union. I have known of cases where a man,
recognized as a social blackguard of the worst type, whose ways of life
are too odious to be named, has been accepted as a fitting mate for a
young innocent girl just out of school, because he is a Lord or a Duke
or an Earl. Anything for money! Anything for the right to stand up and
crow over your neighbours! When an inexperienced girl or woman is
united for life to a loathsome blackguard, an open sensualist, a
creature far lower than the beasts, yet possessed of millions, she is
'congratulated' as being specially to be envied, when as a matter of
strict honesty, it would be better if she were in her grave. The
prayers and invocations pronounced at such marriages are not
'religious,'--they are mere profanity! The priest who says 'Those whom
God hath joined together let no man put asunder,' over such immoral
wedlock, is guilty of a worse sacrilege than if he trampled on the
bread and wine of Christ's Communion! For marriage was not intended to
be a mere union of bodies,--but a union of souls. It is the most sacred
bond of humanity. From the love which has created that bond, is born
new life,--life which shall be good or evil according to the spirit in
which husband and wife are wedded. 'The sins of the fathers shall be
visited on the children,'--and the first and greatest sin is bodily
union without soul-love. It is merely a form of animal desire,--and
from desire alone no good or lofty thing can spring. We are not made to
be 'as the beasts that perish'--though materialists and sensualists
delight in asserting such to be our destiny, in order to have ground
whereon to practise their own vices. This planet, the earth, is set
under our dominion; the beasts are ours to control,--they do not
control us. Our position therefore is one of supremacy. Let us not
voluntarily fall from that position to one even lower than the level of
beasts! The bull, the goat, the pig, are moved by animal desire alone
to perpetuate their kind--but we,--we have a grander mission to
accomplish than theirs--we in our union are not only responsible for
the Body of the next generation to come, but for the brain, the heart,
the mind, and above all the Soul! If we wed in sin, our children must
be born in sin. If we make our marriages for worldly advantage, vanity,
blind desire, or personal convenience, our children will be moulded on
those passions, and grow up to be curses to the world they live in.
Love, and love only of the purest, truest, and highest kind, must be
the foundation of the marriage Sacrament,--love that is prepared to
endure all the changes of fate and fortune--love that is happy in
working and suffering for the thing beloved--love that counts nothing a
hardship,--neither sickness, nor sorrow, nor poverty, provided it can
keep its faith unbroken!"
He paused--there was a slight stir among the audience, but otherwise
not a sound. Sylvie sat quiet, a graceful, nymph-like figure, veiled in
her cloudy white--Cardinal Bonpre's mild blue eyes raised to the
speaker's face, were full of rapt attention--and Manuel still leaning
against the great Cross seemed absorbed in dreamy and beautiful
thoughts of his own.
"I should like," went on Aubrey with increasing warmth and passion, "to
tell you what I mean by 'faith unbroken.' It is the highest form of
love,--the only firm rock of friendship. It leaves no room for
suspicion,--no place for argument--no cause for contradiction. It is
the true meaning of the wedding-ring. Apart from marriage altogether,
it is the only principle that can finally civilize and elevate man. So
long as we doubt God and mistrust our fellows, so long must corruption
sway business, and wars move nations. The man who gives us cause to
suspect his honesty,--the man who forces us to realize the existence of
treachery, is a worse murderer than he who stabs us bodily to death;
for he has tainted our soul; he has pushed us back many steps on our
journey Godward, and has made us wonder and question whether in truth a
God can exist who tolerates in His universe such a living lie! It is
only when we have to contemplate a broken faith that we doubt God! For
a broken faith is an abnormal prodigy in the natural scheme of the
universe--a discord in the eternal music of the stars! There are no
treacheries, no falsifying of accounts, in the Divine order of the Law.
