CHAPTER VIII.
Breakfast on Sunday morning was an hour later than on week-days, and Priscilla, who usually made no public appearance before luncheon, honoured it by her presence. Dressed in black silk, with a ruby cross as well as her customary string of pearls round her neck, she presided.
An enormous Sunday paper concealed all but the extreme pinnacle of her coiffure from the outer world.
"I see Surrey has won," she said, with her mouth full, "by four wickets.
The sun is in Leo: that would account for it!"
"Splendid game, cricket," remarked Mr. Barbecue-Smith heartily to no one in particular; "so thoroughly English."
Jenny, who was sitting next to him, woke up suddenly with a start.
"What?" she said. "What?"
"So English," repeated Mr. Barbecue-Smith.
Jenny looked at him, surprised. "English? Of course I am."
He was beginning to explain, when Mrs. Wimbush vailed her Sunday paper, and appeared, a square, mauve-powdered face in the midst of orange splendours. "I see there"s a new series of articles on the next world just beginning," she said to Mr. Barbecue-Smith. "This one"s called "Summer Land and Gehenna.""
"Summer Land," echoed Mr. Barbecue-Smith, closing his eyes. "Summer Land. A beautiful name. Beautiful--beautiful."
Mary had taken the seat next to Denis"s. After a night of careful consideration she had decided on Denis. He might have less talent than Gombauld, he might be a little lacking in seriousness, but somehow he was safer.
"Are you writing much poetry here in the country?" she asked, with a bright gravity.
"None," said Denis curtly. "I haven"t brought my typewriter."
"But do you mean to say you can"t write without a typewriter?"
Denis shook his head. He hated talking at breakfast, and, besides, he wanted to hear what Mr. Scogan was saying at the other end of the table.
"...My scheme for dealing with the Church," Mr. Scogan was saying, "is beautifully simple. At the present time the Anglican clergy wear their collars the wrong way round. I would compel them to wear, not only their collars, but all their clothes, turned back to frantic--coat, waistcoat, trousers, boots--so that every clergyman should present to the world a smooth facade, unbroken by stud, b.u.t.ton, or lace. The enforcement of such a livery would act as a wholesome deterrent to those intending to enter the Church. At the same time it would enormously enhance, what Archbishop Laud so rightly insisted on, the "beauty of holiness" in the few incorrigibles who could not be deterred."
"In h.e.l.l, it seems," said Priscilla, reading in her Sunday paper, "the children amuse themselves by flaying lambs alive."
"Ah, but, dear lady, that"s only a symbol," exclaimed Mr.
Barbecue-Smith, "a material symbol of a h-piritual truth. Lambs signify..."
"Then there are military uniforms," Mr. Scogan went on. "When scarlet and pipe-clay were abandoned for khaki, there were some who trembled for the future of war. But then, finding how elegant the new tunic was, how closely it clipped the waist, how voluptuously, with the lateral bustles of the pockets, it exaggerated the hips; when they realized the brilliant potentialities of breeches and top-boots, they were rea.s.sured.
Abolish these military elegances, standardise a uniform of sack-cloth and mackintosh, you will very soon find that..."
"Is anyone coming to church with me this morning?" asked Henry Wimbush.
No one responded. He baited his bare invitation. "I read the lessons, you know. And there"s Mr. Bodiham. His sermons are sometimes worth hearing."
"Thank you, thank you," said Mr. Barbecue-Smith. "I for one prefer to worship in the infinite church of Nature. How does our Shakespeare put it? "Sermons in books, stones in the running brooks."" He waved his arm in a fine gesture towards the window, and even as he did so he became vaguely, but none the less insistently, none the less uncomfortably aware that something had gone wrong with the quotation. Something--what could it be? Sermons? Stones? Books?
CHAPTER IX.
Mr. Bodiham was sitting in his study at the Rectory. The nineteenth-century Gothic windows, narrow and pointed, admitted the light grudgingly; in spite of the brilliant July weather, the room was sombre. Brown varnished bookshelves lined the walls, filled with row upon row of those thick, heavy theological works which the second-hand booksellers generally sell by weight. The mantelpiece, the over-mantel, a towering structure of spindly pillars and little shelves, were brown and varnished. The writing-desk was brown and varnished. So were the chairs, so was the door. A dark red-brown carpet with patterns covered the floor. Everything was brown in the room, and there was a curious brownish smell.
