Messrs. Greening, it elicited a long and eloquent letter from the “St.
Andrews Society,” asking me why I addressed my pamphlet to England?
Where was Scotland in my thoughts? Knowing the curious prejudice some
Scotsmen entertain for the word “England” (which I have liked to
imagine included Scotland, Ireland, and Wales), I made haste to reply
that I had not presumed to ask “Is all well with Scotland?” as I know
all _must_ be well, and that all would be for ever well! How could
anything go ill with _Scotland_? I do not know whether I satisfied my
truculent correspondent, but I hope I did.)
THE WORLD IN TEARS
(_The following was written at the request of Mr. Robert Hayes,
the publisher, who asked for it as a preface to a helpful little
book of “Messages of Hope, Sympathy, and Consolation,” entitled_
THE WORLD IN TEARS. _Those who contributed to this book included
many well-known “leaders,” such as the Bishop of Birmingham, the
Archdeacon of Westminster, the Dean of Manchester, etc., etc., and
the publisher introduced my article in the following kindly note_:--
_In preparing the book for Press it was thought desirable
to obtain, and include, an introduction by an author whose
sympathies would commend it to the general public. Miss
Marie Corelli immediately came to mind. No one could essay
the task better._
_To Miss Marie Corelli, then, the publisher wrote for
assistance. It was generously, courteously, and promptly
given. His best thanks are recorded here for this able and
kindly help in producing what he hopes will bring comfort
to a multitude who sorrow and some financial assistance to
that benevolent and deserving institution, the British Red
Cross Society._)
All over the world to-day looms the brooding shadow of Death--that
strange and solemn Mystery which to most of us seems a complete
Disappearance for ever into the eternal Unknown. Though truly, if our
faith in God be perfect, we should not look upon it as a Shadow, but
a Brightness; a glorious fulfilment for which the experiences and
trials of this present life are the needful training and preparation.
Nevertheless, the ties of human affection are strong, and partings
are always bitter--so that whether our beloved ones go away from us
for weeks, months, or years--whether to a far country or to another
world--it is hard to say “good-bye!” and the sorrow of separation is
the sorrow of all the lives that are left thus lonely. The strongest
and bravest of us know well enough that those we have lost are not
really “dead,” but living elsewhere; yet the fact that they are not
actually with us--that we cannot hear their voices or hold their hands
in our own--is sufficient to crush us down under such a burden of grief
that we feel as if we could never lift up our eyes to heaven again or
trust the great Power Invisible which has allowed us to be deprived of
all we hold most dear. Nothing can be said in the way of consolation
that does not, at such a time, sound poor and trivial. A great grief
is of all things the most sacred: and even the gentle words of the
gentlest and most compassionate friend hurt like a careless touch on an
open wound.
In this unspeakably wicked War much of our best and bravest British
manhood has been sacrificed, to say nothing of the terrible losses
suffered by our noble and resolute Allies. Young, promising, and heroic
lives have been ruthlessly slaughtered on all the fields of battle,
and it would not be too much to say that the whole of Europe is in
mourning. It is the hour of supreme self-sacrifice; we are called
upon to give the best of everything we have to our country, so that
we may keep it safe from the invasion of a remorseless foe, and hold
its liberty intact. Blood and treasure and tears are the price of
our freedom; we hold nothing back. But an awful responsibility rests
upon all those who primarily brought about this most un-Christian
world-contest; for war and the murder of the many is always the result
of the evil thoughts and passions of a misguided few. If Peoples in the
aggregate were governed by strong, brave, honest men who loved equity
more than their own advancement, there would be no wars. But as yet we
are still seeking for even One strong, brave, honest man! Our national
Poet speaks truth when he tells us,--
“To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten
thousand.”
