Ardath, Marie Corelli [e ink ebook reader txt] 📗

why do we dare to doubt the certainly conceivable variations and manifestations of Spirit? … The doctrine of a purely HUMAN Christ is untenable,—a Creed founded on that idea alone would make no way with the immortal aspirations of the soul, . . what link could there be between a mere man like ourselves and heaven? None whatever,—it needs the DIVINE in Christ to overleap the darkness of the grave, . . to serve us as the Symbol of certain Resurrection, to teach us that this life is not the ALL, but only ONE loop in the chain of existence, . . only ONE

of the ‘many mansions’ in the Father’s House. Human teachers of high morals there have always been in the world,—Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Socrates, Plato, . . there is no end to them, and their teachings have been valuable so far as they went, but even Plato’s majestic arguments in favor of the Immortality of the Soul fall short of anything sure and graspable. There were so many prefigurements of what WAS to come, . . just as the sign of the Cross was used in the Temple of Serapis, and was held in singular mystic veneration by various tribes of Egyptians, Arabians, and Indians, ages before Christ came. And now that these prefigurements have resolved themselves into an actual Divine Symbol, the doubting world still hesitates, and by this hesitation paralyzes both its Will and Instinct—so that it fails to cut out the core of Christianity’s true solution, or to learn what Christ really meant when He said ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, —no man cometh to the Father but by Me.’ Have you ever considered the particular weight of that word ‘MAN’ in that text? It is rightly specified that ‘no MAN cometh ‘—for there are hosts of other beings, in other universes, who are not of our puny race, and who do not need to be taught either the way, truth, or life, as they know all three, and have never lost their knowledge from the beginning.”

 

His voice quivered a little, and he paused,—Villiers watched him with a strange sense of ever-deepening fascination and wonder.

 

“I have lately studied the whole thing carefully,”.. he resumed presently, . . “and I see no reason why we, who call ourselves a progressive generation, should revert back to the old theory of Corinthus, who, as early as sixty-seven years after Christ, denied His Divinity. There is nothing new in the hypothesis—it is no more original than the doctrine of evolution, which was skilfully enough handled by Democritus, and probably by many another before him. Voltaire certainly threshed out the subject exhaustively, . .

and I think Carlyle’s address to him on the uselessness of his work is one of the finest of its kind. Do you remember it?”

 

Villiers shook his head in the negative, whereupon Alwyn rose, and glancing along an evidently well-remembered book-shelf, took from thence “Sartor Resartus”—and turned over the pages quickly.

 

“Here it is,”—and he read out the following passage.. “‘Cease, my much-respected Herr von Voltaire, . . shut thy sweet voice; for the task appointed thee seems finished. Sufficiently hast thou demonstrated this proposition, considerable or otherwise: That the Mythus of the Christian Religion looks not in the eighteenth century as it did in the eighth. Alas, were thy six-and-thirty quartos, and the six-and-thirty thousand other quartos and folios and flying sheets or reams, printed before and since on the same subject, all needed to convince us of so little! But what next?

Wilt thou help us to embody the Divine Spirit of that Religion in a new Mythus, in a new vehicle and vesture, that our Souls, otherwise too like perishing, may live? What! thou hast no faculty in that kind? Only a torch for burning and no hammer for building?

Take our thanks then—and thyself away!’”

 

Villiers smiled, and straightened himself in military fashion, as was his habit when particularly gratified.

 

“Excellent old Teufelsdrockh!” he murmured sotto-voce—“He had a rugged method of explaining himself, but it was decisive enough, in all conscience!”

 

“Decisive, and to the point,”.. assented Alwyn, putting the book back in its place, and then confronting his friend.—“And he states precisely what is wanted by the world to-day,—wanted pressingly, eagerly, . . namely that the ‘Divine Spirit’ of the Christian Religion should be set forth in a ‘new vehicle and vesture’ to keep pace with the advancing inquiry and scientific research of man. And truly for this, it need only be expounded according to its old, pure, primal, spiritual intention, and then, the more science progresses the more true will it be proved.

Christ distinctly claimed His Divinity, and everywhere gave manifestations of it. Of course it can be said that these manifestations rest on TESTIMONY,—and that the ‘testimony’ was drawn up afterward and is a spurious invention—but we have no more proof that it IS spurious than we have of [Footnote: See Chapter XIII. “In Al-Kyris”—the allusion to “Oruzel.”] Homer’s Iliad being a compilation of several writers and not the work of a Homer at all. Nothing—not even the events of the past week—can be safely rested on absolute, undiffering testimony, inasmuch as no two narrators tell the same story alike. But all the same we HAVE the Iliad,—it cannot be taken from us by any amount of argument, . . and we have the FRUITS of Christ’s gospel, half obscured as it is, visible among us. Everywhere civilization of a high and aspiring order has followed Christianity even at the cost of blood and tears, ..slavery has been abolished, and women lifted from unspeakable degradation to honor and reverence,—and had men been more reasonable and self-controlled, the purifying work would have been done peacefully and without persecution. It was St.

