ANTI-"WE-ISM."
Sir Archibald Carlyon, proprietor of the "Courier," and Ralph Bastin's
employer, had just arrived at the "Courier" office. The whilom
middle-aged, sprightly old man was as bowed and decrepit as a man of
ninety.
As he entered the editorial private room, Ralph, for one instant, did
not recognize him. Then, as he realized who it was, he sprang forward
with an almost son-like solicitude, and helped him to a chair.
"Sir Archibald, what has happened?" he cried.
The old man lifted weary, hopeless eyes, out of which all the old-time
flash had gone, and nothing but heavy dullness remained. "Have _you_
heard from my boy, from George?" he asked.
"No, why, is there anything the matter, Sir Archibald?" Ralph's tones
were full of alarmed anxiety.
The baronet's hand had been thrust into his breast-pocket, as he spoke.
He took out a letter and handing it to Ralph, groaned out the two words:
"Read that!"
Ralph caught his breath as his eyes took in the first lines: "Dear
Uncle, by the time you receive this, I shall be beyond _this_ life,
though _where_--in that outer world, that world beyond--I can--not
tell."
Ralph had not turned to the signature, he knew the writing too well,
and knew it for bright, happy jocund George Carlyon's. He read on:
"All that has happened in the world, of late, has driven me mad. Dear
old Tom Hammond wrote me fully of his change of heart, and besought me
to face the whole matter of my 'eternal destiny,' as he termed it. I
simply did not reply to his letter. Three days later he was taken,
with all those others, to God. Since then I have plunged into
everything trying to drown thought, and remorse, but I cannot, so I am
ending all--there's a mad thing to say, as if death could end all.
Though I do not doubt but what many other fellows will do what I am
doing now. Good bye, good old Hunky Archie,
"Your unhappy, rotten,
"GEORGE."
As Ralph lifted his eyes from the paper he found Sir Archibald's fixed
upon him, and the anguish in the poor old dull eyes drew tears to
Ralph's.
"We found him," cried the old man, "in the boathouse, by the lake, with
a bullet through his temples. My poor boy! My noble boy!"
Dry-eyes, but with a soul full of anguish, his features, too, twisted
with the anguish of his soul, the old man rocked himself for a moment
in his chair.
Looking up suddenly, he startled Ralph by the bitterness of his tones,
as he said:
"God forgive me! But I could find it easy to curse our clergy, our
ministers, our bishops, our teachers, for that when we looked to them,
and _paid_ them, to tell us the right, the true thing, they let us go
on deluded by the belief that attendance upon the _outward form_ was
sufficient to make us sure of Heaven in the future. Why, Bastin, good
fellow, do you know that more than half of the clergymen with whom I
was _well_ acquainted, are among those whom God has left behind, and
not one of those whom I know, thus left, has a mite of concern about
their state, but seem to have gone right over to the Devil, if I may so
say it. What does it all mean?"
Ralph began to speak kindly, sympathetically to him, but the old man
suddenly interrupted with:
"And yesterday's article in 'the Courier' upon the opening of that
Temple at Jerusalem, with all that about the 'Mark of the Beast;' that
mock (I suppose it was _mock_) miracle, with the fire consuming the
sacrifice, and then that awful portent of darkness, thunder, and
lightning--but no rain. It reminded me of the scene at Calvary, when
the Christ was crucified. What _does_ it all mean, Bastin?"
"What I have said in that article, I believe, Sir Archibald. The
events in Jerusalem, during the last three days are the beginning of
the reign of Anti-christ. For years, blinded by Satan whom most of us,
unknowingly, served, and blinded by what we termed the 'Progress of the
Age,' and of the World, but which ought to have been recognized for
what it really was, the growing of the Apostasy, which has now begun to
be avowed and absolutely universal--blinded, I say, by all this, Sir
Archibald, we suffered many mighty forces to stealthily, powerfully
work together so that the climax that has come upon us, was made
absolutely easy.
"If we had known our Bibles only a tithe as well as we knew our
newspapers, we should have seen that all we were glorying in, under the
name of 'Progress,' was but a perfecting of human systems, leaving God,
and His purposes, and His plans utterly out of the question. We went
to our churches, our chapels, we had a '_form_ of Godliness,' but we
tacitly, and controversally, in print and speech, 'denied the _power_
thereof.' We not only made it possible, but easy 'for one man of
Master-mind to assume universal dominion, and to be the object of
universal worship, as Apleon, the Anti-christ, soon will be.'
