I
On the following Sunday morning the early light filtered into Alison's
room, and she opened her strong eyes. Presently she sprang from her bed
and drew back the curtains of the windows, gazing rapturously into the
crystal day. The verdure of the Park was freshened to an incredible
brilliancy by the dew, a thin white veil of mist was spread over the
mirror of the waters, the trees flung long shadows across the turf.
A few minutes later she was out, thrilled by the silence, drawing in
deep, breaths of the morning air; lingering by still lakes catching the
blue of the sky--a blue that left its stain upon the soul; as the sun
mounted she wandered farther, losing herself in the wilderness of the
forest.
At eight o'clock, when she returned, there were signs that the city had
awakened. A mounted policeman trotted past her as she crossed a gravel
drive, and on the tree-flecked stretches, which lately had been empty
as Eden, human figures were scattered. A child, with a sailboat that
languished for lack of wind, stared at her, first with fascination and
wonder in his eyes, and then smiled at her tentatively. She returned the
smile with a start.
Children had stared at her like that before now, and for the first time
in her life she asked herself what the look might mean. She had never
really been fond of them: she had never, indeed, been brought much in
contact with them. But now, without warning, a sudden fierce yearning
took possession of her: surprised and almost frightened, she stopped
irresistibly and looked back at the thin little figure crouched beside
the water, to discover that his widened eyes were still upon her. Her
own lingered on him shyly, and thus for a moment she hung in doubt
whether to flee or stay, her heart throbbing as though she were on the
brink of some unknown and momentous adventure. She took a timid step.
“What's your name?” she asked.
The boy told her.
“What's yours?” he ventured, still under the charm.
“Alison.”
He had never heard of that name, and said so. They deplored the lack of
wind. And presently, still mystified, but gathering courage, he asked
her why she blushed, at which her colour deepened.
“I can't help it,” she told him.
“I like it,” the boy said.
Though the grass was still wet, she got down on her knees in her white
skirt, the better to push the boat along the shore: once it drifted
beyond their reach, and was only rescued by a fallen branch discovered
with difficulty.
The arrival of the boy's father, an anaemic-looking little man, put an
end to their play. He deplored the condition of the lady's dress.
“It doesn't matter in the least,” she assured him, and fled in a mood
she did not attempt to analyze. Hurrying homeward, she regained her
room, bathed, and at half past eight appeared in the big, formal
dining-room, from which the glare of the morning light was carefully
screened. Her father insisted on breakfasting here; and she found him
now seated before the white table-cloth, reading a newspaper. He glanced
up at her critically.
“So you've decided to honour me this morning,” he said.
“I've been out in the Park,” she replied, taking the chair opposite
him. He resumed his reading, but presently, as she was pouring out the
coffee, he lowered the paper again.
“What's the occasion to-day?” he asked.
“The occasion?” she repeated, without acknowledging that she had
instantly grasped his implication. His eyes were on her gown.
“You are not accustomed, as a rule, to pay much deference to Sunday.”
“Doesn't the Bible say, somewhere,” she inquired, “that the Sabbath was
made for man? Perhaps that may be broadened after a while, to include
woman.”
“But you have never been an advocate, so far as I know, of women taking
advantage of their opportunity by going to Church.”
“What's the use,” demanded Alison, “of the thousands of working women
spending the best part of the day in the ordinary church, when their
feet and hands and heads are aching? Unless some fire is kindled in
their souls, it is hopeless for them to try to obtain any benefit from
religion--so-called--as it is preached to them in most churches.”
“Fire in their souls!” exclaimed the banker.
“Yes. If the churches offered those who might be leaders among their
fellows a practical solution of existence, kindled their self-respect,
replaced a life of drudgery by one of inspiration--that would be worth
while. But you will never get such a condition as that unless your
pulpits are filled by personalities, instead of puppets who are all cast
in one mould, and who profess to be there by divine right.”
“I am glad to see at least that you are taking an interest in religious
matters,” her father observed, meaningly.
Alison coloured. But she retorted with spirit.
“That is true of a great many persons to-day who are thinking on the
subject. If Christianity is a solution of life, people are demanding of
the churches that they shall perform their function, and show us how,
and why, or else cease to encumber the world.”
Eldon Parr folded up his newspaper.
“So you are going to Church this morning,” he said.
“Yes. At what time will you be ready?”
“At quarter to eleven. But if you are going to St. John', you will have
to start earlier. I'll order a car at half past ten.”
“Where are you going?” She held her breath, unconsciously, for the
answer.
“To Calvary,” he replied coldly, as he rose to leave the room. “But I
hesitate to ask you to come,--I am afraid you will not find a religion
there that suits you.”
For a moment she could not trust herself to speak. The secret which,
ever since Friday evening, she had been burning to learn was disclosed
... Her father had broken with Mr. Hodder!
“Please don't order the motor for me,” she said. “I'd rather go in the
street cars.”
