/ v 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 . 
 
 
VISIONS 
 
VISIONS 
 
 COULSON 
 KERNAHAN 
 
 LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 27 PATERNOSTER ROW. 1905 
 
FIRST EDITION, October, 1905. 
 SECOND EDITION, November, 1905. 
 
TO 
 J. E. HODDER WILLIAMS 
 
 PUBLISHER 
 MY FRIEND AND FELLOW-CRAFTSMAN 
 
 855252 
 
PUBLISHERS' NOTE 
 
 TV j\ R. KERNAHAN'S imaginative work 
 has attracted such unusual attention, 
 and has been so widely circulated that his 
 publishers think the time has come when his 
 four now-famous religious booklets and the 
 remainder of his separately published imagina- 
 tive writings might with advantage be issued 
 in one volume, especially as they are enabled 
 to include three entirely new pieces. 
 
 "The Lonely God," "A Lost Soul" and 
 "The Garden of God," all three from A Book 
 of Strange Sins, are included by kind per- 
 mission of Messrs. Ward, Lock and Co., the 
 owners of the copyright. 
 
 vn 
 
THE CHILD-FACE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 THE DREAM OF THE DEAD FOLK . 19 
 
 GOD AND THE ANT . 
 
 35 
 
 THE HEAVENLY GRAFTING 
 
 61 
 
 THE FACE BEYOND THE DOOR . . 67 
 
 THE GARDEN OF GOD 
 
 ix 
 
 153 
 
Contents 
 
 PACK 
 
 THE CHILD, THE WISE MAN AND THE 
 
 DEVIL 169 
 
 A LOST SOUL . 213 
 
 THE LONELY GOD . . . 225 
 
 A WORLD WITHOUT A CHILD . . 237 
 
/ have looked on Life : I have looked on 
 Death. I have pitied, / have sorrowed^ I 
 have smiled. Yet have I no lore save that 
 which was learned from flowers and little 
 children, from loving all God*s creatures, and 
 from seeing^ in my visions, the Sorrowful 
 Face. 
 
 XI 
 
THE^CHILD 
 RACE 
 
 B 
 
THE@CHIL,DFACE 
 
 WHAT a little thing to set a strong 
 man's heart a-thump ! Just a wee 
 sound half sigh, half cry from the 
 cot where a child stirs in her sleep. It was 
 not even a troubled cry. It was like the un- 
 considered, unconscious " chirrup " of some 
 small bird that wakes in the night to nestle 
 more snugly under its mother's wing, and 
 drowses off again even as it chirrups. It was 
 as if, upon the stilled waters of night, a falling 
 rose-leaf had set a-stir a scarcely perceptible 
 ripple. Yet light as is the rose-leafs kiss upon 
 the water's lips that kiss trembles, halo-wise, 
 into a circle, the emblem of eternity. And that 
 child's feeble cry seems to me to be a voice 
 calling from the eternities that are gone and 
 from the eternities that are to come. 
 
 3 
 
The Child-Face 
 
 Listening to that child's cry, I see, standing 
 
 behind her, the shadowy line of the unknown 
 
 { *dea J\ jwhp^e: she and I sprang. It is a line 
 
 .; which*: tr$t<?hes- away back into the mists of 
 
 ' the " morning * of the world, when God first 
 
 committed the brimming vase of life into the 
 
 hands of man, charging him that he and those 
 
 who came after him should, generation by 
 
 generation, pass on, unspilt, that purple vase 
 
 which I, in my turn, have passed on to my 
 
 child, and she will one day, I hope, pass on 
 
 to hers. 
 
 As those ghost voices cry out to me from 
 the dust, I am aware of strange stirrings in the 
 blood that flows in my veins and once flowed 
 in other veins than mine. I am conscious of 
 blind yearnings, of unyielded obediences, of 
 unrendered love, and my hands go groping 
 forth as if to clasp unseen hands that are 
 stretched to me from impenetrable dark ; even 
 as now, when I am warm with life, the cold 
 ghost of me, that is to be, stretches wan hands 
 of yearning towards my child's unborn chil- 
 dren whom I may never see. 
 
 4 
 
The Child-Face 
 
 When I was myself a child I once asked the 
 meaning of the strange knocking within my 
 breast, and was told that it came from a glow- 
 ing forge where a blacksmith plied his hammer 
 unceasingly upon the anvil. I was told that it 
 was there the bones for my body were welded ; 
 it was there that the blood which ran red and 
 hot like molten metal in my veins was 
 warmed, and that the rising and falling of 
 my chest was caused by the constant working 
 of the big pair of bellows that kept the fire 
 alight within. I remember that I accepted 
 the explanation implicitly so implicitly that, 
 even now, when I hear my own child's cry 
 in the night, and my heart stands still a 
 moment to listen, I fancy that for that moment 
 the blacksmith is poising the withheld hammer 
 high over his head. Then down it comes 
 again, with a lustier blow than ever, and the 
 accustomed and monotonous round goes on 
 until the day when the hammer shall fall from 
 the nerveless fingers, the fire shall flicker up 
 into sudden brightness, and then as suddenly 
 sink to a thin red line, along which it is chased 
 
 5 
 
The Child-Face 
 
 to a mere spark, and is finally swallowed up 
 by pursuing night. And where once there 
 had been warmth, life, light, and movement, 
 there shall be only darkness, silence, stillness, 
 cold cinder, and grey ash. 
 
 Sometimes it is a pitiful, frightened little 
 cry that reaches me, and to-night it is 
 followed by the pattering of dumpy feet along 
 the landing. Wee fists assail the panels 
 of my door, and a quavering treble pipes : 
 " Fa'ver, I'se afwaid. Let me in ! " 
 
 As I hush her in my arms I ask myself 
 whether it is because God would have us, His 
 children, to realise the infinite love of the 
 Divine Father that He, the Creator, permits 
 His creature to enter into, and in a sense to 
 share, the mystery of Fatherhood. I look 
 sometimes into my child's eyes and I ask 
 myself whether she can read and sound the 
 depths of love in mine. One day, perhaps, 
 when she has a child of her own, she will 
 understand that the mere fact of her room 
 being next to mine is a happiness to me, and 
 that my sleep is sweeter because of the sense 
 
 6 
 
The Child-Face 
 
 of nearness to her. But in the meantime I 
 often wonder whether as yet she is even if 
 unconsciously aware of my love, or whether 
 it is only because I represent to her the 
 buoyant joys of airy up-tossings, because I am 
 associated in her thoughts with the eager 
 interest of new toys, and the thousand and 
 one devices which I contrive for her entertain- 
 ment, that she bounds gleefully in her nurse's 
 arms at sight of me. " Ah, little one ! " I say 
 to myself. " Perhaps the heart of the Divine 
 Father may ache as longingly for some sign 
 of His children's love, as mine is now aching 
 to be assured of yours. Were I to pass out of 
 your sight to-morrow, would you forget me as 
 easily as I forget Him?" 
 
 Here I am naturally reminded of Mr. 
 William Canton's poem on this very subject, 
 and remembering it I am silenced as by 
 a rebuke. Instead, therefore, of proffering 
 copper of my own coining, let me assist to 
 circulate the fine gold of his. The poem 
 occurs in " The Invisible Playmate and W. V., 
 Her Book," which stands side by side on my 
 
 7 
 
The Child-Face 
 
 shelf with Mr. Barrie's " Margaret Ogilvy.' 
 To me it is the " Margaret Ogilvy " of child- 
 hood, and if out of all the literature of the last 
 ten years only some half-dozen volumes might 
 remain, I should certainly plead that these two 
 be among them. 
 
 I have a little maid who, when she leaves 
 Her father and her father's threshold, grieves, 
 But being gone, and life all holiday, 
 Forgets my love and me straightway; 
 Yet when I write, 
 
 Kisses my letters, dancing with delight, 
 Cries " Dearest father ! " and in all her glee 
 For one brief live-long hour remembers me. 
 Shall I in anger punish or reprove? 
 Nay, this is natural ; she cannot guess 
 How one forgotten feels forgetfulness ; 
 And I am glad thinking of her glad face, 
 And send her little tokens of my love. 
 
 And Thou wouldst Thou be wroth in such a case ? 
 
 And crying Abba, I am fain 
 
 To think no human father's heart 
 
 Can be so tender as Thou art, 
 So quick to feel our love, to feel our pain. 
 
 When she is froward, querulous, or wild, 
 Thou knowest, Abba, how, in each offence, 
 8 
 
The Child-Face 
 
 I stint not patience, lest I wrong the child, 
 
 Mistaking for revolt defect of sense, 
 
 For wilfulness mere sprightliness ef mind. 
 
 Thou know'st how often, seeing I am blind; 
 
 How when I turn her face against the wall 
 
 And leave her in disgrace, 
 
 And will not look at her, or speak at all, 
 
 I long to speak and long to see her face; 
 
 And how, when twice, for something grievous done 
 
 I could but smite, and, though I lightly smote, 
 
 I felt my heart rise strangling in my throat; 
 
 And when she wept I kissed the poor red hands. 
 
 All these things, Father, a father understands; 
 And am not I Thy son ? 
 
II 
 
 I HAVE told you of the thoughts that come 
 and go in my brain as I lie at night hushing 
 my frightened child to my breast, and watching 
 the little eyelids droop over the tired eyes, like 
 the petals of a primrose, as the sense of sweet 
 security and loving companionship lulls her 
 to happy sleep. But the night passes, and it 
 is she and I who are first out of doors in the 
 morning to drink in together a deep, delicious 
 draught of dewy air. There is no such divine 
 intoxicant as is to be found in the blue chalice 
 which morning tilts brimming to our lips. To 
 drink of it is to know why the butterfly 
 is so merry-mad that he must needs skip and 
 dance in his flight. It is the magic philtre 
 which lets us into the secret of bird-song and 
 flower-speech. At the first draught we are 
 
 10 
 
The Child-Face 
 
 aware of voices calling to us from the garden. 
 There is a flutter among the flowers, for the 
 rose which they have been so long expecting 
 has arrived with the dawn, and before they 
 were awake to receive her as became her 
 state. There she stands damask-red, and 
 beautiful as some dusky Eastern queen, 
 and around her the sweet-peas are pouting 
 their pretty lips, piqued at our delay, the 
 white pinks are wearing their best frilled 
 petticoats, and the pansies, aproned in royal 
 purple, are impatiently awaiting our arrival 
 that the rose-queen and the child-queen may 
 be duly presented to each other. Scarcely is 
 the ceremony over, and formal calls been 
 made in order of precedence upon the flowers 
 who form the royal court, before the gong 
 summons my little maid and me to breakfast, 
 after which we go our separate ways I to my 
 work, she to her morning sleep. At luncheon 
 she sits at my side in her high chair, and if 
 no morsel is so sweet to the little one as that 
 which comes off " FaVer's " plate, no meal is so 
 delightful to him as that which is shared with 
 
 ii 
 
The Child-Face 
 
 his darling. Then luncheon over and my pipe 
 smoked out, away we go, she and I, for an 
 afternoon's holiday - making in the fields. 
 Sometimes, with hand fast clasped in mine 
 and face upturned to listen, she trudges along 
 at my side, all eyes and ears, while I am 
 weaving " a story " for her. Sometimes she 
 elects to be perched in masterful ease on my 
 shoulder ; at others she slips the parental cable 
 altogether, now lingering behind, now flitting 
 on in front, now darting bird- like aside at 
 sight of a butterfly or flower. But whatever 
 be the way she travel, she is with me, and I 
 with her, and when that is so, and on such 
 a day, the very intaking of our breath is a joy. 
 The sky spreads above us a shimmering sea 
 of blue not the cool crystalline sapphire of 
 early morning, but the deep, dense azure of 
 a midsummer noon. How hot the bees must 
 feel in that furry coat! As we lie basking 
 in the sunlight, and watching the buttercups 
 dancing and dipping above the grass, like 
 golden banners upborne amid an army of 
 green-bladed bayonets, we do not wonder, she 
 
 12 
 
The Child-Face 
 
 and I, that the bees like some one with a 
 grievance grumble monotonously to them- 
 selves. We can see the hot air quivering and 
 simmering above the clover fields, but all else 
 is drowsily, dreamily still. The streets of the 
 far-off city are reeking with dusty heat, but 
 here we are in another world, and the birds 
 and the butterflies are our brethren. This 
 meadow is our boundless prairie ; our heads are 
 below the level of the grass-tops, which spread 
 filmy arms above us, like the boughs of a 
 miniature forest. 
 
 We love, she and I, to feel the wind upon 
 our cheek, to hear it, as it whistles by us, sing- 
 ing in our ears, as in the hollow convolutions of 
 a shell. We love to look out upon the sea or 
 upon open plains and broad sky spaces where 
 there is " eyesight room" and room for our 
 souls to fare forth into the blue. We love to 
 lie and listen to the song of the wind among 
 the pine-trees the "sailing" pine-trees and 
 to watch them rock and sway like storm-tossed 
 ships at sea. We love to see the rook beat up 
 against the wind, and poise and hover and soar, 
 
 13 
 
The Child-Face 
 
 and slide down upon the edge of the blast 
 with rigid blade-like wings, that shear like a 
 knife. As we watch him cut the ether in 
 circles and half-circles I think of him less 
 as a bird than as some winged artist of the 
 heights, who delights in flowing line and 
 beauty of curve, and to my very limbs is lent 
 something of the buoyancy of his flight. 
 
 By and by we come to that sunny stretch of 
 meadowland over which the skylark seems 
 always singing, and where the grass grows so 
 long that the little ones whom, at almost any 
 hour of a summer's day, one is sure to see 
 gathering flowers have to wade, waist high, 
 as they go. This we call "The Children's 
 Meadow," because, as I say, one can rarely 
 pass through it without hearing a psean of 
 childish laughter just as we have christened 
 the lane beyond the stile " Lovers' Avenue," 
 because on a summer's evening one seldom 
 passes between the hazel-hedges that over- 
 arch, bower-wise above, without finding a coy 
 couple leaning bashfully on the gate, or wander- 
 ing in front of us in waist-encircled bliss. 
 
The Child-Face 
 
 Then we reach the sloping, wind-swept hillside, 
 where we love to lie and watch the slow sail- 
 ing of stately clouds over our head, or to listen 
 to the tinkle of the brooklet purling over the 
 pebbles in the dell below. 
 
 And in my child's joyous wonder at all that 
 is wonderful in this beautiful world, I forget 
 the making of books with which my brain is 
 busied, and when the first flush of rapture is 
 over and the wee brain has sobered into calm, 
 I tell her of Him once a little child like her- 
 self by Whom this beautiful world was made. 
 
Ill 
 
 IT is night again, and once more I am with 
 my child. In the daytime I seem to lose her, 
 but at night she comes back to me, more mine 
 than ever. How many times I have tip-toed, 
 quiet as any mouse, along the passage to her 
 door and peeped in, just to satisfy myself that 
 all was well with her. 
 
 Do you remember the opening verses of Mr. 
 Canton's poem, "The Inquisition"? 
 
 I woke at dead of night ; 
 
 The room was still as death ; 
 All in the dark I saw a sight 
 
 Which made me catch my breath. 
 
 Although she slumbered near, 
 
 The silence hung so deep, 
 I leaned above her crib to hear 
 
 If it were death or sleep. 
 16 
 
The Child-Face 
 
 How often I have done that ! How often 
 a cold hand has seemed to shut and hold down 
 the sluice-gates of my heart, as I saw how 
 waxen-white was her face, how stony-still her 
 slumbers. Then a sigh that would scarcely have 
 stirred a feather, or it may be a twitching of 
 the wee hand, that lay as if sculptured in marble 
 outside the coverlet, has brought a " Thank 
 God ! " to my lips ; the cruel fingers that were 
 clutching at my heart have relaxed their hold, 
 letting the up-gathered blood go racing through 
 my veins again, and I have crept back to the 
 bed which I had left only in a dream. For the 
 little face upon which I had looked was a dream 
 face, a dead face the saddest of all dead faces 
 the face of the child that never was. 
 
 1 7 
 
^ __ mf _ u ^-o-^** s-/ - <J W r *V^^*"^ ^*^^>^--^_ "^V 
 
 THESDRJEAIWOF 
 THEiiDEADiFOLK 
 
THEQDREAM^OF 
 THESDEADiFOLk, 
 
 A MAN lay listening to the cry of the 
 wind at midnight ; and as he lay, he 
 fell asleep and dreamt that he was 
 dying. 
 
 Just as upon a map one seeks to trace a 
 river from its source to its union with the 
 sea, so he now strove to look back upon his 
 own life and to see it in perspective. 
 
 It had seemed to him like a space set 
 between two far-removed marks, but now 
 he saw that every completed human life is 
 a circle ; and though he realised that none 
 may see whence the centre of that circle 
 is taken, he knew that the hand which 
 holds the compasses is the hand of God. 
 
 21 
 
The Dream of the Dead Folk 
 
 And the man saw that the arc of his 
 life was fast rounding to a ring, and as 
 he drew nearer to what he had thought 
 was End, he saw that End was already 
 merging into Beginning. 
 
 And then just as the last grain in an 
 hour-glass runs out the swiftest the remnant 
 of his strength failed him, and he died. 
 
 22 
 
II 
 
 SINCE the day when He took our mother 
 Eve from the side of our father Adam, 
 God has caused a deep sleep to fall upon 
 the soul to whom a great change is about 
 to come. 
 
 When the man first awoke from the 
 sleep into which he had fallen, he knew 
 that it was night, but he knew not that it 
 is only the souls of the unhallowed dead 
 which awake at night, and that the spirits 
 of those who have passed away in peace 
 awake greeted by angel-faces in the sun- 
 light of God's smile, and fare forth, com- 
 panioned by rejoicing dear ones, among the 
 flowers, the fields, and the happy birds. 
 
 But just as the feeble hands of a newly- 
 born babe grope unconsciously for the 
 
 23 
 
The Dream of the Dead Folk 
 
 warm bosom under which the little one 
 has long lain so the poor human soul that 
 awakes, naked and cold from the birth- 
 change which we call death, cries out for the 
 touch of a familiar hand, the consolation of 
 familiar companionship. 
 
 When a child awakes, screaming from an 
 evil dream, no assurance of mother or nurse 
 can dispel the illusion so quickly as a sight 
 of the streaming morning sunshine, for then 
 the child knows not only that the imagined 
 monsters of the night are gone, but that they 
 had never existed, and never could exist, except 
 in a dream. 
 
 But when the man awoke it seemed to him 
 so terrible was the sense of evil which hung 
 over him as if the awakening had come, not 
 to dispel the spectres of sleep, but to make 
 possible and present the impossible horrors of 
 his most hideous dreams. 
 
 Fear, abject and craven, crouched cowering 
 at his heart fear of himself, fear of the 
 perpetual and imprisoning dark, and fear of 
 the mocking shapes that the darkness hid. 
 
 2 4 
 
The Dream of the Dead Folk 
 
 But most of all he feared to be alone, for 
 henceforth he knew that he was deserted of 
 God that where he was, God was not. 
 
 If of the living it has been said that solitude, 
 the withdrawal of oneself from the world, 
 is strength-giving, but that loneliness is the 
 horror of horrors, what shall be said of the 
 loneliness of the dead? 
 
 For the living know not what loneliness is. 
 Where life is, there God is, and where God is, 
 none is alone. 
 
 But when a naked human soul drifts out 
 on death's tide to that region of outer dark 
 which is emptied of God, then is that soul 
 confronted with the Loneliness. 
 
Ill 
 
 WHEN the man was in the body, all things 
 were measured and compelled by his body's 
 needs. 
 
 "I must have warmth, for I am cold," he 
 had said ; " I must eat, for I am hungry ; 
 must drink, for I am thirsty ; must sleep, for 
 I am tired." 
 
 Now that he was no longer in the body, 
 heat and cold, hunger and thirst, wakeful- 
 ness and weariness, could affect him never 
 
 again. 
 