In the midst of this brown gloom Mr. Bodiham sat at his desk. He was the man in the Iron Mask. A grey metallic face with iron cheek-bones and a narrow iron brow; iron folds, hard and unchanging, ran perpendicularly down his cheeks; his nose was the iron beak of some thin, delicate bird of rapine. He had brown eyes, set in sockets rimmed with iron; round them the skin was dark, as though it had been charred. Dense wiry hair covered his skull; it had been black, it was turning grey. His ears were very small and fine. His jaws, his chin, his upper lip were dark, iron-dark, where he had shaved. His voice, when he spoke and especially when he raised it in preaching, was harsh, like the grating of iron hinges when a seldom-used door is opened.
It was nearly half-past twelve. He had just come back from church, hoa.r.s.e and weary with preaching. He preached with fury, with pa.s.sion, an iron man beating with a flail upon the souls of his congregation.
But the souls of the faithful at Crome were made of india-rubber, solid rubber; the flail rebounded. They were used to Mr. Bodiham at Crome. The flail thumped on india-rubber, and as often as not the rubber slept.
That morning he had preached, as he had often preached before, on the nature of G.o.d. He had tried to make them understand about G.o.d, what a fearful thing it was to fall into His hands. G.o.d--they thought of something soft and merciful. They blinded themselves to facts; still more, they blinded themselves to the Bible. The pa.s.sengers on the "t.i.tanic" sang "Nearer my G.o.d to Thee" as the ship was going down. Did they realise what they were asking to be brought nearer to? A white fire of righteousness, an angry fire...
When Savonarola preached, men sobbed and groaned aloud. Nothing broke the polite silence with which Crome listened to Mr. Bodiham--only an occasional cough and sometimes the sound of heavy breathing. In the front pew sat Henry Wimbush, calm, well-bred, beautifully dressed. There were times when Mr. Bodiham wanted to jump down from the pulpit and shake him into life,--times when he would have liked to beat and kill his whole congregation.
He sat at his desk dejectedly. Outside the Gothic windows the earth was warm and marvellously calm. Everything was as it had always been. And yet, and yet...It was nearly four years now since he had preached that sermon on Matthew xxiv. 7: "For nation shall rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places." It was nearly four years. He had had the sermon printed; it was so terribly, so vitally important that all the world should know what he had to say. A copy of the little pamphlet lay on his desk--eight small grey pages, printed by a fount of type that had grown blunt, like an old dog"s teeth, by the endless champing and champing of the press. He opened it and began to read it yet once again.
""For nation shall rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places."
"Nineteen centuries have elapsed since Our Lord gave utterance to those words, and not a single one of them has been without wars, plagues, famines, and earthquakes. Mighty empires have crashed in ruin to the ground, diseases have unpeopled half the globe, there have been vast natural cataclysms in which thousands have been overwhelmed by flood and fire and whirlwind. Time and again, in the course of these nineteen centuries, such things have happened, but they have not brought Christ back to earth. They were "signs of the times" inasmuch as they were signs of G.o.d"s wrath against the chronic wickedness of mankind, but they were not signs of the times in connection with the Second Coming.
"If earnest Christians have regarded the present war as a true sign of the Lord"s approaching return, it is not merely because it happens to be a great war involving the lives of millions of people, not merely because famine is tightening its grip on every country in Europe, not merely because disease of every kind, from syphilis to spotted fever, is rife among the warring nations; no, it is not for these reasons that we regard this war as a true Sign of the Times, but because in its origin and its progress it is marked by certain characteristics which seem to connect it almost beyond a doubt with the predictions in Christian Prophecy relating to the Second Coming of the Lord.
"Let me enumerate the features of the present war which most clearly suggest that it is a Sign foretelling the near approach of the Second Advent. Our Lord said that "this Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come." Although it would be presumptuous for us to say what degree of evangelisation will be regarded by G.o.d as sufficient, we may at least confidently hope that a century of unflagging missionary work has brought the fulfilment of this condition at any rate near. True, the larger number of the world"s inhabitants have remained deaf to the preaching of the true religion; but that does not vitiate the fact that the Gospel HAS been preached "for a witness" to all unbelievers from the Papist to the Zulu. The responsibility for the continued prevalence of unbelief lies, not with the preachers, but with those preached to.