Meanwhile, for the incalculable crimes of Dishonest Governments, the
Peoples are bereaved of their children--their young manhood--and
mothers, sisters, sweethearts, wives, and little ones are flung
remorselessly into withering fires of agony, and drowned in a deep
sea of tears. Who shall comfort these poor wounded hearts?--who shall
fill these empty and desolate lives?--who shall raise them from their
swooning despair amid the dust of graves and turn their hopes towards
that Higher Life, which though unseen and unrealised, is as certain as
what we understand to be life in this world? The Christian Faith is,
or should be, the Comforter, if accepted in its true spiritual sense.
We are too prone to deaden and cheapen its splendid teaching by the
dullness of our own understanding: we seek to materialise into common
earthiness that which is purely heavenly. If we trusted more absolutely
in the Divine Intelligence, through whose will and power we have come
into being, we should be entirely sure of the positive truth pronounced
by St. Paul to the Corinthians:--
“There are celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial, but the glory of
the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another....
So also is the resurrection of the dead; it is sown in corruption,
it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised
in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a
natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body
and there is a spiritual body.”
This is what all the scientific, theological, and psychical instructors
that ever lived in the world have been striving to teach humanity
through ages upon ages. But we still continue to cling to the natural
“body”--not the spiritual--to the temporal, and not the eternal; and,
despite both religion and science, we surround the episode of death
with every sort of gloomy panoply and weeping protest against the
Divine decree. Yet our men who have died at the front have died with
extraordinary cheerfulness; it would seem that some God-given influence
has surrounded them in the very midst of all the most awful ways of
dying! Never a murmur--never a complaint--never a regret! Wonderful,
and indeed miraculous is this, if we pause to think of it! It is as
if they knew, or were being told, that there are many things in life
worse than death! They face the Last Terror with a dauntless smile and
unflinching eyes, and it may be that they see light where many of us,
blinded by personal sorrow, are only conscious of darkness. Our Selves
are the clouds which cover the sun.
And while we continue to sit in the shadow and mourn for our absent,
though never lost ones, it is well we should bear in mind that no life
lived on earth, however long extended, is complete. No lesson is ever
thoroughly learned, no accomplishment ever entirely mastered. No poet,
musician, or painter ever produced a “perfect” work. Why? Because here
we are only in a preparatory school--wider instruction is to come. The
fullness of existence which is ultimately destined to be ours is an
ever-increasing perfection and power which are at present impossible
for us to conceive. Just as when we came into this world we had no
knowledge beforehand of its natural beauties and delights, so in the
same way we cannot, in our present condition, realise the “Shall Be”
of the Hereafter. Our bodies, to which we attach such undue importance
here, are composed entirely of particles or atoms which are constantly
changing, and none of us possess the same body we had seven or fourteen
years ago. That body has already suffered death--not by violence, but
by change. The manner in which the change has been effected is not
perceived by ourselves, yet it has occurred. Identity of person does
not depend on the identity of these atoms; the individual Spirit is the
same, despite the shifting forces or renewal of cells in its tenement
of clay. Continuity, persistency, and individuality are eternal laws,
and remake the vesture of the soul according to its needs. Therefore
our beloved dead are not truly dead, for, “as we have borne the image
of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.”
Many of us find it difficult--even impossible--to accept this
reasoning, and why? Because our minds are always more or less attuned
to the lower key of Self--Self, and our own private and particular
sorrow. As long as this is the case the light will never come through
the gloom; we shall never “see God.” We shall never understand that
the lives sacrificed with such splendid heroism, for the freedom and
purification of the whole world, have not ceased to live, and that
they have simply “passed on.” But--is not the parting from them cruel?
Ah, yes! but partings even more cruel are common in the most ordinary
daily life. When love grows cold--when fair illusions perish--when
the friend we trusted is treacherous and ungrateful--when we have
to “let go” those we have most dearly cherished to other loves and
new surroundings--are not these things “cruel”? Crueller far than
death!--for death most usually clears up many misunderstandings and
sets the true soul right with itself and with that which it has loved
faithfully. For there are many kinds of so-called “love” which is not
love at all, but merely the passion or caprice of the moment, and
which, if resolved into marriage between the two persons concerned,
ends in mutual indifference and life-long unhappiness, and in such
cases, death is a release which separates finally and for ever. But
there is another sort of love which is so deep and unselfish, and
loyal, that it needs no earthly bond to make it eternal, and which, no
matter how long the parting, whether by absence or death, is so truly
love in the highest sense that all the powers of earth or heaven could
not hinder its complete union with the beloved.
