Part 38 (1/2)

'When was it ever a living system?' answered the other. 'When was it ever anything but a transitionary makes.h.i.+ft since the dissolution of the monasteries?'

'Why, then, not away with it at once?'

'You English have not done with it yet. At all events, it is keeping your cathedrals rain-proof for you, till you can put them to some better use than now.'

'And in the meantime?'

'In the meantime there is life enough in them; life that will wake the dead some day. Do you hear what those choristers are chanting now?'

'Not I,' said Lancelot; 'nor any one round us, I should think.'

'That is our own fault, after all; for we were not good churchmen enough to come in time for vespers.'

'Are you a churchman then?'

'Yes, thank G.o.d. There may be other churches than those of Europe or Syria, and right Catholic ones, too. But, shall I tell you what they are singing? ”He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He hath sent empty away.” Is there no life, think you, in those words, spoken here every afternoon in the name of G.o.d?'

'By hirelings, who neither care nor understand--'

'Hush. Be not hasty with imputations of evil, within walls dedicated to and preserved by the All-good. Even should the speakers forget the meaning of their own words, to my sense, perhaps, that may just now leave the words more entirely G.o.d's. At all events, confess that whatever accidental husks may have cl.u.s.tered round it, here is a germ of Eternal Truth. No, I dare not despair of you English, as long as I hear your priesthood forced by Providence, even in spite of themselves, thus to speak G.o.d's words about an age in which the condition of the poor, and the rights and duties of man, are becoming the rallying-point for all thought and all organisation.'

'But does it not make the case more hopeless that such words have been spoken for centuries, and no man regards them?'

'You have to blame for that the people, rather than the priest. As they are, so will he be, in every age and country. He is but the index which the changes of their spiritual state move up and down the scale: and as they will become in England in the next half century, so will he become also.'

'And can these dry bones live?' asked Lancelot, scornfully.

'Who are you to ask? What were you three months ago? for I know well your story. But do you remember what the prophet saw in the Valley of Vision? How first that those same dry bones shook and clashed together, as if uneasy because they were disorganised; and how they then found flesh and stood upright: and yet there was no life in them, till at last the Spirit came down and entered into them? Surely there is shaking enough among the bones now! It is happening to the body of your England as it did to Adam's after he was made. It lay on earth, the rabbis say, forty days before the breath of life was put into it, and the devil came and kicked it; and it sounded hollow, as England is doing now; but that did not prevent the breath of life coming in good time, nor will it in England's case.'

Lancelot looked at him with a puzzled face.

'You must not speak in such deep parables to so young a learner.'

'Is my parable so hard, then? Look around you and see what is the characteristic of your country and of your generation at this moment. What a yearning, what an expectation, amid infinite falsehoods and confusions, of some n.o.bler, more chivalrous, more G.o.dlike state! Your very costermonger trolls out his belief that ”there's a good time coming,” and the hearts of gamins, as well as millenarians, answer, ”True!” Is not that a clas.h.i.+ng among the dry bones? And as for flesh, what new materials are springing up among you every month, spiritual and physical, for a state such as ”eye hath not seen nor ear heard?”--railroads, electric telegraphs, a.s.sociate-lodging-houses, club-houses, sanitary reforms, experimental schools, chemical agriculture, a matchless school of inductive science, an equally matchless school of naturalist painters,--and all this in the very workshop of the world! Look, again, at the healthy craving after religious art and ceremonial,-- the strong desire to preserve that which has stood the test of time; and on the other hand, at the manful resolution of your middle cla.s.ses to stand or fall by the Bible alone,--to admit no innovations in wors.h.i.+p which are empty of instinctive meaning. Look at the enormous amount of practical benevolence which now struggles in vain against evil, only because it is as yet private, desultory, divided. How dare you, young man, despair of your own nation, while its n.o.bles can produce a Carlisle, an Ellesmere, an Ashley, a Robert Grosvenor,--while its middle cla.s.ses can beget a Faraday, a Stephenson, a Brooke, an Elizabeth Fry? See, I say, what a chaos of n.o.ble materials is here,--all confused, it is true,--polarised, jarring, and chaotic,--here bigotry, there self-will, superst.i.tion, sheer Atheism often, but only waiting for the one inspiring Spirit to organise, and unite, and consecrate this chaos into the n.o.blest polity the world ever saw realised! What a destiny may be that of your land, if you have but the faith to see your own honour! Were I not of my own country, I would be an Englishman this day.'

'And what is your country?' asked Lancelot. 'It should be a n.o.ble one which breeds such men as you.'

The stranger smiled.

'Will you go thither with me?'

'Why not? I long for travel, and truly I am sick of my own country.

When the Spirit of which you speak,' he went on, bitterly, 'shall descend, I may return; till then England is no place for the penniless.'

'How know you that the Spirit is not even now poured out? Must your English Pharisees and Sadducees, too, have signs and wonders ere they believe? Will man never know that ”the kingdom of G.o.d comes not by observation”? that now, as ever, His promise stands true,-- ”Lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world”? How many inspired hearts even now may be cheris.h.i.+ng in secret the idea which shall reform the age, and fulfil at once the longings of every sect and rank?'

'Name it to me, then!'

'Who can name it? Who can even see it, but those who are like Him from whom it comes? Them a long and stern discipline awaits. Would you be of them, you must, like the Highest who ever trod this earth, go fasting into the wilderness, and, among the wild beasts, stand alone face to face with the powers of Nature.'