"Again, it has been generally recognised that "the drying up of the waters of the great river Euphrates," mentioned in the sixteenth chapter of Revelation, refers to the decay and extinction of Turkish power, and is a sign of the near approaching end of the world as we know it. The capture of Jerusalem and the successes in Mesopotamia are great strides forward in the destruction of the Ottoman Empire; though it must be admitted that the Gallipoli episode proved that the Turk still possesses a "notable horn" of strength. Historically speaking, this drying up of Ottoman power has been going on for the past century; the last two years have witnessed a great acceleration of the process, and there can be no doubt that complete desiccation is within sight.
"Closely following on the words concerning the drying up of Euphrates comes the prophecy of Armageddon, that world war with which the Second Coming is to be so closely a.s.sociated. Once begun, the world war can end only with the return of Christ, and His coming will be sudden and unexpected, like that of a thief in the night.
"Let us examine the facts. In history, exactly as in St. John"s Gospel, the world war is immediately preceded by the drying up of Euphrates, or the decay of Turkish power. This fact alone would be enough to connect the present conflict with the Armageddon of Revelation and therefore to point to the near approach of the Second Advent. But further evidence of an even more solid and convincing nature can be adduced.
"Armageddon is brought about by the activities of three unclean spirits, as it were toads, which come out of the mouths of the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet. If we can identify these three powers of evil much light will clearly be thrown on the whole question.
"The Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet can all be identified in history. Satan, who can only work through human agency, has used these three powers in the long war against Christ which has filled the last nineteen centuries with religious strife. The Dragon, it has been sufficiently established, is pagan Rome, and the spirit issuing from its mouth is the spirit of Infidelity. The Beast, alternatively symbolised as a Woman, is undoubtedly the Papal power, and Popery is the spirit which it spews forth. There is only one power which answers to the description of the False Prophet, the wolf in sheep"s clothing, the agent of the devil working in the guise of the Lamb, and that power is the so-called "Society of Jesus." The spirit that issues from the mouth of the False Prophet is the spirit of False Morality.
"We may a.s.sume, then, that the three evil spirits are Infidelity, Popery, and False Morality. Have these three influences been the real cause of the present conflict? The answer is clear.
"The spirit of Infidelity is the very spirit of German criticism. The Higher Criticism, as it is mockingly called, denies the possibility of miracles, prediction, and real inspiration, and attempts to account for the Bible as a natural development. Slowly but surely, during the last eighty years, the spirit of Infidelity has been robbing the Germans of their Bible and their faith, so that Germany is to-day a nation of unbelievers. Higher Criticism has thus made the war possible; for it would be absolutely impossible for any Christian nation to wage war as Germany is waging it.
"We come next to the spirit of Popery, whose influence in causing the war was quite as great as that of Infidelity, though not, perhaps, so immediately obvious. Since the Franco-Prussian War the Papal power has steadily declined in France, while in Germany it has steadily increased.
To-day France is an anti-papal state, while Germany possesses a powerful Roman Catholic minority. Two papally controlled states, Germany and Austria, are at war with six anti-papal states--England, France, Italy, Russia, Serbia, and Portugal. Belgium is, of course, a thoroughly papal state, and there can be little doubt that the presence on the Allies"
side of an element so essentially hostile has done much to hamper the righteous cause and is responsible for our comparative ill-success. That the spirit of Popery is behind the war is thus seen clearly enough in the grouping of the opposed powers, while the rebellion in the Roman Catholic parts of Ireland has merely confirmed a conclusion already obvious to any unbiased mind.
"The spirit of False Morality has played as great a part in this war as the two other evil spirits. The Sc.r.a.p of Paper incident is the nearest and most obvious example of Germany"s adherence to this essentially unchristian or Jesuitical morality. The end is German world-power, and in the attainment of this end, any means are justifiable. It is the true principle of Jesuitry applied to international politics.
"The identification is now complete. As was predicted in Revelation, the three evil spirits have gone forth just as the decay of the Ottoman power was nearing completion, and have joined together to make the world war. The warning, "Behold, I come as a thief," is therefore meant for the present period--for you and me and all the world. This war will lead on inevitably to the war of Armageddon, and will only be brought to an end by the Lord"s personal return.
"And when He returns, what will happen? Those who are in Christ, St.
John tells us, will be called to the Supper of the Lamb. Those who are found fighting against Him will be called to the Supper of the Great G.o.d--that grim banquet where they shall not feast, but be feasted on.
"For," as St. John says, "I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried in a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the Great G.o.d; that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great." All the enemies of Christ will be slain with the sword of him that sits upon the horse, "and all the fowls will be filled with their flesh." That is the Supper of the Great G.o.d.