“Shall we meet again?” sighs the bereaved mother, the lonely wife, the
despairing lover! Most assuredly you will!--by all the known laws of
attraction in this glorious Universe you _must_ meet again, if your
love be love indeed! Love is not limited by time or space; we know
that we can obtain light from a star many millions of miles distant,
and in the same way we can give and receive love from our parted dear
ones, and can exert this power far beyond the confines of our bodies.
But only when love is really true can this happen. For, when the veil
is withdrawn from heaven and the released Spirit goes hence, it sees
and knows clearly which of all its friends on earth has loved it most
unselfishly and sincerely--whose sorrow is the most tender--whose
faith is most entirely faithful! And only shall such an one meet it
again and rejoice in everlasting union. _We find our own_: we discover
our beloved ones in that state of clear vision and life-fulfilment to
which we are all hastening. And in realising this we shall also realise
that in all the truths of science and of reasoning there is No Death;
and that we deceive ourselves in the confusing shadow of our personal
griefs when they are strong and bitter as they are to-day, because of
our own “personal” sense of loss.
“It is because my beloved is gone!” is the cry--“Because I shall see
him no more!”
Patience! He has not “gone” far! Just into the next room of existence,
whither you yourself will soon go; there is but the slightest partition
between you! And you will see him, as it were, directly--and you will
know him, as he will see and know _you!_--and you will wonder why you
shed so many tears when all the while he is alive, and happy in the
consciousness of having done something in his earthly life to prepare a
cleaner, safer world for the generations coming after him.
But, if this is so, some of us ask, why are we not given the proofs of
it? Why does not God make us sure? You might as well demand why, in the
former ages of the world, the learning and science of the present day
were not revealed. “Sound-waves,” “light-rays,” “radium,” “electric
force,”--all these existed from the very beginning of creation--_why
were we not told?_ Simply because, by universal law, all advancement
is, and _must_ be the result of gradual evolvement, suited to the
slowly expanding capacity of the human brain and its attendant mental
spirituality, and because it is decreed that we shall “work out our own
salvation.” One thing is certain, and that is, that--_if_ we knew--if
we were told the smallest part of the wondrous hidden future awaiting
us, hardly any of us would have the resolution to live this preparatory
life through! We should all hurry ourselves out of the world, for we
would not have the patience to endure its schooling. We could not wait.
We would rush to grasp our glory; we would not work to win it, and so
we might lose what we must ourselves deserve to gain. Hence arose the
saying, “Those whom the gods love die young.” For their schooling has
been brief and easy--“Even so, saith the Spirit, for they rest from
their labours.”
A striking illustration of faith in God and the future life has been
given to us in these days of darkness by the heroic martyrdom and
death of Edith Cavell, murdered by human brutes for whom Christianity
has become a dead letter. Her resignation, and her thanks to God for
her “ten weeks’ quiet before the end”--her unaffected devotion to the
Christian Faith--her simple “Good-bye” to her spiritual adviser with
a happy smile and her confident assurance, “We shall meet again!”
make a brilliant and inspiring contrast to the doubt and distrust of
God’s mercy openly manifested by many of those who are bereaved and
mourning in the “Valley of the Shadow.” Prayerfully one wonders when
the inhabitants of this small planet of ours will come to realise
the fixed law of its being?--a Law which knows no changing! Namely,
that Progression towards Good--Good, not only for one’s Self, but for
Humanity--brings peace and prosperity; while Retrogression towards
Evil results in war and ruin! God Himself cannot undo this Law, which
is part of His own Eternal Existence--it is as fixed as the poles. We
dare not blame His Almighty justice for the evil we have deliberately
brought upon ourselves. No one can deny that all the nations now
warring together have for many years past sought to put God altogether
out of their countings, while societies and individuals, rejoicing in
prolonged good fortune and taking as their right the blessings bestowed
upon them through the mercy of a beneficent and kindly Providence, have
forgotten to Whom they should give thanks, and have become “puffed
up,” as the Psalmist says, with pride, and enervated by luxury. We
have had innumerable warnings, but we would not listen. We have made
a jest and a mockery of all those who sought to rouse us from our
lethargy. We have permitted such inroads of vice and atheism into our
lives and morals, our art and letters, as might make pagans blush.