 But more cruel than the pangs and slow 
 wasting of hunger, more torturing than the 
 searing and blistering of live flesh by fire, 
 more terrible than the throes of those who, 
 with lolling tongues dry and swollen as puff- 
 balls, drop on the desert sands to die of thirst, 
 
 26 
 
The Dream of the Dead Folk 
 
 were the loneliness and the fear of loneliness 
 which lay upon the soul of the man. 
 
 And in that awful moment he thought of the 
 mother whom he had left on earth, the mother 
 to whom, as a child, he had fled in his every 
 sorrow, the mother to whom, even as a man, 
 he had never gone for solace in vain. 
 
 And as he so thought, lo ! he saw his mother 
 before him. With a cry of joy, he flung 
 himself on his knees beside her, burying his 
 head in her lap, and crying piteously : 
 
 " Mother, mother ! It is your son ! " 
 
 But no loving hand was laid upon his head, 
 no loving word was whispered in his ear, and 
 when the man looked into his mother's eyes, 
 he saw that there was no recognition in 
 them. 
 
 Then, pressing a pleading hand upon hers, 
 again the man cried out to his mother to 
 comfort him, and again he saw that she sat 
 impassive and unseeing, and, though her lips 
 moved placidly, 'twas but to count the stitches 
 in the work that she held in her hand. 
 
 Then the man thought of the wife he loved, 
 27 
 
The Dream of the Dead Folk 
 
 the mother of his children ; but when he 
 sought her presence, he saw that beside her 
 was one who was whispering words of love in 
 her ear, and the man knew that already he 
 was replaced in his wife's heart. 
 
 And, though he called her by name, she, 
 unhearing and unheeding, turned away with 
 laughing eyes, and kissed the lips of the lover 
 who stood by her side. 
 
 Then the man thought of the child that he 
 had loved better than he had loved his life, 
 and, as he so thought, the child lay sleeping in 
 its cot before him. And the man bent over 
 the child, calling it by every dear, familiar 
 name ; but the child stirred not, nor even so 
 much as smiled in its sleep. 
 
 Then the soul of the man turned colder 
 than the clay semblance of himself which 
 lay mouldering in the churchyard. 
 
 He knew now that he was alone indeed, for 
 he knew that he was dead, and that in the 
 kingdom of outer dark, the dead seek no com- 
 panionship with the dead. 
 
 It is from the living the lords of life that 
 28 
 
The Dream of the Dead Folk 
 
 the lonely dead folk crave the companionship 
 which can never be theirs. 
 
 To no living ear are dead voices audible, by 
 no living eyes are dead shapes seen, and 
 though the dead may go to the living though 
 they cannot help but go to the living they 
 may not by so much as a word, by so much as 
 some old familiar household sign, make known 
 their presence and their needs to the happy 
 live folk who stand in the sun. 
 
 Else were the joy of life for ever gone, for 
 could the live folk see but once the piteous 
 spectres mendicants of a moment's com- 
 panionship that throng the way, as figures 
 throng a church door ; the stricken shapes 
 that crawl like dogs to their feet, craving the 
 solace of a single recognising look ; the 
 haggard hunted faces that people the dark ; 
 the imploring arms outstretched on every side 
 could the live folk see all this, then were life 
 no longer a lordly palace, but a leper house. 
 
 But for the dead folk, the live folk have no 
 eyes, for the dead folk the live folk have no 
 ears, and soon those pallid shapes, aweary of 
 
 29 
 
The Dream of the Dead Folk 
 
 waiting for the look, the word, the caress that 
 never come, pass out, the prey of utter hope- 
 lessness, into the night only again to return 
 to the presence of the living, again to urge 
 their unavailing prayers, and again to be 
 driven forth of despair into the night. 
 
IV 
 
 EVEN so the soul of the man fled forth from 
 the presence of the loved ones out of whose 
 lives he had for ever passed. 
 
 And as he fled, a thousand menacing 
 shapes sprang up to gibber, ape-like, at him 
 ere they, too, were swallowed up of night. 
 
 And as they shrank from him, so the man 
 shrank from them ; for in the realm of outer 
 dark, the shapes that flit athwart the gloom 
 go lonely as lepers, who, unclean themselves, 
 see only in others their own uncleanliness, and 
 so come to loathe and to fear each other, even 
 as they loathe and fear themselves. 
 
 Then more poignant than the longing of 
 a mother for her dead child, more irresistible 
 than the lust of a drunkard for drink, more 
 desperate than the soldier's last fight for dear 
 
 3 1 
 
The Dream of the Dead Folk 
 
 life the cruel, crushing fear of his incom- 
 municable loneliness came over the man. And 
 ever he pressed on panic-stricken into the 
 night, and ever he was pursued as by ravening 
 wolves by the fear that lurked at his heart. 
 
 And as he fled he was aware of the rising 
 of the wind ; and he was aware, too, that just 
 as a tempest lashes the surface of the sea into 
 angry and contending waves, so the wind, as 
 it gathered in strength, was lashing into blind 
 hate his own soul, and the souls of them that 
 peopled the outer dark. 
 
 He still feared and shrank from the shapes 
 that he saw around, just as they feared and 
 shrank from him, but he knew that in them, as 
 in him, every gust that blew was goading fear 
 into ungovernable and murderous fury, and 
 that soon, like caged lions, which, chafing at 
 imprisonment, turn the one to rend the other, 
 so he and they would soon be at each other's 
 throats. 
 
 Then in that domain of darkness the man 
 heard the wind's bugle-call to battle, and saw 
 the rabble of the dead massing into devil-led 
 
 32 
 
The Dream of the Dead Folk 
 
 legions, that hurled themselves the one upon 
 the other in bloody and insatiate hate. 
 
 And with a great cry the man awoke, and 
 knew that he had been dreaming. 
 
 The casement stood open, and as he heard 
 the wind sweep past like charging cavalry, he 
 thought of the contending cohorts of the 
 damned, and the man knelt by the window to 
 breathe a prayer for the souls in outer dark. 
 
 Then suddenly the wind dropt, and from 
 the heart of the night a mournful cry was 
 borne, even as the cry of gulls far out at sea 
 is borne inland upon the wind. 
 
 And again the man thought of the lonely 
 dead folk. 
 
 And again he knelt in prayer. 
 
 33 
 
GOD 
 
I SAW, in a dream, the End of the World. 
 I had thought to behold the sea give up 
 its dead, the graves open, and the count- 
 less companies of the sleepers roll up like 
 mist from off the face of the earth to heaven. 
 I had thought to hear the Last Trump sound- 
 ing ; to see the heavens part like a rent veil ; 
 and to behold God, seated in terrible majesty 
 upon the clouds, while innumerable legions of 
 shining angels waited His bidding to marshal 
 the vast armies of the dead to their place 
 before the judgment bar of heaven. 
 
 But that which I had thought to see, I saw 
 not, that which I had thought to hear, I heard 
 not, for God gave no sign, nor any of His 
 angels ; and excepting that around me were 
 the souls of all who had lived and died on the 
 
 37 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 earth, I had not known that the Great Day of 
 Judgment was indeed come. 
 
 And though the number of the dead was 
 many million millions, I saw that all were 
 gathered together as one man. For to them 
 that are in the Spirit, Space and Place and 
 Time are not. One says no longer, " I am 
 here," or " I go there," for " Here " and 
 "There" are lost in one ever-conscious "I 
 am," just as Yesterday and To-morrow, Past 
 and Future, are merged into one unending 
 Now. 
 
 The Last Day was indeed come, but it was 
 God and not man who was bidden to the bar 
 of heaven ; it was the Creator not the creature 
 who was called to judgment. 
 
 As with one voice the people cried aloud, 
 saying : " Come forth, Thou who wouldst 
 judge us, and make answer for the wrongs 
 Thou hast done to man." 
 
 But God made no sign. 
 
 I saw in my dream, that from among 
 that vast assembly, gathered together like 
 sheep without a shepherd upon the plains of 
 
 38 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 Eternity, there arose one with uplifted arms, 
 who cried upon God, saying : 
 
 "Why hast Thou awakened us, O God? 
 We were a-weary and glad to be at rest ; for 
 though Thou didst make the spirit willing, 
 Thou didst make the flesh weak ; though 
 Thou didst ordain that man should be a little 
 lower than the angels, Thou didst also ordain 
 that he should be not far removed from the 
 brutes. And we were a-weary of warring 
 against lusts which we had not strength 
 to overcome ; a-weary of hoping hopes too 
 high for us to attain ; and we were glad 
 so glad ! to be at rest. Why hast Thou 
 awakened us, O God ? " 
 
 And again the people cried: "Come forth 
 Thou who wouldst judge us, and make answer 
 for the wrongs Thou hast done to man ! " 
 
 But God made no sign. 
 
 Then spoke a woman, wailing : " Thou 
 knowest my life, O God ! that I was poor 
 so poor ! and unlovely, and . alone. And 
 each day I awoke so weary that I had scarce 
 the strength to struggle up that I might go 
 
 39 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 forth to work for the day's bread. And night 
 after night I laid me down so tired too tired 
 to sleep. And, as I lay, the unendurable 
 thought of the burden which I must take up on 
 the morrow and every morrow ; and the still 
 more unendurable thought of dying, and being 
 thrust down among foul and rotting things 
 into black nothingness and decay, set my 
 heart leaping like the heart of the hunted 
 and desperate creature which hears the hounds 
 behind it, but sees no nook or cranny into 
 which to creep that it may escape their cruel 
 fangs. 
 
 " And so I lived, with the shadow of death 
 and the burden of life ever upon me ; and now 
 when my long slumber has come at last when 
 death's horror and life's hatefulness lie behind 
 now Thou hast called me back to the old 
 burden and the old pain. Why hast Thou 
 awakened us, O God ? " 
 
 And the people said : " Where is He who 
 would judge us ? Why comes He not forth 
 to answer for the wrongs He has done to 
 man ? " 
 
 40 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 But still God made no sign. 
 
 Then spake a man, saying : 
 
 " Have we not long enough been Thy 
 pitiful butt and jest, Thou Great Derider of 
 the Heavens, that Thou needest to waken us 
 out of our sleep to make sport for Thee 
 again ! 'Twere well done in Thee to set our 
 little puppet-play of a world a-going, that our 
 tiny woes and tears might afford Thee beguile- 
 ment and diversion. 'Twere well done in 
 Thee to make a seeming of goodness, by 
 giving us gifts of love and friendship, that 
 when they had most become part of our lives, 
 Thou mightest mock us by taking them from 
 us again. 'Twere a jest of infinite humour to 
 make life sweet that Thou mightest take it 
 from us when sweetest ; to set us in the con- 
 demned cell and prison of the earth, that we 
 might behold our companions taken out one 
 by one, as it were, to execution, not knowing 
 but that it might be our turn to be summoned 
 next. But that when the death we so feared 
 was faced and over, and the long-sought sleep 
 had come at last, Thou shouldst waken us to 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 make sport for Thee again, were a rare 
 jest truly! Give Thee joy of Thy jest, 
 O God ! but wilt Thou not come forth 
 that we may have sight of so cunning a 
 humorist ? " 
 
 And the people cried out : " Come forth 
 Thou who makest mock of us ; and answer 
 for what Thou hast done." 
 
 But still God made no sign. 
 
 Then spake again a woman : 
 
 " In sin was I conceived, among thieves and 
 prostitutes was I born. What chance had I, 
 who was brought up, even as a child, to the 
 vilest sin, as to a trade what chance had I 
 to be other than what I am ? Of mine own 
 will came I not into the world, but of Thine. 
 Answer, then, Thou who didst create a crea- 
 ture, foreknowing that that creature must 
 perish everlastingly answer for the deed 
 Thou hast done." 
 
 And the people cried out: " Answer, O 
 God ! for the deed Thou hast done." 
 
 But yet God made no sign. 
 
 Then spake one, saying : " 'Twas a cruel 
 42 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 deed and wanton, though at least this woman 
 suffers for the sins she did herself commit. 
 
 " But what say ye to a God who makes the 
 innocent to suffer for the guilty; yea, whose 
 boast it is that He visiteth the sins of the 
 fathers upon the children who did no wrong ? 
 Had any earthly judge dared, in the name of 
 justice, to pronounce such judgment and to 
 call it ' good,' the people would have arisen as 
 one man, cursing him and casting him out as 
 unworthy of his office. Is good evil, and evil 
 good, because God doeth it ? And shall the 
 Judge of all the earth do wrong, and none be 
 found to call iniquity, iniquity ? " 
 
 And the people cried : " What are our sand- 
 like sins compared to Thine ? Come forth 
 Thou who boasteth that Thou dost make the 
 innocent to suffer for the guilty ! Come forth, 
 and answer for what Thou hast done ! " 
 
 And yet God made no sign. 
 
 And as the people so cried, there arose from 
 among them a woman, entreating them to give 
 ear to her, saying : 
 
 " That evil might work out its own exceed- 
 43 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 ing bitter punishment and for guilty parents 
 to know that they have inflicted upon their 
 children a heritage of woe, must be bitter 
 indeed ! God suffered it that some share of 
 the consequences of what the parents have 
 done amiss should descend to the children. 
 
 " But do not the same children profit by the 
 things in which the parents have done well ? 
 And how shall they share the good, if they do 
 not suffer by the evil ? 
 
 "Shall He who is infinite Justice become, as 
 it were, a juggler, to conjure evil into good ? 
 And know ye not that were not misery swift 
 to overtake ill-doing, man had long since 
 made ?. hell of God's fair earth ? And shall 
 God work miracles, day by day, to save 
 man from the consequences of man's own 
 evil deeds ? 
 
 " But who of us can truly say of our lives, 
 that the evil was greater than the good ? that 
 the gladness was less than the grief? For 
 every tear that starts to the eye, our lips have 
 worn a thousand smiles. Love and friendship 
 and little children, fields and flowers, sea and 
 
 44 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 sky, sunshine and starlight, have made life 
 glad and beautiful. 
 
 " I say not that there is no misery in the 
 world, for were all things made plain, where 
 were then the test of our faith in God ? 
 
 " Not in the profession of blind optimism, 
 not in shutting our eyes to the mysteries 
 which surround us, and by protesting * All's 
 well with the world, therefore will I trust in 
 God,' does faith consist. 
 
 " If we have the fearlessness of perfect faith, 
 we say : ' Here is mystery dark and terrible ! 
 here are suffering and sorrow, the loving pur- 
 pose of which it passeth human wisdom to 
 comprehend. Yet must I cling to the faith 
 that God is good ; and in regard to the 
 sorrows I see, the suffering I endure, I must 
 through all in spite of all trust Him, and 
 hold to Him though He slay me.' For is not 
 our God Himself a suffering God, who sends 
 us no sorrows Himself has not undergone? 
 And who that witnessed the sufferings of His 
 Son and were ever sufferings like to His? 
 could have foreseen that the cruel Cross on 
 
 45 
 
Cod and the Ant 
 
 which He hung should hereafter be the 
 Finger-post to point the way to heaven ? or 
 that sounding through the Saviour's cry of 
 agony in the garden, God heard the triumph- 
 song of a ransomed world ? 
 
 " When you were children, you so took your 
 childish griefs to heart that life looked to you 
 like an eternity of woe, and your tiny sorrows 
 made sorrowful the whole world. Are the 
 tears of the child less bitter and less real than 
 the tears of the man ? 
 
 " But of these childish sorrows, how many 
 remained beyond the hour which called them 
 forth ? how many of the griefs, over which you 
 sobbed yourselves to sleep, endured till the 
 morning? how many are there of which as 
 much as the memory of them remains to you 
 now ? 
 
 " And when the White Morning of Eternity 
 has dawned at last, and you stand forth like 
 children newly risen strong in your noble 
 manhood, beautiful in your nobler womanhood, 
 and made perfect in the image of God then 
 shall your bitterest woe seem of as little 
 
 46 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 moment to you, as the tear which glistens in 
 the eyes of childhood, even while the laugh 
 leaps to the lips. 
 
 "Yet we His children have thought to 
 fathom the ways and wisdom of God by our 
 ways and our wisdom, thinking that our little 
 minds could encompass and set bounds to the 
 Infinite Mind. Can the ant crawl up into the 
 brain of man to see man's world as man sees 
 it? Yet has man, whose whole world is, in 
 the eyes of God, but as one ant in a uni- 
 verse, thought to creep into God's brain, 
 to think as He thinks, to see as He sees, 
 and to judge the Omnipotent by man's 
 little laws. 
 
 " One there is among you, whom I heard 
 crying out that he was a drunkard, because 
 his father was a drunkard before him. Then 
 is his the greater shame, seeing that he fell 
 not into sin unwarned and unawares. And for 
 every one who is a drunkard because his 
 father was a drunkard before him, are there 
 not many who have taken warning by their 
 father's sin, and will neither touch nor taste 
 
 47 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 the accursed thing, so that good has, in very 
 truth, come out of evil ? 
 
 "A woman among you has said that she 
 was a prostitute because her mother before 
 her was a prostitute, and has bidden God 
 make answer for creating a creature, fore- 
 knowing that that creature must perish ever- 
 lastingly. 
 
 " But can she foresee into eternity to know 
 what gifts are in store for her from Him who 
 has said that each shall be judged by his light 
 that from them to whom little is given, 
 little shall be required? 
 
 " And know ye not that the misery of the 
 world is of man's, not of God's making ? 
 
 " By man's tempting, not by God's decree, 
 did yonder woman's mother fall ; and there- 
 fore man's sin and man's punishment are the 
 greater. 
 
 " But who was it that, making in God's 
 name, laws unto themselves more abominable 
 in His eyes than the rites of heathendom, shut 
 fast in her face the only door by which the 
 wandering sheep, that He sent His Son to 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 save, could have returned to the fold who 
 but her sister-women ? 
 
 "Who was it that let the sinning-against 
 come and go in their midst, but drew aside 
 their skirts, as if her very touch were contami- 
 nation, from the sinned-against, and by their 
 looks, their words, or it may be their very 
 silence, hounded her out from among them, 
 driving her, in the very recklessness of despair, 
 from bad to worse, from sin to infamy who 
 but the very Christian women who should have 
 been the first to hold out a hand to save ? 
 
 " It is women who would have us to believe 
 that the weakness of an unguarded moment 
 must mean a lifetime's pollution ; that chastity 
 is the one and only thing which, once lost, can 
 never be regained ; and who, by robbing 
 God's creatures of their birthright of self- 
 respect and hope, have set open a gate to hell 
 in every home. Who was it that dared to 
 arrogate and narrow down, to one negative 
 meaning, the sacred names of ' virtue/ ' chas- 
 tity/ 'purity/ and 'honour'? Think ye that 
 she who, for the sake of his money, marries 
 
 49 E 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 the man she does not love, who sells herself 
 shamelessly and sordidly white body and 
 woman soul for so many hundreds or thou- 
 sands of golden coins is less ' fallen ' than she 
 who is a mother but not a wife? Think ye 
 that they only are ' immoral ' who have broken 
 one law of God ? that the woman whose lips 
 are defiled by lies is ' virtuous ' though her 
 body be chaste, or that a harlot is more hateful 
 in the sight of Heaven than the woman who 
 has set on foot a slander against her neigh- 
 bour ? 
 
 " Ye do well to call into question the justice 
 of a God who, if He had not tempered justice 
 with mercy, but had meted out punishment to 
 you according to your deserts, had not suffered 
 your iniquities and your hypocrisies thus long, 
 but had arisen in righteous wrath to strike 
 out your names from the Book of Life. 
 
 " Stand forth ye church-going, form-observ- 
 ing women, chaste, some of you, more from 
 self-consideration and fear of the world than 
 from love of purity or fear of God, or haply, 
 because you have never been tempted ; stand 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 forth ye who have pronounced judgment upon 
 your neighbours, calling this woman 'fallen' 
 or that man ' lost ' whom ye shall find among 
 the honoured and loved of God ; stand forth 
 ye who have dared even to pronounce judg- 
 ment upon your Maker stand forth, and take 
 your place at the bar to which ye have sum- 
 moned Him ! " 
 
 The woman ceased, and as her voice died 
 away, there arose one upon whom all eyes 
 were fixed. And he spoke to the people, 
 saying : 
 
 '* I am he who, when in like straits to yours, 
 did blaspheme as you, O my brothers and 
 sisters, have blasphemed ; I am he who hung 
 by the dying Saviour he who in the hour of 
 death and judgment did revile that Divine 
 Sufferer, even as you in your hour of judgment 
 have blasphemed the most Holy Name of 
 God. I am he whom, these many a hundred 
 years, ye have called the ' impenitent thief/ 
 knowing not the infinite mercy and power of 
 God. 
 
