CHAPTER X.
PREACHING AND PRACTICE.
It was a serious grief to Louis, when, following Fritz’s example, several of the other young men declared themselves, as Fritz had expressed it, “solid for religion,” not to be able to include himself among the number. It was an odd thing, he thought, that he, who had played at being a Christ-kind in his babyhood, whose guide and pattern in his youth had been the life of the Lord Christ,—that he should stand aside unable to believe, while others, till then indifferent, pressed forward to be called by His name. It was easy enough to go to church, and that Louis did quite regularly, sitting always when others rose or knelt, and following every word with patient, wistful anxiety. But there was very little comfort to be got out of churchgoing, so far as Louis could see; though the sound of Ernest Clare’s voice, and the sight of his calm, strong face, gave him sometimes the sensation of one struggling on in utter darkness, who, though he can trace no ray of light, knows that the full, cloudless sunshine is just beyond. But, meanwhile, the darkness is hard to bear; and the wistful pleading of the blue eyes that were fixed so earnestly upon his face went to the very heart of Ernest Clare.
Mr. Clare was slowly becoming a power at St. Andrew’s, the unfashionable church to which he had offered his services, gratis, at his first coming to Micklegard. The rector, an elderly man with a large family, always ground down to the earth by fuel and grocery bills, had, at first, looked askance at his unsalaried assistant, as an eccentric whose dangerous social doctrines were likely to get not only himself, but the Church at large, into trouble. Indeed, long years of money anxieties, whereof the care had been faithfully cast upon Him who has promised to bear it, had almost convinced the rector that a situation wherein lay no temptation to be anxious for the morrow would be positively irreligious. He knew too well the blessings of poverty to pray, like pious Agar, to be delivered therefrom; and while his favorite beatitude was “Blessed are the poor,” the promise that the meek shall inherit the earth had for him no signification that was at all borne out by his own individual experience.
By such a man as this Ernest Clare was quite content to be lightly esteemed and guarded against. Reading the prayers and lessons, however, in the rector’s opinion, could harm no one, and spared a weary voice; even in the baptism of infants, and the visitation of the sick, there is little scope for dynamite, and it was a great comfort to be able to call at will upon one so entirely destitute of vanity or self-assertion. So, by the time the winter came, and the rector got a cold instead of the voice he lost in catching it, he was ready to accept Mr. Clare’s offer to preach for him, backed by the promise, voluntarily made, with a smile of affectionate amusement, “not to say a word of which the rector could possibly disapprove.”
It was not at all what is usually considered a popular sermon, though of a kind more likely to be popular than is often supposed. The text was,—
“Because I live, ye shall live also.”
“Very many men,” said the preacher, “have tried to define life, just as they have endeavored to explain what is meant by a personal God, and with about the same success. Our own first Article says, ‘There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions.’ This is not all of the article, as you will see from your prayer-books, but it is the root-part, which contains and implies all the rest. And you will notice that most of this one sentence that I have read you says what God is not; there are only two words, ‘living’ (which implies everlasting), and ‘true,’ to tell us what God is. But this, that He is living and true, nay, that He is life and truth, is really all that we need to know about Him. Well, then, I hope some of us are asking, What do we mean by life, and what do we mean by truth? Let us take the latter first.
“Truth is that which a man troweth or believeth; a better definition than one might suppose; but there is another word which will lead us more quickly to the heart of our subject this morning. ‘In sooth’ and in ‘good sooth’ are phrases now found only in poetry; yet we could very well spare from our daily conversation more sonorous terms than that one little monosyllable sooth. For it is connected with the Sanskrit word sat, or satya, meaning truth; sat being the participle of the verb as, to be. Therefore, when we say, ‘Do you in sooth?’ we mean simply, ‘Do you tell me that which is?’
