There was no communion after that service, and so the choir and priests
formed for the recessional hymn. Father Baldwin, as the procession
formed behind him, came to the front of the chancel and said:
"Instead of the hymn appointed, it will be better if we end the service
with number 274."
"Through the night of doubt and sorrow."
The organ pealed out, the congregation rose, and the hymn began. It so
happened that as Vane was passing the chairs on which Enid and her
husband were sitting with several friends, the last verse but one was
reached.
"Onward therefore, pilgrim brothers,
Onward, with the Cross our aid!
Bear its shame, and fight its battle,
Till we rest beneath its shade."
At the words "Bear its shame and fight its battle," she looked up. Her
eyes met Vane's for a moment; but there was no look of recognition in
them. A sudden dart of pain seemed to shoot into her heart. This man,
this prophet-priest, as he seemed to her now, had once been hers, her
promised husband. How far away from her, how far above her was he now!
She had listened to the sermon with a double interest, interest in the
man as well as in the wonderful words he had just spoken--words so
simple in themselves, and yet spoken with such terrible force, a force
so terrible that within the space of a few minutes it had shattered all
her worldly ideals and destroyed the faith that she had been brought up
in, changing her whole outlook upon the world.
She had been educated on the ordinary lines of conventional
Christianity, and, until now, she had, like thousands of others,
honestly believed herself to be a good Christian woman, just as she
believed her mother to be. But, as it happened, there was that within
her soul which instantly responded to the truth which she had heard
to-day for the first time; and she saw that Vane was right, hopelessly,
piteously right.
And then as the procession passed she looked at her husband. He had
already sat down, and was getting his hat from under the seat. The
procession streamed slowly out of sight into the vestry, and the
congregation moved out into the aisles with much soft rustling and
swishing of skirts and a subdued, buzzing hum of eager conversation.
As the three streams of well-dressed men and women converged towards the
great doorway which led out into the street many began to ask themselves
and each other if any one would obey the preacher's exhortation and send
their carriages away. The carriages were lined up in the street just as
they would be outside a theatre. Some of their owners got in and drove
away, making very pointed remarks on the impropriety of bringing such
subjects as carriages and horses into sermons and the length that young
curates would go now-a-days to obtain notoriety. Others dismissed
theirs and went away trying to look unconcerned; while other people
stared after them, some smiling and others looking serious.
The Garthornes' victoria, drawn by a pair of beautiful light bays, drew
up, and Garthorne put out his hand to help Enid in, but she drew back
and said:
"No, thanks, I think I'll walk."
"Oh, nonsense, Enid!" he said impatiently. "Time is getting on, and we
must have our turn in the Park. Everybody will be there, and this is
about the last Sunday in the season. We haven't over much time either."
"I am not going into the Park, Reginald," she said decidedly. "I am
going to walk straight home. You can go and do Church Parade if you
like."
"All right, Tomkins, you can go home," he said to the coachman. "Mrs.
Garthorne prefers to walk."
The coachman and footman touched their hats, and the victoria drove
away.
"Surely to goodness, Enid," said Garthorne almost angrily, as they
walked away together, "you are not doing this because Maxwell said it
was wrong to use carriages on a Sunday! Good heavens, if we were to
translate sermons into everyday life it would be rather a funny world to
live in."
"Then what is the use of going to hear them, if they are not to be taken
seriously?" she said, looking up quickly at him. "Why should they be
preached, or why should we go to church at all?"
"Because it is the proper thing to do, I suppose, and because Society,
whose slaves we are, makes it one of the social functions of the week,"
replied Garthorne, who had as much real religion in his composition as
a South African Bushman. "We men go because you women do, and you women
go to show others how nicely you can dress, and to see what they have
got on."
"My dear Reginald, that is about as true as it is original, and that is
not saying very much for it. If we don't go to church for any other
reasons than those it is merely mockery and wickedness to go at all. I
was very glad to see that a great many people did send their carriages
away. Next Sunday I hope they will have the decency to walk."