 " For, be it known to you that, as I hung in 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 that Sacred Presence, I saw, ere my spirit 
 fled, the people mocking and reviling Him, 
 even as I foul sinner that I am had mocked 
 and reviled Him. And I saw that, even as 
 He had answered me not, so He answered 
 them never a word, but lifting His eyes to 
 heaven, He prayed to His God and theirs, 
 ' Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
 they do ! ' 
 
 "And as He thus prayed, He turned and 
 bent on me, me, the outcast, the blasphemer, 
 the vilest and most impenitent of all that vile 
 and impenitent throng, such look of Divine 
 dignity, such look of infinitely pitying and 
 pardoning love, that, though my anguish- 
 racked body, heavy with approaching death, 
 hung, dragging its dead weight from the cross, 
 I forgot the straining of my torn and quivering 
 hands against the cruel nails, forgot the thou- 
 sand tortures which each heart-throb sent 
 through every nerve and limb ; forgot shame 
 and death and judgment, in wonder and 
 worship and love. 
 
 " To your knees, O brothers and sisters, and 
 52 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 sue for pardon, that even as I outcast and 
 blasphemer obtained mercy at that last 
 moment of my life, so may ye, blasphemers 
 and impenitent, be forgiven by the inter- 
 cession of the same Saviour who laid down 
 His life for us all!" 
 
 And many of the people, greatly trembling, 
 cried out : 
 
 " He speaketh truly. Let us kneel before 
 the God against whom we have done this 
 thing, and ask forgiveness in the name of the 
 Saviour Christ, who laid down His life for us 
 all!" 
 
 Then uprose one who spoke mockingly : 
 
 " Make not ye Christians too great a boast, 
 that your Christ did lay down His life for 
 others? Think ye that none but the Christ 
 has suffered death that others might live ? 
 The Christ did lay down His life to save a 
 world, knowing that in recompense He should 
 receive a kingly guerdon ; but men aye, and 
 feeble women have laid down theirs to save 
 a single soul in that world, though they looked 
 for no reward. He, to win the love of a wor- 
 
 53 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 shipping universe, endured death willingly, 
 assured that when His sufferings were accom- 
 plished, He should inherit eternal bliss. They, 
 for the sake of a brother-man or sister- 
 woman aye, for the sake of a principle or a 
 creed feared not to face the wild beast's 
 fang, the martyr's fire, and died, praising God 
 and glorifying His name. And this they did, 
 knowing not whether the death, which they 
 went forth of their own accord to meet, be the 
 Great Mesmerist, the Shadow of whose hand, 
 when it falls upon our faces, calls us from 
 Life's sleep and trance to Eternity's awaken- 
 ing ; or whether he be the Great Destroyer, at 
 whose transmuting touch man's spirit flickers 
 out, and is no more, and man's body dissolves 
 again into the dust whence it sprang. 
 
 "Who is this Christ that He should rule 
 over us ? Think ye that His triumph was 
 dearly bought, who for a few short hours 
 upon the Cross is recompensed by the throne 
 of Heaven ? " 
 
 And some of the people murmured, saying : 
 "He speaketh truly. The sorrows of the 
 54 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 Christ were but for a season. These many a 
 hundred years has He reigned secure in the 
 bliss of heaven, while upon earth, each minute, 
 a human heart was breaking. Hunger and 
 thirst, heat and cold, weariness of body and 
 sickness of soul, have been our portion. 
 Death and disease have had their cruel will 
 of us, and on every side was heard the cry of 
 mothers mourning for their children, children 
 for their mothers, wives for husbands, and 
 husbands for wives. Some of us died, starved 
 for want of bread for the body ; others and 
 theirs the bitterer pang heart-starved for the 
 want of the sympathy and love, without which 
 they could not live. 
 
 " And so we passed our days haunted by 
 the fear of death, and prey to disease and 
 torture, while He who calls Himself the 
 Saviour of man smiled down on us serenely 
 from the heavens, His sorrows long while 
 forgotten in eternal bliss." 
 
 But others crying out upon the name of the 
 Saviour Christ turned from him who had thus 
 spoken, saying : 
 
 55 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 " This man uttereth blasphemies." Where- 
 at he spoke again, and mockingly : 
 
 " Where is this Saviour of Men, this Christ 
 who tarrieth so long ? 
 
 " What if your God the jealous God have 
 slain Him, saying, ' Lo! this Christ, this God- 
 Man, has become greater than I, and draweth 
 all men unto Him ! Come, let us slay Him, 
 that the people may have none other God but 
 Me.' " 
 
 And as the mocker so spoke, I saw in my 
 dream, as I looked upon that vast assembly, 
 that ONE was standing in their midst, of 
 whose coming none had been aware One 
 whose features were the features of a man, 
 but whose face was the face of God. 
 
 All silently and unseen He came, as once 
 of old to His disciples, but upon that vast 
 assembly there fell a hush like the silence 
 which follows prayer. 
 
 And turning to him who had last spoken, 
 the Christ made answer : 
 
 " Thou who hast throughout the world's 
 history put it into the heart of man to do 
 
 56 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 devilries which no human passion could 
 inspire, which none but a devil could prompt 
 thou the author of all blasphemies and all 
 evil, who of old didst stir up war in heaven, 
 tempting the very angels of God to their fall, 
 comest thou at the last, thinking to work the 
 eternal ruin of man ? " 
 
 Then turning to the people He said : 
 " Look ye for the second coming of the 
 Christ?" 
 
 And with one voice the people chanted : 
 " We look for the Second Advent of the 
 Christ, who shall come again with glory, to 
 judge both the quick and the dead. Whose 
 Kingdom shall have no end." 
 
 And in a voice of infinite and wearied sad- 
 ness, He made answer : 
 
 " Even so of old awaited the Jews the 
 Coming of the Messiah. They looked for a 
 King and a Conqueror, and lo ! there came 
 unto them a helpless babe ! And even so, 
 come I unto you again the victim, not the 
 victor, the crucified, not the crowned, the 
 Christ of Calvary and Gethsemane, the bearer 
 
 57 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 of all your burdens, the sufferer for all your 
 sins. 
 
 " Did you indeed think, beloved, that while 
 you were suffering and sorrowing on earth, I, 
 your elder Brother and Saviour, could rest 
 content in the bliss of heaven ? that I ceased 
 to share your sorrows when my earthly life was 
 at end ? 
 
 "O mothers, who mourned for your chil- 
 dren, it was My heart that brake when you 
 fell sobbing by that tiny bed ! O little chil- 
 dren ! every hair of whose head is sacred unto 
 Me, to spare whose little feet one step on a 
 thorny road, I would endure and gladly a 
 Calvary of woes ! O weary men ! O lonely 
 women ! whose every sorrow I have known, at 
 whose every tear this heart of mine has bled 
 think you that any nail which wounded these 
 hands, these feet, on Calvary's Cross, stabbed 
 Me with so cruel a pang, as that which pierces 
 My soul at any sin or sorrow of yours ? 
 
 "You have suffered for a lifetime, but I, 
 until time shall be no more ; and even as 
 every sorrow of yours has entered into My 
 
 58 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 heart, so has every sorrow of Mine entered 
 into the heart of the Father. 
 
 " Said I not unto you that, ' Lo, I am with 
 you alway, even unto the end of the world ' ? 
 and thought you, that I could be with you, and 
 not feel with you, sorrow with you, suffer with 
 you ? 
 
 " But now is that end indeed accomplished ; 
 now are the powers of darkness for ever over- 
 come ; now is death, the last enemy, de- 
 stroyed ; and now render I up the Kingdom 
 to my Father, that God may be All, and in 
 All." 
 
 Whereat my dream passed, and I awoke 
 awoke so suddenly that I carried with me, 
 into the waking world, the words of a dream- 
 world prayer : " Lord Christ, who hast borne, 
 and dost continually bear, the burden of all our 
 sins and the burden of all our woes, grant that 
 I, at least, may never wound Thy heart, may 
 never add to Thy burden, by any wilful sin of 
 mine ! " 
 
 In at my open window, singing from the 
 gates of morning, came the cool sweet air of 
 
 59 
 
God and the Ant 
 
 early dawn. And as I arose and looked out, 
 I saw the rising sun burst like an incoming 
 sea against a breakwater through a dense 
 bank of cloud, flooding and glorifying the 
 haggard streets of London with glamour of 
 wizard gold. Above me upraised like the 
 draped arm of a priest who holds the cross 
 on high as he pronounces the benediction 
 I saw the purple dome of the Cathedral, up- 
 bearing the golden cross that soars above the 
 city. 
 
 And, as I looked, the rays of the low-lying 
 sun broke forth behind the brooding and cross- 
 crowned dome, casting the shadow, slant-wise, 
 and thrown out into vast proportions, across 
 street and square. 
 
 Below me, in the street, hurrying to their 
 work, I saw pass and repass, haggard men and 
 careworn women ; but in every face I saw the 
 sorrowful face of Christ ; and over the great 
 city yea, over God's whole world I seemed 
 to see resting 
 
 THE SHADOW OF A CROSS. 
 
 60 
 
THE 
 HEAVENLY 
 GRAFTING 
 
THE 
 HEAVENLY 
 
 GRAT IN 
 
 AN EVOLUTIONISTS DREAM OF 
 THE GARDEN OF GOD 
 
 GOD, the great Gardener, looked upon 
 that little patch of garden ground a 
 mere speck among the myriad worlds 
 in space which we call the earth. 
 
 And God said : " Many and fair are the 
 flowers abloom in my earth-garden. Yet in 
 all the world there is no flower so fair as a 
 good woman, and in all the world there is no 
 woman so good as Mary the maiden of 
 Nazareth in Galilee. Here is Humanity at 
 its highest. Out of the dust have I fashioned 
 man, and upward from the dust have I led 
 him, step by step, and stage by stage. 
 
The Heavenly Grafting 
 
 Here is the culminating point. Higher than 
 this, unaided by me, Humanity may not attain, 
 for in this maiden I behold Humanity's fairest 
 and most perfect flower. Yet the earth-flowers 
 bloom but to wither and to fall. Here shall 
 the old order change, for upon this, the fairest 
 and most perfect flower abloom in the garden 
 of earth, will I engraft the Flower of all 
 flowers that blooms in the garden of heaven. 
 Upon Mortality I will engraft Immortality, 
 upon the Human I will engraft the Divine. 
 And the blossoming of the Flower that shall 
 come of that union shall bring, to all the 
 gardens of the world, Eternal Spring. The 
 dead weeds of the world shall lie lifeless where 
 they have lain, but wherever a flower has 
 bloomed and fallen, there shall come with the 
 coming of that Flower which is called the 
 Christ, a stir at the dry roots, a quickening 
 of the sleeping sap, and lo ! all the gardens 
 of the world shall bloom again, and no 
 flower which has once bloomed shall ever 
 die." 
 
 64 
 
The Heavenly Grafting 
 
 And man man that until the coming of 
 the Christ knew scarcely more of God than 
 the caterpillar which has climbed to the top 
 of its blade of grass, and can climb no farther, 
 knows of the heaven beyond who shall say 
 where the upward evolution of man shall end, 
 since into humanity has come a power outside 
 itself that makes humanity divine ? 
 
THE 
 
 'ACE 
 THE 
 
THE 
 BEVbN 
 
 ACE 
 
 DGOR 
 
 A MAN who was lonely of soul sought 
 the solitude of his chamber on Christmas 
 night. 
 
 To the young, Christmas is a season of 
 gladness, but the man was no longer young, 
 and though, rather than mar the gladness of 
 others, he had put aside his sorrow, and taken 
 part with smiling face in the day's rejoicing, 
 yet now that the little ones lay snugly abed 
 (each tiny fist fast closed upon that talisman 
 of happy dreams, a treasured toy) now that 
 the lights were lowered and the last guest 
 gone, the smile dropped, a discarded mask 
 from his face, as he seated himself, with 
 unseeing eyes, by the ashes of a dead fire. 
 
 He remembered that, earlier in the evening, 
 the fire had shone out upon him, like the 
 
The Face 
 
 welcome upon a loved face ; that all the 
 warmth and light and cosiness had seemed 
 centred and reflected there as in a mirror, 
 and he had marvelled to think that what at 
 one moment had been dry tinder and dead 
 clod should spire at a touch into live spirits 
 of leaping flame, like the dust upon which 
 God breathed when He said, " Let there be 
 life!" 
 
 But now the dead fire seemed to gather to 
 itself all the menace of the night, all the gloom 
 and iciness that shuddered in each corner of 
 the chamber. The heart of it that had once 
 burned red now seemed to freeze black, like 
 an imagined moon, unwarmed and unlighted 
 by any sun. The stealthy cracking of the 
 cinders, as they contracted, chilled him as the 
 ominous cracking of ice chills the heart of 
 the skater. Yet the man sat on, his hands 
 splayed open, palms outward, brooding over 
 the spot where once had been the blaze, even 
 as the sick in soul brood over a vanished 
 sorrow. 
 
 And as he sat it seemed to him that an 
 70 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 Angel stood beside him, so that the haggard 
 room was filled with warmth and colour and 
 light. 
 
 And the Angel said : 
 
 " The Christ is heavy of heart because of 
 you. The Christ whom, on this, His day 
 of days, you have utterly forgotten, has, this 
 day, borne you in especial remembrance. He 
 has seen that, full as is your life, yet one 
 thing there is for lack of which you let 
 what remains of your youth consume away 
 as by a wasting fire ; one thing the absence 
 of which turns all your sunshine to shadow. 
 
 " Wherefore, that the cause of your sorrow 
 may evermore be removed, this is His Christ- 
 mas gift to you that whatever you shall 
 this day wish shall, this day, be granted." 
 
 And looking at him wearily, the man made 
 answer : 
 
 "How know I that your master be not the 
 same Satan who, ere this, to achieve infernal 
 purpose, has assumed angelic guise ? You 
 come to me saying, ' The kingdoms of this 
 world and the glory thereof are yours for 
 
The Face 
 
 the asking. Speak your wish and it shall be 
 granted.' But even so of old have others 
 been tempted of Satan. What sign then have 
 you whereby to satisfy me that your errand is 
 not of Hell, but of Heaven ? " 
 
 And the Angel said : 
 
 " A baby boy lay once upon his mother's 
 knee. His parents were poor, and the child's 
 birth-chamber was humble and rude a mere 
 shed to shelter them from wind and rain and 
 very dark. 
 
 " The child's earliest memory was the starry 
 shining of his mother's eyes. There was a 
 time when all his world was heavened under 
 the fair firmament of her face. Its stooped 
 oval was scarcely less steadfast in his little 
 heaven than the sun is daily steadfast in your 
 sky, and even when he let his eyes stray from 
 her eyes, and wander away from the pure 
 arch of her brows into what, to his baby 
 eyes, seemed infinite space there were always 
 her eyes to which to come back, when the 
 little wanderer felt cold and lonely and 
 forlorn. 
 
 72 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 " But one day the child awoke from sleep to 
 find the heaven of his mother's face had gone. 
 With a cry of fear he raised his head to look 
 for her. Instinctively his baby eyes were 
 drawn to a something which glimmered white 
 and square in the darkness the one rude 
 window that lighted the place. It was but a 
 rectangular hole, cut in the side of the shed, 
 open to the outer air, and unprotected save for 
 the fact that two iron bars one stretching 
 from top to bottom, the other from side to 
 side had been set therein to close the way 
 against the entrance of prowling thief or wild 
 creature of the plain. 
 
 " Did that little child, looking now for the 
 first time at the Cross, thus outlined against 
 the twilight sky did that little child dream of 
 the close of an awful day to come, when three 
 stark and cross-hung figures should be seen 
 against the darkening skies of a world that 
 had crucified its God ? 
 
 "For that little child was the Christ, and 
 the sign for which you ask, whereby to prove 
 that I come to you in His Name, is the sign 
 
 73 
 
The Face 
 
 of the Cross, which I now make between you 
 and me. Is it enough ? " 
 
 The Angel paused, but, with unseeing eyes 
 astare, the man sat unmoved, and answered 
 him never a word. 
 
 Again the Angel spoke : 
 
 " Haply you are still unsatisfied and seek 
 less simple a sign. 
 
 " Is there not in that very simplicity that 
 elemental simplicity something of deliberate 
 and Divine intention ? The soldier may 
 perish in the desert where is never a stone to 
 mark his grave, but his comrades lash one 
 twig upon another, and over the desolate 
 resting-place, of him whom Christ died to save, 
 is set the symbol of Eternal Life. Once the 
 badge of infamy, to-day it stands for all that 
 is highest in humanity, divinest in God, for 
 in naught else is God so divine as in the 
 humility that stooped to take upon Himself 
 man's mantle of flesh, man's sorrows, and 
 man's doom." 
 
 The Angel paused, and waking as it were 
 from a dream, the man answered him sadly : 
 
 74 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 "If any sign I seek, it is a sign whereby to 
 assure myself that you are not an imagined 
 creature begotten and born in my own sick 
 brain. For this night, as I sat here, I held 
 commune with myself, and to myself I said, 
 ' Were an angel from God were God 
 Himself to appear before me, bidding me 
 wish the wish of my heart, and it should 
 be granted, I should ask not riches, nor 
 fortune, nor fame, nor the applause of men, 
 nor the love of women, but only the assurance 
 of Eternal Life.' " 
 
 75 
 
II 
 
 THEN said the Angel : 
 
 "In all ages of the world there have been 
 men and women among them many of earth's 
 noblest who are sceptics by nature, who 
 seem constitutionally incapable of accepting 
 aught which cannot be proved. 
 
 " Upon such as they, God forbid that 
 you or I should sit in judgment. What they 
 believe, or do not believe, must rest between 
 themselves and God. But when a man who 
 has once been of the company of the faithful, 
 and has in very truth entered into the inner 
 mysteries which are revealed only to the eye 
 of faith, falls from faith, as you have fallen, 
 then indeed is Christ wounded in the house 
 of His friends ; then indeed are we in the 
 presence of tragedy dire and terrible. That 
 
 76 
 
The Face Beyond the Door 
 
 such an one should come to believe that God 
 can forget ; that the men and women whose 
 trust in God has been complete and unwaver- 
 ing, who, year in, year out, have lived as ever 
 in God's sight, shall at the last be allowed to 
 drop into dead nothingness, forgotten and 
 forsaken of the God whom they trusted, is 
 to come face to face with tragedy, soul- 
 slaying tragedy, compared to which the 
 tragedy that is concerned with the slaying of 
 the body is scarce worthy a thought." 
 
 For a time there was silence. Then again 
 the Angel spoke : 
 
 " There was once a man who was a dreamer. 
 He was a child of Eternity, dreaming the 
 dream of Time, and even while he dreamt, 
 he was half-awake and knew that he was but 
 dreaming. To others, a thought might be the 
 very byword for all that is intangible and unreal. 
 To him what they counted realities, were the 
 only unrealities. Things and persons had no 
 existence except in his thoughts of them, and 
 had he opened his eyes one morning to find 
 that this world, and the things and persons of 
 
 77 
 
The Face Beyond the Door 
 
 this world, were gone for ever, he would but 
 have sighed and said, * At last, then, the 
 awakening for which I have waited has come, 
 and now I am asleep no longer.' 
 
 " Not that he set thought above conduct. 
 He held, and rightly, that he who, knowing 
 that his own life, could it be seen of all, would 
 give the lie to his words, is yet willing to make 
 wares of righteousness by preaching it for pay 
 from a pulpit, or by publishing it for sale in 
 a book, is a sorrier knave than he whose busi- 
 ness is the circulation of false coin, for whereas 
 the one tampers with a currency that has been 
 minted by man, the other debases the coinage 
 which bears the image of God. 
 
