THE WARNING
Like a bell the preacher's voice rang through the crowded church.
After the delivery of the solemn and menacing text of warning, Joseph
began, suddenly and swiftly, without any of the usual preliminary
platitudes with which so many preachers in all the churches commence
their addresses.
"I look down upon you and see you with an inward and spiritual vision.
And to me, you men and women in your wealth, your temporal power, your
beauty, your curiosity and your sin, seem as a vast Slough of Despond.
"I need no such fantastic images, powerful and skilful as they may be,
by means of which Dante or Milton portrayed the horrors of hell, to show
me a horror more real and terrible than any of which they wrote. This is
the City of Dreadful Night. It is the Modern Babylon, where Christendom,
corrupt both in state and in society, sits by many waters, and speaks in
her heart, and boasts, 'I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no
sorrow.'
"Sin and Satan exercise a terrible dominion, ungodliness and debauchery
accompany them, for Babylon is the abode of all unclean spirits.
"And in this church, you men and women to whom I am speaking now
represent in your very persons no small portion of the army of
wickedness which rules London and fattens upon its corruption."
He paused for a moment, looking down from his high place with a pale
face, burning eyes, and a hand outstretched in condemnation.
There was a soft, universal, and perceptible noise of movement, which
rose and ceased. Then all was silent again. With their eyes fixed
steadfastly on Joseph, no one had seen the vicar half rise from his seat
in the chancel, with a scared look upon his face, and a sudden
deprecatory movement of his arm.
The preacher resumed:--
"In a very short time--for some of you the time is shorter than you
dream of--for to-night God has revealed much to me--you will all be
dead. The feasting, and the folly, and the fun, and the lying and the
drinking and the lust will all be over for you, and you will answer for
what you have done.
"This is what I tell you to have constantly in your minds while I am
speaking to you to-night. You may think in your blindness, in your
folly, that I am exaggerating the evil of the time, the monstrous
wickedness of London, for which you and people like you are largely
responsible. Delude yourself with no such vain imagining, for I speak to
you as the ambassador of the Most High God, and to-night you shall hear
me.
"The signs of the time are unmistakable. London has come to the worship
of the image of the beast, of the human spirit, which has apostatized
from God, and made itself God. You have fallen into strong delusions,
into which the Lord suffers all to fall who have not received the truth
in the love of it, that they might be saved. You worship that which the
inspired words of the Bible call the 'beast' because it denies what is
truly human, and, with all its culture and civilization, is more and
more tending to degrade humanity.
"All who see with the eye of the Spirit know that atheistic and
materialistic systems, denying God and the existence of the Spirit, and
based upon a purely physical view of existence, and atheistic
literature, which by its poetry, fictions, and romances, diffuses the
Gospel of the flesh among the masses, grow daily, and are triumphant.
The words of Revelation have come true, and out of the mouth of the
dragon and out of the false prophet have proceeded the three unclean
spirits, like frogs. These creatures of the swamp, the mire, and the
morass are among you. Their croaking, powerless as it is in itself, yet
produces a sound which penetrates, and is heard all around; repeating
the same thing day after day, deluding men, and bringing them into the
right state of mind for the service of Antichrist.
"You call yourselves Christians. You are here in a church, and the
presence of most of you is the most grim and ghastly mockery that the
finite mind can possibly conceive.
"Day by day in this holy temple of the Blessed Trinity God Incarnate
comes down upon the altar yonder as the priest says the words of
Consecration--those incredibly wonderful five words which put the
Blessed Body of our Lord under the white species of the Host. Only this
morning many of you heard those
_Jewels five words long
That on the outstretched forefinger of all time,
Sparkle for ever._
Next Sunday, it may be, you will hear them again, as you heard them last
Sunday. Yet you live for evil pleasure still.
"When you think at all, you delude yourselves into imagining you are
worshipping God, when you are taking a fitful interest in a ceremony
which means no more to you than a ceremony. You come here for an hour in
the morning of one day of the week, your minds full of worldly pleasures
and the memories of your pleasant sins. You listen to the words of the
Bible in your comfortable seats, and think how quaint, far off, and
unreal they are. With a languid mental smile you hear of the devil and
the evil spirits who walk up and down the City seeking whom they may
devour. You would not smile if you were to take a short journey from
this church into the devil's country, the East End of London--if now,
with one accord, you were to drive in your carriages to those places
where the air is heavy with ceaseless curses, where hideous disease and
uncleanliness that you cannot even imagine, stalk hand in hand with
famine, despair, and unmentionable horrors of vice.
