Part 29 (1/2)
”And now, in the concluding portion of this article, we must briefly consider what the news that it has been our responsible and painful duty to give first to the world will mean to England.
”We fear that the mental anguish of countless thousands must for a time cloud the life of our country as it has never been clouded and darkened before. The proof that the Divinity of the Greatest and Wisest Teacher the world has ever known, or ever will know, is but a symbolic fable, will for a time overwhelm the world. A great upheaval of English society is beginning. Old and venerated inst.i.tutions will be swept away, minds fed upon the Christian theory from youth, instinct with all its hereditary tradition, will be for a while as men groping in the dark. But the light will come after this great tempest, and it will be a broader, finer, more steadfast light than before, because founded on, and springing from, Eternal Truth. The mission of beneficent illusion is over.
Error will yet linger for a generation or two. That much is certain. There will be more who will base their objections to the New Revelation upon 'the una.s.sailable and ultimate reality of personal spiritual experience,' forgetting the psychological influences of hereditary training, which have alone produced those experiences. But, alas! the knell of the old and beautiful superst.i.tions is ringing. The Doom is begun. The Judge is set, who shall stay it? Let us rather turn from the saddening spectacle of a fallen creed and rejoice that the 'Infinite and eternal energy' men have called G.o.d--Jah-weh, ?e??--that mysterious law of Progress and evolution, is about to reveal man to himself more than ever completely in its destruction of an imagined revelation.”
During the afternoon preceding the publication of the above article, the three princ.i.p.al proprietors had met at the offices of the paper and had held a long conference with Mr. Ommaney, the editor.
It had been decided, as a matter of policy and in order to maintain the leading position already given to the paper by the first publication of Hands's dispatch, that a strong and definite line should be taken at once.
The other great journals were already showing signs of a cautious ”tr.i.m.m.i.n.g” policy, which would allow them to take up any necessary att.i.tude events might dictate. They feared to be explicit, to speak out.
So they would lose the greater glory.
Once more commercial and political influences were at work, as they had been two thousand years before. The little group of Jewish millionaires who sat in Ommaney's room had their prototypes in the times of Christ's Pa.s.sion. Men of the modern world were once more enacting the awful drama of the Crucifixion.
Constantine Schuabe was among the group; his words had more weight than any others. The largest holding in the paper was his. The tentacles of this man were far-reaching and strong.
”For my part, gentlemen,” Ommaney said, ”I am entirely with Mr. Schuabe.
I agree with him that we should at once take the boldest possible att.i.tude. Sir Robert's opinion before he left was conclusive. We shall therefore publish a leader to-morrow taking up our standpoint. We will have it quite plain and simple. Strong and simple, but with no subtleties to puzzle and obscure the ordinary reader. It's no use to touch on history or metaphysics, or anything but pure simplicity.”
”Then, Mr. Ommaney,” Schuabe had said, ”since we are exactly agreed on the best thing to do, and since these other gentlemen are prepared to leave the thing in our hands, if you will allow me I will write the leading article myself.”
CHAPTER VI
HARNESS THE HORSES; AND GET UP, YE HORs.e.m.e.n, 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 bra.s.s 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 s.p.a.ces 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.