“Now, I once read a book, the author of which was very jubilant over his discovery that this verb as, to be, meant originally, simply, to breathe. Thus, if we go back a step farther, and say, ‘Do you in sooth?’ or, ‘Do you tell me that which breathes?’ we shall not be long in coming to the conclusion that Truth and Life are identical; and that What is Truth? means exactly the same as What is Life?
“Now, though so many attempts have been made, with only partial success, to define Life, as I told you a while ago, I suppose all of us have a fair working idea of it, at least as regards this outside world. We know that a plant or animal is dead when it ceases, as Herbert Spencer says, to ‘correspond with its environment;’ that is, to receive something from and return something to the air or water or earth around it. Now, spiritual Life, or eternal Life, as we often call it, is exactly the same. We must correspond with our Environment, in Whom ‘we live and move and have our being;’ that is, our breathing, according to Mr. Matthew Arnold. We must breathe in Truth, and breathe out Love, if we would correspond with this environment; and then—because He lives we shall live also. For there is one peculiarity about Life. It cannot stand still, any more than we can cease breathing; it must grow, else it ceases to be Life and becomes Death. And so He says because I live ye shall live also. Not merely His disciples, not merely those who profess to believe on Him, but the whole world shall live also. ‘The Kingdom of God is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal until the whole was leavened.’
“If you look back on the story of the world, you will see for yourselves how the history of mankind is a history of progress, of climbing higher and higher. That the world, as a whole, is perceptibly better off, freer, wiser, and purer, than it was even a hundred years ago, is a proposition which I suppose few will controvert; but if I say that all this, and the almost incalculable progress that preceded it, is owing to the Life of Christ which is in the world, there will not fail some to deny it. Yet growth implies life, cannot be without life; and he who refuses to ascribe certain known results to an adequate cause must be able to produce in evidence some other cause capable of producing the same effects. But this is the very point where those who deny that the life of Christ is, not was, in the world, utterly fail. Also, their strongest point against Christianity is that the lives of those who do not believe in the Divinity of Jesus Christ often resemble more nearly what we call His human character than the lives of professing Christians. Well, why not? He has told us Himself that He does not care to be called Lord, Lord, unless we do the things that He says; and if we really do the things that He says, if we are pure, true, unselfish, and loving, then, whether we know it or not, His life is in us, and will transform us into its own likeness, just as surely as the life of the acorn transforms air, earth, and water into the likeness of an oak.
“Perhaps there are some here who think that Jesus Christ was simply a good man, not even a perfect man, far less the God-man. In fact, I have often heard just such words from some whom I see here before me.
“You think highly of Christianity as a moral system, and only wish its professors lived up to their duties. Well, I wish so too. I wish all who call themselves Christians were one-tenth as kind, as unselfish, as disinterested, as some of you who call yourselves infidels. But the difference between you is simply this. The humblest, the most faulty, sincere Christian knows that whatever good there may be in him is the fruit of that divine Life; while you are very apt to consider your virtues your own, and your faults the result of circumstances, due to heredity, perhaps, or education, or the cross-grained perversity of your next neighbor. And you are quite right; your faults are due to just these things. They are a part of the Kingdom of Death, which the Life of Christ came into the world to conquer.
“It is said that ‘if to-night a new star were created in some far-distant constellation, ages would pass before its light could reach us, but only a few seconds before the earth would feel its presence.’ And would not the influence of that star be just the same whether we knew of it or not? Would our world be deflected from its present orbit one hair’s-breadth more or less because that new star could not be found upon a single astronomical chart? The name of Jesus Christ may not be found upon your guide to the stars, dear friends, but His life is nevertheless within and around you, making you better as you yield to it, or worse as you resist it. For as individuals you can resist it, perhaps, forever, though, as a race, humanity must and will grow more and more into His image and likeness, Who is, that is, Who breathes, Life, Love, and Truth.”
“Now, I suppose,” said Dr. Richards, who waited outside the church door, with Alice on his arm and Freddy in his chair, whereof Louis served as propeller,—“now, I suppose you think you have settled the whole question, and convinced everybody by that sermon?”