"You would believe then, perhaps, that the devil still goes about the
streets of London doing his work.
"I tell you this without any possibility of mistake, that you are the
servants of Satan, and that in your lives you have enrolled yourselves
under the black banners of hell.
"And more especially than all, you are hypocrites. Outwardly all is fair
and of good report until, as happens now and then, your lives are laid
bare to the world in some hideous scandal. You go to church, your names
are seen upon the lists of those societies which endeavor to ameliorate
the life of the downtrodden and the oppressed. But what personal service
do most of you give to the cause of the God in whom you confess to
believe? You live for pleasure, and you are hypocrites.
"Hypocrisy occurs in all the relations of your life; in the daily
intercourse between man and man, when friendship is feigned; in the
political sphere, when tyrants and self-seekers pretend a deep care for
Fatherland, and thereby lead men according to their design. In art and
science you are hypocrites, pretending a pure unselfish love to the
higher ideal, when self-gratification is all you look for; incense is
offered to the idols of the time, and pleasure is alone the end and aim,
the Alpha and Omega of existence.
"You are as 'trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead,
plucked up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own
shame; wandering stars.'
"And all around you London grows worse and worse, while it is from its
corruption and from its misery that your sordid pleasures are distilled.
"There are men here to-night who have won fortune, rank, and celebrity
from the wholesale poisoning of the poor. The food which the slaves of
the modern Babylon eat, the drink they drink, is full of foulness, that
you may fare sumptuously every day, that your wives may be covered with
jewels. There are men here to-night who keep hundreds and thousands of
their fellow-Christians in hideous and dreadful dens without hope, and
for ever. In order that you may live in palaces, surrounded by all the
beauties and splendors that the choicest art, the most skilled
handicraft can give, hundreds of human beings who lurk in the holes for
which they pay you must spend their lives, where no ordinary man or
woman can remain for more than a moment or two, so terrible are these
nauseous places.
"Whole miles of ground in the modern London are thickly packed with
fellow-Christians who are hourly giving up their lives in one long
torture that you may eat, drink and be merry. At midday you may go into
the East End of London and pass a factory. Men come out of it dripping
with perspiration, and that perspiration is green. The hair of these men
sprouts green from the roots giving them the appearance of some strange
vegetable. These men are changed and dyed like this that your wives may
spend the life-earnings of any one of them in the costly shops of the
perruquiers in Bond Street.
"In order that you may draw twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty per cent.
from your investments, instead of an honest return from the wealth with
which God has entrusted you, there are men who eat like animals. In the
little eating-houses around the works, there are human beings who leave
their knives and forks unused and drop their heads and bury their noses
and mouths into what is set before them. All the bones, nerves, and
muscles below their wrists are useless. These are the slaves of lead,
who are transmuting lead with the sacrifice of their own lives, that it
may change to gold to purchase your banquets. You are the people who
directly or indirectly live in a luxury such as the world has never seen
before, out of the wages of disease and death. Copper colic, hatter's
shakers, diver's paralysis, shoemaker's chest, miller's itch,
hammerman's palsy, potter's rot, shoddy fever, are the prices which
others pay for your yachts and pictures, your horses and motor-cars,
your music, your libraries, your clubs, your travel, and your health.
"And what of the other and more intimate side of your lives? Do you live
with the most ordinary standard of family and personal purity before
you? Do you spend a large portion of your lives in gambling, in the
endeavor to gain money without working for it from people less skilful
or fortunate than yourself? Do you reverence goodness and holiness when
you find them or are told of them, or do you mock and sneer? Do you
destroy your bodily health by over-indulgence in food, in wine, and in
unnatural drugs, which destroy the mind and the moral sense? Do you
ever and systematically seek the good and welfare of others, or do you
live utterly and solely for yourself, even as the beasts that perish?"
The preacher stopped in one long pause; then his voice sank a full
tone--
"Yes, all these things you do, and more, and God is not with you."
Nearly every head in the church was bent low as the flaming, scorching
words of denunciation swept over them.
Wealthy, celebrated, high in the world's good favor as they were, none
of these people had ever heard the terrible, naked truth about their
lives before. Nor was it alone the denunciatory passion of the words and
the bitter realization of the shameful truth which moved and influenced
them so deeply. The personality of the Teacher, some quality in his
voice which they had never yet heard in the voice of living man, the
all-inspiring likeness to the most sacred figure the world has ever
known, the intense vibrating quality of more than human power and
conviction--all these united to light the fires of remorse in every
heart, and to touch the soul with the cold fingers of fear.