 "Would'st thou 'think truly,' then 'live 
 truly,' was the axiom of his life, and of those 
 who thought truly, he would fain believe that 
 the heart of them, at least, was set upon 
 righteousness." 
 
Ill 
 
 " THE lad held that God answers prayer. He 
 was not so superstitious as to suppose that the 
 All-Wise One will confuse the issues of a 
 universe at a creature's bidding. Shall he, who 
 sails east, ask the Lord of the Four Winds to 
 speed his voyage by favouring gales, when 
 haply one, who sails to the west, is praying for 
 winds from the east ? The lad knew well that 
 God would not be God, did He not withhold 
 the gift that is unwisely asked, the gift that 
 we seek in a narrow and selfish spirit, the gift 
 that can only be granted at cost of another's 
 loss. But he knew, too, that the child, whose 
 simple prayer is lisped, what time her little 
 head is pillowed on her mother's knee, is less 
 near to her earthly mother, than the man, the 
 very thought of whose heart is a prayer, is 
 
 79 
 
The Face 
 
 
 
 near to the Father in Heaven ; and that, 
 though God may deny the material gift for 
 which we ask, that He may give us a spiritual 
 gift of greater excellence, yet to those, who 
 unfailingly rest in Him, will He as unfailingly 
 give their heart's desire. 
 
 " The lad was a hero- worshipper. So 
 supreme an influence for good were certain 
 books ; so inseparably associated were they 
 with all that is noblest in humanity ; so in- 
 tensely did they make for righteousness and 
 perfection, that he would not be persuaded that 
 the writers of these books could rest content 
 with anything which came short of such 
 righteousness and such perfection as they 
 pictured. 
 
 " Hero-worshipper though he might be, 
 however, he was not so blind a worshipper 
 as to fail to see that certain of his idols had 
 feet of clay. That this singer was known to 
 love the gaming-table, that artist the wine-cup, 
 he would not attempt to deny, but his invari- 
 able answer was : * So much the less singer, 
 the less artist, he ! Wherein he sinned, therein 
 
 80 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 his art has suffered ; yet was there never true 
 artist who in his heart of hearts did not realise 
 and revere the beauty of holiness. 1 
 
 " The man could not but so believe, for to 
 him all art was but a thought in the mind 
 of God. 
 
 " To the pseudo-artist and word -juggler, who 
 assured him that the fact of a book being good 
 or bad in its influence or its intention, has 
 nothing to do with its value as a work of art ; 
 that the book or picture must be judged by 
 the fact whether it be well or ill-written, well 
 or ill-painted, he would reply : ' You may say 
 so, if you choose so to say, and you may, and 
 with equal reason, say that the coming and 
 going of the sun have nothing to do with the 
 coming and going of day and night ; that day 
 is day, and night, night, whether the sun cease 
 to rise, or continue constant in the heavens. 
 Your saying so will not alter eternal principles, 
 and though one is far from desiring that art be 
 self-consciously ethical, the fact remains that 
 the highest art is unconsciously so, if only 
 for the reason that the higher the art, the 
 
 81 G 
 
The Face 
 
 nearer it approximates to a pure thought 
 of God.' 
 
 " In the presence, therefore, of great pictures 
 or in the recital of brave deeds, in the hearing 
 of high music, or of a true poem, at sight of 
 the least of the flowers of the field the soul 
 of the man knelt, or stood instinctively at 
 prayer. 
 
 " And each morning, when the white wonder 
 of the dawn, bubbling up in the East, like 
 water rising from a spring, to over-run meadow 
 and glebe, and then swelling in volume, like an 
 incoming tide upon a level beach, sending 
 billows and rollers of light to wash clean the 
 tainted atmosphere of the world, till the morn- 
 ing air was cool and sweet and crystalline 
 as the sands which are left by a receding tide 
 beneath the feet each morning was to the 
 man as newly wonderful as was the face of 
 the risen Christ to those who watched by the 
 sepulchre each morning was a new resurrec- 
 tion from the dead ; a new and sacred promise 
 of Immortality. 
 
 "In the drag of the day, in the heaviness of 
 82 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 late noontide, when all nature is at lull, when 
 strength slips away from the body, and thought 
 stands still in the brain, the angel in the man 
 seemed sometimes to lapse back into the 
 animal, and, for the moment, the life of the 
 senses enticed with invitation lovelier and more 
 alluring than the life of the soul. 
 
 " But each evening, as he dreamed himself 
 out into the sunset, all that was noble would 
 reawaken. 
 
 " Though, since the world's beginning, there 
 have never been two sunsets alike, yet in each 
 sunset found he ever that which was anciently 
 familiar that which set such strange stirrings 
 in his veins, as might stir in the veins of those 
 who, born of the same father and mother, look 
 each upon the other's face, not knowing that 
 they are of one blood. 
 
 " It was so that the sunset seemed to call 
 him, and it was so that the soul of him went 
 out to claim kinship with the sunset. 
 
 " At the little old church, where he had 
 worshipped in the morning of his days, it 
 had been the custom, during prayer, for the 
 
 83 
 
The Face 
 
 congregation reverently to kneel, while some, 
 who were stricken in years, as reverently 
 stood. And to him when, at eventide, all 
 Nature was at her orisons, the petals of the 
 flowers seemed like little hands folded in 
 prayer, while the great trees those grey- 
 beards of meadow and garden stood, like 
 the aged worshippers in the church, in sacred 
 and silent commune with God. 
 
 "And, indeed to the man it seemed as if 
 not only all Nature were at worship, but as 
 if the great world itself had become, as it were, 
 a little child of worlds among the worlds of 
 wise old stars. For at hush of even, the world 
 itself seemed kneeling. On the world's lips 
 was silence, yet to the listening man, that 
 silence was a prayer. Not now the morning 
 prayer that asks material blessing, but the 
 eventide prayer of pure and adoring worship ; 
 not the prayer of many words, but the prayer 
 so fervent that its words are few. * Our 
 Father, which art in heaven. Hallowed be 
 Thy Name. Amen.' These were the words 
 into which the prayer on the world's lips 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 seemed to frame itself; and, as the kneeling 
 worshippers repeat, after the minister, the 
 words with which he leads them in prayer, 
 so from the lips of the man the same words 
 fell. And in his heart was peace. 
 
 "To him, at such moments, it seemed as 
 if the lost Garden of Eden lay now beyond 
 the setting sun. It was the Presence of God 
 walking therein in the cool of the day, to hold 
 commune with His creatures, which gave such 
 glory and glamour to those sky-gardens of the 
 west. Then would the man point up to the 
 sunset, crying out, ' Dear God, all that the soul 
 of me loves, all that I seem to have lost my 
 boyhood's hopes, my manhood's strivings, my 
 love-dreams, my little angel child they are 
 not really lost. They are there, there, with 
 Thee, among the crimson and purple and gold. 
 The evil that which is not of God dies, but 
 all that is good, lives on for evermore." 
 
 The Angel paused. Then continuing he 
 said : 
 
 " You who make mock of the dreams of 
 youth ; you to whom the comfort of the body 
 
 85 
 
The Face Beyond the Door 
 
 is of more moment than the life of the soul ; 
 who hold that ' there are no such men as we 
 fable,' that it matters not whether a book or 
 picture be good or evil, so long as it be ' art ' ; 
 to whom death is the end of all, the Christ but 
 a man, and God little more than the Maker of 
 a vast system of machinery, from which, having 
 once set it a-going, He turns away, heedless 
 whether the world, like some huge wheel, 
 crush underneath or carry upwards with it, 
 in its revolution, the pigmy creatures with 
 whom He has peopled it answer me, do you 
 know this man of whom I have told you ? 
 Behold now I show you his face. Look well 
 thereon and make avowal whether it be familiar 
 or strange." 
 
 And with a cry the man made answer : 
 " I know it. Tis the face of the man who 
 once was, but now is not. The face of the 
 man God meant me to be." 
 
 86 
 
IV 
 
 "Wnv did you not become that man?" said 
 the Angel sternly. 
 
 "Ask the God who took my boyhood's faith 
 from me," cried the man passionately. " God 
 knows I did not want to lose faith. But can 
 one control the thoughts that come and go in 
 the brain ? " 
 
 " Once you believed in the life to come," 
 said the Angel, "but now you believe therein 
 no longer, and for this your loss of faith you 
 make a grievance against God a grievance 
 even against your fellow- creatures, whining to 
 them in abject and impotent self-pity, because 
 Death waits for you, and you fear Him. And 
 when they make not haste to cast from their 
 own shoulders upon yours the mantle of their 
 
 87 
 
The Face 
 
 pity, you rail against the unsympathetic selfish- 
 ness of man. 
 
 " Why should your fellow-creatures bestow 
 upon you the alms of their pity, seeing that 
 they are subject to a like fate to yours ? Is life 
 less sweet to them than to you? Or shall they 
 suffer one pang less than you in that last 
 awful giving up of the ghost which all mortals 
 dread ? Tis not the pity of God or of man 
 that you need, but searching and relentless 
 self-examination. 
 
 " Faith is to the soul what health is to the 
 body. 'Tis unnatural to disbelieve. Doubt is 
 too often the first symptom of a sick soul the 
 danger-signal giving warning that all is not 
 well with the soul, just as fainting and nausea 
 give warning that mischief is at work with the 
 body. 
 
 " And to the sick in soul, as to the sick in 
 body, the first question of the physician must 
 be, ' What of your life ? Are you living it for 
 evil or for good ? ' ' 
 
 The Angel paused as one who awaits an 
 answer. 
 
 88 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 But with sullen face and averted eyes 
 the man sat huddling with outstretched 
 palms over the dead fire, and answer came 
 there none save the shamed answer of his 
 silence. 
 
" Do you believe in God?" asked the Angel at 
 last. 
 
 "I do ! " said the man. " That belief not 
 all the discoveries of science have shaken, can 
 ever shake. No one shall persuade me that 
 this wonderful body of ours to take only one 
 wonderful thing in all this universe of wonders 
 organs doing our bidding, unbidden and 
 automatically, whether we sleep or wake ; 
 hands that open and shut without the exertion 
 of conscious will-power, as if in anticipation of 
 our lightest wish, and with finger-tips, of which 
 no two are alike in all the many million 
 millions of human beings in the world ; eyes 
 that even as they look can signal to the brain 
 a score of colours in as many flowers, that can 
 read in other eyes the secret thought of other 
 
 90 
 
The Face Beyond the Door 
 
 souls, or at a glance can cross and compass the 
 space between this world and the farthest star ; 
 to say nothing of the brain which conceives, 
 the soul that cries after, and is akin to, God 
 no man, I say, can persuade me that all this 
 arose originally (just as fire arises out of the 
 striking together of flints) from what has been 
 termed a * fortuitous concourse of atoms.' 
 
 " It seems to me that those who cease to 
 believe that this world, with its punctual alter- 
 nation of day and night, and unerring return 
 of Spring (that rainbow of the seasons, which 
 comes, after winter storm and snow, to assure 
 us of the faithfulness of God, and shines across 
 the troubled face of a rainy sky, like laughter 
 in a child's eyes while still the tears are wet 
 upon the little cheeks) it seems to me that 
 those who can attribute all this, as well as the 
 miracle of child-birth, to blind happening of 
 chance, rather than to the design of an 
 Omnipotent Creator, should be the last to 
 hurl at others the reproach of superstition ' 
 and 'credulity.' It is we, not they, who are 
 4 sceptics. Compared with such a theory of 
 
The Face 
 
 life as theirs, our reasonable belief is but to 
 make a mouthful of a gnat, while they, in their 
 credulity, swallow entire camels. 
 
 " Even could they prove that this world is, 
 as they say, the outcome of ' a concourse of 
 atoms,' my faith would remain unshaken. 
 Resolve me this world back into a single 
 primordial atom, resolve me a man into an ape, 
 and the ape back to an amoeba, and my belief 
 in God, my wonder and worship, are greater 
 than had He seen fit to call man and ape and 
 amoeba into being at a word. 
 
 " Men speak to-day of science being antago- 
 nistic to religion. They speak as if that 
 theory of life which they call Evolution were 
 a contradiction instead of a confirmation of 
 belief. 
 
 " If anything can restore my lost faith in 
 Immortality, it is this same doctrine of Evolu- 
 tion or truth of Evolution as I hold it to be. 
 The very Scriptures, at which the unbelieving 
 scoff, trace the rise of our race, upward from 
 the dust, to the human in Adam, and from the 
 human to the Divine in Christ. It is unscien- 
 
 92 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 tific, it is a flat contradiction of Evolution, to 
 believe that out of one type shall evolve 
 another and a higher, and out of that higher 
 type shall evolve one higher still, and so on, 
 and on, through countless upward stages and 
 ages only to hold that death breaks the 
 continuity by ending all. 
 
 " It has been said that if man were once an 
 ape, is not that the greater reason why one 
 day he should become an angel ? Unbeliever 
 in Immortality as I am, there are moments 
 when old faiths revive, even as to the sincerest 
 believer there are moments when faith falters. 
 Inconsistent it may be, on the part both of the 
 believer and the unbeliever, but to be inconsis- 
 tent is only to be human ; and at such moments 
 I tell myself that if Evolution be indeed the 
 Fingerpost of Science, it is heavenward and 
 Godward that Evolution's finger points. 
 Science is the truth of the natural world, just 
 as religion is the science of the spiritual world. 
 The one is built up atom by atom by the 
 brain : the other already is, but may be seen 
 only by the eye of the soul The one is a 
 
 93 
 
The Face Beyond the Door 
 
 lighthouse to warn the mariner off the rocks ; 
 the other is the star in the sky, by which he 
 steers. When our knowledge of the natural 
 world is equal to our knowledge of the spiritual 
 world, then will Science and Religion shine 
 forth in perfect and beautiful accord." 
 
 94 
 
VI 
 
 THE man paused with eyes aglow, and looking 
 at him curiously, the Angel said : 
 
 " Believe you all this, and yet deny Im- 
 mortality ? " 
 
 " Listen," replied the man. 
 
 "That God concerns Himself about the 
 welfare of the world, about the welfare of the 
 race, I make no doubt ; but that He concerns 
 Himself to consider separately the welfare of 
 each individual member of that race, I have 
 ceased to believe. God's plans for the future 
 of this world, this universe, no man may know. 
 Even as a teacher wipes away from a black- 
 beard the chalked words or figures with which 
 he has proved a proposition or worked a sum, 
 so from the face of the heavens God may see 
 fit, ere to-morrow's morn, to wipe away, like 
 
 95 
 
The Face 
 
 vain scribbling, His handwriting of constella- 
 tions, comets, moons, planets, nebulae, and 
 Milky Way. The time may come I believe 
 will come when, suddenly by fire, or slowly 
 by cold, He will make of this earth of ours a 
 moon to shine coldly by night, or a sun to 
 warm by day another world than ours. 
 
 " Even should He will that the human race 
 and this world continue, the fact remains that 
 though humanity may be, and perhaps is, 
 immortal immortal the individual man is not, 
 save only so far as something of himself 
 shall survive in the children of his body or of 
 his brain. In the children he has begotten, 
 the work he has done, or in the words he has 
 written, some essence of himself shall yet be 
 found after the body of him has ceased to 
 quiver with ecstasy or pain, the heart to beat, 
 the brain to think. ' Man is immortal till his 
 work be done.' Like the coral zoophyte that 
 comes into being and lives and dies that it may 
 contribute its tiny shell to the building of the 
 central reef, so we human beings play our 
 infinitesimal part. And having provided for 
 
 96 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 the carrying on of God's scheme by obeying 
 the instincts of reproduction, that others may 
 come after us to carry on the work which we 
 have continued or begun then like the coral 
 zoophytes we die and cease to be, as little 
 regarded and remembered of God as they. 
 
 " Yet man, the egomaniac of created beings, 
 has presumptuously dared to claim for himself 
 that which is the attribute only of God. It is 
 arrogance, gross and colossal, for me to 
 suppose that my little ego is of sufficient 
 importance to continue to exist after I have 
 lived out the brief life which God has granted 
 me here. 
 
 " Who am I to claim for myself an eternal 
 place in the eternal scheme ? This world, that 
 scheme, existed before I was, and will continue 
 to exist when I have ceased to be." 
 
 97 
 
VII 
 
 THEN said the Angel : 
 
 " You have called yourself inconsistent, and 
 inconsistent you assuredly are. First, you 
 profess your belief that God is all-powerful, 
 and in the next breath you speak as if you set 
 limits to God's power. To create, to call into 
 existence a creature, to breathe therein that 
 very essence and spark of God at which men 
 and angels must never cease to wonder, but 
 never can explain that something which is 
 called 'life' is surely more incredible, more 
 inconceivable, than that a living creature, 
 having once come into being, should never 
 more cease to be. In all the world, all the 
 universe, life, and life only, is divine. All 
 else planets and suns and stars are but 
 dead matter ; and the animalcule which the 
 
 98 
 
The Face Beyond the Door 
 
 microscope makes visible in a drop of water 
 is more marvellous than they. If one thing, 
 and one thing only, be certain, it is that only 
 out of life does life come. And all life, could 
 we trace it to its source, leads back to God. 
 The science of to-day may trace life's stages 
 from man to the ape, and from the ape back- 
 wards through countless forms to the amoeba, 
 but sooner or later the science of to-day comes 
 to a dead stop. It is not what science has 
 found out, but what she has not found out 
 that completes the chain. Every century sees 
 science place the origin of life farther back. 
 Before science had learnt to make use of the 
 microscope, the animalcule in the water was, 
 though man knew not of that animalcule's 
 existence. A hundred years hence, man 
 may learn to make use of some other new 
 mechanism, compared to which, your micro- 
 scope of to-day is but a schoolboy's toy a 
 mechanism which may reveal forms of life so 
 minute that, in comparison with them, the 
 animalcule in the water shall seem a very 
 monster. But what the science of to-day, or 
 
 99 
 
The Face 
 
 of a thousand aeons from to-day, cannot, and 
 never will be, able to explain away, is life. 
 We may label it by this or that name, and, 
 seeing it so labeled, foolish men and women 
 may be content to call it by that name and to 
 cease to wonder, just as they cease to wonder, 
 many of them, at the miracles by which a 
 child, a sparrow, or a flower is born. But in 
 all the world, life, and life only, is divine, for life 
 comes from life, and all life leads back to God. 
 
 " Answer me. Do you doubt that the God, 
 who called life into being, has it in His power, 
 if He so choose, to continue to man the life 
 which God Himself has begun ? " 
 
 " I do not doubt it," replied the man. 
 
 Then said the Angel : " You doubt neither 
 the existence nor the power of God, but if 
 there be a God, as you believe, surely you 
 must admit that God to be good. Savages 
 may conceive a Supreme Power who is evil ; 
 civilised men and women, never. And would 
 a good God call into being men and women 
 and little children, implanting imperishably in 
 their hearts the belief in, and the craving for, 
 
 100 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 immortality setting in those hearts a love 
 towards each other which is surely immortal 
 since it is the nature of God HimselfV-jojily t;o, 
 make mock of them at last by robbing , them 
 alike of life and love and immortality ? Would 
 you be content to let your little child, and your 
 tender thought for that child, all the infinite 
 father-love of your heart, pass out of your life 
 for ever? Yet you stand to your child pre- 
 cisely as God stands to you, with this difference 
 that the sum of all the father-love, all the 
 mother-love of the world, boundless as that 
 love may be, is not equal to the love of God 
 for any one of His creatures. To compare 
 your love to His love, is to set a single sun ray 
 against the gleaming father-sun whence all 
 light comes to liken a drop of water to the 
 mother of all waters the sea. 
 
 "Other loves may not be all unselfish, all 
 unsoiled of the flesh, but the ecstasy, with which 
 a mother hugs and gathers her child to her 
 heart, is the one pure passion, the white flame 
 of which casts no shadow, since, like God's 
 love, it seeks only to give. 
 