The sun does not fail to rise each morning, whether clouds obscure the
sky or not,--the moon appears at her stated seasons and performs her
silver-footed pilgrimage faithfully to time--the stars move with
precision in their courses,--and so true are they to their ordainment,
that we are able to predict the manner in which they will group
themselves and shine, years after we have passed away. In the world of
Nature the leaves bud, and the birds nest at the coming of Spring; the
roses bloom in Summer--the harvest is gathered in Autumn,--the whole
marvellous system moves like a grand timepiece whose hands are never
awry, whose chimes never fail to ring the exact hour,--and in all the
splendour of God's gifts to us there is no such thing as a broken
faith! Only we,--we, the creatures He has endowed with 'His own
image,'--Free-will,--break our faith with Him and with each other. And
so we come to mischief, inasmuch as broken faith is no part of God's
Intention. And when two persons, man and woman, swear to be true to
each other before God, so long as life shall last, and afterwards break
that vow, confusion and chaos result from their perjury, and all the
pestilential furies attending on a wrong deed whip them to their
graves! In these times of ours, when wars and rumours of wars shake the
lethargic souls of too-exultant politicians and statesmen with anxiety
for themselves if not for their country, we hear every day of men and
women breaking their marriage vows as lightly as though God were not
existent,--we read of princes whose low amours are a disgrace to the
world--of dukes and earls who tolerate the unchastity of their wives in
order that they themselves may have the more freedom,--of men of title
and position who even sell their wives to their friends in order to
secure some much-needed cash or social advantage,--and while our law is
busy night and day covering up 'aristocratic' crimes from publicity,
and showing forth the far smaller sins of hard-working poverty, God's
law is at work in a totally different way. The human judge may excuse a
king's vices,--but before God there are neither kings nor commoners,
and punishment falls where it is due! Christ taught us that the
greatest crime is treachery, for of Judas He said 'it were better for
that man that he had never been born,' and for the traitor and perjurer
death is not the end, but the beginning, of evils. Against the man who
accepts the life of a woman given to him in trust and love, and then
betrays that life to misery, all Nature arrays itself in opposition and
disaster. We, as observers of the great Play of human existence, may
not at once see, among the numerous shifting scenes, where the
evil-doer is punished, or the good man rewarded,--but wait till the
end!--till the drop-curtain falls--and we shall see that there is no
mistake in God's plan--no loophole left for breaking faith even with a
child,--no 'permit' existing anywhere to destroy the life of the soul
by so much as one false or cruel word! It is with a deep sense of the
exact balance of God's justice, that I stand before you to-day, my
friends, and ask you without any accepted ritual or ceremonial to hear
my vows of marriage. She to whom I pledge my word and life, is one who
in the world's eyes is accounted great, because rich in this world's
goods,--but her wealth has no attraction for me, and for my own self I
would rather she had been poor. Nevertheless, were she even greater
than she is,--a crowned queen with many kingdoms under her control, and
I but the poorest of her servants, nothing could undo the love we have
for each other,--nothing could keep our lives asunder! Love and love
only is our bond of union--sympathy of mind and heart and spirit;
wealth and rank would have been but causes of division between us if
love had not been greater. The world will tell you differently--the
world will say that I have married for money--but you who know me
better than the world, will feel by my very words addressed to you
to-day that my marriage is a true marriage, in which no grosser element
than love can enter. My wife's wealth remains her own--settled upon her
absolutely and always, and I am personally as poor as when I first came
among you and proved to you that hard work was a familiar friend. But I
am rich in the possession of the helpmate God has given me, and with
the utmost gratitude and humility I ask you to bear witness to the fact
that this day before you and in the presence of the symbol of the
Christian faith, I take my oath to be true to her and only her while
life shall last!"
Here going to where Sylvie stood, he took her by the hand, and led her
to the front of the platform. Then he turned again to his eager and
expectant audience.
"In your presence, my friends, and in the presence of God and before
the Cross, I take Sylvie Hermenstein to be my wedded wife! I swear to
devote myself to her, body and soul,--to cherish her first and last of
all human creatures,--to be true to her in thought, word and deed,--to
care for her in sickness as in health, in age as in youth,--to honour
her as my chiefest good,--and to die faithful to her in this
world,--hoping by the mercy of God to complete a more perfect union
with her in the world to come! In the name of Christ, Amen!"
And then Sylvie threw back her veil and turned her enchanting face upon
the crowd,--a face fairer than ever, irradiated by the love and truth
of her soul,--and the people gazed and wondered, and wondering held
their breath as her clear accents rang through the silence.
"In your presence, and in the presence of God and before the Cross, I
take Aubrey Leigh to be my wedded husband! I swear to devote myself to
him body and soul, to cherish him first and last of all human
creatures,--to be true to him in thought, word and deed,--to care for
him in sickness as in health, in age as in youth,--to honour him as my
chiefest good,--and to die faithful to him in this world,--praying God
in His mercy to complete a more perfect union with him in the world to
come. In the name of Christ, Amen!"
Then Aubrey, taking his wife's hand, placed for the first time on her
finger the golden wedding-ring.
"In the presence of you all, before God, I place this ring upon my
wife's hand as a symbol of unbreaking faith and loyalty! I pledge my
life to hers; and promise to defend her from all evil, to shelter her,
to work for her, and to guard her with such tenderness as shall not
fail! I swear my faith; and may God forsake me if I break my vow!"
And Sylvie without hesitation, responded in her sweet clear voice.
"In the presence of you all, before God, I take this ring and wear it
as a symbol of my husband's trust in me, and a token of his love! I
pledge my life to his; and promise to uphold the honour of his
name,--to obey him in every just and rightful wish,--to defend his
actions,--to guard his home in peace and good report,--and to surround
him with such tenderness as shall not fail! I swear my faith; and may
God forsake me if I break my vow!"
There followed a deep and almost breathless silence. Then Aubrey spoke
once more, standing before the throng with Sylvie by his side and her
hand clasped in his.
"I thank you all, my friends! Strange and unlike all marriage
ceremonies as ours is to-day, I feel that it is a sacred and a binding
one! Your thousands of eyes and ears have heard and seen us swear our
marriage vows--your thousands of hearts and minds have understood the
spirit in which we accept this solemn sacrament! I will ask you before
we go, to kneel down with us and repeat 'The Prayer of Heart-searching'
which I have said with you so often, and to then quietly disperse."