"Especially if the British climate, as it probably will, ends up the
season with a pouring wet Sunday!" laughed Garthorne. "No, dear, those
godly precepts are all very well when you read them in Sunday School
books or hear them from the pulpit, and I am sure Vane put them most
admirably to-day, although I confess I was slightly surprised to hear a
really clever fellow like him preaching such hopelessly impossible
nonsense. Of course I don't mean any offence to him--far from it, but
really, you know, if theories like those could be put into practice they
would simply turn the world upside down."
"I think you might have found a better word than nonsense," she replied
a trifle sharply; "but the world of to-day certainly would have to be
turned upside down or inside out to make it anything like Christian.
That, at least, Vane--I mean Mr. Maxwell--taught us this morning."
"Christian according to the Reverend Vane Maxwell," he said, with the
suspicion of a sneer. "Fortunately the Churches have agreed that such a
violent operation is not necessary. By the way, though, won't Maxwell
get himself into a howling row with the ecclesiastical powers that be!
Just imagine the bench of Bishops standing anything like that!"
"Yes," she said quietly, "the preaching of the Sermon on the Mount in a
fashionable London church! It does sound very terrible, doesn't it? And
yet, after all, I suppose they can't take his orders away from him even
for that. I wonder what would happen? It is sure to be in the papers
to-morrow, and of course everybody will be talking about it."
"Yes," said Garthorne; "but if Master Vane thinks he is going to play
Savanarola to this generation he will find that he has taken on a pretty
large order. Are you quite sure you won't take a turn in the Park, even
on foot?"
"No, I'd rather not, but don't let me keep you if you would like a
stroll. I can get home all right."
"Well, if you don't mind, Enid, I think I will. There are one or two
fellows I want to see particularly about something, so bye-bye for the
present."
He raised his hat and turned back, and she went on towards the house in
Queen's Gate with many strange thoughts in her heart.
Enid and her husband were by no means the only members of the
congregation of St. Chrysostom who discussed Vane's sermon on their way
home. In fact, whether people walked or rode home, it was the universal
topic. Some discussed it with timorous sympathy; others, perhaps with
more worldly wisdom, talked of it quietly and cynically as the outburst
of a half-fledged clerical enthusiast who would very soon find out that
his superiors, on whom he depended for preferment, regarded the
doctrines of Christianity as one thing and the practises of the Church
as something entirely different.
"He's a clever fellow, a very clever fellow and very earnest," said Lord
Canore, who was a patron of several fat livings, to her ladyship and his
two daughters as they drove home, "but he'll soon get those rough
corners knocked off him. If they are wise they will give him a good
living, and then make him a canon as soon as possible. There's nothing
like preferment to sober a man down in the Church."
"Yes," sighed Lady Caroline Rosse, the elder daughter, who was getting
somewhat _passee_, and was deeply interested in Church work; "what a
beautiful voice he has, and such a wonderful face! Really, he looked
almost inspired at times. He would make quite an ideal bishop, and, you
know, some quite young men are being made bishops now-a-days."
"Yes," chuckled his lordship, as he lay back against the cushions, "that
is the sort of thing I mean. You don't catch bishops preaching the
Sermon on the Mount and sub-editing it as they go on."
"My dear Canore," said her ladyship frigidly, "I think we had better
change the subject; that last remark of yours was almost blasphemous."
"Never heard such rubbish preached from a respectable pulpit in my
life," said Mr. Horace Faustmann, a member of the Stock Exchange,
director of several limited companies and a most liberal contributor to
the offertories, and all Church effort in the parish of St. Chrysostom,
to his wife as they rolled smoothly in their cee-spring, rubber-tyred
victoria towards Hyde Park Corner.
"Why, if you can't make plenty of money and still be a Christian, where
are subscriptions coming from, and what price the Church endowments? It
seems absolutely absurd to me. I wonder what on earth Baldwin was
thinking about to let him preach a sermon like that in the smartest
church in the West End. If he goes on in that style he will just ruin
the show. Anyhow, he gets no more of my money if he is going to insult
rich people in the pulpit. Any more of that sort of thing, my dear, and
we'll go somewhere else, won't we?"