 101 
 
apd rbJoopi in due season, 
 * .* .*?ft en 3-nd women, He set 
 : 'tafity In their souls, knowi 
 
 The Face 
 
 " Just as a gardener sets seeds in the soil to 
 lie dormant for a time, and then to spring up 
 ad rbJoopi in due season, so when God made 
 
 the seed of immor- 
 knowing that motherhood 
 and fatherhood would call it into flower. Nay, 
 I go farther than this, and say that, were there 
 no promise of a hereafter in the Scriptures, had 
 Christ never come, and were there no word 
 of immortality in all the natural and spiritual 
 world I am persuaded that belief in immor- 
 tality is a flower which would have sprung, 
 self-seeded, in the garden of a mother's heart. 
 I am persuaded, even that had God not planned 
 immortality for His creatures, He would not be 
 the God He is, could He look upon human life, 
 human love, and most of all upon the love of 
 father and mother for their child, and refuse 
 to grant to them and to their child, the 
 immortality for which they crave. 
 
 "A little maid once said that she knew 
 there was a heaven because of the presence of 
 flowers on earth. Her mother, she said, had 
 shown her dandelion-down afloat upon the 
 
 102 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 wind, and had told her it was thus that the 
 first flowers had come, wind-seeded from 
 heaven. 
 
 " 'Twas but a pretty fable to take the 
 fancy of a child, but it is a fable which has 
 a meaning for God's children of older growth. 
 
 " The presence of beauty on the earth is 
 surely a witness to the love of Him who is 
 Eternal Loveliness. Tell me that Nature 
 bestows those colours upon the flower to 
 attract the bee, that this effect comes of 
 Evolution, that of Natural Selection, and I 
 shall not say you nay, for Nature does> indeed, 
 seem to evolve out of herself that which she 
 requires for her own purposes and for the 
 maintenance of life. But it was God, the 
 Eternal Loveliness, who tinted that sunset 
 sky, who gave those changing colours to the 
 sea, who made the rainbow that flower of 
 the sky which blooms and withers betwixt 
 sunshine and a shower an arch of living, 
 luminous opal and pearl. 
 
 " Has art, which men miscall long art, 
 which is not long, but eternal no inner 
 
 103 
 
The Face Beyond the Door 
 
 meaning to your eye ? Has music no message 
 for your ear? music, of which one of the 
 great of the earth once said, 'Away! Away! 
 thou speakest to me of things which in all 
 this life I have not found, and in this life 
 shall never find ' ; music which is surely angel- 
 speech heard of mortal, but as yet untrans- 
 latable to mortal ear ; music which is none 
 other than the sound of the deep waters of 
 Eternity breaking on the shallow shores of 
 Time?" 
 
 104 
 
VIII 
 
 AGAIN the Angel spoke : 
 
 " You say that you have ceased to believe 
 in Eternal Life. It seems to me that the 
 falling from faith of you, and such as you, 
 goes farther back, and that you have ceased 
 to believe in Him who is Eternal Life that 
 what is at fault is not so much your faith in 
 immortality as your faith in God." 
 
 "It is God's care for the individual of 
 which I seek to be assured," repeated the 
 man. " The question whether I have failed, 
 or have not failed in faith, matters nothing 
 in comparison with the question whether 
 God the Creator has called into being a 
 creature no matter whether that creature be 
 man or mouse, horse or bird, dog or ant 
 only to leave that creature, like a fatherless, 
 
 105 
 
The Face 
 
 motherless foundling cast out upon the street, 
 to starve or to be fed, to live in comfort, or 
 to perish miserably as the cruel chance may 
 be. Even earthly parents may not so re- 
 pudiate their responsibilities. Mothers have 
 faced death a thousand times for the sake of 
 their child. The very bird in the hedge will 
 yield up its little life in defence of its brood. 
 Yet we, God's children whether of the human 
 race or of the dumb creation come into this 
 world, only to be left to the tender mercies 
 of the cruellest of all foster-mothers, Dame 
 Chance. 
 
 " Last summer, as I walked in my garden, I 
 heard a fledgling sparrow chirruping merrily 
 under a bush. Possibly he had by accident 
 dropped out of his nest, and, by making 
 parachutes of his wings, had so broken his 
 fall as to reach ground without taking hurt, 
 and was now in a flutter, between pride and 
 fear, at his own daring. For a few minutes 
 I watched him ruffling it as roguishly as a 
 robin, now cocking his glossy head at a 
 sprawling worm, now stropping his tiny beak, 
 
 106 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 razor-wise, upon a twig, and twittering lustily 
 meanwhile for very joy of his freedom and 
 of his merry youth and of the summer 
 morning. 
 
 " But, alas ! as into the First Garden there 
 stole and slid the serpent, so, into our later 
 gardens, a fanged and spitting creature, of 
 like cruelty, crouches and watches, with belly 
 to the ground, to spring upon its prey ; and 
 lest my small sparrow, so merrily at matins 
 under a bush, should find some prowling cat 
 to play at clerk by saying Amen to his 
 matins and thereafter making an end of 
 them, and of him, I chased the feather- 
 surpliced chorister into a corner, and in spite 
 of the valorous onslaught of his beak, set him 
 high up upon a cedar bough. Whether the 
 fact of my placing him there led him to 
 suspect some trap or ambush from which he 
 must make haste to escape, or whether it was 
 sheer flurry and fright which brought him to 
 the ground, I cannot say, but scarcely was 
 my back turned, before again he had taken 
 cover under the bush. Again I caught him, 
 
 107 
 
The Face 
 
 setting him, this time, high on an ivied 
 window-ledge where cat could neither climb 
 nor leap ; and yet again he came to ground. 
 When I had a third time set him out of 
 reach of danger, and he had a third time as 
 resolutely come back to it, I thwarted the 
 small malcontent no longer, but returning to 
 my hammock, I insinuated myself therein and 
 with my fingers between the pages of a book, 
 lay a-swing in the sunshine as in the centre 
 of a golden globe. For a time I forgot both 
 book and bird. Then suddenly my golden 
 globe shattered into darkness at a sound 
 a mere thimbleful of sound a scream of 
 terror and agony, so tiny and yet so haunting 
 and so horrible, that I seem to hear it even 
 now. 
 
 "A tame rook, that has the run of my 
 garden, had pinned the sparrow, breast upward, 
 under his talons, and, as I looked, was stabbing 
 the life out of him with iron beak. For the 
 wee bird no happy warbling among the 
 leaves ; no happier rearing of his young. It 
 seemed to me as if he had been robbed of 
 
 108 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 his right to live, and though it is but what 
 happens somewhere every hour perhaps 
 every minute of each summer day, the 
 sight of that helpless nestling, done to death 
 in the June sunshine, and by one of his 
 feathered kin, turned me sick and faint with 
 horror. 'Twas murder, bloody and cruel, 
 and in thought I could not forgive the God 
 who had made a world upon such a plan." 
 
 Then said the Angel : 
 
 " You know no more of God's purpose than 
 that sparrow knew of yours. To the fluttering 
 nestling, well nigh panting out his tiny life in 
 terror, you seemed some cruel monster, hunt- 
 ing him down to kill, whereas your thought 
 was but to place him beyond reach of 
 danger. And you lost patience with the 
 little creature that, haply, God had committed 
 to your care. Thrice only did you succour 
 him and then, manlike, left him to his fate, 
 and now would throw upon God the blame 
 for the death which you countenanced. 
 
 "Had God dealt with you as you dealt 
 with God's bird ; had God not borne with 
 
 109 
 
The Face 
 
 you, not thrice, but thrice three thousand 
 times, where had you been to-day? And if 
 God saw fit to set that little creature singing 
 in the green groves of Paradise (and who 
 dare say that God has no place in His 
 universe for the sparrow, that God Himself 
 has told us is evermore within His care!); 
 if God saw fit at the cost of a moment's pain 
 to take His bird happier than ever for the 
 knowledge of danger for ever past where 
 danger shall menace never more, what is that 
 to you ? " 
 
 "It may be that you are right," answered 
 the man. "It may be that for the wings 
 which could not carry the bird beyond reach 
 of the danger which lurks in an earthly 
 garden, God gave that little creature wings 
 which could bear him afar to the garden of 
 God. From a harp or violin, which is out 
 of tune, comes not music but discord. It may 
 be that even as a musician screws tighter and 
 tighter each separate string, till the whole 
 instrument be in harmony, so the racking of 
 nerves which we call pain may be no more 
 
 no 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 than the touch of God's hand, tuning the 
 strings of men's souls to sweet accord, that 
 out of discord shall come harmony, out of 
 brief suffering shall come eternal bliss ! 
 
 " But listen ! 
 
 " I had a friend whom I loved more dearly 
 than a brother the truest, gentlest, most 
 stainless, and unselfish of gentlemen. For 
 many years he and I, and two other close 
 friends and cronies, constantly met and walked 
 and talked or sat at table together. He was a 
 frequent visitor at my house, and occasionally 
 would accompany me to the homes of the 
 other two members of our circle ; but none of 
 us was ever asked to his. Naturally we made 
 no comment upon this, either to him or to each 
 other. If among friends we must remain 
 silent about matters which are told us in confi- 
 dence, it is even more sternly imperative that 
 we remain silent in regard to matters concern- 
 ing which confidence is withheld. 
 
 " One day (I shall never forget it) he opened 
 his heart to us. 
 
 " ' You must have wondered to yourselves,' 
 in 
 
The Face 
 
 he said, ' why it was that I have never asked 
 any of you to my home. I had hoped to have 
 gone to my grave without speaking, but now 
 my hands are forced. For eighteen years my 
 wife has been a drunkard. Now, God help 
 me ! she has gone, as women who drink, too 
 often, do, from drink to worse if anything can 
 be worse in a woman than the systematic 
 bestialisation of herself by drink. But she 
 has gone, as I say, from drink to worse, and 
 for the sake of my daughters, who are just 
 growing into womanhood, I am compelled to 
 divorce her. Up to now no word of this has 
 ever passed my lips. On the contrary, I have 
 lied consistently and deliberately, that others 
 might be led to believe, as you have been led 
 to believe, that my home was happy and that 
 she was the best of mothers and wives. Of 
 that lie I am unashamed, for it was not an 
 untruth of the heart. Had I for any reason, 
 or for no reason, to face the scaffold, God 
 knows that, God helping me, I would climb 
 that scaffold with tripping step and smiling lips, 
 rather than that any emotion of mine should 
 
 112 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 give zest and edge to the gossip of the canaille 
 over their cups. Think, then, what it meant 
 to a man of my pride to know his wife, the 
 bearer of his name, the mother of his children, 
 for a shameless drunkard ! You have wondered 
 sometimes that one, who is still comparatively 
 young, should be thus prematurely aged. You 
 have wondered that my hair is grey and thin, 
 that my nerves are shattered, my body feeble 
 and bowed, and that I speak with embittered 
 spirit and barbed tongue. Had you grown to 
 hate God's very sunlight, as I have, because, in 
 the sweet but searching light of the sun, the 
 secret of my shame and of her sin was more 
 apparent than by night your wonder would 
 cease. 
 
 " ' At night the unsteady step, the bottle 
 slipped under a cloak, and brought from that 
 depot of the devil whither she had gone, 
 ostensibly, to purchase groceries, but in reality 
 to take away gin these might escape a neigh- 
 bour's eye. With the fellow who sold it to her 
 the secret was like to be safe. Scandal of 
 another sort might be whispered across a 
 
 113 i 
 
The Face 
 
 counter or over teacups. It could do no more 
 than stab at a woman's reputation, a man's 
 honour, but business secrets since they affect 
 the takings of the till must among men of 
 business be held sacred. The firm of Satan & 
 Co. has its agents in high as well as in humble 
 places, and has touts of all sorts, saints and 
 shopmen, statesmen and sinners, at work 
 extending its ancient trade, but at few estab- 
 lishments is so roaring a business driven, as at 
 those Ticket Offices for Hell where a 
 husband's earnings are supposed to be spent 
 in groceries, but in reality are squandered in 
 brandy, whisky, or gin. 
 
 " ' I had hoped, as I say, to have kept my 
 hideous secret to myself, but now, alas ! 
 secrecy is no longer possible. Recently I was 
 compelled to remain the whole of the night by 
 the bedside of a patient for whose life I was 
 fighting hand to hand with death. Next 
 morning at five, as the crisis was past, and the 
 patient sleeping, I crept home in the grey of 
 the dawn that I might snatch a few hours' rest 
 before commencing the work of another day, 
 
 114 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 only to find that my wife had availed herself of 
 my absence to get drunk, and while in that 
 condition had admitted into my house, under 
 the very roof where her young daughters were 
 sleeping, a villain with whom I now learn she 
 has long been carrying on an intrigue. Upon 
 the man, feeble as I am, I have put a mark 
 which, please God, he shall carry to his dying 
 day. It is a mark seeing which all shall say, 
 " That disfigurement was done to a villain and 
 a blackguard by. the man whom he had foully 
 wronged." 
 
 "'The woman, for her children's sake, I 
 spared but to small purpose. She was placed 
 under lock and key, but a fox is not more 
 cunning than a dipsomaniac under the craving 
 for drink. She contrived in some way to 
 escape, and being found drunk in the streets, 
 was taken to the station. I made strenuous 
 efforts to keep the case from coming before a 
 magistrate, and so appearing in the papers, but 
 she was equally set on courting scandal. She 
 saw in this public washing of dirty linen a 
 means to injure, perhaps to ruin me. People 
 
The Face 
 
 hesitate to call in a doctor who cannot order 
 his own house decently, or who comes, 
 perhaps to a critical case, with harassed mind 
 and nerves unstrung. There is no madness 
 so cruel as the madness which is born of a 
 woman's lust of drink. To injure the very 
 man whom she has most cause to love, 
 the man who is fighting for her soul with 
 the devil, and to save her from herself, she is 
 ready to involve him, herself, and her children 
 in one common ruin. The prostitute on the 
 street is less shameless ; the suicide is less 
 reckless than the woman who has drowned in 
 drink the angel which God sets in the bosom 
 of every woman. Men may, and do, soak 
 away their manhood. It is hateful, it is 
 hideous that they should do so, but when the 
 angel in a woman dies, the angel's place is 
 taken by a devil from Hell. 
 
 " * The rest is soon told. There was a 
 terrible scene in court, the unhappy woman 
 shouting my name hysterically to the reporters 
 that everybody should know, as she said, 
 whose wife she was. She accused me of 
 
 116 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 being a man of drunken habits as well as an 
 unfaithful husband, and when the magistrate 
 said he could not listen to her, she refused to 
 leave the court, and had to be removed 
 forcibly, screaming out shamelessly, as she 
 went, the story of her unfaithfulness, and 
 declaring that it was my wickedness which had 
 driven her to it. 
 
 " ' That is what drink can do to one who 
 had once been a pure woman, a good wife, and 
 a loving mother.' ' 
 
 117 
 
IX 
 
 THE man paused in his story, and when he 
 spoke again, his words were like a challenge 
 thrown in the face of the listening Angel. 
 
 " The friend of whom I have told you is 
 dead. His heart was broken. The woman 
 who was once his wife still lives, but of the 
 vileness of the life she leads I may not speak. 
 
 " I passed her in the street to-day, and the 
 face of her was so shameless, so bestialised by 
 vice and drink, that I searched in vain for a 
 sign, not only of her Divine origin, but of her 
 womanhood, of her very humanity. 
 
 " It may be that, even on earth, pain and 
 suffering have some ultimate outcome in good. 
 But out of the bestialisation of a soul, it is 
 surely impossible, even to God, that good can 
 come ; and that God could bring into the world 
 
 118 
 
The Face Beyond the Door 
 
 an immortal soul, most of all a woman, fore- 
 knowing that she would sink to such an abyss 
 of degradation, that God could do this, makes 
 me sometimes feel that rather than believe in 
 such a God, one does God honour by refusing 
 to believe in a God at all." 
 
 As the man's voice ceased, it seemed as if he 
 slept within his sleep, as if he dreamed within 
 his dream ; from which sleep, from which 
 dream, he presently awakened, crying out : 
 " I have seen a vision." 
 
 "What saw you therein?" inquired the 
 Angel. 
 
 " I saw in my dream the place to which pass 
 the souls of them who in life have been slaves 
 of strong drink. I had thought to see some 
 manner of prison-house, Hades or Purgatory, 
 yet to me it seemed less like a place of punish- 
 ment than of healing for the sick of body and 
 of soul. It seemed indeed as if nowhere else 
 in the universe was the expense of God's pity 
 so tender and so infinite as in this place, where 
 I saw faces degraded out of all human likeness 
 by debauchery and drink. I remember that in 
 
 119 
 
The Face 
 
 some strange way the dwellers therein were 
 aware of, and were witnessing, the daily life of 
 the woman of whom I have been speaking, the 
 woman whom I passed this day in the street, 
 the woman who was once the loved and 
 honoured wife of my dead friend. They saw 
 her staggering, sottishly drunk, in the streets ; 
 they saw her strike brutally at her child when 
 the little one cried out wanly, weakly, for 
 bread ; they saw her bartering soul and body 
 alike in an infamous traffic for the blood-money 
 wherewith to buy more drink. 
 
 " Whether I were in that prison-house for 
 long years, as indeed it seemed to me then, or 
 but for a moment, as I now suppose it must 
 have been, I cannot say, but I know that in 
 presence of the terrible object-lesson of that 
 woman's life, which they were compelled thus, 
 in their own despite, to witness, some sense, 
 some realisation, of its loathsomeness, seemed 
 to awake, even on the faces of the most 
 degraded. 
 
 " Slowly, subtly, 1 saw the stubbornness, the 
 shamelessness, of those drink-debauched faces 
 
 1 20 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 soften into some semblance of humanity, of 
 womanhood. 
 
 " In the eyes of one poor creature, wit- 
 nessing thus the sinnings of her sister woman, 
 I saw loathing and horror grow. * God of 
 Pity, have mercy upon me ! ' she cried in 
 agony, and, as the words left her lips, I 
 heard a sound like the thankful sigh of listen- 
 ing angels. And when yet another woman, 
 witnessing her earth-sister's shame, cried out 
 in even more terrible agony of soul, 'God 
 of Pity, have mercy upon her / ' there came 
 the sudden happy harping of saints in 
 Heaven ; and she who had so spoken, her 
 face strangely beautiful, passed out of that 
 place, and I saw her no more. 
 
 " Then, looking back upon earth, I beheld 
 death come swiftly, mercifully, to the sinning 
 woman ; and it seemed to me, ere the vision 
 passed, that her soul was winging its way to 
 the same place of repentance." 
 
 The man ceased, and for a season he was 
 silent. When again he spoke, his voice was 
 passionate, yet pleading. 
 
 121 
 
The Face Beyond the Dooi 
 
 " Was this all a dream, born of sad 
 memories?" he asked, "or is there, beyond 
 the grave, some such prison-house as that I 
 visioned ? " 
 
 And very gently the Angel made answer : 
 " The veil which hides the mysteries of 
 the spirit world may not for mortal be with- 
 drawn. May it not be, however, that these 
 things are a parable ; and that what you have 
 seen is God's word to you, that you may 
 pause ere yet again you say that, even to God, 
 it is impossible that, out of the degradation 
 of God's creature, good may come ? " 
 
 122 
 
X 
 
 WHEN next the man spoke there was a new 
 note of hope in his voice, and from his face 
 something of the heaviness of his doubt had 
 passed. 
 
 " Is there aught else that still troubles 
 you ? " asked the Angel. 
 
 "Only this," said the man. "They, who 
 should know better than I, would persuade 
 me that to modern science it is possible to 
 associate this or that attribute of a man with 
 this or that portion of his brain. Here, they 
 say, in this particular cranny, are located 
 the grey cells whence man's moral sense 
 comes ; here is yet another centre which is 
 responsible for his perception of what is 
 beautiful in art. Injure or destroy, by acci- 
 dent or design, this set of brain cells, and 
 
The Face 
 
 the man's moral sense is correspondingly 
 either injured or destroyed. Destroy or do 
 injury to the parts where are performed the 
 processes by which he writes poems, paints 
 pictures, or composes music, and a like result 
 will follow a like cause. The brain, they say, 
 secretes thought, as the liver secretes bile, 
 and out of that thought grew the conception 
 of a soul. But the soul, they would persuade 
 me, is nothing more than a higher manifesta- 
 tion of the brain, and, like the brain since 
 both are material may and must be des- 
 troyed. 
 