She sat very still in the empty room, her face burning.
Characteristically, her father had not once mentioned the rector of
St. John's, yet had contrived to imply that her interest in Hodder was
greater than her interest in religion. And she was forced to admit, with
her customary honesty, that the implication was true.
The numbers who knew Alison Parr casually thought her cold. They admired
a certain quality in her work, but they did not suspect that that
quality was the incomplete expression of an innate idealism capable
of being fanned into flame,--for she was subject to rare but ardent
enthusiasms which kindled and transformed her incredibly in the eyes of
the few to whom the process had been revealed. She had had even a longer
list of suitors than any one guessed; men who--usually by accident--had
touched the hidden spring, and suddenly beholding an unimagined woman,
had consequently lost their heads. The mistake most of them had made
(for subtlety in such affairs is not a masculine trait) was the failure
to recognize and continue to present the quality in them which had
awakened her. She had invariably discovered the feet of clay.
Thus disillusion had been her misfortune--perhaps it would be more
accurate to say her fortune. She had built up, after each invasion,
her defences more carefully and solidly than before, only to be again
astonished and dismayed by the next onslaught, until at length the
question had become insistent--the question of an alliance for purposes
of greater security. She had returned to her childhood home to consider
it, frankly recognizing it as a compromise, a fall....
And here, in this sanctuary of her reflection, and out of a quarter on
which she had set no watch, out of a wilderness which she had believed
to hold nothing save the ruined splendours of the past, had come one
who, like the traditional figures of the wilderness, had attracted her
by his very uncouthness and latent power. And the anomaly he presented
in what might be called the vehemence of his advocacy of an outworn
orthodoxy, in his occupation of the pulpit of St. John's, had quickened
at once her curiosity and antagonism. It had been her sudden discovery,
or rather her instinctive suspicion of the inner conflict in him which
had set her standard fluttering in response. Once more (for the last
time--something whispered--now) she had become the lady of the lists;
she sat on her walls watching, with beating heart and straining eyes,
the closed helm of her champion, ready to fling down the revived remnant
of her faith as prize or forfeit. She had staked all on the hope that he
would not lower his lance.....
Saturday had passed in suspense.... And now was flooding in on her
the certainty that he had not failed her; that he had, with a sublime
indifference to a worldly future and success, defied the powers. With
indifference, too, to her! She knew, of course, that he loved her. A man
with less of greatness would have sought a middle way....
When, at half past ten, she fared forth into the sunlight, she was
filled with anticipation, excitement, concern, feelings enhanced and not
soothed by the pulsing vibrations of the church bells in the softening
air. The swift motion of the electric car was grateful... But at length
the sight of familiar landmarks, old-fashioned dwellings crowded in
between the stores and factories of lower Tower Street, brought back
recollections of the days when she had come this way, other Sunday
mornings, and in a more leisurely public vehicle, with her mother.
Was it possible that she, Alison Parr, were going to church now? Her
excitement deepened, and she found it difficult to bring herself to
the realization that her destination was a church--the church of her
childhood. At this moment she could only think of St. John's as the
setting of the supreme drama.
When she alighted at the corner of Burton Street there was the
well-remembered, shifting group on the pavement in front of the church
porch. How many times, in the summer and winter, in fair weather and
cloudy, in rain and sleet and snow had she approached that group, as she
approached it now! Here were the people, still, in the midst of whom
her earliest associations had been formed, changed, indeed,-but yet the
same. No, the change was in her, and the very vastness of that change
came as a shock. These had stood still, anchored to their traditions,
while she--had she grown? or merely wandered? She had searched, at
least, and seen. She had once accepted them--if indeed as a child it
could have been said of her that she accepted anything; she had been
unable then, at any rate, to bring forward any comparisons.
Now she beheld them, collectively, in their complacent finery, as
representing a force, a section of the army blocking the heads of the
passes of the world's progress, resting on their arms, but ready at the
least uneasy movement from below to man the breastworks, to fling down
the traitor from above, to fight fiercely for the solidarity of
their order. And Alison even believed herself to detect, by something
indefinable in their attitudes as they stood momentarily conversing
in lowered voices, an aroused suspicion, an uneasy anticipation. Her
imagination went so far as to apprehend, as they greeted her unwonted
appearance, that they read in it an addition to other vague and
disturbing phenomena. Her colour was high.
“Why, my dear,” said Mrs. Atterbury, “I thought you had gone back to New
York long ago!”
Beside his mother stood Gordon--more dried up, it seemed, than ever.
Alison recalled him, as on this very spot, a thin, pale boy in short
trousers, and Mrs. Atterbury a beautiful and controlled young matron
associated with St. John's and with children's parties. She was
wonderful yet, with her white hair and straight nose, her erect figure
still slight. Alison knew that Mrs. Atterbury had never forgiven her
for rejecting her son--or rather for being the kind of woman who could
reject him.
