The Altar Steps Part 32

"Do you mind my asking you a question?" Mark said.

The gospel bearers craned their necks like hungry fowls in their eagerness to peck at any problems Mark felt inclined to scatter before them. A ludicrous fancy pa.s.sed through his mind that much of the good seed was pecked up by the scatterers.

"What are you trying to convert people to?" Mark solemnly inquired.

"What are we trying to convert people to?" echoed Mr. Bullock and Mr.

Smillie in unison. Then the former became eloquent. "We're trying to wash ignorant people in the blood of the Lamb. We're converting them from the outer darkness, where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, to be rocked safe for ever in the arms of Jesus. If you'd have read that tract I handed you a bit more slowly and a bit more carefully, you wouldn't have had any call to ask a question like that."

"Perhaps I framed my question rather badly," Mark admitted. "I understand that you want to bring people to believe in Our Lord; but when by a tract or by a personal exhortation or by an emotional appeal you've induced them to suppose that they are converted, or as you put it saved, what more do you give them?"

"What more do we give them?" Mr. Smillie shrilled. "What more can we give them after we've given them Christ Jesus? We're sitting here offering you Christ Jesus at this moment. You're sitting there mocking at us. But Mr. Bullock and me don't mind how much you mock. We're ready to stay here for hours if we can bring you safe to the bosom of Emmanuel."

"Yes, but suppose I told you that I believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ without any persuasion from you?" Mark inquired.

"Well, then you're saved," said Mr. Bullock decidedly. "And you can ask the landlord for our bill, Mr. Smillie."

"But is nothing more necessary?" Mark persisted.

"_By faith are ye justified_," Mr. Bullock and Mr. Smillie shouted simultaneously.

Mark paused for a moment to consider whether argument was worth while, and then he returned to the attack.

"I'm afraid I think that people like you do a great deal of damage to Christianity. You only flatter human conceit. You get hold of some emotional creature and work upon his feelings until in an access of self-absorption he feels that the universe is standing still while the necessary measures are taken to secure his personal salvation. You flatter this poor soul, and then you go away and leave him to work out his own salvation."

"If you're dwelling in Christ Jesus and Christ Jesus is dwelling in you, you haven't got to work out your own salvation. He worked out your salvation on the Cross," said Mr. Bullock contemptuously.

"And you think that nothing more is necessary from a man? It seems to me that the religion you preach is fatal to human character. I'm not trying to be offensive when I tell you that it's the religion of a tapeworm.

It's a religion for parasites. It's a religion which ignores the Holy Ghost."

"Perhaps you'll explain your a.s.sertion a little more fully?" Mr. Bullock invited with a scowl.

"What I mean is that, if Our Lord's Atonement removed all responsibility from human nature, there doesn't seem much for the Holy Ghost to do, does there?"

"Well, as it happens," said Mr. Bullock sarcastically, "Mr. Smillie and I here do most of our work with the help of the Holy Ghost, so you've hit on a bad example to work off your sneers on."

"I'm not trying to sneer," Mark protested. "But strangely enough just before you came along I was thinking to myself how much I should like to travel over England preaching about Our Lord, because I think that England has need of Him. But I also think, now you've answered my question, that _you_ are doing more harm than good by your interpretation of the Holy Ghost."

"Mr. Smillie," interrupted Mr. Bullock in an elaborately off-hand voice, "if you've counted the change and it's all correct, we'd better get a move on. Let's gird up our loins, Mr. Smillie, and not sit wrestling here with infidels."

"No, really, you must allow me," Mark persisted. "You've had it so much your own way with your tracts and your talks this last few weeks that by now you must be in need of a sermon yourselves. The gospel you preach is only going to add to the complacency of England, and England is too complacent already. All Northern nations are, which is why they are Protestant. They demand a religion which will truckle to them, a religion which will allow them to devote six days of the week to what is called business and on the seventh day to rest and praise G.o.d that they are not as other men."

"_Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto G.o.d the things that are G.o.d's_," said Mr. Smillie, putting the change in his pocket and untying the nosebag from the horse.

"_Ye cannot serve G.o.d and mammon_," Mark retorted. "And I wish you'd let me finish my argument."

"Mr. Smillie and I aren't touring the Midlands trying to find grapes on thorns and figs on thistles," said Mr. Bullock scathingly. "We'd have given you a chance, if you'd have shown any fruits of the Spirit."

"You've just said you weren't looking for grapes or figs," Mark laughed.

"I'm sorry I've made you so cross. But you began the argument by asking me if I was saved. Think how annoyed you would have been if I had begun a conversation by asking you if you were washed."

"My last words to you is," said Mr. Bullock solemnly, looking out of the caravan window, "my last words to you are," he corrected himself, "is to avoid beer. You can touch up the horse, Mr. Smillie."

"I'll come and touch you up, you big-mouthed Bible thumpers," a rich voice shouted from the inn door. "Yes, you sit outside my public-house and swill minerals when you're so full of gas already you could light a corporation gasworks. Avoid beer, you walking bellows? Step down out of that travelling menagerie, and I'll give you 'avoid beer.' You'll avoid more than beer before I've finished with you."

But the gospel bearers without paying any attention to the tirade went on their way; and Mark who did not wait to listen to the innkeeper's abuse of all religion and all religious people went on his way in the opposite direction.

Swinging homeward over the Cotswolds Mark flattered himself on a victory over heretics, and he imagined his adversaries entering Wield that afternoon, the prey of doubt and mortification. At the highest point of the road he even ventured to suppose that they might find themselves at Evensong outside St. Andrew's Church and led within by the grace of the Holy Spirit that they might renounce their errors before the altar.