 '" If this be true, if the researches of science 
 have incontrovertibly proved that brain and 
 soul are one and the same, then man's dream 
 of a soul, which survives the dissolution of the 
 body, beautiful as that dream may be, is gone 
 for ever." 
 
 " Do you believe that you have an immortal 
 soul ? " inquired the Angel. 
 
 "There was a time when I did so believe," 
 replied the man, "and there are times when 
 I am not far from so believing now, but more 
 
 124 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 often than not I look back on that belief as 
 one of the lost illusions of youth." 
 
 And the Angel made answer : 
 
 " If the Devil were in need of a lie to serve 
 some evil purpose, he would look for it, not 
 among the recorded words of those whom 
 the Churches have excommunicated and de- 
 nounced as antichrists and deceivers. Rather 
 would he choose to make search among the 
 musty-fusty collection of so-called truths which 
 hallowed by universal acceptance and the 
 dust of centuries lie pigeon-holed away as 
 self-evident, self-proved and unassailable. Of 
 all these ancient and lying adages, the Devil 
 finds no such tool for his purpose as that 
 which would have men to believe that youth 
 with its dreamings is foolish, and age with 
 its disillusionment, wise ; for as has been said, 
 * There shall come a time when man shall 
 awaken from his lofty dreams to find his 
 dreams still there, and that nothing has gone 
 but his sleep.' 
 
 " Tell me, do you remember your mother 
 and the manner of her passing ? " 
 
 125 
 
The Face 
 
 " I remember," answered the man. 
 
 " Describe to me that passing," said the 
 Angel. 
 
 "It was from peritonitis, and the agony was 
 so terrible that the doctors mercifully kept 
 her under opium, up to the moment of her 
 passing. I shall not soon forget that passing. 
 The drug had been administered at frequent 
 intervals, and in such large doses that if the 
 brain and the soul be one, and subject there- 
 fore to the laws of matter, then must the 
 very soul and brain of her have been para- 
 lysed and put out of all action by the opium. 
 Under its influence the face was scarcely 
 recognisable, for of the eyes wide open as 
 the eyelids were only the whites seemed 
 visible, and she lay with every sense so 
 drugged and drowned that a log had scarcely 
 been less capable of a conscious thought. 
 
 " Suddenly, in an instant, there was a 
 marvellous, a miraculous change. I say a 
 4 change,' yet none of us saw any change take 
 place. It was but that the other face had 
 gone, and that in its stead there looked out 
 
 126 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 at us the beautiful saint-face of one of the 
 holiest and most Christ-like of women. And 
 never had those eyes looked at her husband 
 and at her children with more conscious love 
 than then. And on that face was a light 
 which I may not describe, since not in all 
 the wonderful world is there aught to which 
 it may be likened. But, seeing that light, we 
 who stood in the darkened room, hand clasped 
 in hand around the bed, felt for a moment 
 as if we were in the very Presence of God. 
 And with that light on her face, and with such 
 look of infinite and tender love in her eyes as I 
 shall never see in human eyes again, she died." 
 
 " Whence came the light, whence came that 
 look of conscious love ? " asked the Angel. 
 "If the soul and the brain be one, then from 
 your own showing the brain of her was so 
 drugged and drowned in opium that a log, as 
 you have said, had been scarcely more incapable 
 of conscious thought." 
 
 And steadfastly the man made answer, " I 
 believe that what I saw was the passing of a 
 pure and saintly soul to God.'' 
 
 127 
 
XI 
 
 SUDDENLY the man stirred in his sleep. Christ- 
 mas had come and gone, for the clocks were 
 striking twelve, and soon upon the midnight 
 clear came the carillon of cathedral bells 
 chiming a hymn: 
 
 Our God, our help in ages past, 
 
 Our hope for years to come ; 
 Our shelter from the stormy blast, 
 
 And our eternal home. 
 
 " Do you know that hymn ? " said the Angel 
 softly. "It is the very anthem of eternity. 
 Though but two hundred years old as it now 
 stands, it seems ancient as humanity. It is 
 easy to believe that, far back in the morning of 
 the world, when man was first groping after 
 God, was first stretching feeble hands into the 
 
 128 
 
The Face Beyond the Door 
 
 dark, if haply somewhere amid the darkness he 
 might find the hand of the unknown, unseen 
 Father it is easy to believe, I say, even thus 
 early in the history of the race, that the cry of 
 the creature, after the Creator, would shape 
 itself into some such words as these. It 
 sweeps the whole gamut of the ages. It is 
 as true to you, to-day, as it was to your fathers, 
 and it was as true to your fathers' fathers, as 
 it was to the far back progenitors from whose 
 loins the race first sprang. And when you 
 have become of no more moment in this world 
 than the specks of dust which are whirled by, 
 on the winds of a winter that is dead and gone, 
 that hymn will be as true to your children, 
 and to your children's children, as it is to the 
 anxious, timid, yet trusting hearts of to-day. 
 
 "It is more than the anthem of eternity to 
 which I have likened it. It is a pledge and 
 promise of Immortality. 
 
 " Whether some atom of the dust of Moses, 
 on whose words the hymn was founded, be 
 blown hither and thither on some sandy 
 Palestinian plain, is neither mine nor yours 
 
 129 K 
 
The Face Beyond the Door 
 
 to know, but that the thought, which first 
 called the words of the hymn to the lips of 
 Moses, is alive to-day, millions can bear 
 witness. And shall the thought be looked 
 for among the quick, and the Soul, that gave 
 birth to that thought, be looked for among the 
 dead ? As well believe that man, the creature 
 man who was once but a thought in the 
 mind of God shall survive to see his Creator 
 perish."" 
 
 130 
 
XII 
 
 AGAIN the man slept and dreamed. 
 
 In his dream he saw a walled Eastern 
 city, the four-square houses of which, low- 
 domed as the clay-built kraal of the beaver, 
 clustered (like meadow-mushrooms upspringing 
 amid fallen rocks) around columned temples, 
 palaces, and towers. Overhead the sun 
 burned in a sky so blue, that temples, towers, 
 palaces, and the rounded roofs under which 
 the populace was thick-hived, gleamed like 
 washed marble, or whitened in the glare, like 
 linen which housewives spread to bleach upon 
 the grass. 
 
 And in the chief street of the city a turbulent 
 mob of men, women, and children, some un- 
 clean of person, and clad in ragged gaberdines, 
 filthy as the garbage that festered in the street 
 
The Face 
 
 corners ; others spruce, turbaned and richly 
 robed, pressed howling and hooting where a 
 solitary prisoner strode between two files of 
 soldiery. 
 
 One knew by the bound wrists that He was 
 a prisoner, else by His royal bearing, the 
 majesty of His brow, and the native grace and 
 dignity with which He moved, one had 
 thought Him to be some great monarch 
 moving to the judgment throne amid massed 
 and acclaiming multitudes. 
 
 Looking at that advancing Figure, tall as 
 the tallest of the picked Roman guards, erect, 
 spare, soldier-like, noting the superb poise of 
 the head upon the shoulders, the strength and 
 stateliness of the stride, one ceased to wonder 
 why it was that half a score of grown men, 
 greedy of gain, and made bold by avarice, had 
 incontinently left their overturned money-tables, 
 and fled panic-stricken from the Temple, rather 
 than face a whip of small cords in the hand of 
 a single man. 
 
 Remembering that He was of gentle birth 
 and noble lineage, remembering that the blood 
 
 132 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 of kings ran in His veins, one might have 
 thought it was contempt for the rabble, yelping 
 beside and behind Him, which lent such "lift" 
 and aloofness to the nobly-formed head. 
 
 But as one so thought, one remembered too 
 that it was from the very poor His disciples 
 had been chosen, and that He had elected 
 to be despised as a Nazarene and the friend 
 of publicans and sinners. Remembering, too, 
 that He had made choice of the carpenter's 
 bench, at which to work, beholding the infinite 
 humility, the boundless compassion which 
 softened the awful fire of those sin-accusing 
 eyes, the onlooker realised that here was One 
 to whom the very scum, the outcast, the fallen, 
 and the lost, of His fellow-creatures must be 
 sacred ; One who even for the vile must 
 entertain compassion, but never, even for the 
 vilest of the vile, contempt. 
 
 One's first thought at sight of that Figure 
 was a thought of sheer joy the supreme and 
 sunny joy with which the heart of a happy 
 child suddenly over- wells the joy of June 
 mornings when all the world is made anew ; 
 
 133 
 
The Face 
 
 when we waken to see, through the open 
 casement, Summer, who has been up before 
 us, go singing on her way with an armful of 
 flowers ; and when there is never a moment 
 that the air around us is not a-ripple with 
 bird-song, or with the shaken silver bells of 
 baby-laughter or child-speech. 
 
 Looking at that advancing Figure, all Life's 
 fetters seemed suddenly to fall away, all Life's 
 flowers seemed suddenly to burst into blossom. 
 Now, at last, and for the first time, could it 
 be realised that man was indeed made in the 
 likeness of God, for into this imperfect world 
 had come One who, though of like flesh and 
 blood to ours, was perfect and pure and 
 beautiful, alike in body and in spirit ; and, at 
 sight of this perfect and beautiful work of God, 
 the heart of humanity could not but sing in 
 sheer joy, for now at last might humanity 
 tower to perfection, now might flesh and blood 
 spire into spirit. 
 
 Yet, as one drew near and beheld the awful 
 sorrow of that face, the joy that sang in one's 
 heart quivered suddenly into a stabbing 
 
 134 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 dagger, for from those eyes looked out all the 
 sorrow of all the world. One endured moment 
 of such sorrow, as lay behind those eyes, had 
 slain the man who was no more than man. 
 Only God could endure such sorrow and 
 live ! 
 
 To say that in realising that upon this single 
 soul was laid the burden, and was laid the 
 blame, of all the sin and sorrow of the world, 
 and that in realising this fact one realised also 
 that He was a willing bearer of the burden, is 
 but imperfectly to express the thought which 
 the sight of that Figure aroused in one's mind, 
 since " willing " implies consent, rather than 
 choice, submission rather than command, 
 whereas of that Figure every onlooker felt 
 instinctively that here was one to compel, not 
 to acknowledge, allegiance ; one who obeyed 
 no dictate save the dictate of His own soul, 
 and, in obeying His own soul, served and yet 
 ruled by right Divine. 
 
 In the same sense, notwithstanding that He 
 walked with bound wrist, one felt it was He 
 who held His captors captive ; not they, Him. 
 
The Face 
 
 In all the crowd no churl raised cowardly hand 
 to strike at Him, but was aware in his heart 
 that had the Christ so willed it, the arm which 
 was raised against the Holy One had withered 
 at the shoulder. They knew, those dastards, 
 that He who had healed the sick and raised 
 the dead, yet scorned to use His powers in 
 His own behalf; and this knowledge it was 
 which gave new zest to the malignity with 
 which they struck at that defenceless head. 
 
 As He walked, a thrown flint smote Him on 
 the brow, cutting the delicate flesh to the bone, 
 yet, save to wipe aside the trickle of blood 
 that ran into His eyes, He gave no heed to it, 
 nor troubled even to turn His head to see 
 whence the missile came. 
 
 Yet when, later, an onlooker, striking 
 savagely at Him, caused Him to stumble 
 for a moment against the soldier who walked 
 at His side, the Christ turned with such grace 
 of high breeding, such courtly smile, to crave 
 pardon for the mishap, that, compelled instinc- 
 tively to the respect which the common soldier 
 accords to the officer, the hind to the gentle- 
 
 136 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 man, the rude Roman stood unconsciously at 
 salute. 
 
 Only once did the awful aloofness of the 
 Christ give place to more awful anger. In all 
 that surging mob His was the one face upon 
 which no passing mood was mirrored. At 
 Him the trained soldiery, forgetful of drill and 
 discipline, and driven in their own despite to 
 wonderment at such fortitude, might turn in 
 the ranks to stare, but by Him was no curious 
 gaze returned. He, the object of the crowd's 
 cries and scorn, was the one soul present by 
 whom neither cries nor scorn were heeded. 
 
 Suddenly the cries ceased. A score of 
 yards away a crowd was gathering, and thither 
 the inconstant mob, greedy to peer and pry, 
 and hoping for some new victim upon whom to 
 wreak its spite, scurried like clucking hens ! 
 
 But still that solitary prisoner steadfast- 
 eyed, august, inscrutable strode on, aloof alike 
 from fear, from hate, from scorn, and from 
 idle curiosity. 
 
 As the little band of guards, with the 
 prisoner in the midst, came nigh to the cause 
 
 137 
 
The Face 
 
 of the disturbance, the crowd, fearful of the 
 soldiery, fell back. A woman of the streets, 
 her baby at her breast, was dancing wantonly, 
 and at each lewd gesture the ribald onlookers 
 jeered and cheered anew. As the Christ 
 passed the woman, He turned to look sorrow- 
 fully upon her, and on meeting the challenging 
 purity of His eyes, she reeled as one reels at 
 the lightning flash, and then sank with bowed 
 head upon her knees, crying out, " Unclean ! 
 Unclean ! Lord of all Holiness, speak but the 
 word and I shall be pure ! " 
 
 Whereat an evil-faced priest spurned her 
 with his foot as she knelt, so that she and 
 her child fell to the ground. And at that sight 
 there blazed from the eyes of the Christ such 
 fire of divine wrath as with fists tight clenched 
 He strained against His bonds that He might 
 strike the miscreant to the ground that even 
 the rude soldiery of Rome, meeting that glance, 
 quailed and fell away from where He stood. 
 
 Then to the dreaming man the scene of his 
 dream shifted. 
 
 Night had come and fitly, for even then 
 
 138 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 was being done the deed on which Nature 
 herself, shuddering and horror-stricken, had 
 refused to look ; the darkest and most awful 
 deed in the world's history the Sin of sins, 
 the Crime of crimes, the murder by the men 
 and women, whom He came on earth to save, 
 of humanity's Maker and God. 
 
 Yes, night had come, though it was but the 
 sixth hour of the day, yet never before had 
 such night made strange the earth, made fear- 
 ful the heavens. With the night had come 
 darkness not the merciful darkness that fast- 
 closes the shutters of sleep, that steals over the 
 tired brain and lulls the tired body to rest ; not 
 the darkness that hides away the hovels of 
 earth and makes manifest the glittering star- 
 ramparts which fortress the palaces of heaven ; 
 but a hideous, haunting, semi-darkness, like 
 the twilight of Hell a darkness that was not 
 all dark, but was pregnant with horror and 
 with the menace of unimaginable evil. 
 
 As if from some smiling face the flesh had 
 suddenly fallen, laying bare the grinning bone 
 beneath, so from the face of the sky the light 
 
 139 
 
The Face 
 
 had faded, and where, but a moment before, 
 the sun had been empty darkness gaped as 
 from the eyeless sockets of a skull. Yet over 
 the face of the earth, rising like some miasmic 
 exhalation, there came and went, uncertainly, 
 strange phosphorescent lights the outcome, 
 it may be, of smouldering subterranean fires 
 within now, and for the first time, become 
 visible because of the darkness ; a light which 
 made more unearthly the most awful scene 
 which mortal eye has witnessed. 
 
 For a moment the earth and the darkness 
 which had closed around it seemed to sway 
 together like interlocked wrestlers come to the 
 death-grip. The earth reeled, as reels the 
 spent wrestler whose strength fails him, and 
 then, as if from under the cloak of night, the 
 one had treacherously drawn dagger on the 
 other, came the swift stab of the lightning. 
 Beneath the feet of the bystanders the earth 
 leaped and shuddered, as if smitten to the 
 heart, and, following upon the lightning, there 
 fell such crash of awful thunder as shall never 
 again on earth be heard till that dire day when 
 
 140 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 God shall toss man's world a dead end of dry 
 tinder to the central furnace of a sun which, 
 in its turn, shall become fuel, to feed the 
 fires of a sun that lightens another universe 
 than ours. 
 
 And in the lightning's flash the man saw the 
 whole scene that was outspread before him. 
 
 He seemed to be standing upon the outskirts 
 of the same city. The land, that lay nearest to 
 the city wall, was tilled and cultivated, or laid 
 out into walled gardens, with here and there 
 a house, planted around with trees. Farther 
 out the ground was broken and uneven, and, 
 save where a herdsman had built himself a 
 hut and weeded out a stone-enclosed patch of 
 garden, had in many places been allowed to 
 run to waste. 
 
 One spot in particular, that rose in a slight 
 declivity, was terraced by step-like ridges, bare 
 as picked ribs, whitening on the desert sands. 
 The summit of the declivity was formed of 
 hard rock, domed and polished like the upper 
 half of a skull, and surrounded by a low and 
 loosely-built wall of stone. 
 
 141 
 
The Face 
 
 And here, against the pall of dead night, was 
 to be seen the cross-hung figure of the prisoner 
 who, like some great monarch moving through 
 massed multitudes to his throne, had that day 
 passed on to Calvary and to the cross. 
 
 Looking upon that scene, that figure, the 
 dreaming man realised how blind, how misled 
 have been many of those who have essayed 
 to depict that scene, that figure, on canvas 
 or in stone. Too often they do no more than 
 show us a tortured and crucified man, with 
 hanging head and glazed eyes, broken, bleed- 
 ing, and shrunken of body ; sorrowful, even 
 abject of mien ; a figure of infinite pathos, 
 infinite anguish ; a subject inviting infinite 
 tenderness, infinite pity, infinite tears. 
 
 Pity ! Looking upon that figure the 
 dreaming man dared less to think of pity 
 than, standing in that sacred presence, to 
 blaspheme. 
 
 Anguish and tears of compassion, anguish 
 and tears of repentance, anguish and tears 
 of remorse ! But pity ! The very angels of 
 heaven had shrunk in horror from the impious 
 
 142 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 mortal who dared to offer the alms of his 
 pity to the God whom that mortal's sins had 
 stretched upon the cross. 
 
 For here was no man, come and compelled 
 to the last awful giving up of the ghost. Here 
 only was God taking with both hands to put 
 off as a king might put off his crown the 
 dear human life to which the human heart of 
 Him so passionately clung; the life to part 
 with which it cost Him such black anguish of 
 horror as it has never entered into the heart 
 of man to conceive ; the life below, which His 
 love for humanity had made dearer to Him, 
 it may even be, than the life above. 
 
 Looking into those eyes the dreamer knew 
 that every moment of the life, which was now 
 ebbing away, had been, and was, an seon of 
 endured agony. Every separate sorrow of 
 every single soul that was, that had been, and 
 that was to come, was lived out to the last 
 pang in the torture chamber of that single 
 soul. Into that chamber only God's eye could 
 see, but the dreaming man knew that, looking 
 therein, God saw the Christ take upon Himself 
 
The Face 
 
 the sorrow wherewith Rachel had mourned and 
 refused to be comforted, the burden of David's 
 pain when he cried out : " O my son Absalom, 
 my son, my son Absalom. Would God I had 
 died for thee, O Absalom ! My son, my son ! " 
 And looking thereon God saw the shame that 
 rent the sick soul of Peter after the denial of 
 his Master and Lord ; saw, even, resting upon 
 the white soul of Christ, the black shadow of 
 despair and remorse under which Judas stole 
 out to hang himself in the Field of Blood. 
 
 When first he had looked upon that divine 
 figure, thus mocked and tortured and crucified 
 of men, there had blazed up in the heart of the 
 dreamer such horror of the deed, such blind 
 fury of hatred against the doers, that he had 
 burned to hurl himself single handed against 
 them, sparing neither Jew nor Roman in his 
 vengeance and wrath. 
 
 But looking again upon that face, the 
 dreamer knew in his heart of hearts that had 
 there been only one man in the world when 
 Christ came and he that man his would 
 have been the sins which slew the Saviour, 
 
 144 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 his the blood-guilty hands that nailed those 
 sinless hands to the cross. 
 
 Not alone He hung, for Him, even on the 
 cross, the malice of His enemies pursued. 
 