The Press of the world has not occupied itself with the uplifting
of the brotherhood of the peoples,--on the contrary, it has taken
pleasure in sowing the seeds of discontent and rebellion, and has given
prominence to the unworthy, praising the stage-mime more than the
statesman--the materialist more than the idealist. Moreover, so far as
our foe is concerned, it has left no stone unturned that could rouse
the Teuton wolf from its lair. Bitter mockery, stinging gibe, misplaced
sneers--these have all been flung at Germany for the past ten years or
more, and, though they have been written chiefly by half-educated young
men and boys who in the might of an ineffable conceit “rush in where
angels fear to tread,” they have had harmful effect. A great statesman
said to me recently, “Had there been no Press there would have been no
war.”
This may or may not be true,--but whether true or false the eternal
verities make no mistake in their summing-up of evil things to a
fatal figure. Thoughts give place to words, and words to actions. The
War-thought is the embryo of the War-deed. Let us not, therefore, in
the bitterness of our own personal sorrows blame God, or demand “Where
was He?” when our dear ones have been slain. The nations have brought
this chastisement of terror upon themselves; and that the innocent must
suffer with the guilty is the worst part of the punishment. The world
was becoming sordid, covetous, and materialistic; and now the young
and strong and brave of our best manhood are called upon to cleanse it
of its foul humours and to _leave it clean_. Some thousands of lives
must be sacrificed in this great struggle for Freedom and for Right,
but better to die honoured than live shamed! Life, as generally lived,
is not worth the pains we take to preserve it; we do our loved ones an
infinite wrong when we assume that their best chance of happiness is to
eat and sleep and play, and make the wherewithal to eat and sleep and
play. A brave death is more valuable than an ignoble life; death itself
being the admission to a more vital and splendid experience.
This being so, we should not mourn as “those having no hope.” We, who
have loved and lost for a time, will go on loving till we find our lost
again, as we shall surely do. We shall meet and know each other on that
higher plane where life is life indeed and love is love indeed; and
we shall make amends for all our weeping and complaint. We shall see
how slight and brief, after all, were the troubles of this present,
compared with the perfect joy of the attained future. And we shall read
the Book of the Wisdom of God without mistaking one word or letter of
its meaning, and we shall learn that Love alone is the conqueror of all
kingdoms. So lift up your weeping eyes, ye million mourners!--lift them
to the Light and Life Eternal, which shall not fail you even in this
dark Battle-Dream of Death!
GOD AND THE WAR
(_Written for “Some 1918 Reflections.” A collection arranged by Guy
Glendower Croft_)
Among the many “reflections” flashed upon the mirror of the time there
is one which to my mind is not so much a “reflection” as a blur--a blot
which is almost a dark and deepening shadow. I, who venture to write of
it, own myself to be but a mere romancist, whose ostensible business is
to weave night and day, like the “Lady of Shalott,”--“A magic web with
colours gay,” a web of thought-tapestry into scenes and episodes which
may or may not please my readers and distract them from the continuous
harassment and grief brought upon them by the war. It might even be
said of me that--
“So she weaveth steadily
And little other care hath she,”
but for the further fact that--
“Moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year
Shadows of the world appear,”
and the Shadow which darkens my outlook most is what I may call the
Shadow of Negation, or what the Roman Church classifies among the sins
against the Holy Ghost, namely, “Presumption of God’s mercy.”