Accustomed as most of them were to this or that piquant thrill or
sensation--for were not their lives passed in the endless quest of
stimulating excitement?--there was yet something in this occasion
utterly alien to it, and different from anything they had ever known
before.
Of what this quality consisted, of what it was composed, many of them
there would have given conflicting and contradictory answers. All would
have agreed in its presence.
Only a few, a very few, knew and recognized the truth, either with
gladness and holy awe or with shrinking and guilty dread, the Power
which enveloped them with the sense of the presence of the Holy Ghost.
There was a change in the accusing voice--
"But it is not yet too late. God's mercy is infinite, and through the
merits of His Son you may save yourselves while there is time. Kneel now
and pray silently as you have never prayed before, for I tell you that
God is here among you. An opportunity will be given to each one of you
to make reparation for the evil you have done, for the messengers of the
Lord have come to London, and wondrous things will come to pass! And now
pray, pray, pray! In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost. Amen."
With no further word the Teacher turned and quietly descended the pulpit
steps.
Every head was bowed; hardly a single person heard or saw him move away
into the vestry, and a great silence fell upon the church.
As if in a dream, the tall figure in its white linen ephod passed
through the outer vestry into the large and comfortable room used by the
priests. No one was there, and Joseph sank upon his knees in prayer. He
had been sending up his passionate supplications for the souls of those
without but a few seconds, when he felt a touch--a timid, hesitating
touch--upon his shoulder.
He looked up, and saw a little elderly man, wearing the long
velvet-trimmed gown which signalized a verger in St. Elwyn's, standing
by his side. The old man's face was moving and working with strong
emotion, and a strange blaze of eagerness shone in his eyes.
"Master," he said, "I heard it all, every word you said to them; and it
is true--every word is bitter true. Master, there is one who has need of
you, and in God's name I pray you to go with me."
"In God's name I will come with you, brother," Joseph answered gravely.
"Ay," the old man answered, "I felt my prayer would be answered,
Master." He took Joseph's surplice from him, divested himself of his own
gown, and opened the vestry door. "You found this way when you came,
Master," he said. "The public do not know of it, for it goes through the
big livery-stables. The district is so crowded. No one will see us when
we leave the church, though there are still thousands of people waiting
for you to pass in front. But my poor home is not far away."
As they walked, the old man told his story to Joseph. His son, a young
fellow of eighteen or nineteen, had been employed as basement porter in
the Countess of Morston's Regent Street shop for the selling of
artistic, hand-wrought metal work.
Like many another fashionable woman in London, Lady Morston was making a
large sum of money out of her commercial venture. But the repousse work
which she sold was made by half-starved and sweated work-people in the
East End of town, and all the employees in the shop itself were
miserably underpaid. From early morning, sometimes till late at night,
the old fellow's son had been at work carrying about the heavy crates of
metal. His wages had been cut down to the lowest possible limit, and
when he had asked for a rise he had been told that a hundred other young
fellows would be glad to step into his shoes at any moment.
One day the inevitable collapse had come. He had found himself unable to
continue the arduous labor, and had left the position. Almost
immediately after his departure he had been attacked with a long and
painful nervous complaint. Unable, owing to the fact of his resignation,
to claim any compensation from the countess as a legal right, he had
humbly petitioned for a little pecuniary help to tide him over his
illness. This had been coldly refused, and the young man was now
bedridden and a permanent encumbrance to the old man, who himself was
unable to do anything but the lightest work.
Mr. Persse, on being applied to for assistance, had consulted the
Countess of Morston, who was one of his parishioners, in order, as he
said, to find out if it were "a genuine case." With an absolute
disregard for truth, and in order to shield herself, the woman had told
the clergyman that her late assistant was a dishonest scoundrel who
merited no consideration whatever.
"And so, Master," the old man concluded--"and so I lost all hope, and
tried to make up my mind to see my lad die slowly. And then I see about
you in the paper, and something comes into my mind like. And then the
vicar he tells me about this here service to-night, and that you were
coming yourself, Master. So I prayed and I prayed that I should have a
chance to speak to you. Master, I want you to raise Bill up and make him
well."
The old man clutched Joseph by the arm, his cracked and pathetic voice
full of poignant pleading.
"You will, won't you, Master?" he said once more.
"Take me to the young man," Joseph answered.