Dawn of All, Robert Hugh Benson [ebook reader with highlighter txt] 📗

opinion even as early as 1910.

"Turn now to a completely different plane. Turn to Art. This, too, drove men back to the Church."

(Mr. Manners' air was becoming now less professional and more vivid. He glanced quickly from face to face with a kind of sharp triumph; his long, thin hands waved a slight gesture now and again.)

"Art, you remember, in the end of the Victorian era had attempted to become realistic--had attempted, that is, the absurdly impossible; and photography exposed the absurdity, For no man can be truly a realist, since it is literally impossible to paint or to describe all that the eye sees. When photography became general, this began to be understood; since it was soon seen that the only photographer who could lay any claim to artistic work was the man who selected and altered and posed--arranged his subject, that is to say, in more or less symbolic form. Then people began to see again that Symbolism was the underlying spirit of Art--as they had known perfectly well, of course, in medieval days: that Art consisted in going beneath the material surfaces that reflected light, or the material events that happened, in painting and literature respectively, and, by a process of selection, of symbolizing (not photographically representing) the Ideas beneath the Things--the Substance beneath the Accidents--the Thought beneath the Expression--(you can call it what you like). Zola in literature, Strauss in music, the French school of painting--these reduced Realism ad absurdum. Thus once more the Catholic Church, in this as in everything else, was discovered to have possessed the secret all along. The Symbolic Reaction therefore began, and all our music, all our painting, and all our literature to-day are frankly and confessedly Symbolic--that is, Catholic. And this too, you see, pointed to the same lesson as Psychology, that beneath phenomena there was a Force which transcended phenomena; and that the Church had dealt with this Force, knowing It to be Personal, through all her history.

"Finally--and this was the crowning argument of all, that correlated all the rest--there was the growing scientific and popular perception of the Recuperative Power of the Church--that which our Divine Lord Himself called the Sign of the Prophet Jonas, or Resurrection.

"There were of course countless other lines of advance, in practically every science, and they all pointed in the same direction, and met, so to speak, from every quarter of the compass the end of the tunnel which the Church had been boring through all the heaped-up stupidities and ignorances of man. Psychology tunnelled, and presently heard the voices of the exorcists and the echoes of Lourdes through the darkness. Human religions tunnelled--Hinduism with its idea of a Divine Incarnation, Buddhism with its coarse apprehension of the Eternal Peace of a Beatific Vision, North American Religion with its guesses at Sacramentalism, Savage Religion with its caricature of a Bloody Sacrifice; all from various points; and presently heard through the tumult the historical dogma of the Incarnation of Christ, the dogma of Eternal Life, the Sacramental System and the Sacrifice of the Cross--all proclaimed in one coherent and perfectly philosophical Creed. Ideals of Social Reform met with the same experiences. The Socialist with his dream of a Divine Society, the Anarchist with his passionate nightmare of complete individual liberty, both ran up together, in the heart of the black darkness, against the vast outline of a Divine Family that was a fact and not a far-off ambition--a Family that fell in Eden and became a competitive State; a Holy Family that redeemed Nazareth and all the world; a Catholic Family in whom was neither Jew nor Greek, nor masters against men--in whom the doctrine of Vocation secured the rights and the dignities of the Society on one side and the Individual on the other. Finally Art, wandering hither and thither in the mazes of Realism, saw light ahead, and found in Catholic Art and Symbolism the secret of her life.

"This, then, was the result--that the Church was found to be eternally right in every plane. In plane after plane she had been condemned. Pilate--the Law of Separate Nations--had found her guilty of sedition; Herod--the miracle-monger at one instant and the sceptic at the next--the Scientist, in fact--had declared her guilty of fraud; Caiaphas had condemned her in the name of National Religion. Or, again, she had been thought the enemy of Art by the Greek-spirited; the enemy of Law by the Latins; the enemy of Religion by the Hebraic Pharisee. She had borne her title written in Greek and Latin and Hebrew. She had been crucified, and taunted as she hung there; she had seemed to die; and, to and behold! when the Third Day dawned she was alive again for evermore. From every single point she had been justified and vindicated. Men had thought to invent a new religion, a new art, a new social order, a new philosophy; they had burrowed and explored and digged in every direction; and, at the end, when they had worked out their theories and found, as they thought, the reward of their labours, they found themselves looking once more into the serene, smiling face of Catholicism. She was risen from the dead once more, and was seen to be the Daughter of God, with Power."

There was a moment's silence.

"There, gentlemen," said Mr. Manners, dropping back again into the quiet professor, "that, I think, in a few words, is the outline for which Monsignor asked. I hope I have not detained you too long."


(II)

"It is the most extraordinary story I have ever heard," said Monsignor Masterman ten minutes later, as he threw himself down in his chair upstairs, with Father Jervis sitting opposite.