There are any number of apparently worthy, respectable and
well-intentioned persons who regard the Great War as a singular piece
of Divine injustice and undeserved annoyance to themselves--and their
attitude towards it is so amazing as to be almost incredible.
They are incapable of taking a broad outlook; and, to them, the whole
terrible business is a monstrously impertinent interference with the
peaceful working of the Parish Pump--no more.
This curious mental standpoint was forced upon my notice recently by
the remarks of a seemingly intelligent man of commerce, who, having
made a pleasant little “pile” which enables him to live comfortably
for the rest of his days, and being much too old for any form of
“active” or “national” service, has, literally, nothing to complain
of, and nothing to do but offer his valueless opinions on the terrific
happenings of the hour. And he it was, who, with an air of judicially
settling the business of the Universe, once and for all, said firmly,--
“I’ve given up God! I don’t believe in a God! If there was one He would
not have permitted this war!”
This crushing observation from one of the least of human microbes
would not merit notice but for the fact that many more intelligent
and thoughtful microbes than he have committed themselves to the same
unwise and, I may venture to say, blasphemous utterance. For, if any
doubter has need of assurance as to the existence of God, this great
and terrible war is the most profound, significant, and emphatic
declaration of Almighty Power and Justice that the world has ever known.
It is the strong, resolved assertion of a vast spiritual and
intellectual Force, which, for many years, all the nations now
warring together have elected to ignore, or else to acknowledge in
such half-hearted fashion that sheer ignoring might betoken greater
reverence. It is the Force, which by natural and immutable law acts
upon unclean and poisonous things and exterminates them without mercy
or appeal. We may call it Fate or God as it suits us--but whatever be
the accepted name of this eternally working system of Mathematics, it
admits of no false quantities and has to be reckoned with as the only
positive FACT in the universe. All else may change, “Heaven and earth
may pass away but My Word shall not pass away.” That is to say--“My
Word” is the eternal Law; and however craftily and cleverly we may
arrange our little “civilisations” and schemes of “giving” in order to
“get,” we cannot carry forward a single act of injustice or falsity
without punishment following the offence. If not soon, then late. _Our_
judgments, _our_ opinions on the scroll of everlasting equity, are as
the scrawls of babes who are incapable of mastering the fact that two
and two make four. We are always trying to make them five, the one over
being a clumsy attempt to gain some advantage to ourselves.
It is our “camouflage”--that vulgar expression of French police
“argot” which truly is not in the French language at all, but
which, nevertheless, has lately become the stupid parrot-cry of the
irremediably illiterate British press, whose paragraphists seize with
rabid joy on any foreign word they do not entirely understand and run
it to death.
Yet, try as we may, two and two will _not_ make five. Hence our small
political quarrels and big greedy wars.
The _pros_ and _cons_ of the present terrific clash of nations can
be totalled up as easily as a sum on a slate--each effect has had
its causes. Belgium is devastated, and her people have been and are
robbed, tortured, and murdered. True! But what of Belgium’s own
tacitly approved cruelties on the Congo? The present is the result of
the past. Consider Russia! She is like a great creature fallen in the
dust--the seeming corpse of herself, helpless to move, while birds of
prey gather round her seeking to tear her to bits and divide the spoil.
But does not Russia deserve her fate?--has she not invited it? May we
not think of her cruelties, tyrannies, and enslavements practised on
her own people for hundreds of years? The gods have been patient with
her arrogance, but there is a limit even to divine patience. Italy and
France--prosperous, and growing more and more fond of money-getting,
eager to destroy all their noble, ancient ideals--these have, as it
were, administered a kick to the very thought of Deity.
Twenty years ago in France the _Catechisme du Libre Pensuer_ was taught
in schools, and the name of God excluded from the general curriculum.
Italy has long been openly pagan, notwithstanding the “Holy Prisoner”
of the Vatican. And Germany, our brutal foe, has flung every ideal to
the winds save Self and Greed, so that not even the “untutored savage”
principles of honour have any hold on her.