“Surely you haven't been here all summer?”
Alison admitted it, characteristically, without explanations.
“It seems so natural to see you here at the old church, after all these
years,” the lady went on, and Alison was aware that Mrs. Atterbury
questioned--or rather was at a loss for the motives which had led such
an apostate back to the fold. “We must thank Mr. Hodder, I suppose. He's
very remarkable. I hear he is resuming the services to-day for the first
time since June.”
Alison was inclined to read a significance into Mrs. Atterbury's glance
at her son, who was clearing his throat.
“But--where is Mr. Parr?” he asked. “I understand he has come back from
his cruise.”
“Yes, he is back. I came without--him---as you see.”
She found a certain satisfaction in adding to the mystification, to the
disquietude he betrayed by fidgeting more than usual.
“But--he always comes when he is in town. Business--I suppose--ahem!”
“No,” replied Alison, dropping her bomb with cruel precision, “he has
gone to Calvary.”
The agitation was instantaneous.
“To Calvary!” exclaimed mother and son in one breath.
“Why?” It was Gordon who demanded. “A--a special occasion there--a
bishop or something?”
“I'm afraid you must ask him,” she said.
She was delayed on the steps, first by Nan Ferguson, then by the
Laureston Greys, and her news outdistanced her to the porch. Charlotte
Plimpton looking very red and solid, her eyes glittering with
excitement, blocked her way.
“Alison?” she cried, in the slightly nasal voice that was a Gore
inheritance, “I'm told your father's gone to Calvary! Has Mr. Hodder
offended him? I heard rumours--Wallis seems to be afraid that something
has happened.”
“He hasn't said anything about it to me, Charlotte,” said Alison, in
quiet amusement, “but then he wouldn't, you know. I don't live here
any longer, and he has no reason to think that I would be interested in
church matters.”
“But--why did you come?” Charlotte demanded, with Gore naivete.
Alison smiled.
“You mean--what was my motive?”
Charlotte actually performed the miracle of getting redder. She was
afraid of Alison--much more afraid since she had known of her vogue in
the East. When Alison had put into execution the astounding folly (to
the Gore mind) of rejecting the inheritance of millions to espouse
a profession, it had been Charlotte Plimpton who led the chorus of
ridicule and disapproval. But success, to the Charlotte Plimptons, is
its own justification, and now her ambition (which had ramifications)
was to have Alison “do” her a garden. Incidentally, the question had
flashed through her mind as to how much Alison's good looks had helped
towards her triumph in certain shining circles.
“Oh, of course I didn't mean that,” she hastened to deny, although
it was exactly what she had meant. Her curiosity unsatisfied--and
not likely to be satisfied at once, she shifted abruptly to the other
burning subject. “I was so glad when I learned you hadn't gone. Grace
Larrabbee's garden is a dream, my dear. Wallis and I stopped there the
other day and the caretaker showed it to us. Can't you make a plan for
me, so that I may begin next spring? And there's something else I wanted
to ask you. Wallis and I are going to New York the end of the month.
Shall you be there?”
“I don't know,” said Alison, cautiously.
“We want so much to see one or two of your gardens on Long Island, and
especially the Sibleys', on the Hudson. I know it will be late in the
season,--but don't you think you could take us, Alison? And I intend to
give you a dinner. I'll write you a note. Here's Wallis.”
“Well, well, well,” said Mr. Plimpton, shaking Alison's hand. “Where's
father? I hear he's gone to Calvary.”
Alison made her escape. Inside the silent church, Eleanor Goodrich gave
her a smile and a pressure of welcome. Beside her, standing behind the
rear pew, were Asa Waring and--Mr. Bentley! Mr. Bentley returned to St.
John's!
“You have come!” Alison whispered.
He understood her. He took her hand in his and looked down into her
upturned face.
“Yes, my dear,” he said, “and my girls have come Sally Grover and the
others, and some friends from Dalton Street and elsewhere.”
The news, the sound of this old gentleman's voice and the touch of his
hand suddenly filled her with a strange yet sober happiness. Asa Waring,
though he had not overheard, smiled at her too, as in sympathy. His
austere face was curiously illuminated, and she knew instinctively that
in some way he shared her happiness. Mr. Bentley had come back! Yes, it
was an augury. From childhood she had always admired Asa Waring, and now
she felt a closer tie....
She reached the pew, hesitated an instant, and slipped forward on her
knees. Years had gone by since she had prayed, and even now she made no
attempt to translate into words the intensity of her yearning--for what?
Hodder's success, for one thing,--and by success she meant that he might
pursue an unfaltering course. True to her temperament, she did not
look for the downfall of the forces opposed to him. She beheld him
persecuted, yet unyielding, and was thus lifted to an exaltation
that amazed... If he could do it, such a struggle must sorely have an
ultimate meaning! Thus she found herself, trembling, on the borderland
of faith...