"I should think so," said the beautiful Mrs. Faustmann. She was the
daughter of a poor aristocrat, and had made a very good social and
financial bargain. She was one of the smartest women and most successful
entertainers in London. There was another man eating his heart out on
her account in the Burmese jungle, and sometimes, in her tenderest
moment, she gave him a thought and a little sigh--about as much thought
and sigh as her engagements permitted.
"Yes, Father Baldwin will really ruin the Church if he allows that sort
of thing. Of course all the good people will give it up. In fact, you
saw the Steinways, the Northwicks, the Athertons and several more leave
the church before he was half way through his harangue, for really you
could hardly call it a sermon. All the same, the church will be thronged
to-night and next Sunday, because people will go there just for the
sensation of the thing, and to see if anything else is going to happen;
but poor Father Baldwin will simply be inundated with letters from the
best of his people, and I don't think he'll find them very pleasant
reading. I am going to write, and, although I respect the dear man very
much, I shall tell him exactly what I think."
"Quite right," said her husband, as they turned into the Park. "You give
it to him straight. If you don't, I shall drop him a line myself and
tell him that if he wants any more of my money, and he has had a good
bit, he will have to keep his half-broken clerical colts a bit better in
hand; I'm not going to support a church to be insulted in it."
Many other similar conversations were going on just then in the Park, in
fact, Vane and his sermon were already being discussed by half
fashionable London, so fast does the news of so startling an event
travel from lip to lip when a crowd of somewhat _blase_ people, who have
nothing in particular to talk about, get together. Most of the comments
were quite similar to those just quoted, for Society felt generally by
dinner time that night that it had been deliberately insulted, outraged,
in fact, through its representatives in the congregation of St.
Chrysostom.
Nevertheless the church was packed to its utmost capacity at evening
service. It was known that Father Baldwin was to preach, but it was
hoped that Vane would take some part in the service, and of course
everyone wanted to see him; still, the audience went away disappointed.
Vane was far away, helping Ernshaw at his mission in Bethnal Green, and
was telling his congregation truths just as uncompromising and perhaps
as unpalatable as those he had told to his wealthy and aristocratic
hearers in the morning.
Father Baldwin preached, but his sermon was rather a homily on the
duties of the rich towards the poor, especially at a time when the rich
were about to migrate like gay-plumaged birds of passage to other lands
and climes in search of pleasure, leaving behind the millions of their
fellow mortals and fellow Christians, whose ceaseless life-struggle left
no leisure for the delights which they had come to look upon as the
commonplaces of their existence.
He only made one brief allusion to Vane's sermon. He knew perfectly
well that these thronging hundreds of people had not come to hear him.
He felt, not without sorrow, that quite half of them had come to hear,
or at least see, the man whose name was already the talk of fashionable
London.
"Some of you," he said, "who are present now heard this morning from
this pulpit words which must have sunk deep into the heart of every man
and woman who feels an earnest desire to follow in the footsteps of the
Master as closely as imperfect human nature will permit you. It is not
for me to tell you to what extent those words must be taken literally.
They were spoken earnestly and from the inmost depths of the preacher's
own soul--may they sink into the inmost depths of yours! They put the
most vital interest of human life plainly, nay, uncompromisingly before
you; how far you can or will follow them in your daily lives is a matter
which rests between yourselves and your Redeemer."
The next morning nearly all the papers contained more or less lengthy
reports of a sermon of which half London was already talking. Ernest
Reed, a smart young reporter with strong freethought tendencies, who
made a Sunday speciality of reporting sermons of all sorts, especially
the extreme ones, and who wrote caustically impartial comments on them
in the rationalist papers, had instantly grasped the true significance
of such a sermon being preached to such a congregation, and, moreover,
he had himself been deeply affected by the solemn earnestness with which
the momentous words had been spoken.
