When It Was Dark Part 29

"And now, in the concluding portion of this article, we must briefly consider what the news that it has been our responsible and painful duty to give first to the world will mean to England.

"We fear that the mental anguish of countless thousands must for a time cloud the life of our country as it has never been clouded and darkened before. The proof that the Divinity of the Greatest and Wisest Teacher the world has ever known, or ever will know, is but a symbolic fable, will for a time overwhelm the world. A great upheaval of English society is beginning. Old and venerated inst.i.tutions will be swept away, minds fed upon the Christian theory from youth, instinct with all its hereditary tradition, will be for a while as men groping in the dark. But the light will come after this great tempest, and it will be a broader, finer, more steadfast light than before, because founded on, and springing from, Eternal Truth. The mission of beneficent illusion is over.

Error will yet linger for a generation or two. That much is certain. There will be more who will base their objections to the New Revelation upon 'the una.s.sailable and ultimate reality of personal spiritual experience,' forgetting the psychological influences of hereditary training, which have alone produced those experiences. But, alas! the knell of the old and beautiful superst.i.tions is ringing. The Doom is begun. The Judge is set, who shall stay it? Let us rather turn from the saddening spectacle of a fallen creed and rejoice that the 'Infinite and eternal energy' men have called G.o.d--Jah-weh, ?e??--that mysterious law of Progress and evolution, is about to reveal man to himself more than ever completely in its destruction of an imagined revelation."

During the afternoon preceding the publication of the above article, the three princ.i.p.al proprietors had met at the offices of the paper and had held a long conference with Mr. Ommaney, the editor.

It had been decided, as a matter of policy and in order to maintain the leading position already given to the paper by the first publication of Hands's dispatch, that a strong and definite line should be taken at once.

The other great journals were already showing signs of a cautious "tr.i.m.m.i.n.g" policy, which would allow them to take up any necessary att.i.tude events might dictate. They feared to be explicit, to speak out.

So they would lose the greater glory.

Once more commercial and political influences were at work, as they had been two thousand years before. The little group of Jewish millionaires who sat in Ommaney's room had their prototypes in the times of Christ's Pa.s.sion. Men of the modern world were once more enacting the awful drama of the Crucifixion.

Constantine Schuabe was among the group; his words had more weight than any others. The largest holding in the paper was his. The tentacles of this man were far-reaching and strong.

"For my part, gentlemen," Ommaney said, "I am entirely with Mr. Schuabe.

I agree with him that we should at once take the boldest possible att.i.tude. Sir Robert's opinion before he left was conclusive. We shall therefore publish a leader to-morrow taking up our standpoint. We will have it quite plain and simple. Strong and simple, but with no subtleties to puzzle and obscure the ordinary reader. It's no use to touch on history or metaphysics, or anything but pure simplicity."

"Then, Mr. Ommaney," Schuabe had said, "since we are exactly agreed on the best thing to do, and since these other gentlemen are prepared to leave the thing in our hands, if you will allow me I will write the leading article myself."

CHAPTER VI

HARNESS THE HORSES; AND GET UP, YE HORs.e.m.e.n, AND STAND FORTH WITH YOUR HELMETS; FURBISH THE SPEARS, AND PUT ON THE BRIGANDINES.--JER.

XLVI: 4

Father Ripon sat alone in his study at the Clergy House of St. Mary's.

The room was quite silent, save for the occasional dropping of a coal upon the hearth, where a bright, clear fire glowed.

Three walls of the room were lined with books. There was no carpet on the floor; the bare boards showed, except for a strip of worn matting in front of the little cheap bra.s.s fender. Over the mantel a great crucifix hung on the bare wall, painted, or rather washed with dark red colour.

The few chairs which stood about were all old-fashioned and rather uncomfortable. A great writing-table was covered with papers and books.

Two candles stood upon it and gave light to the room. The only other piece of furniture was a deal praying-stool, with a Bible and prayer-book upon the ledge.

A rugged, ascetic place, four walls to work and pray in, with just the necessary tools and no more. Yet there was no _affectation_ of asceticism, the effect was not a considered one in any way. For example, there was an oar, with college arms painted on one blade, leaning against the wall, a memory of old days when Father Ripon had rowed four and his boat at Oxford had got to the head of the river one Eight's week. The oar looked as if it were waiting to be properly hung on the wall as a decorative trophy, which indeed it was. But it had been waiting for seven years. The priest never had time to nail it up. He did not despise comfort or decoration, pretend to a pose of rigidness; he simply hadn't the time for it himself. That was all. He was always promising himself to put up--for example--a pair of crimson curtains a sister had sent him months back. But whenever he really determined to get them out and hang them, some sudden call came and he had to rush out and save a soul.

Father Ripon looked ill and worn. A pamphlet, a long, thin book bound in blue paper, with the Royal Arms on the top of the folio, lay upon the table. It was the report of the Committee of Investigation, and the whole world was ringing with it.