She arose, bewildered, her pulses beating. And presently glancing about,
she took in that the church was fuller than she ever remembered having
seen it, and the palpitating suspense she felt seemed to pervade, as
it were, the very silence. With startling abruptness, the silence was
broken by the tones of the great organ that rolled and reverberated
among the arches; distant voices took up the processional; the white
choir filed past,--first the treble voices of the boys, then the deeper
notes of the--men,--turned and mounted the chancel steps, and then she
saw Hodder. Her pew being among the first, he passed very near her.
Did he know she would be there? The sternness of his profile told her
nothing. He seemed at that moment removed, set apart, consecrated--this
was the word that came to her, and yet she was keenly conscious of his
presence.
Tingling, she found herself repeating, inwardly, two, lines of the hymn
“Lay hold on life, and it shall be
Thy joy and crown eternally.”
“Lay hold on life!”
The service began,--the well-remembered, beautiful appeal and prayers
which she could still repeat, after a lapse of time, almost by heart;
and their music and rhythm, the simple yet magnificent language in
which they were clothed--her own language--awoke this morning a
racial instinct strong in her,--she had not known how strong. Or was it
something in Hodder's voice that seemed to illumine the ancient words
with a new meaning? Raising her eyes to the chancel she studied his
head, and found in it still another expression of that race, the history
of which had been one of protest, of development of its own character
and personality. Her mind went back to her first talk with him, in the
garden, and she saw how her intuition had recognized in him then the
spirit of a people striving to assert itself.
She stood with tightened lips, during the Apostles' Creed, listening to
his voice as it rose, strong and unfaltering, above the murmur of the
congregation.
At last she saw him swiftly crossing the chancel, mounting the pulpit
steps, and he towered above her, a dominant figure, his white surplice
sharply outlined against the dark stone of the pillar. The hymn died
away, the congregation sat down. There was a sound in the church,
expectant, presaging, like the stirring of leaves at the first breath of
wind, and then all was silent.
II
He had preached for an hour--longer, perhaps. Alison could not have said
how long. She had lost all sense of time.
No sooner had the text been spoken, “Except a man be born again, he
cannot see the Kingdom of God,” than she seemed to catch a fleeting
glimpse of an hitherto unimagined Personality. Hundreds of times she
had heard those words, and they had been as meaningless to her as
to Nicodemus. But now--now something was brought home to her of the
magnificent certainty with which they must first have been spoken, of
the tone and bearing and authority of him who had uttered them. Was
Christ like that? And could it be a Truth, after all, a truth only to be
grasped by one who had experienced it?
It was in vain that man had tried to evade this, the supreme revelation
of Jesus Christ, had sought to substitute ceremonies and sacrifices for
spiritual rebirth. It was in vain that the Church herself had, from time
to time, been inclined to compromise. St. Paul, once the strict Pharisee
who had laboured for the religion of works, himself had been reborn into
the religion of the Spirit. It was Paul who had liberated that message
of rebirth, which the world has been so long in grasping, from the
narrow bounds of Palestine and sent it ringing down the ages to the
democracies of the twentieth century.
And even Paul, though not consciously inconsistent, could not rid
himself completely of that ancient, automatic, conception of religion
which the Master condemned, but had on occasions attempted fruitlessly
to unite the new with the old. And thus, for a long time, Christianity
had been wrongly conceived as history, beginning with what to Paul and
the Jews was an historical event, the allegory of the Garden of
Eden, the fall of Adam, and ending with the Jewish conception of the
Atonement. This was a rationalistic and not a spiritual religion.
The miracle was not the vision, whatever its nature, which Saul beheld
on the road to Damascus. The miracle was the result of that vision, the
man reborn. Saul, the persecutor of Christians, become Paul, who spent
the rest of his days, in spite of persecution and bodily infirmities,
journeying tirelessly up and down the Roman Empire, preaching the
risen Christ, and labouring more abundantly than they all! There was no
miracle in the New Testament more wonderful than this.
The risen Christ! Let us not trouble ourselves about the psychological
problems involved, problems which the first century interpreted in its
own simple way. Modern, science has taught us this much, at least,
that we have by no means fathomed the limits even of a transcendent
personality. If proofs of the Resurrection and Ascension were demanded,
let them be spiritual proofs, and there could be none more convincing
than the life of the transformed Saul, who had given to the modern,
western world the message of salvation....
That afternoon, as Alison sat motionless on a distant hillside of the
Park, gazing across the tree-dotted, rolling country to the westward,
she recalled the breathless silence in the church when he had reached
this point and paused, looking down at the congregation. By the subtle
transmission of thought, of feeling which is characteristic at dramatic
moments of bodies of people, she knew that he had already contrived
to stir them to the quick. It was not so much that these opening words
might have been startling to the strictly orthodox, but the added fact
that Hodder had uttered them. The sensation in the pews, as Alison
interpreted it and exulted over it, was one of bewildered amazement that
this was their rector, the same man who had preached to them in June.