"And now, Sir Archibald, we are on the eve of a gigantic blend of all
religions, with all commercial undertakings. The more I study God's
word in the light of all that is happening, the more clearly I see this.
"How often, in the old days--say from the mid-eighties--professing
Christian men, when expostulated with as to the difference between
their professed creed of the Sunday, and their daily practice in
business, would say, 'oh, bosh! religion is one thing, business is
another!' Then, as the years moved on, all kinds of trading concerns
sprang up professedly religious, and conducted on professedly religious
lines. But even the truest Seers in the Church of God would hardly
have dared to predict that in a comparatively few years the final
outcome of this trend in events would be an absolute coalescence into
one vast system of the world's many religious systems and of the
world's commerce. The most that the Seers of God, in His church, dared
to say of the future was that the _principle_ of such a _combined_
system was suggested by the text of Rev. xiii. For the second Beast
'caused the earth and them that dwell therein to worship the first
Beast . . . . And he had power . . . to cause that as many as would
not worship the image of the Beast should be killed. And he causeth
all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a
mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads, and _that no man might
buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or
the number of his name_.' Here, for nearly two thousand years, was the
principle of this Hell-devised, Devil-developed combined system of
religion and commerce, prophesied, but now few even of God's choicest
saints realized all that would mean.
"The nineteenth and early twentieth century Christendom had lost the
Bible ideal of Christianity, and had substituted a very material idea
for God's idea. The two decades--last of the nineteenth, and first of
the twentieth centuries--were marked by immense religious activities,
but while a merely religious movement might manufacture a Christendom,
it could never make Christians.
"To be religious is one thing to be a Christian quite another thing.
The vast bulk of the members of the so-called Christian Churches of
those years, had never been born again from above.
"Christian in name (by virtue of membership in a Church; or by virtue
of their subscription to a creed; or by a careful attendance upon the
forms of their own particular church) they were yet _only religious_,
because God's word regards those only as _Christians_ in whom Christ
indwells, and none can be indwelt by Christ save those into whom He has
come in the birth from above. ('Born again' ones.) '_Except_ a man be
born again, he CANNOT _see_ the Kingdom of God' much more live in it.
"'That which is born of the _flesh_ is flesh,' and 'flesh and blood
cannot inherit the Kingdom of God,' but only those _spiritually_
born--born from above. We only become Christians by _re_-generation.
"In the years immediately before the 'Rapture,' _professing_
Christians, and even _professedly_ Christian ministers, men who had
taken vows before God to preach the 'whole counsel of God,' and who
received their salary avowedly for this purpose, scouted, and often
publicly denied the necessity of the New Birth. Blind leaders of the
blind, they surely will have the greater punishment.
"But to return to the other thought.
"The last twenty years of the nineteenth century, and more so the first
ten years of the twentieth century, was marked as an age of
centralization and concentration of all kinds of interests, commercial,
and religious. Each year, the trusts and monopolies in the commercial
world became more and more concentrated, until it has become perfectly
easy for Lucien Apleon, Emperor-Dictator of the World, to govern and
control (from that beautiful, hellish city, Babylon the great,) every
business interest in the world.
"Two days ago, at Jerusalem, the 'Covenant Sign'--so called--but which
God calls the 'Mark of the Beast'--was donned by three or four million
people, in the _holiday_ spirit. But what was donned voluntarily, in a
holiday spirit, forty-eight hours ago, will have to be _branded_ on
every one's person in the universe in three and a half years time--or
less--or else the refuser of the degradation will have to seal his or
her loyalty to God by their life.
"In three and a half years from now, Sir Archibald, the image of Lucien
Apleon, will be set up in the Temple of Jerusalem, and, I believe, in
every other great religious centre of the World--St. Peter's, Rome; St.
Paul's, London; and so on in all our great cities, and world centres.
I have been studying this subject naturally, and I find that one great
scholar (Hengstenberg) says, that though _one_ image is spoken of, yet
having regard to the sense of the original, 'a multitude of images is
meant.'"
"But _religiously_, Bastin, religiously?" cried the old man. "How did
the condition of things in the end of the nineteenth, and the beginning
of the twentieth centuries, help to make it possible for all the world
presently to _worship_ the Beast, and his image?"
There was an almost childish querulousness of tone in the old baronet's
questioning.