The report had now appeared for two days.

The priest took up _The Tower_, a weekly paper, the official organ, not of the pious Evangelical party within the Church, but of the ultra-Protestant.

His hand shook with anger and disgust as he read, for the third time, the leading article printed in large type, with wider s.p.a.ces than usual between the lines:

"We have hitherto refrained from any comment on the marvellous discovery in Jerusalem, being content simply to record the progress of the investigations, which have at last satisfied us that a genuine discovery has been made.

"In the daily special issues of the organs of the sacerdotal party we find much more freedom of expression. They have run the whole gamut--Disbelief, Doubt, Desolation, Detraction, Demoralisation, and Dismay. Rome and Ritualism have received a shock which demolishes and destroys the very foundation of their sinful system.

"Carnal in its conception it cannot survive.

"'The worship of the corporeal presence of Christ's natural flesh and blood' (_vide_ the so-called _Black_ rubric at the end of the order of the administration of the Lord's Supper) was always prohibited in the Protestant Reformed Communion, but this idolatrous practice has been the glory and boast of Babylon, and the aim and object of the Traitors, within the Established Church of England, whom we have habitually denounced.'

"'The times of this ignorance G.o.d winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent.'

"Hidden by the Divine Providence till the fulness of time, a simple inscription has taught us the full meaning of Paul's mysterious words, 'Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more.'--2 Cor. v. 16.

"Paul and Protestantism are vindicated at last. 'There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body.' The spiritual body that manifested the resurrection of Jesus to His disciples has too long been identified with the natural body that was piously laid to rest by Joseph and Nicodemus. Much that has been obscure in the Gospel narratives is now explained.

"Men have always wondered that the Apostles, in preaching their risen Lord, attempted no explanation of His manifestations of Himself.

"We can understand now why it was that they were divinely protected from imagining that the spiritual Body is a dead body revived.

"How often have perplexed believers been troubled by the questions of our modern scientists as to the physical possibilities of a future resurrection of the body! The material substance of humanity is resolved into its elements, and again and again through the centuries is employed in other organisms.

"'How then,' men have asked, 'can you believe that the body you have deposited beneath the earth shall collect from the universe its dissipated particles and rise again?'

"Hitherto we have been content to put the question aside with a simple faith that 'with G.o.d all things are possible.' But to-day we are enabled to have a further comprehension of the Lord's words, 'It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.'

"Doubtless those who, even among our own company of Evangelical Protestants, have attached too much importance to the teaching of the so-called 'Fathers of the Church' (who so early corrupted the sweet simplicity of the Gospel) will find themselves compelled to a more spiritual explanation of some pa.s.sages of Holy Scripture; but Faith will find little difficulty in rightly dividing and interpreting the word of Truth.

"The Protestant cause has little to fear from facts. We have been by G.o.d's Providence gradually prepared for a great elucidation of the truth about the Resurrection.

"Those who studied with attention the treatise of the late Frederick W. H. Myers (the man who, of all moderns, has best appreciated the personality of Paul the apostle) had come to a conviction on the survival of Human Personality after death on scientific grounds.

"The Resurrection of the Lord Jesus was no longer to them 'a thing incredible,' its unique character was recognised as consisting in its spiritual power.

"'Some doubted,' as on the mountain in Galilee. Protestantism on the Continent, especially in Germany, the home of what is misnamed the 'Higher Criticism,' has been hampered in this way by the study of the 'letter,' and so in some degree has lost the a.s.sistance of 'the spirit which giveth life.'

"But the great heart of Protestant England is still sound, and whilst Rome and Ritualism are aghast as the foundation of their fabric of lies crumbles into dust, we stand sure and steadfast, rejoicing in hope.

"Some readjustment of formularies may be conceded to weak brethren.

"Our great Reformers drew up that marvellous manifesto of the Protestant faith--'Articles agreed upon by the archbishops and bishops of Both Provinces, and the whole clergy in the Convocation holden at London in the year 1562 for the avoiding of diversities of opinions, and for the establishing of consent touching True Religion.'

"England was at that time--alas, how often has it been so!--inclined to compromise.

"There were timid men amongst the great divines who brought us out of Babylon, and the 4th article of the Thirty-nine was notoriously drawn up in antagonism to the teaching of the holy Silesian n.o.bleman, Caspar Schwenckfeld, to satisfy the scruples of the sacerdotal party, which clung to the benefices of the Establishment then as now.

"The omission of twelve words would remove all doubt as to its interpretation. We may be content to affirm that 'Christ did truly rise again from death' without stating further 'and took again his body with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining.'

"It has always been the curse of Christendom that man desired to express in words the ineffable.

"'Intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind.'

"But it need not now be difficult with the aid of a Protestant Parliament, which has so recently and so gloriously determined on the expulsion of sacerdotalists, to modify, in deference to pious scruples, too rigid definitions. Time will suffice for these necessary modifications of sixteenth-century theology.