Like Paul, of whom he spoke, he too was transformed, had come to his
own, radiating a new power that seemed to shine in his face.
Still agitated, she considered that discourse now in her solitude,
what it meant for him, for her, for the Church and civilization that
a clergyman should have had the courage to preach it. He himself had
seemed unconscious of any courage; had never once--she recalled--been
sensational. He had spoken simply, even in the intensest moments of
denunciation. And she wondered now how he had managed, without stripping
himself, without baring the intimate, sacred experiences of his own
soul, to convey to them, so nobly, the change which had taken place in
him....
He began by referring to the hope with which he had come to St. John's,
and the gradual realization that the church was a failure--a dismal
failure when compared to the high ideal of her Master. By her fruits she
should be known and judged. From the first he had contemplated, with a
heavy heart, the sin and misery at their very gates. Not three blocks
distant children were learning vice in the streets, little boys of seven
and eight, underfed and anaemic, were driven out before dawn to sell
newspapers, little girls thrust forth to haunt the saloons and beg,
while their own children were warmed and fed. While their own daughters
were guarded, young women in Dayton Street were forced to sell
themselves into a life which meant slow torture, inevitable early death.
Hopeless husbands and wives were cast up like driftwood by the cruel,
resistless flood of modern civilization--the very civilization which
yielded their wealth and luxury. The civilization which professed the
Spirit of Christ, and yet was pitiless.
He confessed to them that for a long time he had been blind to the
truth, had taken the inherited, unchristian view that the disease which
caused vice and poverty might not be cured, though its ulcers might be
alleviated. He had not, indeed, clearly perceived and recognized the
disease. He had regarded Dalton Street in a very special sense as a
reproach to St. John's, but now he saw that all such neighbourhoods were
in reality a reproach to the city, to the state, to the nation. True
Christianity and Democracy were identical, and the congregation of St.
John's, as professed Christians and citizens, were doubly responsible,
inasmuch as they not only made no protest or attempt to change a
government which permitted the Dalton Streets to exist, but inasmuch
also as,--directly or indirectly,--they derived a profit from conditions
which were an abomination to God. It would be but an idle mockery for
them to go and build a settlement house, if they did not first reform
their lives.
Here there had been a decided stir among the pews. Hodder had not seemed
to notice it.
When he, their rector, had gone to Dalton Street to invite the poor and
wretched into God's Church, he was met by the scornful question: “Are
the Christians of the churches any better than we? Christians own the
grim tenements in which we live, the saloons and brothels by which
we are surrounded, which devour our children. Christians own the
establishments which pay us starvation wages; profit by politics, and
take toll from our very vice; evade the laws and reap millions, while we
are sent to jail. Is their God a God who will lift us out of our misery
and distress? Are their churches for the poor? Are not the very pews in
which they sit as closed to us as their houses?”
“I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou wert
cold or hot.”
One inevitable conclusion of such a revelation was that he had not
preached to them the vital element of Christianity. And the very
fact that his presentation of religion had left many indifferent or
dissatisfied was proof-positive that he had dwelt upon non-essentials,
laid emphasis upon the mistaken interpretations of past ages. There
were those within the Church who were content with this, who--like the
Pharisees of old--welcomed a religion which did not interfere with
their complacency, with their pursuit of pleasure and wealth, with
their special privileges; welcomed a Church which didn't raise her voice
against the manner of their lives--against the order, the Golden
Calf which they had set up, which did not accuse them of deliberately
retarding the coming of the Kingdom of God.
Ah, that religion was not religion, for religion was a spiritual, not
a material affair. In that religion, vainly designed by man as a
compromise between God and Mammon, there was none of the divine
discontent of the true religion of the Spirit, no need of the rebirth
of the soul. And those who held it might well demand, with Nicodemus and
the rulers of the earth, “How can these things be?”
And there were others who still lingered in the Church, perplexed and
wistful, who had come to him and confessed that the so-called catholic
acceptance of divine truths, on which he had hitherto dwelt, meant
nothing to them. To these, in particular, he owed a special reparation,
and he took this occasion to announce a series of Sunday evening sermons
on the Creeds. So long as the Creeds remained in the Prayer Book it was
his duty to interpret them in terms not only of modern thought, but in
harmony with the real significance of the Person and message of Jesus
Christ. Those who had come to him questioning, he declared, were a
thousand times right in refusing to accept the interpretations of other
men, the consensus of opinion of more ignorant ages, expressed in an
ancient science and an archaic philosophy.