"All those years," began Ralph, "were marked by a wonderful activity on
new lines of deliverance for the human race, from the ills that had
grown up around the vast bulk of that race. God's plan was for man's
_regeneration_, a change of heart and life--a working from the centre
to the circumference. But the churches--_all_ denominations--of the
years we are speaking about, began endless schemes of deliverance that
the man, as they hoped, might be changed from the _out_side--that is to
say, man's idea of benefitting man was by an _outward_ reform.
"They failed to recognize the fundamental fact that all the 'Ills of
Humanity,' so called, proceeded from man's natural depravity, from man
_himself_, and not from his environment. We failed to see that a
_reformed_ race would only mean a perpetuation of all the old natural
lusts, and presently, bring about a return to the old condition of
things, while a _regenerated_ race would hold reform in it, and that
that reform would not only be perpetual, but ever increasing in its
perfecting.
"Then, too, the great religious denominations became fired with the
idea of a consolidating, unifying process that should smelt down all
denominations into one. To do this every type of religion should find
a place. What would it matter if one or more of the religions denied
the Deity of Christ? that others did not accept the Bible as the
Inspired word of God and so on? 'The doctrine of Christ,' was
gradually eliminated from almost all preaching and the doctrine of a
divine humanism--'The divinity of man,' became largely the new cult.
"I believe, from all that I can gather, one of the first steps towards
this elimination of 'the doctrine of Christ,' could be traced in the
continued elimination from the various denominational hymn-books (as
_new_ ones were issued beginning as far back as the late seventies) of
hymns relating to the facts of the Atonement and other kindred
subjects, and the substitution of odes, poems, etc., in which
aspiration took the place of experimental religion. The hymn-books of
more than one, or two, or three denominations, showed this retrograde
movement, through their several successive issues.
"Then, side by side with this _Anti_-christian movement, there went on
silently that gathering out from the world, and from the merely
professing Christian church, those who were, by virtue of their New
Birth, through faith in Christ, the recipients of Eternal life, and
who, when that glorious 'Rapture' took place awhile ago, were caught up
into the air as a _body_ of living believers to be joined for ever, to
their head--Christ; thus robbing the world of what Christ Himself
called 'the salt of the earth.'"
With a groan, Sir Archibald cried:
"God help us, Bastin! What fools we were!"
Then with a weary upward look into Ralph's face, he rose to his feet,
saying:
"I must be going. I've arranged to meet the lawyers in half-an-hour
from now. Good-bye, dear fellow. I will come up to town to see you,
or you must come down to see me, before the wind-up of the paper.
Good-bye."
The two men wrung each other's hand, then parted.
Ten minutes later George Bullen and Rose arrived. Amazed to see his
friend with an extraordinary beautiful girl, Ralph was presently
listening to all the wonderful story of their meeting, etc.
Later on, when, for a moment or two, the two men were alone together,
in the inner room, Ralph asked George what he proposed to do with the
beautiful girl?
"There is but one thing I can do," he replied. "I must marry her, and
that soon. It is no time, in the ordinary sense, to be thinking of
'marrying and giving in marriage,' yet, under the circumstances, I can
do no other. I care for her already, as I never cared for any woman,
and her affection for me is touching in its clingingness."
He smiled a little sadly, as he added:
"It is well that there is a little company of us here in London,
Believers in God, and therefore believers in marriage."
* * * * * *
George Bullen and Rose were married within the week of their landing in
England. The ceremony took place in a little company of believers, who
gathered on Sunday (old-count of time) and once on a week-night, in a
little hall that had been used for a Sunday School in the old days.
Sunday Schools, like many of the other religious institutions, of the
old days before the "Rapture," were quite a thing of the past.
Marriage was one of the things of the past. Some years before the
"Rapture," a booklet entitled "We-ism" had been published, in which the
author had unblushingly declared: "Women, _absolved from shame_,
servitude, and inequality, shall be enfranchised, owners of themselves
* * * We believe in the sacredness of the family and the home, _the
legitimacy of every child_, and the inalienable right of every woman to
the absolute possession of herself."
The doctrines and practice of "affinity," the "problem" plays, and
"sex" novels, of the first decade of the twentieth century, had all
materially helped to make the unregenerate mind and heart ready to
receive "free love" in its widest, grossest forms. While a certain
teaching of "Christian Science" had had an overwhelming power in the
same direction.[1]
All these forces had helped to make the doctrine of illicit love
acceptable in these early days of the Anti-christ reign, so that it was
only among the little gatherings of true Believers, that marriage was
sanctified into the sacrament it had been in the _good, true_ old days.
[1] We prefer, in a book of this character, to keep back the actual
terms of the filthy statement. Author.