“On the contrary,” replied Mr. Clare. “There’s a verse that always comes into my mind the moment I finish preaching. I wish it wouldn’t, for it has rather a depressing effect at times, so that I am compelled to reason myself into optimism again before I can go on with the service,” with a mischievous glance, as he lent a hand to help the Ark over a gutter.
“Optimism! humph! I gave you credit for greater knowledge of the world. What is the verse?”
All turned and descended;
The pikes went on stealing,
The eels went on eeling.
Much delighted were they,
But preferred the old way!’
“It is from St. Anthony’s sermon to the fishes, I believe, but that is all I know of the poem,” said Mr. Clare.
“Ah! there’s a deal of human nature in fishes,” said the doctor, laughing. “Well, then, what is the good of preaching?”
“There’s more good in practising, I admit; still a sermon does sometimes come back to one—like Longfellow’s Arrow, don’t you know,” replied the clergyman. “But I must say,” he added, laughing, “that I don’t set quite such a value upon preaching as some people. I should not, for example, if I had undertaken to ‘Look Backward,’ like Mr. Bellamy, have found my ideal Sunday in listening to a sermon by telephone. It doesn’t quite fulfil one’s idea of worship, however excellent the sermon.”
“Worship? why, the life they led in the year 2000 and the work they had done for the world was a better worship than if they had whined away on their knees for a month.”
“No doubt; better worship, and the best of divine service; but—I don’t believe that when men learn to work together they will cease to pray together. This new Cathedral they are going to build in New York is to me one of the grandest and most heart-cheering signs of the times; but even that, I hope, won’t hold the people when the day of freedom really dawns. And when poverty is abolished, and every man stands equal with his brother-man—before man and before God,—then, I believe, from that mighty host will rise such a shout of loyalty to the Captain of their Salvation as will shake the Kingdom of Death to its centre. Cannot you imagine the wild—no, not wild—the disciplined enthusiasm with which that army of industry, and therefore of liberty, shall sing,—
“‘Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,
Great David’s greater Son,
Hail, in the time appointed,
His reign on earth begun.
He comes to break oppression,
To set the captive free;
To take away transgression,
And rule in equity’?
And the new meaning there will be in so many hymns? ‘All hail the power of Jesus’ Name,’ ‘Crown Him with many crowns,’ and another, the campaign song now as then of His soldiers,—
“‘He marches in front of His banner unfurled,
Which He raised that His own might find Him,
And the Holy Church throughout all the world
Falls into rank behind Him.’
Ah! Dr. Richards, you may pessimize to your heart’s content, but, nevertheless,—
“‘We march to victory
With the Cross of the Lord before us!’”
“I wish you did,” said the doctor. “I’d veil my crest to that Banner with the best grace in the world. But I haven’t much faith in the future.”
“You haven’t much faith in God.”
“Why, I can’t shut my eyes to facts, neither can I believe in a God who is less than omnipotent or less than perfectly good. Yet one of these hypotheses is necessary to reconcile the existence of God and the existence of evil.”
“As to omnipotence,” replied Mr. Clare, “it is a very singular thing that those whose very name for the Deity is ‘the Unknowable’ should be so ready to deny Him omnipotence, an attribute as incomprehensible by our finite minds as infinite space or everlasting time.”
“That is your way of getting out of it,” said the doctor.
“It is simply a statement of facts. We can know of God only what He has revealed to us, through Nature, His ‘living Garment,’ through the Scriptures, and in Jesus Christ, ‘the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person.’”
“Well, Nature and the Sermon on the Mount are about as much alike as chalk and cheese,” said Dr. Richards.
“‘Fire and Hail, Snow and Vapor, Wind and Storm, fulfilling His word,’” said Mr. Clare. “You’ve been reading Mill, Dr. Richards, and he has disagreed with you. I remember, too, that Tennyson represents Nature as crying,—
“‘A thousand types have gone;
I care for nothing, all shall go.’