And what should be said of the vast and ever increasing numbers of those
not connected with the Church, who had left it or were leaving it? and
of the less fortunate to whose bodily wants they had been ministering
in the parish house, for whom it had no spiritual message, and who never
entered its doors? The necessity of religion, of getting in touch with,
of dependence on the Spirit of the Universe was inherent in man, and yet
there were thousands--nay, millions in the nation to-day in whose hearts
was an intense and unsatisfied yearning, who perceived no meaning in
life, no Cause for which to work, who did not know what Christianity
was, who had never known what it was, who wist not where to turn to
find out. Education had brought many of them to discern, in the Church's
teachings, an anachronistic medley of myths and legends, of theories of
schoolmen and theologians, of surviving pagan superstitions which
could not be translated into life. They saw, in Christianity, only
the adulterations of the centuries. If any one needed a proof of the
yearning people felt, let him go to the bookshops, or read in the
publishers' lists to-day the announcements of books on religion. There
was no supply where there was no demand.
Truth might no longer be identified with Tradition, and the day was past
when councils and synods might determine it for all mankind. The era of
forced acceptance of philosophical doctrines and dogmas was past,
and that of freedom, of spiritual rebirth, of vicarious suffering, of
willing sacrifice and service for a Cause was upon them. That cause was
Democracy. Christ was uniquely the Son of God because he had lived and
suffered and died in order to reveal to the world the meaning of this
life and of the hereafter--the meaning not only for the individual, but
for society as well. Nothing might be added to or subtracted from that
message--it was complete.
True faith was simply trusting--trusting that Christ gave to the world
the revelation of God's plan. And the Saviour himself had pointed out
the proof: “If any man do his will, he shall know of the doctrine,
whether it be of God, or whether I speak for myself.” Christ had
repeatedly rebuked those literal minds which had demanded material
evidence: true faith spurned it, just as true friendship, true love
between man and man, true trust scorned a written bond. To paraphrase
St. James's words, faith without trust is dead--because faith without
trust is impossible. God is a Spirit, only to be recognized in the
Spirit, and every one of the Saviour's utterances were--not of the
flesh, of the man--but of the Spirit within him. “He that hath seen me
hath seen the Father;” and “Why callest thou me good? none is good save
one, that is, God.” The Spirit, the Universal Meaning of Life, incarnate
in the human Jesus.
To be born again was to overcome our spiritual blindness, and then, and
then only, we might behold the spirit shining in the soul of Christ.
That proof had sufficed for Mark, had sufficed for the writer of the
sublime Fourth Gospel, had sufficed for Paul. Let us lift this
wondrous fact, once and for all, out of the ecclesiastical setting and
incorporate it into our lives. Nor need the hearts of those who seek the
Truth, who fear not to face it, be troubled if they be satisfied, from
the Gospels, that the birth of Jesus was not miraculous. The physical
never could prove the spiritual, which was the real and everlasting,
which no discovery in science or history can take from us. The Godship
of Christ rested upon no dogma, it was a conviction born into us with
the new birth. And it becomes an integral part of our personality, our
very being.
The secret, then, lay in a presentation of the divine message which
would convince and transform and electrify those who heard it to
action--a presentation of the message in terms which the age could
grasp. That is what Paul had done, he had drawn his figures boldly
from the customs of the life of his day, but a more or less intimate
knowledge of these ancient customs were necessary before modern men and
women could understand those figures and parallels. And the Church must
awake to her opportunities, to her perception of the Cause....
What, then, was the function, the mission of the Church Universal? Once
she had laid claim to temporal power, believed herself to be the sole
agency of God on earth, had spoken ex cathedra on philosophy, history,
theology, and science, had undertaken to confer eternal bliss and to
damn forever. Her members, and even her priests, had gone from murder
to mass and from mass to murder, and she had engaged in cruel wars and
persecutions to curtail the liberties of mankind. Under that conception
religion was a form of insurance of the soul. Perhaps a common,
universal belief had been necessary in the dark ages before the
sublime idea of education for the masses had come; but the Church
herself--through ignorance--had opposed the growth of education, had set
her face sternly against the development of the individual, which Christ
had taught, the privilege of man to use the faculties of the intellect
which God had bestowed upon him. He himself, their rector, had
advocated a catholic acceptance, though much modified from the mediaeval
acceptance,--one that professed to go behind it to an earlier age. Yes,
he must admit with shame that he had been afraid to trust where God
trusted, had feared to confide the working out of the ultimate Truth of
the minds of the millions.
The Church had been monarchical in form, and some strove stubbornly
and blindly to keep her monarchical. Democracy in government was
outstripping her. Let them look around, to-day, and see what was
happening in the United States of America. A great movement was going
on to transfer actual participation in government from the few to the
many,--a movement towards true Democracy, and that was precisely what
was about to happen in the Church. Her condition at present was one of
uncertainty, transition--she feared to let go wholly of the old, she
feared to embark upon the new. Just as the conservatives and politicians
feared to give up the representative system, the convention, so was she
afraid to abandon the synod, the council, and trust to man.