"Certainly he puts it very well," said the old priest, smiling. "I think every one was interested. It's not often that we can hear such a clear analysis of events. Of course Manners has it all at his fingers' ends. It's his special subject, and----"

"But the amazing thing to me," interrupted the other, "is that this isn't just a dream or a prophecy, but a relation of facts. . . . Do you mean to tell me that the whole world is Christian?"

The priest looked at him doubtfully.

"Monsignor, surely your memory isn't----"

Monsignor made an impatient gesture.

"Father," he said, "it's exactly as I told you before lunch. I'll promise to tell you if my memory comes back. At present I remember practically nothing at all, except instinctively. All I know is that this story we have heard simply astounds me. I had a sort of idea that Christianity was ebbing from the world; that most thinking men had given up all belief in it; and now I find it's exactly the other way. Please treat me as if I had stepped straight out of the beginning of the century. Just tell me the facts as if for the first time. Is it really true that practically the whole world is Christian?"

The priest hesitated.

"You mean that, Monsignor?"

"Certainly."

"Very well, then." He paused again. "But it's extraordinarily hard to know where to begin."

"Begin anywhere. It's all new to me."

"Very good. Well, yes: roughly we may say that the world is Christian, in the same sort of way, at least, in which Europe was Christian, say in the twelfth century. There are survivals, of course, particularly in the East, where large districts still cling to their old superstitions; and there are even eminent men here and there who are not explicitly Catholics; but, as a whole, the world is Christian."

"Do you mean Catholic?"

The priest stared a moment.

"Why, yes. What else---?"

"All right; go on."

"Well then, to begin with England. Catholicism is not yet established as the State Religion; but it'll only be a question of time, and it may be said that all the laws are Christian."

"Divorce?"

"Divorce was abolished thirty years ago, and fornication was made a felony ten years later," said the priest quietly. "Benefit of clergy also was restored three years ago; and we have our own courts for heresy, with power to hand over convicted criminals to the secular arm."

"What?"

"Certainly. It has been in force now for three years."

"Then what do you mean by saying that the Church isn't established?"

"I mean that no religious test is demanded of officers of state, and that bishops and abbots have no seat in Parliament. It was the enfranchisement of women that turned the tide once and for all."

"Do you mean that all women have the vote?"

"They are under the same conditions as men. There's a severe educational test now, of course. Not more than about one in seventy adults ever get the vote at all. But the result is that we're governed by educated persons."

"Stop. Is it a Monarchy?"

"Certainly. Edward IX--a young man--is on the throne."

"Go on."

"Christianity, then, holds the field. Of course there are infidels left, who write letters to the newspapers sometimes, and hold meetings, and so on. But they are practically negligible. As regards Church property, practically everything has finally been given back to us;--I mean in the way of buildings, and, very largely, revenues too. All the cathedrals are ours, and all parish churches built before the Reformation, as well as all other churches in parishes where there was not organized Protestant resistance."

"I thought you said there were no Protestants."

Father Jervis suddenly laughed aloud.

"Monsignor, are you really serious? Do you really mean you wish me to go on?"

"Good God, man! I'm not playing a game. . . . Go on, please. Tell me about the Protestants."

"Well, of course there are some Protestants left. I think they've got four or five churches in London, and . . . and . . . yes, I'm sure of it, they've got some kind of bishop. But really I scarcely know. I shall have to look it up."

"Well, go on."

"Well, that's the state of England. Practically everybody is a Catholic--from the King downwards. The last remains of Church property was only actually given back to us last year. That's why the monks haven't come back to Westminster yet."

"What about the rest of the world?"

"Well, first Rome. Austria drove out the House of Savoy nearly twenty-five years ago; and the Holy Father----"

"What's his name?"

"Gregory the Nineteenth. He's a Frenchman. Well, the Holy Father is Temporal Ruler of the whole of Italy; but the Emperor of Austria administers it. Then France is, of course, a very small country."

"Why small?"

"Well, you know the European War of 1914 . . .?" Monsignor interrupted by a large sigh.

"Good heavens!" he said. "How I shall have to read. I'm sorry. Go on, please."

"Well, France is a very small country, but intensely Catholic. The Church is re-established there,----"

"Is it a monarchy too?"

"Certainly. The Orleans line came back after the war. Louis XXII is king. I was saying that the Church is re-established there, and is practically supreme. That is traceable entirely to Pius X's policy."

"Pius X! Why----"

"Yes, Monsignor?"

"I know all about that. But I thought Pius X simply ruined everything."

"So they said at the time. His policy was to draw the lines tight and to make no concessions. He drove out every half-hearted Catholic by his regulations, and the result was a small but extraordinarily pure body. The result has been that the country was re-evangelized, and has become almost a land of saints. They say