 There is no human creature so lowly but for 
 once, and for a space, stands immeasurably 
 removed above his fellows, and is honoured 
 before them. For King Death comes once 
 only to the door of each subject, yet, be that 
 subject prince or pauper, courtier or clown, it 
 is meet that when the king comes, he comes 
 in state, and that to the man or woman, whom 
 he thus honours, shall be accorded some mea- 
 sure of the dignity which is due to them who 
 consort with kings. There is no one so lowly 
 of station, so meek of spirit, but in that awful 
 hour is wrapt about, in the eyes of others, with 
 the august arrogance of them who come to die ; 
 and that, even in death, the Christ should be 
 robbed of that last lone dignity, that isolate 
 distinction which death confers Him they 
 made but as one of a company of common 
 thieves and robbers, brought out to suffer 
 together one common and shameful fate. 
 
The Face 
 
 This they did, knowing not that the manner 
 of Christ's death, in company with nameless 
 thieves, should for all time make that death 
 more wonderful and more memorable, and those 
 nameless thieves remembered by the world 
 when many of the world's kings and rulers 
 are forgotten. This they did, knowing not 
 that the presence of those thieves should 
 call from Him, who hung in their midst, 
 words which even in death proclaimed Him 
 King of Heaven and Lord of Life ; words 
 which, even to the end of the world, shall 
 remain humanity's surest pledge and promise 
 of eternal life. 
 
 Three figures there were, co-sufferers in that 
 last and most cruel agony comrades in death, 
 though in life such worlds apart yet was there 
 never a man or woman, witnessing that final 
 tragedy, who had eyes for any but the One. 
 For never had the Christ seemed so robed 
 in awful majesty as now when, naked and 
 bleeding, and mocked of all, with head erect 
 (the head that He was so soon of His own 
 accord to bow, in giving up the ghost) He 
 
 146 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 looked upon the company of His murderers, and 
 with lips whence issued nor sigh nor groan, 
 He prayed the prayer whereto this world and 
 this world's God shall never cease to listen : 
 
 " Father, forgive them, for they know not 
 what they do." 
 
 Hearing these words, Hell shuddered, for 
 by these words Satan and his princes knew 
 that their kingdom had for ever slipped from 
 them. 
 
 In death, as in life, they had tried and 
 tempted the Holy One ; and in death, as in 
 life, Christ, the King and Captain of our 
 salvation, had conquered. To the last they 
 had hoped against hope for some word of 
 anger to man, of reproach to God, and now, 
 when the first word from the cross was uttered, 
 the word for which Satan and his host had 
 waited and watched, it was a prayer from the 
 Crucified One for God's forgiveness of His 
 murderers. , 
 
 At that word Hell reeled, and gathered itself 
 together in one final and desperate effort. 
 
 Even as the cunning of Satan had caused 
 
The Face 
 
 him to set a Judas among the disciples little 
 thinking, poor fool, that the witness, " I have 
 betrayed innocent blood ! " wrung thus reluc- 
 tantly, and in the sincerity of despair, from 
 that arch enemy and traitor, should for ever 
 echo down the ages, a more tremendous 
 testimony to the absolute sinlessness of Christ 
 than the witness of Christ's faithful disciples 
 and friends even so had the cunning of old 
 Satan caused him to set that tool and fool of 
 the devil, an unrepentant sinner, as Christ's 
 death-comrade and co-sufferer. 
 
 To man that is born of woman it is not 
 given always to walk with unfaltering feet. 
 Yet so long as the sinner hates his sin, so 
 long as he truly repents, and seeks new 
 strength from Heaven, so long is that sinner 
 the much-forgiven, dearly-loved child of God. 
 
 Such an one was he who hung on the 
 Saviour's right. 
 
 When, however, the sinner has sunk to such 
 depths of infamy as, for its own sake, to love 
 what is evil, for its own sake, to loathe what is 
 good when he cherishes in his heart such 
 
 148 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 hatred of God that he would, had he it in 
 his power, be guilty, in act as well as in 
 thought, of God-murder then is that sinner 
 in terrible straits. 
 
 Such an one had been he who hung on the 
 Saviour's left. 
 
 Was it by chance that there had been 
 permitted to suffer with the Christ two such 
 men as they who were set by His side? Yea, 
 but it was the "chance" which "Eternal God 
 did guide." For in all that Life of lives, 
 which was lived on the earth two thousand 
 years ago, there was no act, no occurrence, 
 but was pregnant with stupendous meaning, 
 with stupendous issues. And in that symbolic 
 trinity, the Christ and the two thieves, thus 
 strangely brought together on Calvary's Mount, 
 were to be seen the mystic spokesmen and 
 representatives of Human Nature, Satanic 
 Nature, and Divine Nature. Here was being 
 enacted a triple tragedy, so elemental, yet so 
 tremendous, that Earth, and Hell, and Heaven 
 were once, and for all time, met and mirrored 
 within a few square feet of ground. 
 
 149 
 
The Face 
 
 And then it was that Hell and Satan, 
 brought to bay, made of the as yet impenitent 
 one, who hung on the Saviour's left, the mouth- 
 piece of Hell, whereby even now Hell hoped 
 to tempt the Saviour to His own undoing. 
 "If Thou be indeed the Christ, come down 
 from the cross and save Thyself and us." 
 
 But he who hung on the right rebuked the 
 reviler, and, looking to the Christ, cried out, 
 " Lord, remember me when Thou comest into 
 Thy kingdom." 
 
 Whereat the dreaming man, gazing upon 
 him who had so spoken, saw that it was his 
 own face which looked out at him from the 
 cross on the Saviour's right ; even as, were 
 it given to you, who read this story of his 
 dream, to see that scene as the dreaming man 
 saw it it would be your face which you would 
 then see, even as I, who write the story of the 
 dream, would see my own, the face of sinning, 
 suffering, repenting, forgiven, and redeemed 
 humanity. 
 
 God grant that when you and I come, as 
 come we must, in this world or the next, to 
 
 150 
 
Beyond the Door 
 
 see that scene as the dreaming man saw it 
 God grant that it be not from the cross, which 
 was set at the Saviour's left, that your face and 
 my face shall look out then. 
 
 And, turning to the penitent one, the Christ 
 made answer : " This day thou shalt be with 
 Me in Paradise!" 
 
 Here was promise, considered, deliberate, 
 definite, and given by One who cannot lie. 
 
 Listening to these words the dreaming man 
 doubted no longer, for it was so that He who 
 is the Truth had spoken. 
 
 And, with these words ringing in his ears, 
 the wonder of the man's dream passed, and 
 he awoke awoke to the dull chill of the narrow 
 room, the dark fireplace, the dead fire awoke 
 to a yet more wonderful re-awakening, wherein 
 he should dream no more. 
 
 Suddenly the walls of the little room, wherein 
 he had slept and dreamed, widened, and fell 
 away. The black fireplace, the dead fire, 
 faded before his eyes. 
 
 Ah, God ! what meant that pain at his 
 heart, that strangling in his throat, the dark- 
 
The Face Beyond the Door 
 
 ness that was closing around him ? His hands 
 clutched wildly at empty air, he fell back 
 then . . . light music child-laughter bird- 
 song, flower-fragrance and the abiding calm 
 of infinite and perfect peace. 
 
 And, ah! that sweet saint-face! how well 
 he remembered its pure Madonna oval! his 
 mother's. . . . Those deep, sad eyes under 
 the wide brows, crowned with silver the 
 father whom he had never ceased to mourn! 
 . . . Then, ah ! dear God, could it be true ? 
 already he was young and glad and strong 
 again those radiant eyes, that smile, that 
 voice the worshipped maiden of his man- 
 hood, his love, his wife, the mother of his 
 children, who had taken with her the sunshine 
 out of the world when she went . . . and, in her 
 arms, his and her little one, his lost darling ! 
 
 And then, dearer, immeasurably, infinitely 
 dearer even than these, the face, the human face, 
 of his and their crucified Saviour and God ! 
 
 And again those words : " This day thou 
 shalt be with Me in Paradise ! " 
 
 He was assured of Eternal Life. 
 152 
 
G/ 
 
 RDEN OFGCPD 
 
 A STORY FOR CHILDREN OF 
 EIGHT TO EIGHTY 
 
 IT was broad noonday in the garden, and so 
 hot that one could see the air palpitating 
 and quivering above the gravel paths in 
 undulant haze of heat. Even the butterfly 
 gasped for breath, and grumbled because the 
 swaying of the grasses set stirring a warm 
 puff, which was like the opening of an oven. 
 The sun seemed so near, and was trying so 
 hard to be hot, that the daisies said they 
 could see him spinning and panting as he 
 stood above them ; but that, I think, was 
 only their fancy, although it is true that he 
 was shining so exactly over-head, that there 
 was not a streak of shadow where one could 
 creep for shelter from the sweltering heat. 
 All thj flowers were parched and drooping, 
 and except for the passing buzz where a bee 
 
 155 
 
The Garden of God 
 
 went drowsily by, or buried himself with a 
 contented burr in the heart of a pansy, not 
 a sound stirred the sultry silence. 
 
 All at once there was a sudden scurry 
 among the birds. A cat which had been 
 basking and purring in the sunshine, open- 
 ing and shutting an eye, every now and 
 then, to make believe that she was not 
 sleepy, had dropped off into a doze, and now 
 she awakened, yawning. This was the signal 
 for a general stir. 
 
 " Phew ! but it is hot, to be sure ! " ex- 
 claimed the butterfly, as he darted up for a 
 stretch from the poppy-head on which he 
 had been sitting, and went waltzing, angle- 
 wise, down the gravelled path of the garden, 
 lacing the long, green lines of the boxwood 
 with loops of crimson and gold. 
 
 " I hope my weight won't inconvenience 
 you," he said with airy politeness to the lily, 
 dropping himself lazily, and without waiting 
 for an answer, upon her delicate head, which 
 drooped so feebly beneath this new burden 
 that several scented petals fluttered fainting 
 
The Garden of God 
 
 to the ground. " I am grieved to see you 
 looking so sadly," he continued, after he had 
 settled himself to his liking, " but what on 
 earth, my good soul, makes you lean forward 
 in that uncomfortable attitude ? There is a 
 charmingly shady spot under the shelter of 
 the wall behind you. Why don't you lean in 
 that direction ? As it is, you are going out 
 of your way to make yourself uncomfortable, 
 besides which I should very much prefer to 
 be out of the heat." 
 
 " I should be glad to move into the shade," 
 said the lily gently, " but my sweetheart, the 
 rose, has fallen asleep by the border, and I 
 am leaning over her to keep the sun from 
 her buds." 
 
 " How very charming you are ! " lisped the 
 butterfly languidly, and in a tone of polite 
 contempt which seemed to imply, " And what 
 a fool!" 
 
 " But your ideas are a little crude, don't 
 you know ? " he went on, " though of course 
 interesting. It is easy to see you are not 
 a person of the world. When you have 
 
 157 
 
The Garden of God 
 
 travelled about, and learnt as much as I 
 have, you will come to look at such things 
 in a different way." 
 
 " Yes, you have travelled, and lived in the 
 world, and seen a great deal," said the lily ; 
 " but I have loved; and it is by loving, as 
 well as by living, that one learns." 
 
 " Don't presume to lecture me ! " was the 
 impatient answer. " Fancy a flower finding 
 fault with a butterfly ! Don't you know that 
 I am your superior in the scale of being! 
 But, tell me, does this love of which you 
 speak bring happiness ? " 
 
 "The greatest of all happiness," whispered 
 the lily, almost to herself, and with infinite 
 tenderness her white bells seeming to light 
 up and overflow, like human eyes, as she 
 spoke. "To love truly, and to be loved, is 
 indeed to be favoured of heaven. All the 
 good things which this world contains are 
 not worthy to be offered in exchange for the 
 love of one faithful heart." 
 
 "Then I must learn to love," said the 
 butterfly decisively, " for happiness has 
 
 158 
 
The Garden of God 
 
 always been my aim. Tell me how to 
 begin." 
 
 " You'll have to begin by unlearning," put 
 in a big double-dahlia, who was standing by 
 like a sentinel, and looking as stiff and 
 stuck-up as if he had just been appointed 
 flower-policeman to the garden." 
 
 " Don't you be afraid that any one's going 
 to fall in love with you," was the spiteful 
 rejoinder of the butterfly, edging himself 
 round and round on a lily-bell as he spoke. 
 "Your place, my good creature, is in the 
 vegetable garden, with the cauliflowers and 
 the artichokes. There is something distin- 
 guished about a white chrysanthemum, and 
 the single-dahlias are shapely, although they 
 do stare so ; but the double-dahlias ! " and 
 the butterfly affected a pretty shudder of 
 horror which made the double-dahlia stiffen 
 on his stem with rage. 
 
 "How dare you speak slightingly of my 
 family ! " he said indignantly. " And as for 
 those big chrysanthemums ! they're just like 
 tumbled heaps of worsted, or that shaggy- 
 
The Garden of God 
 
 eyed skye-terrier dog that we see sometimes 
 in the garden untidy, shapeless, lumpy things 
 / call them ! " 
 
 The butterfly, who had been alternately 
 opening and shutting his wings, as if he 
 thought the sight of such splendour was 
 too dazzling to be borne continuously, but 
 really because he knew that the sombre 
 tinting, which they displayed when closed, 
 heightened, by contrast, their gorgeous 
 colouring when open, was nothing if not 
 well-bred, so he simply pretended to stifle a 
 yawn in the dahlia's face, and to make 
 believe that he had not heard what was 
 said. 
 
 "After all," he said, turning his back 
 pointedly upon the dahlia, and shutting up 
 his wings with a final snap just as a fine 
 lady closes a fan "after all, my dear lily, I 
 don't know whether it's worth my while to 
 learn to love ; for, by this time next year, 
 you and I will be dead, and it will be all the 
 same then to us as if we had never loved, or 
 even lived at all." 
 
 1 60 
 
The Garden of God 
 
 " I know nothing about death," replied the 
 lily, "but no one who loves can doubt im- 
 mortality, and if the rose and I are not 
 already immortal, I believe that our love 
 will make us so." 
 
 " What is this immortality ? " said the 
 butterfly. " I have heard the word used a 
 great deal in my wanderings, but I never 
 quite knew the meaning of it." 
 
 "It is the finding again, after death, of those 
 we have loved and lost ; and the loving and 
 living with them forever, I think," answered 
 his companion. 
 
 " I don't believe you know anything about 
 it," said the butterfly, decisively. "All the 
 men and women I've met and they ought 
 to know used ever so much longer 
 words." 
 
 " Perhaps you are right," replied the lily 
 quietly, bending forward to shield a stray 
 rose-bud from the burning sun, " but to be 
 forever with those I love would be immortality 
 enough for me. And I heard the maiden who 
 walks in the garden speaking yesterday, and I 
 
 161 M 
 
The Garden of God 
 
 remember that she said it was more godlike 
 to love one little child, purely and unselfishly, 
 than to have a heart filled with a thousand 
 vast vague aspirations after things we cannot 
 understand." 
 
 162 
 
II 
 
 How strangely still it was in the garden ! 
 Summer had gone, and October was nearly 
 over, but the day had been so bright and 
 warm that every one said the winter must 
 be a very long way off. But since sunset 
 the air had been getting more and more chilly, 
 and the stars were glittering like cold steel^ 
 and the moon looked so bright and large, that 
 the flowers, which had awakened with an icy 
 pain at their hearts, could scarcely believe 
 it was night and not day, for every tiny grass- 
 blade and buttercup stood out with startling 
 distinctness on the grass. A strange, sharp 
 scent was in the air, and a singular stillness 
 was abroad. 
 
 There was no " going " in the trees, nor 
 bough-swing among the branches, but all 
 
The Garden of God 
 
 stood rigid and motionless as if intently 
 listening. 
 
 " Perhaps they are listening for the first 
 footfall of the winter the winter which is 
 coming to kill us," said the lily sadly, bending 
 down, as she spoke, to twine herself protect- 
 ingly around the rose. 
 
 " Perhaps we are dead already," said the 
 rose, with a shudder, " and are but ghost- 
 flowers in a ghostly garden. How cold and 
 wan my petals look in this pallid light ! 
 And is this grey place blanched and silent 
 and still as death our sweet-scented and 
 sunny garden, that glowed with warm colour 
 and was astir with life ? " 
 
 Just then, and before the lily could answer, 
 they heard a sudden cry of pain. 
 
 It was the butterfly, who had fallen, half 
 dead with cold, from a sycamore bough, and 
 now lay shelterless and shivering on the frozen 
 path. " Creep up upon my leaves, dear butter- 
 fly," said the lily tenderly, as she bent towards 
 him, "and I will try and find a warm place for 
 you near my heart." 
 
 164 
 
The Garden of God 
 
 " Oh, I'm so frightened! I'm so frightened!" 
 he sobbed. " The world is dying ; even now 
 the trees seem still and dead. Soon the stars 
 will fall out of the sky into the garden. 
 Shall we be left in darkness when the moon 
 is dead ? Already her face is deadly pale, 
 although she shines so brightly. And what 
 has come to the trees ? On every bough there 
 sparkle a thousand lights. Are they stars 
 which have dropped from the sky ? " 
 
 "They are not stars at all," said the lily, 
 bending over him and hushing him to her 
 heart as a mother hushes a frightened child, 
 "but diamonds for the Frost King's crown. I 
 think we shall die to-night. Are you asleep, 
 dear rose ? The end is coming. Let us meet 
 it waking, and in each other's arms." 
 
 " It is coming, dear heart, and coming soon," 
 said the rose with a cry. " Already I can 
 scarcely speak for pain. The night grows ever 
 colder and more cold. And how strangely 
 bright the moon is ! What was that streak 
 of silver across the sky? A star which has 
 fallen from its place ? " 
 
 165 
 
The Garden of God 
 
 " I think it was the shining angel God sends 
 to fetch us," answered the lily. " Dear love, 
 the end will soon be here. Already the 
 pain has reached my heart; already I begin 
 to die." 
 
 "And I, too," said the rose. "I sink I 
 faint the sharp pain stings and bites ! Hold 
 me fast, darling! I scarce can see you 
 
 now." 
 
 " Nor I you, sweetheart ! " 
 
 " Hold me closer closer. Everything seems 
 to fall away." 
 
 " Everything but love, dearest, and where 
 love is, all is. At least we shall die to- 
 gether." 
 
 Icier and more icy grew the air ; brighter 
 and whiter shone the moonlight on the garden, 
 until the sunflower's shadow lay like ebony 
 upon silver along the grass ; colder and more 
 steely glittered the stars, and closer crept the 
 pain to the heart of the dying flowers. All 
 the long night through the silent trees stood 
 rigid and motionless, but now they listened no 
 longer, for winter was come indeed, and on 
 
 166 
 
The Garden of God 
 
 every branch the frost-crystals glinted and 
 sparkled. 
 
 And when morning dawned, the butterfly 
 lay dead for ever, but the lily and the rose 
 were the fairest flowers a-bloom in the Garden 
 of God. 
 
 \ 
 
 167 
 
THE 
 
 CMLDHTHE 
 WISE* MAN '&} 
 THE! 
 
AN 
 WO) 
 DEVll 
 
 PROEM 
 
 1 DREAMT that I stood within the walls 
 of a great city. Under the deep, dense 
 blue of an Italian sky, innumerable towers, 
 domes, temples, and palaces, glittered and 
 whitened like headstones bleaching in a 
 cemetery in the morning sunshine ; and high 
 overhead soared the cross-crowned cupola of 
 a huge cathedral. 
 
 And in the streets and squares of the city, 
 I beheld the vastest concourse which the eye 
 of man has ever witnessed. People of every 
 race and every nation swarmed, ant-like, in 
 
 171 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 house and street; and when I looked beyond 
 the city's limits, I saw that the country, for 
 many miles around, was thick with tents and 
 pavilions, so that the place had become, as it 
 were, the camping ground of nations. 
 
 Then, turning to one who stood near me, I 
 said, " Surely this is Rome, the Eternal City? " 
 
 "It is," he made answer. 
 
 "And yonder church," I said, "is it not the 
 church of Saint Peter ? " 
 
 " It has so been called ot old," he re- 
 sponded, "but it is called so now no longer." 
 
 "What, then, call they it?" I asked. 
 