Indeed, it was not until he was back in the Rectory that the futility of his own bearing overwhelmed him with shame. Anxious to atone for his self-conceit, Mark gave the Rector an account of the incident.

"It seems to me that I behaved very feebly, don't you think?"

"That kind of fellow is a hard nut to crack," the Rector said consolingly. "And you can't expect just by quoting text against text to effect an instant conversion. Don't forget that your friends are in their way as great enthusiasts probably as yourself."

"Yes, but it's humiliating to be imagining oneself leading a revival of the preaching friars and then to behave like that. What strikes me now, when it's too late, is that I ought to have waited and taken the opportunity to tackle the innkeeper. He was just the ordinary man who supposes that religion is his natural enemy. You must admit that I missed a chance there."

"I don't want to check your missionary zeal," said the Rector. "But I really don't think you need worry yourself about an omission of that kind so long before you are ordained. If I didn't know you as well as I do, I might even be inclined to consider such a pa.s.sion for souls at your age a little morbid. I wish with all my heart you'd gone to Oxford," he added with a sigh.

"Well, really, do you know," said Mark, "I don't regret that. Whatever may be the advantages of a public school and university, the education hampers one. One becomes identified with a cla.s.s; and when one has finished with that education, the next two or three years have to be spent in discovering that public school and university men form a very small proportion of the world's population. Sometimes I almost regret that my mother did not let me acquire that c.o.c.kney accent. You can say a lot of things in a c.o.c.kney accent which said without any accent sound priggish. You must admit, Rector, that your inner comment on my tale of the gospellers and the innkeeper is 'Dear me! I am afraid Mark's turning into a prig.'"

"No, no. I laid particular stress on the point that if I didn't know you as well as I do I might perhaps have thought that," the Rector protested.

"I don't think I am a prig," Mark went on slowly. "I don't think I have enough confidence in myself to be a prig. I think the way I argued with Mr. Bullock and Mr. Smillie was a bit priggish, because at the back of my head all the time I was talking I felt in addition to the arrogance of faith a kind of confounded sn.o.bbishness; and this sense of superiority came not from my being a member of the Church, but from feeling myself more civilized than they were. Looking back now at the conversation, I can remember that actually at the very moment I was talking of the Holy Ghost I was noticing how Mr. Bullock's d.i.c.ky would keep escaping from his waistcoat. I wonder if the great missionary saints of the middle ages had to contend with this acc.u.mulation of social conventions with which we are faced nowadays. It seems to me that in everything--in art, in religion, in mere ordinary everyday life and living--man is adding daily to the wall that separates him from G.o.d."

"H'm, yes," said the Rector, "all this only means that you are growing up. The child is nearer to G.o.d than the man. Wordsworth said it better than I can say it. Similarly, the human race must grow away from G.o.d as it takes upon itself the burden of knowledge. That surely is inherent in the fall of man. No philosopher has yet improved upon the first chapter of Genesis as a symbolical explanation of humanity's plight. When man was created--or if you like to put it evolved--there must have been an exact moment at which he had the chance of remaining where he was--in other words, in the Garden of Eden--or of developing further along his own lines with free will. Satan fell from pride. It is natural to a.s.sume that man, being tempted by Satan, would fall from the same sin, though the occasion, of his fall might be the less heroic sin of curiosity.

Yes, I think that first chapter of Genesis, as an attempt to sum up the history of millions of years, is astoundingly complete. Have you ever thought how far by now the world would have grown away from G.o.d without the Incarnation?"

"Yes," said Mark, "and after nineteen hundred years how little nearer it has grown."

"My dear boy," said the Rector, "if man has not even yet got rid of rudimentary gills or useless paps he is not going to grow very visibly nearer to G.o.d in nineteen hundred years after growing away from G.o.d for ninety million. Yet such is the mercy of our Father in Heaven that, infinitely remote as we have grown from Him, we are still made in His image, and in childhood we are allowed a few years of blessed innocency.

To some children--and you were one of them--G.o.d reveals Himself more directly. But don't, my dear fellow, grow up imagining that these visions you were accorded as a boy will be accorded to you all through your life. You may succeed in remaining pure in act, but you will find it hard to remain pure in heart. To me the most frightening beat.i.tude is _Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see G.o.d._ What your present state of mind really amounts to is lack of hope, for as soon as you find yourself unable to be as miraculously eloquent as St. Anthony of Padua you become the prey of despair."

"I am not so foolish as that," Mark replied. "But surely, Rector, it behoves me during these years before my ordination to criticize myself severely."

"As severely as you like," the Rector agreed, "provided that you only criticize yourself, and don't criticize Almighty G.o.d."

"But surely," Mark went on, "I ought to be asking myself now that I am twenty-one how I shall best occupy the next three years?"

"Certainly," the Rector a.s.sented. "Think it over, and be sure that, when you have thought it over and have made your decision with the help of prayer, I shall be the first to support that decision in every way possible. Even if you decide to be a preaching friar," he added with a smile. "And now I have some news for you. Esther arrives here tomorrow to stay with us for a fortnight before she is professed."

CHAPTER XXII

SISTER ESTHER MAGDALENE

Esther's novitiate in the community of St. Mary Magdalene, Sh.o.r.editch, had lasted six months longer than was usual, because the Mother Superior while never doubting her vocation for the religious life had feared for her ability to stand the strain of that work among penitents to which the community was dedicated. In the end, her perseverance had been rewarded, and the day of her profession was at hand.