But Nature does care for something, and if she casts aside a thousand types, it is only as the fruit-tree casts away millions of petals which have done their work in protecting the infant fruit. Nature strives always after one type, one ideal; and will have attained it when man has fulfilled the command laid upon him at his creation, to ’replenish the earth and subdue it.’”
“But could not an All-good, All-powerful Creator have prevented a great deal of sin and misery by making the world perfect in the beginning?”
“I don’t think we can reason about what God might or could have done; that belongs to the realm of the Unknowable. What we can reason about and are entirely justified—that is, made just—in trying to understand, is what He has done. He is life, therefore Nature lives, and we live. But life is evidenced by growth, and growth depends chiefly upon effort. And hence, Dr. Richards, knowledge or virtue or muscular strength must be developed in you by your own exertions, they cannot be won for you by another.”
“How about imputed righteousness?”
“There’s not a word in Scripture about imputed righteousness, though it does say that God will not impute iniquity; that is, that he sees us as we ought to be, as we will be; and that all His blows and chastisements are simply to set free this divine ideal, as a sculptor liberates the angel imprisoned in his block of marble. Does the sculptor impute roughness or lack of graceful form to the marble?”
Dr. Richards turned suddenly and looked down at his wife, who had at the moment leaned rather heavily upon his arm. Then he replied, though with less verve than before,—
“Well, you haven’t touched my spiritual optic nerve yet, Mr. Clare. How about the millions who die still in the rough, and live on in eternal torment?”
“I think you mean everlasting, not eternal, which has nothing to do with time. And no one who used his eyes, Dr. Richards, would claim that the angel is always liberated in this life.”
“Then, you believe”—
“What I believe, my dear friend, is of very little consequence, unless you can make it out from what I do. And yet I do believe in the Love of God and His uncovenanted mercies, to which those He has promised and made sure are as a mote in the sunshine to the boundless atmosphere in which it floats.”
“I suppose it makes you happier,” said the doctor, with a sigh; “and I never interfere with any one’s happiness,” he added with a glance at his wife.
When the Richardses had been left at their own door, and Mr. Clare and Louis went on alone, the latter said,—
“Mr. Clare, I’d give my right hand if I could believe all you said in your sermon to-day.”
“Keep your right hand to serve God with, Louis,” was the reply. “If you were more likely to believe without it than with it, He Himself would take it from you.”
“I don’t think I am likely to believe either way,” was the boy’s reply. “You see, my father taught me to imitate Christ, to be a little Christ-child, as he called it, yet to think Christianity itself only a fairy tale. And I can’t get over the habit,” he added; “I can’t think of Christ as alive now, or believe that He is God. To me He is dead as King Arthur and Washington and Barbarossa are dead.”
“And when you wish to believe Him alive, is it that you may serve Him better, or that you may possess the happiness in the perpetual consciousness of His presence which others enjoy?” asked the clergyman, smiling tenderly upon the wistful face upturned to him.
“The last, of course,” returned Louis honestly, “though perhaps I could serve Him better, if you mean working for others,” he added.
Mr. Clare smiled. “Leave the better service to Him; He knows what He wants from you,” he said. “For the rest, Prince Louis, are you following out your father’s teaching in asking or wishing any thing for yourself? Is that like Jesus Christ, who pleased not Himself?”
“Then what must I do?”
“Do what you believe,” said Mr. Clare. “In fact, neither you nor any of us can do otherwise. What we believe, that will we do; nothing else. What we do not show in our lives, we do not yet entirely believe. There is no escape from that logic, Louis, terrible though it be.” He paused, hesitated, then went on with a smile. “For I have just shown you that you have not been living up to what faith you have, which is, after all, not a little. Therefore, you see, it fails just so far of being a real faith, and you cannot ask for more until you have made the most of what you already have. Only go on working, not thinking at all of yourself, living for others, and some day—if not in this world, at least in the next—your eyes will be opened like those of the disciples at Emmaus, and you will say, ‘Did not my heart burn within me, while He talked with me by the way?’”