The light was coming slowly, the change, the rebirth of the Church
by gradual evolution. By the grace of God those who had laid the
foundations of the Church in which he stood, of all Protestantism, had
built for the future. The racial instinct in them had asserted itself,
had warned them that to suppress freedom in religion were to suppress it
in life, to paralyze that individual initiative which was the secret of
their advancement.
The new Church Universal, then, would be the militant, aggressive body
of the reborn, whose mission it was to send out into the life of the
nation transformed men and women who would labour unremittingly for
the Kingdom of God. Unity would come--but unity in freedom, true
Catholicity. The truth would gradually pervade the masses--be wrought
out by them. Even the great evolutionary forces of the age, such as
economic necessity, were acting to drive divided Christianity into
consolidation, and the starving churches of country villages were now
beginning to combine.
No man might venture to predict the details of the future organization
of the united Church, although St. Paul himself had sketched it in broad
outline: every worker, lay and clerical, labouring according to his
gift, teachers, executives, ministers, visitors, missionaries, healers
of sick and despondent souls. But the supreme function of the Church was
to inspire--to inspire individuals to willing service for the cause, the
Cause of Democracy, the fellowship of mankind. If she failed to inspire,
the Church would wither and perish. And therefore she must revive again
the race of inspirers, prophets, modern Apostles to whom this gift
was given, going on their rounds, awaking cities and arousing whole
country-sides.
But whence--it might be demanded by the cynical were the prophets to
come? Prophets could not be produced by training and education; prophets
must be born. Reborn,--that was the word. Let the Church have faith.
Once her Cause were perceived, once her whole energy were directed
towards its fulfilment, the prophets would arise, out of the East
and out of the West, to stir mankind to higher effort, to denounce
fearlessly the shortcomings and evils of the age. They had not failed
in past ages, when the world had fallen into hopelessness, indifference,
and darkness. And they would not fail now.
Prophets were personalities, and Phillips Brooks himself a prophet--had
defined personality as a conscious relationship with God. “All truth,”
he had said, “comes to the world through personality.” And down the
ages had come an Apostolic Succession of personalities. Paul, Augustine,
Francis, Dante, Luther, Milton,--yes, and Abraham Lincoln, and Phillips
Brooks, whose Authority was that of the Spirit, whose light had so shone
before men that they had glorified the Father which was in heaven; the
current of whose Power had so radiated, in ever widening circles, as to
make incandescent countless other souls.
And which among them would declare that Abraham Lincoln, like Stephen,
had not seen his Master in the sky?
The true prophet, the true apostle, then, was one inspired and directed
by the Spirit, the laying on of hands was but a symbol,--the symbol of
the sublime truth that one personality caught fire from another. Let the
Church hold fast to that symbol, as an acknowledgment, a reminder of
a supreme mystery. Tradition had its value when it did not deteriorate
into superstition, into the mechanical, automatic transmission
characteristic of the mediaeval Church, for the very suggestion of which
Peter had rebuked Simon in Samaria. For it would be remembered that
Simon had said: “Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay
hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.”
The true successor to the Apostles must be an Apostle himself.
Jesus had seldom spoken literally, and the truths he sought to
impress upon the world had of necessity been clothed in figures and
symbols,--for spiritual truths might be conveyed in no other way. The
supreme proof of his Godship, of his complete knowledge of the meaning
of life was to be found in his parables. To the literal, material mind,
for example, the parable of the talents was merely an unintelligible
case of injustice.... What was meant by the talents? They were
opportunities for service. Experience taught us that when we embraced
one opportunity, one responsibility, the acceptance of it invariably led
to another, and so the servant who had five talents, five opportunities,
gained ten. The servant who had two gained two more. But the servant of
whom only one little service was asked refused that, and was cast into
outer darkness, to witness another performing the task which should
have been his. Hell, here and hereafter, was the spectacle of wasted
opportunity, and there is no suffering to compare to it.
The crime, the cardinal sin was with those who refused to serve, who
shut their eyes to the ideal their Lord had held up, who strove to
compromise with Jesus Christ himself, to twist and torture his message
to suit their own notions as to how life should be led; to please God
and Mammon at the same time, to bind Christ's Church for their comfort
and selfish convenience. Of them it was written, that they shut up
the Kingdom of Heaven against men; for they neither go in themselves,
neither suffer them that are entering to go in. Were these any better
than the people who had crucified the Lord for his idealism, and because
he had not brought them the material Kingdom for which they longed?
That servant who had feared to act, who had hid his talent in the
ground, who had said unto his lord, “I knew thee that thou art an hard
man, reaping where thou hadst not sown,” was the man without faith, the
atheist who sees only cruelty and indifference in the order of things,
who has no spiritual sight. But to the other servants it was said, “Thou
halt been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many
things. Enter thou into the joy of thy lord.”