In one moment the vast crowd was kneeling, and Cardinal Bonpre's aged
eyes filled with tears of emotion as he saw all these human beings,
moved by one great wave of sympathy, prostrate themselves before the
simple Cross where the wedded lovers knelt also, and where Manuel alone
stood, like one who is too sure of God to need the help of prayer.
And Aubrey, thrilled to the heart by the consciousness that all the
members of that huge congregation were with him in his ideal dream of
Christian Union, offered up this supplication--
"All-powerful God! Most loving and beneficent Creator of the Universe!
We Thy creatures, who partake with Thee the endowment of immortality,
now beseech Thee to look upon us here, kneeling in adoration before
Thee! Search our hearts and souls with the light of Thy revealing Holy
Spirit, and see if in any of us there is concealed an unworthy thought,
or doubt, or distrust, or scorn of Thy unfailing goodness! We ask Thee
to discover our sins and imperfections to ourselves, and so instruct us
as to what is displeasing to Thee, that we may remedy these wilful
blots upon Thy fair intention. Give us the force and fervour, the
wisdom and truth, to find and follow the way Thou wouldst have us
go,--and if our strength should fail, constrain us, oh God, to come to
Thee, whether we learn by sorrow or joy, by punishment or
pity;--constrain us, so that we may find Thee, whatever else we lose!
Let the great searchlight of Thy truth be turned upon the secret
motives of our hearts and minds, and if there be one of us in whom such
motives be found false, impure, cruel or cowardly, then let Thy just
wrath fall upon the misguided creature of Thy love, and teach him or
her, obedience and repentance! We pray that Thou wilt punish us, oh
God, when we have sinned, that we may know wherein we have offended our
dear Father;--and equally, when we have sought to serve Thee
faithfully, may we receive Thy blessing! Make us one with Thee in Thy
perfect plan of good; teach us how to work Thy will in the fulfilment
of peace and joy; make our lives of use to this world, and our deaths
gain to the next, and let the glory of Thy love encompass us, guide us,
and defend us now and forever, through Christ our Lord, Amen."
After he had ceased, there was a deep silence for many minutes, then
all the people as if moved by one impulse, rose from their knees, and
standing, sang the following stanzas, which Aubrey had taught them when
he first began to preach among them his ideals of love and labour.
If thou'rt a Christian in deed and thought,
Loving thy neighbour as Jesus taught,--
Living all days in the sight of Heaven,
And not ONE only out of seven,--
Sharing thy wealth with the suffering poor,
Helping all sorrow that Hope can cure,--
Making religion a truth in the heart,
And not a cloak to be worn in the mart,
Or in high cathedrals and chapels and fanes,
Where priests are traders and count the gains,--
All God's angels will say, "Well done!"
Whenever thy mortal race is run.
White and forgiven,
Thou'lt enter heaven,
And pass, unchallenged, the Golden Gate,
Where welcoming spirits watch and wait
To hail thy coming with sweet accord
To the Holy City of God the Lord!
If Peace is thy prompter, and Love is thy guide,
And white-robed Charity walks by thy side,--
If thou tellest the truth without oath to bind,
Doing thy duty to all mankind,--
Raising the lowly, cheering the sad,
Finding some goodness e'en in the bad,
And owning with sadness if badness there be,
There might have been badness in thine and in thee,
If Conscience the warder that keeps thee whole
Had uttered no voice to thy slumbering soul,--
All God's angels will say, "Well done!"
Whenever thy mortal race is run.
White and forgiven,
Thou'lt enter heaven,
And pass, unchallenged, the Golden Gate,
Where welcoming spirits watch and wait
To hail thy coming with sweet accord
To the Holy City of God the Lord!
If thou art humble, and wilt not scorn.
However wretched, a brother forlorn,--
If thy purse is open to misery's call,
And the God thou lovest is God of all,
Whatever their colour, clime or creed,
Blood of thy blood, in their sorest need,--
If every cause that is good and true,
And needs assistance to dare and do,
Thou helpest on through good and ill,
With trust in Heaven, and God's good will,--
All God's angels will say, "Well done!"
Whenever thy mortal race is run.
White and forgiven, Thou'lt enter heaven,
And pass, unchallenged, the Golden Gate,
Where welcoming spirits watch and wait
To hail thy coming with sweet accord
To the Holy City of God the Lord!
[Footnote: By the late Charles Mackay, LL.D., F.S.A.]
The effect of the last eight-line chorus sung by thousands of voices,
was marvellous. Such a spirit of exaltation pervaded the music that the
common wooden shed-like building in which these followers of one
earnest man asserted their faith in God rather than in a Church, seemed
to take upon itself all the architectural beauty of a temple costing
millions of money. When the singing ceased, Aubrey raised his hand, and
while his audience yet remained standing, pronounced the blessing.
"God be with you all, my friends!--in your hearts and lives and daily
conduct! May none of you here present shadow His brightness by one dark
deed or thought of evil! I will ask you to pray that God may be with me
too, and with my beloved wife, the future partner of all my work, my
joys and sorrows, that we may in our union make our lives useful to you
and to all others who seek our help or care. God's blessing be upon us
all in the name of Christ our Saviour!"