“In the next world!” said Louis thoughtfully. “But if there be no other world, Mr. Clare?”
“Ah! my boy, that you must be content to take—yet a while—on trust. When your eyes see the King in His beauty, the land that is very far off will become a reality to you; not until. The best—I was about to say the sole—argument for immortality is my text of this morning: ‘Because He lives, we shall live also.’ ‘And this is life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.’”
“I’m like Dr. Richards,” said Louis, smiling sadly. “You don’t touch my spiritual optic nerve. But I am glad you tell me to do, Mr. Clare, for I want to believe, and cannot. Yet the Herr Pastor told me once,” he continued, smiling, “not to put my trust in anything that I did, for that my righteousness was as filthy rags, and that I must believe in order to be saved.”
“The Herr Pastor was quite right, my boy. Your righteousness, and mine also, is as filthy rags compared with His, and compared also with the wedding garment in which we shall sit down to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And have I not told you that, as your faith grows, your salvation from sin grows also? I have not told you that you will ever be able to say that you believe in this world, because I have known of so many whose lives have acknowledged Him while their lips, to their latest breath, denied Him. Am I a poor comforter, Louis?” he added kindly, as the boy looked down and sighed.
“No, no; I was thinking of Dr. Richards. He is one of those men you spoke of, and, perhaps, never will believe as you do.”
“Frederick Richards is one of the bravest men I ever knew,” said Mr. Clare.
He was a very silent man for the next few days; also very gentle and tender towards all around him, especially his wife, whom he watched as she went about the house or sat at work beside him, with eyes of wistful comprehension. It was not until the week was nearly gone that she crept up to him one evening, in the early twilight, and silently laid her head upon his breast.
“Yes, my dear, yes,” he said tenderly. “I know all about it, Alice; there is little about yourself that you need to tell me in words, after all these years. But we had better not talk about it, I think; for I might say something to disturb your faith once more, and I should be sorry to do that.”
“I don’t think you could, now,” she replied. “It is no new thing, Fred; I think it has been growing within me for a long time. And it is not such faith as I thought I had once.”
“As you thought you had?”
“It was little more than thinking; I did not know what belief really meant. Oh, don’t say we must not talk about it, dear; I cannot bear any forbidden subjects between us now.”
He drew her nearer, and kissed her, smiling. “Now?” he asked gently.
“It seems as though I had never loved you until now,” she replied. “Years ago—oh, Fred, can you forgive me!—I believed, as I had been taught, that it was a sin to marry an infidel; but it would have killed me to give you up, and so I did what I thought wrong in defiance.”
“Not quite that, I think,” he said tenderly. “It was only that your heart was stronger than your theology, that’s all.”
“One was true, and therefore did the truth, and the other was false,” she replied. “But then, when trouble came, I looked upon it as punishment, or, rather, vengeance, for what was no sin at all. As if I were so much holier than you,” she cried indignantly; “you whose noble life taught me the emptiness and selfishness of my own. ‘Unequally yoked together!’ If we have been, the superiority has been on your side. If truth be life, you have more of it than I; and I have looked up to you and learned of you always.”
“Until now?” he said rather sadly.
“Oh! Fred, you have much to teach me yet. It is you who see things as they are, truly, purely, nobly; and I whose eyes are blinded by the mists of earth. Only in one thing I have the advantage of you.”
“And that?” he asked.
She rose to her feet,—for till then she had knelt beside his chair,—and, drawing his head to her bosom, kissed him with such kisses as in all their life together she had never before given him.
“I know that you are mine now, and always, for life and death, for time and eternity,” she cried passionately. “I am not afraid to let myself love you now that neither life nor death can ever come between us. God has given you back to me, my husband!”