Paul’s preaching that upset all the beautiful, pristine simplicity of the faith,—it is very evident he had no ‘calling or election’

such as he pretended, . . I wonder Jeremy Bentham’s conclusive book on the subject is not more universally known. Paul’s sermonizing gave rise to a thousand different shades of opinion and argument, —and for a mere hair’s-breadth of needless discussion, nation has fought against nation, and man against man, till the very name of religion has been made a ghastly mockery. That, however, is not the fault of Christianity, but the fault of those who PROFESS to follow it, like Paul, while merely following a scheme of their own personal advantage or convenience, . . and the result of it all is that at this very moment, there is not a church in Christendom where Christ’s actual commands are really and to the letter fulfilled.”

 

“Strong!” ejaculated Villiers with a slight smile.. “Mustn’t say that before a clergyman!”

 

“Why not?” demanded Alwyn.. “Why should not clerics be told, once and for all, how ill they perform their sacred mission? Look at the wilderness of spreading Atheism to-day! … and look at the multitudes of men and women who are hungering and thirsting for a greater comprehension of spiritual things than they have hitherto had!—and yet the preachers trudge drowsily on in the old ruts they have made for themselves, and give neither sympathy nor heed to the increasing pain, feverish bewilderment, and positive WANT

of those they profess to guide. Concerning science, too, what is the good of telling a toiling, more or less suffering race, that there are eighteen millions of suns in the Milky Way, and that viewed by the immensity of the Universe, man is nothing but a small, mean, and perishable insect? Humanity hears the statement with dull, perplexed brain, and its weight of sorrow is doubled,—

it demands at once, why, if an insect, its insect life should BE

at all, if nothing is to come of it but weariness and woe? The marvels of scientific discovery offer no solace to the huge Majority of the Afflicted, unless we point the lesson that the Soul of Man is destined to live through more than these wonders; and that the millions of planetary systems in the Milky Way are but the ALPHA BETA of the sublime Hereafter which is our natural heritage, if we will but set ourselves earnestly to win it.

Moreover, we should not foolishly imagine that we are to lead good lives MERELY for the sake of some suggested reward or wages,—no, —but simply because in practising progressive good we are equalizing ourselves and placing ourselves in active working harmony with the whole progressive good of the Creator’s plan. We have no more right to do a deliberately evil thing, than a musician has a right to spoil a melody by a false note on his instrument. Why should we willfully JAR God’s music, of which we are a part? I tell you that religion, as taught to-day, is rather one of custom and fear than love and confidence,—men cower and propitiate, when they should be full of thankfulness and praise,—

and as for any reserve on these matters, I have none,—in fact, I fail to see why truth, . . spiritual truth, . . should not be openly proclaimed now, even as it is sure to be proclaimed hereafter.”

 

His manner had warmed with his words, and he lifted his head with an involuntary gesture of eloquent resolve, his eyes flashing splendid scorn for all things hypocritical and mean. Villiers looked at him, feeling curiously moved and impressed by his fervent earnestness.

 

“Well, I was right in one thing, at any rate, Alwyn”—he said softly.. “you ARE changed,—there’s not a doubt about it! But it seems to me the change is distinctly for the better. It does my heart good to hear you speak with such distinct and manly emphasis on a subject, which, though it is one of the burning questions of the day, is too often treated irreverently, or altogether dismissed with a few sentences of languid banter or cheap sarcasm.

 

“As regards myself personally, I must say that a man without faith in anything but himself, has always seemed to me exactly in keeping with the description given of an atheist by Lady Ashburton to Carlyle,—namely ‘a person who robs himself, not only of clothes, but of flesh as well, and walks about the world in his bones.’ And, oddly enough in spite of all the controversies going on about Christianity, I have always really worshipped Christ in my heart of hearts, . . and yet.. I CAN’T go to church! I seem to lose the idea of Him altogether there: . . but”.. and his frank face took upon itself a dreamy light of deep feeling—“there are times when, walking alone in the fields, or through a very quiet grove of trees, or on the seashore, I begin to think of His majestic life and death, and the immense, unfailing sympathy He showed for every sort of human suffering, and then I can really believe in him as Divine friend, comrade, Teacher, and King, and I am scarcely able to decide which is the deepest emotion in my mind toward Him—love, or reverence.”

 

He paused,—Alwyn’s eyes rested upon him with a quick, comprehensive friendliness,—in one exchange of looks the two men became mutually aware of the strong undercurrents of thought that lay beneath each other’s individual surface history, and that perhaps had never been so clearly recognized before,—and a kind of swift, speechless, satisfactory agreement between their two separate natures seemed suddenly drawn up, ratified, and sealed in a glance.

 

“I have often thought,” continued Villiers more lightly, and smiling as he spoke—“that we are all angels or devils,—angels in our best moments, devils in our worst. If we could only keep the best moments always uppermost! ‘Ah, poor deluded human nature!’ as old Moxall says,—while in the same breath he contradicts himself by asserting that human Reason is the only infallible