"A Daniel come to judgment! A parson who believes in his own creed at
last!" was his mental comment, as he closed his note-book. "That chap's
worth following. I wonder where he is going to preach to-night. I'll
find out."
Of course he did find out and followed Vane to Bethnal Green, with the
result that he made what is professionally termed "a scoop," since he
was the only reporter who was able to give both sermons verbatim. The
_Daily Chronicle_ was the only morning paper smart enough to print them
word for word in parallel columns under the title:
WEIGHTY WORDS TO RICH AND POOR.
The Rev. Vane Maxwell
Asks Mayfair and Bethnal Green
If they are Christian?
The consequence was, that all London and a very considerable part of
England too, stared wonderingly over its breakfast table and asked
itself whether there was really anything in these plain, almost homely,
and yet terribly pregnant words. Certainly there was no getting away
from the pitiless logic of them. If Vane Maxwell was right, England was
_not_ a Christian country, save in name, and its citizens were
Christians only because they had been baptized into one or other of the
churches and so called themselves Christians by a sort of courtesy
title. For the moment at least, Christianity assumed a shape as tangible
and a meaning almost as serious as party politics. In other words Vane's
sermon, even when read in cold print, put the question: Are you really a
Christian? so plainly, so uncompromisingly, and so unavoidably to every
man or woman calling himself or herself a Christian, that hundreds of
thousands of people all over the country, to say nothing of a million
or two in London, felt a sudden, and, as it seemed to them, somewhat
unaccountable obligation to give an equally plain answer to it. What was
the answer to be?
"Yes or no?"
It certainly was a very serious matter to millions who had never thought
of asking the question for themselves, and whose pastors and spiritual
masters had mostly contented themselves with lecturing and teaching in
soul-soothing, instead of soul-searching, words.
They, good folk, had really never troubled themselves very much about
the matter. They had their business affairs to attend to, their wives
and families to keep out of the workhouse or to maintain in comfort or
luxury, as the case might be, and a good many of them had certain social
duties to perform; and so they had got into the way of letting the
churches and chapels, the bishops, priests, deacons and so forth, look
after these things.
They were paid to do so. That was rather an ugly thought. At least, it
seemed to be so, after reading the words of Jesus Christ, and His
servant Vane Maxwell; but still it _was_ a fact; and some of them were
very highly paid. They were living in charming houses and had very
comfortable investments in companies which made money anyhow, so long as
they made it. Others were wretchedly paid, it was true, mostly
half-starved and inevitably in debt; but still, neither of these facts
affected the main question, which, of course, was the personal one: Are
you--rich man or poor man--you who read these words, a Christian? Are
you, as the preacher had asked in those five terrible words, honest
before God and man?
Then to the scores and hundreds of thousands of people who read this,
came, in a whispering terror, the further question:
"Do you think you can cheat God, even if you are cheating yourself and
other people like you--the God Whom you have been taught to believe in
as knowing all things, the God to whom all secrets are known?"
It was a distinctly ugly question to answer, and more Bibles were
searched throughout the United Kingdom than had been for many a long
year past; but no searcher found any answer that satisfied his own soul,
if he had one, save the one that was given from the Mount of Olives:
"Ye cannot serve God and Mammon."
As the young preacher had said, there was no compromise. There was
certainly the alternative of being honest one way or the other; but that
sort of honesty had a very appalling prospect to the respectable British
citizen, especially those, who, in any way, resembled the young man who
came to Christ and asked Him what he should do to be saved. It was, in
short, a case of becoming comparative paupers, and only having the bare
necessaries of life, or keeping what they had, and saying honestly to
themselves, the world, and God:
"I can't be a Christian at that price, and so, instead of remaining a
Christian humbug, I will be an honest atheist."
A very terrible dilemma, certainly, and yet, if the Gospels were true,
and if the Son of God had really preached the Sermon on the Mount, it
was one from which there was no escape but this. It was a plain matter
of belief or disbelief, honesty or dishonesty, and, if they believed in
God, dishonesty was impossible, save under the penalty of eternal
damnation.