When It Was Dark/Chapter 18
CHAPTER VI
HARNESS THE HORSES; AND GET UP, YE HORSEMEN, 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 brass 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 spaces 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 God 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 God 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 passages 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 God'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 assistance 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 nobleman, 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.
"In the present, the gain is ours. We shall hear less of the cultus of the 'Sacred Heart' in future. The blasphemous mimicry of the Mass will perish from amongst us.
"No man, in England at least, will dare to affirm that the flesh in which the Saviour bore our sins upon the Cross is exposed for adoration on the so-called 'altar.'
"As Sir Edwin Arnold put it, on the true grave of Jesus 'the Syrian stars look down,' but the risen Christ, glorious in His Spiritual Body, reigns over the hearts of his true followers, and we look forward in faith to our departure from the earthly tabernacle, which is dissolved day by day, knowing that we also have a spiritual house not made with hands eternal in the heavens."
As he read the clever trimming article and marked the bitterness of its tone, the priest's face grew red with anger and contempt.
This facile acceptance of the Great Horror, this insolent conversion of it to party ends, this flimsy pretence of reconciling statements, which, if true, made Christianity a thing of nought, to a novel and trumped-up system of adherence to it, filled him with bitter antagonism.
But, useful as the article was as showing the turn many men's minds were taking, there was no time to trouble about it now.
To-morrow the great meeting of those who still believed Christ died and rose again from the dead was to be held.
The terrible "Report" had been issued. During the forty hours of its existence everything was already beginning to crumble away. To-morrow the Church Militant must speak to the world.
It was said, moreover, that the great wave of infidelity and mockery which was sweeping hourly over the country would culminate in a great riot to-morrow. . . .
Everything seemed dark, black, hopeless. . . .
He picked up the Report once more to study it, as he had done fifty times that day.
But before he opened it he knelt in prayer.
As he prayed, so sweet and certain an assurance came to him, he seemed so very near to the Lord, that doubt and gloom fled before that Presence.
What were logic, proofs of stone-work, the reports of archaeologists, to This?
Here in this lonely chamber Christ was, and spoke with His servant, bidding him be of good comfort.
With bright eyes, full of the glow of one who walks with God, the priest opened the pamphlet once more.