The meaning of life, then, was service, and by life our Lord did not
mean mere human existence, which is only a part of life. The Kingdom of
heaven is a state, and may begin here. And that which we saw around us
was only one expression of that eternal life--a medium to work through,
towards God. All was service, both here and hereafter, and he that had
not discovered that the joy of service was the only happiness worth
living for could have no conception of the Kingdom. To those who knew,
there was no happiness like being able to say, “I have found my place in
God's plan, I am of use.” Such was salvation....
And in the parable of the Prodigal Son may be read the history of what
are known as the Protestant nations. What happens logically when the
individual is suddenly freed from the restraint of external authority
occurred when Martin Luther released the vital spark of Christianity,
which he got from Paul, and from Christ himself--the revelation of
individual responsibility, that God the Spirit would dwell, by grace, in
the individual soul. Ah, we had paid a terrible yet necessary price for
freedom. We had wandered far from the Father, we had been reduced to
the very husks of individualism, become as swine. We beheld around us,
to-day, selfishness, ruthless competition, as great contrasts between
misery and luxury as in the days of the Roman Empire. But should we, for
that reason, return to the leading-strings of authority? Could we if we
would? A little thought ought to convince us that the liberation of the
individual could not be revoked, that it had forever destroyed the power
of authority to carry conviction. To go back to the Middle Ages would be
to deteriorate and degenerate. No, we must go on....
Luther's movement, in religion, had been the logical forerunner of
democracy, of universal suffrage in government, the death-knell of
that misinterpretation of Christianity as the bulwark of monarchy and
hierarchy had been sounded when he said, “Ich kann nicht anders!” The
new Republic founded on the western continent had announced to the world
the initiation of the transfer of Authority to the individual soul.
God, the counterpart of the King, the ruler in a high heaven of a flat
terrestrial expanse, outside of the world, was now become the Spirit
of a million spheres, the indwelling spirit in man. Democracy and the
religion of Jesus Christ both consisted in trusting the man--yes, and
the woman--whom God trusts. Christianity was individualism carried
beyond philosophy into religion, and the Christian, the ideal citizen
of the democracy, was free since he served not because he had to, but
because he desired to of his own will, which, paradoxically, is God's
will. God was in politics, to the confusion of politicians; God in
government. And in some greater and higher sense than we had yet
perceived, the saying 'vox populi vox dei' was eternally true. He
entered into the hearts of people and moved them, and so the world
progressed. It was the function of the Church to make Christians,
until--when the Kingdom of God should come--the blending should be
complete. Then Church and State would be identical, since all the
members of the one would be the citizens of the other....
“I will arise and go to my father.” Rebirth! A sense of responsibility,
of consecration. So we had come painfully through our materialistic
individualism, through our selfish Protestantism, to a glimpse of the
true Protestantism--Democracy.
Our spiritual vision was glowing clearer. We were beginning to perceive
that charity did not consist in dispensing largesse after making a
fortune at the expense of one's fellow-men; that there was something
still wrong in a government that permits it. It was gradually becoming
plain to us, after two thousand years, that human bodies and souls
rotting in tenements were more valuable than all the forests on all the
hills; that government, Christian government, had something to do with
these.
We should embody, in government, those sublime words of the Master,
“Suffer little children to come unto me.” And the government of the
future would care for the little children. We were beginning to do it.
Here, as elsewhere, Christianity and reason went hand in hand, for
the child became the man who either preyed on humanity and filled the
prisons and robbed his fellows, or else grew into a useful, healthy
citizen. It was nothing less than sheer folly as well as inhuman cruelty
to let the children sleep in crowded, hot rooms, reeking with diseases,
and run wild throughout the long summer, learning vice in the city
streets. And we still had slavery--economic slavery--yes, and the more
horrible slavery of women and young girls in vice--as much a concern of
government as the problem which had confronted it in 1861.... We
were learning that there was something infinitely more sacred than
property....
And now Alison recalled, only to be thrilled again by an electric
sensation she had never before experienced with such intensity, the look
of inspiration on the preacher's face as he closed. The very mists of
the future seemed to break before his importuning gaze, and his eyes
seemed indeed to behold, against the whitening dawn of the spiritual
age he predicted, the slender spires of a new Church sprung from the
foundations of the old. A Church, truly catholic, tolerant, whose
portals were wide in welcome to all mankind. The creative impulse,
he had declared, was invariably religious, the highest art but the
expression of the mute yearnings of a people, of a race. Thus had once
arisen, all over Europe, those wonderful cathedrals which still
cast their spell upon the world, and art to-day would respond--was
responding--to the unutterable cravings of mankind, would strive once
more to express in stone and glass and pigment what nations felt.
Generation after generation would labour with unflagging zeal until
the art sculptured fragment of the new Cathedral--the new Cathedral of
Democracy--pointed upward toward the blue vault of heaven. Such was
his vision--God the Spirit, through man reborn, carrying out his great
Design...