_Intimations of Immortality_
When nations which preach Christianity go to war, their truth has
necessarily to become relative; they cannot tell the truth about
themselves; they cannot tell the truth about their enemies; still less
can they tell the truth about Christianity. For doing that last, a Free
Church minister in a certain land of hope and glory lying West,--he had
merely issued the Sermon on the Mount as a circular--was tarred and
feathered as a demonstration of Christian-mindedness by his belligerent
fellow-countrymen. And nearly everybody said that it served him right.
So when Relative Truth became a spiritual as well as a military
necessity, Mr. Trimblerigg, the inventor of the doctrine in its most
modern form, came gloriously into his own. In other words he became the
fashion.
The War gave him the time and the opportunity of his life. He had
begun by adopting--first pacifism, then benevolent neutrality; but
he saw quickly that there was not a public for either. And as he
listened to the heart-beats of his countrymen roused for battle, a
quick application of his doctrine of Relative Truth restored his mind
to sanity. After that he never wavered; and though he often spoke with
two voices, one day telling the workers, whom he was sent to preach
to, that they were heroes, and another that they were slackers, and
victims of drink; one day demonstrating that the National Executive’s
action had always come just too late, another that it had always come
miraculously up to time; one day protesting the mildness and equity of
his country’s intentions toward those who were unnecessarily prolonging
the war, another--when prospects began to look brighter--threatening
things of a much more drastic character, in terms drawn from the
prize-ring; though thus from day to day and week to week, he spoke
in varied tones, fitting himself to the occasion, always a forefront
figure, occasionally pushing others out of his way; nevertheless
his motive and aim remained constant (nor when nations go to war is
anything more necessary for their salvation)--the ardent assertion,
namely, of the absolute righteousness of his country’s cause, and of
the blameless antecedents leading up to it.
And though Mr. Trimblerigg’s truth was often extremely relative, it was
nearly always successful; and if any man by tireless energy, resilient
spirits, continuous ubiquity in pulpit and on platform, alertness,
invention, suggestiveness, adaptability, rapid change of front in the
ever-shifting tactics of propaganda,--now conciliatory and defensive,
meek but firm; now whole-heartedly aggressive and vision-clear of
coming victory--if by such qualities, richly and rapidly blended
outside the direct line of fire, any man could ever be said to have won
a war, in a larger and wider sense than the little drummer boy who lays
down his life for his drum,--that compliment might have been paid, when
all was done, to the unbloodstained Mr. Trimblerigg,--and was.
In the person of Mr. Trimblerigg the Free Evangelical Church had lifted
up its head and neighed like a war-horse, saying among the trumpets,
ha! ha! to the thunder of the captains and the shouting: and in the
person of Mr. Trimblerigg thanks were publicly tendered to it, when
all the fighting was over. And though Mr. Trimblerigg received neither
title, nor outward adornment, nor emolument, he became, from that day
on, a figure of international significance,--the first perhaps since
great old combative Martin Luther, to attain so high and controversial
a prominence in divided Christendom on his spiritual merits alone.
It may sound cynical to say that the greatness of nations has very
largely been built up on the lies they have told of each other. And yet
it is a true statement; for you have only to compare their histories,
and especially the histories of their wars (upon which young patriots
are trained to become heroes), in order to realize that the day of
naked and unashamed truth has not yet arrived: that so long as nations
stand to be worshipped, and flags to be fought for, truth can only be
relative. From which it follows that while nations are at war too much
truth is bad for them; and not only for them but for religion also.
And that is where and why Mr. Trimblerigg found his place, and fitted
it so exactly. I leave it at that. He became a national hero; and
truly it was not from lack of courage or conviction that he had seen
no fighting. He was short, and fat, and over forty; and his oratorical
gifts were more valuable where the sound of gunfire did not drown them;
otherwise he would have preached his gospel of the relative beatitudes
as willingly from the cannon’s mouth as from anywhere.
A day came, gunfire having ended, when he, and an Archbishop, and
a Prime Minister all stood on a platform together, and spoke to an
exalted gathering too glittering in its rank and distinction to be
called an assembled multitude, though its mere numbers ran into
thousands. The Archbishop sat in the middle; and the two ministers, the
political and the spiritual, sat on either side of him; and if they
were not as like each other as two peas, and did not, by both speaking
at once, rattle together like peas upon a drum, they were nevertheless
birds very much of a feather; and when it came to the speaking, they
fitted each other wonderfully. The Archbishop came first and spoke
well; the Prime Minister followed and spoke better; Mr. Trimblerigg
came last and spoke best of all. The audience told him so; there was no
doubt of it. Field-Marshals and Rear-Admirals applauded him, Duchesses
waved their handkerchiefs at him; a Dowager-Countess, of Low Church
antecedents, became next day a member of the Free Evangelicals; the
mere strength of his personality had converted her.
Mr. Trimblerigg might well think after this that a visible halo, though
not necessary, had it reappeared just then, would not have come amiss.
From his point of view the meeting could not have been more successful;
he went down from the platform more famous than when he went up on it.
And it was not his speech alone that did it: it was in the air.
The great Napoleon was said to have a star: Mr. Trimblerigg had an
atmosphere; and though it was not really the larger of the two, to his
contemporaries on earth it seemed larger.
It was just about this time, when Mr. Trimblerigg was obviously
becoming a candidate for national honours after his death, that he
attended the public funeral of a great Free Church statesman whose
war-winning activities had been closely associated with his own. And as
of the two, Mr. Trimblerigg had played the larger part, the prophetic
inference was obvious; and though in that high-vaulted aisle, amid
uniforms and decorations and wands of office, his demure little figure
looked humble and unimportant, he was a marked man for the observation
of all who had come to observe.
It was an occasion on which Free Churchmen had reason to feel proud.
Impelled by the feeling of the nation--still in its early days of
gratitude before victory had begun to taste bitter--the Episcopal
Church had opened her doors to receive, into that place of highest
honour, the dust of one who had lived outside her communion and
politically had fought against her. But it was dust only (ashes,
that is to say); and while to Mr. Trimblerigg’s perception the whole
ceremony, the music, the ritual, the vestments, the crape-scarved
uniforms, and the dark crowd of celebrities which formed a background,
were deeply impressive in their beauty and symbolism, the little casket
of cremated ashes at the centre of it all was not.
In that forced economizing of space, the sense of the individual
personality had been lost, or brought to insignificance. It gave him
an uncomfortable feeling; he did not like it; he wondered why. So
long as his thoughts went linked with the indwelling genius of that
temple of famous memories he felt thrilled and edified; but whenever
his eye returned to the small casket, he experienced a repeated shock
and felt discomfited. The condition here imposed, to make national
obsequies possible, seemed to him not merely a humiliating one; it
spelt annihilation; what remained had ceased to be personal. The
temple became a museum; in it with much ceremony an exhibit was being
deposited in its case.
And so, pondering deeply on these things, he returned home; and added
to his will (signing and dating it with a much earlier date) an
instruction for his executors, ‘My body is not to be cremated.’
Genius is economy. It could not have been more modestly done.
Somewhere or another, very near to where he had stood that afternoon,
a grave was waiting for him. Those few strokes of the pen had decided
that its dimensions should be not eighteen inches by ten; but five feet
four by two.
But the time was not yet: the instruction added to his will need not
begin to take effect for a good many years. Meanwhile his corner of
immortality waited for him, measured by himself to suit his own taste.
It came back to him then as a pleasant simile of fancy, that he had
had an uncle who was an undertaker. It ran in the family. Here was Mr.
Trimblerigg--his own!