 " The Church of the ONE GOD," replied the 
 man. 
 
 Then said I, " Tell me, I pray you, why 
 the name has been so changed, and whaj 
 means this multitude, for I am but newly 
 arrived in the city." 
 
 Looking at me curiously, the man made 
 answer, "Whence come you, that you know 
 not they have found the body of the Christ ? " 
 
 Then said I : " Nay, that were impossible, 
 for we know that our Saviour Christ was 
 
 172 
 
and the Devil 
 
 crucified, and buried. And that He rose 
 again the third day, according to the Scrip- 
 ture, and ascended into heaven, where He 
 sitteth on the right hand of the Father." 
 
 But he answered me sternly, " It is true 
 that the man, whom you call the Saviour 
 Christ, did claim for Himself that He, being 
 equal with God, was not subject unto death, 
 but would rise again the third day. And it 
 is true, too, that because His body was not 
 found, His disciples gave out that He had so 
 risen and ascended. Wherefore Him the 
 world hath most idolatrously worshipped, 
 according unto a mortal the glory which 
 belongs only unto GOD. Which idolatry 
 God has for nineteen hundred years endured 
 patiently, visiting not their evil-doing upon 
 the heads of the idolaters, but waiting until, 
 in the fulness of time, He might put to scorn 
 the pretensions of the crucified Nazarene, and 
 make manifest the abundance of God's mercy 
 and the magnitude of man's sinning. 
 
 " For know you, that they have found in 
 Palestine, in the rock-hewn sepulchre whither 
 
 173 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 it was borne nineteen hundred years ago by 
 Joseph of Arimatheea, the body of Him who 
 claimed that death had no dominion over 
 Him." 
 
 Then said I, " And has any, for this reason, 
 forsaken Christ ? " 
 
 "You see how many people are here gathered 
 together ? " he made answer. " Think you it is 
 in the power of any man to number them ? " 
 
 " As well might one seek to number the 
 stars in the heavens, the sand on the sea- 
 shore ! " I replied. 
 
 Then said he, "You speak truly. Here, 
 for the first time, the monarchs of every nation 
 which has held the Christian faith are, with 
 their courts and councils, their lords spiritual 
 and temporal, gathered together. Know you 
 why they are met ? " 
 
 " I know not," I answered. 
 
 Then said he, "They are here to make 
 solemn confession, on their own behalf, and 
 on behalf of the people over whom they rule, 
 of the iniquity of which they and their fore- 
 fathers have been guilty, in that they have 
 
 174 
 
and the Devil 
 
 bowed the knee to a mortal, worshipping as 
 God of God, Light of Light, Very God of 
 Very God, one who was of flesh and blood, 
 and subject unto death, as we all are. They 
 are met to make public and solemn renuncia- 
 tion of their error. To-day, at noon, in yonder 
 church, and in every church throughout the 
 world where Christ has been worshipped as 
 God, Christ shall be renounced and proclaimed 
 man ; the symbols of the Trinity and of the 
 Cross shall be cast down and destroyed, that 
 thereby all men may know that God is not 
 Three but One. 
 
 "If you will, you shall come with me to 
 yonder cathedral, where I will show you this 
 great ceremony, that you may believe for your- 
 self that Jesus of Nazareth was a deceiver." 
 
 But I made answer : " Though you show 
 me this and more, though, like Thomas, I 
 behold the wounds in the hands and feet, and 
 thrust my finger into the pierced side, yet will 
 I not believe that Jesus, my Lord and Master, 
 was a deceiver, for I know in Whom I have 
 trusted. Rather, will I believe that this thing, 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 of which you speak, is one of those wiles of 
 Satan, of which we have been warned in Holy 
 Writ : how that in the latter days there 
 should arise * false prophets,' whose * coming 
 is after the working of Satan, with all power 
 and signs and lying wonders,' that they who 
 serve not the truth should ' believe a lie.' ' 
 
 Then said the man, " It is childish to refuse 
 to believe the evidence of one's senses, as 
 childish as it is to be satisfied with so outworn 
 a creed as yours." 
 
 "Were I to judge by sense," I made answer, 
 " I should believe that I see the sun, at a 
 moment when he is actually below the 
 horizon, and when I know that it is but his 
 reflected image, and not himself, which I see. 
 And to be satisfied with the Christian faith 
 may be childlike, but is not childish ; for 
 though the child may find in it all he needs, 
 yet many of the wisest of this world have 
 confessed that the longer they have pondered 
 it, the closer they have studied it, the more 
 cause have they found for wonder, for worship, 
 and for love. The great minds of the world 
 
and the Devil 
 
 the Shakespeares and Miltons of the race 
 are on our side, not on yours, and for the very 
 reason that they were great ; for the reason 
 that they were wise, and did not merely think 
 themselves so. It is true that ours is the 
 simplest of all faiths. It must needs be so, 
 since it appeals alike to rich and to poor, to 
 the young and to the old, to the sick and to 
 the strong; and not less to the sempstress 
 in her garret, who, when she lays down the 
 work at which she has been toiling early and 
 late, is too weary-eyed and worn to take up 
 a book, or even to think, than to the woman 
 of fashion, or to the man of leisure who has 
 devoted his life to the search for knowledge. 
 Were it not so, and were the strength of its 
 appeal only proportionate to the intellectual 
 capacity of the individual, then half humanity 
 the half which needs Him most would be 
 left without the help and hope which are given 
 freely by the Great Consoler. And yet, not- 
 withstanding its simplicity, I believe that, 
 could we stand with God at the centre of all 
 things, we should see that the one supreme 
 
 177 N 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 and controlling Law the pivot upon which 
 the laws of this and all other universes turn 
 is the law of vicarious sacrifice, the law which 
 had ordained, ere the foundations of the world 
 were laid, that the sins of the world should be 
 borne by God's Son, the sinless Christ." 
 
 Then said the man derisively, " He of whom 
 you speak as the Son of God, was but the 
 child of Mary and Joseph the Carpenter. If 
 He claimed to be other than this, He spoke 
 a lie." 
 
 " Surely you have no child of your own," 
 I made answer, " that you can so speak of 
 Him Who consecrated childhood for ever by 
 His own divine Childhood, who consecrated 
 it afresh, with a higher, holier meaning, when, 
 in His Divine Manhood, He uttered those 
 words, which, to the ears of every mother of, 
 to-day, are as full of sweet music, as ever they 
 were to the mothers of Palestine : ' Suffer the 
 little children to come unto Me, and forbid them 
 not, for of such is the kingdom of Heaven.' ' 
 
 Then said the man, " All this is nothing to 
 me, who have neither wife nor child." 
 
and the Devil 
 
 "That I can well believe," I answered, "for 
 surely no father, no mother whether the little 
 one were on earth or in heaven could hear 
 the sweet music of those words unmoved. 
 That picture of the little child nestling as 
 naturally, as trustfully, in our Saviour's arms, 
 as in the arms of her mother, and smiling up 
 with perfect love, perfect confidence, into the 
 face which looked down upon hers with Divine 
 tenderness, Divine Fatherliness though, for 
 His ears, no child-lips might ever lisp the 
 wonderful word ' Father ' has consecrated 
 all children to the Christ, and the Christ 
 to every child. It must remain, for all 
 time, the one picture of spotless purity upon 
 which human eye has looked that inter- 
 change of loving smiles between the innocent 
 child and the sinless Man. So long as 
 that picture is guarded in the heart of one 
 mother, so long you can never hope to 
 destroy Christianity. That little child, in the 
 arms of Jesus, has struck deadlier blows at 
 the enemies of the Cross than all the argu- 
 ments of all the theologians. That child is 
 
 179 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 the most powerful foe whom the armies of 
 unbelief have to fear." 
 
 Even as I spoke, there came the sudden 
 roll of cannon. 
 
 " It is the signal for the procession to start," 
 said my companion ; and over that great 
 assembly there passed a tremor of expectancy, 
 like the stirring of leaves when rain is 
 nigh. 
 
 Afar off we heard a vibrating hum like the 
 droning of insects on a sunny summer's noon ; 
 and the sound moved me strangely, for I knew 
 it was the distant voice of a mighty multitude. 
 Sometimes it died away, as the chiming of 
 bells dies away when the wind falls, and then 
 it swelled again until the hum was as the 
 murmur of an incoming tide, and soon it was 
 like the roar of breakers upon the shore, so 
 that we could hear the blare of trumpets, 
 blending with the drums' monotonous beat, 
 and the cheers rippling along the lines like 
 volleying bells. 
 
 And then, slow-moving to stately music, 
 there came into view a procession of supreme 
 
 180 
 
and the Devil 
 
 splendour. Monarch after monarch, Kaiser 
 and Czar, Emperors, Kings, and Queens, 
 arrayed in royal robes, and surrounded by 
 their courts and counsellors, passed by in 
 state, on their way to the cathedral. And as 
 sovereign succeeded to sovereign, pageant to 
 pageant, there went up, from that vast assem- 
 bly, such thunder of applause, that the thread of 
 my dream was broken, and the scene shifted as 
 it were by magic, and in a moment. 
 
 I was no longer in the streets, where all 
 Rome was ringing with the riotous uproar, but 
 kneeling one of innumerable thousands in 
 the great cathedral. A rolling, as of thunder, 
 was still in my ears, but I knew it now for the 
 rolling of the organ, and I heard it sink, and 
 sink, until it was lost in listening silence, out of 
 which arose the voice of one leading the people 
 in prayer : 
 
 <4 Almighty Father, the ONE GOD of heaven 
 and earth and Judge of all men We do most 
 humbly beseech Thee to look pitifully upon us, 
 Thy people, who by following after the Deceiver, 
 
 181 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 Jesus, and according unto a man the worship 
 which pertaineth only to God, have committed 
 grievous idolatry against Thy Divine Majesty, 
 and are deserving only of Thy just wrath and 
 fiery condemnation. We do most earnestly 
 repent, and humbly implore that Thou wilt 
 mercifully grant us Thy forgiveness, and keep 
 us evermore in the faith and fear of the ONE 
 GOD, Who liveth and reigneth world without 
 end. Amen." 
 
 Then, while the vast congregation remained 
 kneeling, the kings and rulers arose, one by one, 
 and, divesting themselves of their royal robes, 
 walked with bowed heads, and knelt before the 
 altar, in sight of all, that they might make 
 solemn intercession, on their own behalf, and 
 on behalf of their people, for the sin of which 
 the nations had been guilty. 
 
 And after these great ones of the earth had 
 so remained for some minutes, he, who led the 
 congregation in prayer, turned to the kneeling 
 multitude, saying : 
 
 " Do you for evermore renounce the Deceiver 
 182 
 
and the Devil 
 
 who, claiming that he had come to take away 
 the sins of the world, has laid upon the 
 world the burden of nineteen hundred years' 
 idolatry ? " 
 
 And, as with one voice, kings and people 
 made answer : 
 
 " We renounce him for evermore." 
 
 Then, like an overcharged bosom upgathered 
 in a sob, the swelling dome of the great cathe- 
 dral gave utterance to a sullen, sudden, rever- 
 berant note of woe the death-knell of a God 
 and, at the sound, a strange hush, which was 
 not silence, but palpitated, as it were, with 
 the pent-up breathing and tumultuous heart- 
 beating of a multitude, fell upon the as- 
 sembly. 
 
 And he who stood at the altar reached for- 
 ward, and took from its place, over the table 
 of God, the image of the crucified Christ. 
 Turning to the people, he held it, upraised, for 
 a moment before them. 
 
 Then crying out : " The reign of the 
 Christ is at end. The ONE GOD reigneth 
 and is worshipped evermore," he dashed it 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 down into atoms on the marble pavement at 
 his feet. 
 
 And, out in the sunlight the cannon thun- 
 dered, and from a hundred steeples the bells of 
 Rome burst forth into exultant song, that all 
 men might know the Religion of Sorrow was 
 ended, the Reign of Joy was begun. 
 
 184 
 
I 
 
 IN my dream I looked down upon the world, 
 and I saw that the world was in darkness, save 
 for the light which streamed from an upraised 
 Cross. 
 
 And I saw that the light which shone from 
 the Cross made manifest the very heaven of 
 heavens, so that even while men trod the dark 
 and thorny ways of the world, they might at 
 any time look up, and see above them the 
 loving Father-face of God. 
 
 And some I saw who, kindling little candles, 
 of their own making, at the beacon-fire of the 
 Cross, cried out, " Come, see the light we have 
 found ! Here is light, compared to which all 
 other lights are as darkness ! " 
 
 Others said : " See how light it is ! This 
 is the light of day. Why stands yonder Cross 
 
 185 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 in the sunshine, to throw its gloomy shadow 
 over the world? Come let us pull it down, 
 that we may be no longer saddened by the 
 symbol of eternal sorrow." 
 
 As they so spoke, the light from the 
 Cross suddenly faded out, and with it all the 
 little lights that had been kindled at its fire, 
 leaving the world in darkness, utter and 
 complete. 
 
 And I heard the voice of God saying : " Lo ! 
 I have given unto mankind the most precious 
 gift I had to bestow. 
 
 " The creature can at no time be equal with 
 its Creator, and as man may not become God, 
 God, out of the great love He bore the world, 
 was willing to become man. Wherefore the 
 High and Holy One Who inhabiteth eternity, 
 did for man's sake, humble Himself to become 
 a helpless babe, to live man's life, to share 
 man's sorrows, and to die man's death, that 
 henceforth, for every man, life might lose its 
 loneliness and death its horror, for God was 
 become not only man's Maker and Judge, but 
 also man's divine Comrade and Brother. 
 
 186 
 
and the Devil 
 
 " And now, in these latter days, this divinest 
 of gifts this sacrifice of Himself by the 
 Creator, for the sake of His creature is, 
 by that creature, rejected and scorned. The 
 most sacred and solemn of all mysteries is 
 become a thing of which men make mock, 
 denying, because of the very humanity which 
 for their sakes He had stooped to share the 
 divinity which was His, ere He had called 
 humanity into being. 
 
 "They speak of their risen and ascended 
 Saviour as a dead dreamer, or a vain deceiver, 
 declaring that Christianity is an outworn creed, 
 a thing of yesterday, and the story of the 
 Divine Man, a fable, fit only for the ears of 
 a child." 
 
 And God spoke again saying : 
 
 " O faithless and godless generation! O 
 mockers of good and workers of iniquity ! have 
 I not already borne with you over-long ? Day 
 by day have I stood knocking at your door, 
 entreating you to accept a gift which, were it 
 not offered freely, you would count life itself 
 well spent to win. And day by day you have 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 thrust Me out, and driven Me forth as you 
 would thrust away a thief or a beggar from 
 your door. 
 
 " But now behold ! I come to you no more. 
 You at whose door your God Himself has 
 so long stood, entreating entrance vainly shall 
 knock, unheeded, at the Door of Life. Out of 
 your own mouth shall proceed your judgment. 
 You have said that there is no Christ; that He 
 who came to bear away the sin of the world, 
 and, by His glorious resurrection from the 
 dead, to bring unto all men the gift of eternal 
 life, was either deceived, or a deceiver, who 
 lies, and has lain, these two thousand years, in 
 His unknown and unhonoured grave in Pales- 
 tine. It is thus that you have spoken, and by 
 your own words shall come your condemnation. 
 
 " I, who gave, can take away. I, who made, 
 can unmake. Let be. ... It is as you say. 
 . . . There is no Christ." 
 
 And as God so spoke, it seemed to me that 
 He wiped out as a child wipes out an un- 
 finished sum from a slate all that the great 
 
 188 
 
and the Devil 
 
 name of Jesus means, and has meant to 
 humanity. 
 
 For one instant, I saw, shining down the 
 dark vista of the ages, the supreme figure of 
 the Divine Man. Below me, as on a midnight 
 plain, that stretched away into infinite dark- 
 ness, lay the wounded in life's battle the 
 widowed, the orphaned, the friendless, the sick, 
 the halt, and the sin-bound. And I saw that 
 it was this one divine and shining figure, the 
 very Light of the World, to which all hands 
 were uplifted, upon which every eye was 
 fixed. I saw the Christ look down upon His 
 suffering creatures with eyes from which 
 streamed tears of tender and pitying love ; I 
 heard the great and yearning cry which rose 
 to His lips at sight of their sorrows ; I saw 
 Him stretch forth His arms to them, as a 
 mother stretches forth her arms to her stricken 
 child, and then the sublime and lonely figure 
 of the Man of Sorrows faded out for ever, and 
 upon helpless, hopeless, sin-stained and suffer- 
 ing humanity, darkness and despair descended, 
 like vultures descending upon their prey. 
 
 189 
 
II 
 
 YET again I dreamed a dream in which 
 pictures came and went as in a glass. 
 
 I looked down upon a Christless world, and 
 I saw that though the same sun made glad the 
 morning, the same stars made beautiful the 
 night, the men and women, who dwelt thereon, 
 were become haggard, restless and unhappy. 
 Some few there were who sat together, laugh- 
 ing feverishly, but there was no mirth in their 
 laughter, for their faces were anxious and per- 
 turbed, and even while they laughed, they cast 
 uneasy glances about them, as if fearing to be 
 surprised by an unseen foe. I saw, too, that 
 they who had protested that the bread and 
 wine of the Gospel was a mouthful they could 
 not swallow, ate greedily of strange meats 
 which came from other altars, or which were 
 prepared by the hands of the high priests of 
 
 190 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 a new philosophy. They who declared that 
 reason would not allow them to believe that 
 God could once become Incarnate, saw no 
 reason to doubt the manifold Re-incarnations 
 of Man. They who complained that they 
 found the straight and level highway of 
 Christianity too difficult a road for them to 
 follow, or that there was no sure foothold 
 thereon, were content to lose themselves 
 among the mazes of superstition, or to flounder 
 and stumble among the stony wastes of un- 
 belief. 
 
 Many I saw who wandered backward and 
 forward aimlessly, as if seeking for some- 
 thing which they found not. At times one 
 would cry out, " Lo, I have it ! " and the 
 others would cease their search, and run 
 with gladness to hear him. But so often as 
 one thus called out, so often they, who ran, 
 would return whence they came, unsatisfied 
 and unfilled, until not a few ceased to give 
 ear at all. 
 
 Then said I to one who passed by, " For 
 what seek you?" 
 
 191 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 " For the answer to the Riddle of Life," he 
 replied. 
 
 " Why trouble yourself about things which 
 are too great for you ? " I said. " Do as 
 others do. Eat, drink, marry, beget chil- 
 dren, and be merry. You can wait to 
 know the answer to the riddle, till the day 
 when you must go behind the Great Dark 
 to seek it for yourself. That day is, how- 
 ever, as yet far distant. Your years are not 
 many, and, haply, you have still a long time to 
 live." 
 
 But the man made answer : " What we call 
 1 time ' is but a single sunray thrown across the 
 infinite void of Eternity, and ' life ' is but the 
 floating-flicker of a mote that vanishes, even as 
 it becomes visible therein. What matters it, 
 then, to the mote in the sunbeam whether it be 
 a minute or a moment drifting across the ray 
 from dark to dark ? It is not because I fear 
 whatever the future has for me, personally, of 
 good or ill that I seek to read Life's Riddle 
 aright. It is because I have a wife whom I 
 love, a child that I worship, and the thought 
 
 192 
 
and the Devil 
 
 that one day any day death may part us, 
 never, perhaps, to set eyes on one another 
 again, haunts me, holds me, and makes exist- 
 ence a very hell. It were horror enough to 
 lose a dear one, even were we sure that those 
 who love each other here, shall hereafter love 
 each other, and be together again. But even 
 that much of certainty has been denied us, for 
 Death closes, in the face of the living, the door 
 through which he has hurried their beloved 
 dead." 
 
 "You, and those you love, are, at least 
 whether living or dead in the hand of God," 
 I said. 
 
 "What know you of God?" asked the 
 man. 
 
 " That He is great," I made answer. 
 " So great that He cares neither for me nor 
 mine," said the man bitterly. "Who am I, 
 that God should trouble Himself concerning 
 me? Why should I, who am but one among 
 many millions of men whom He has made, be 
 of more account to Him than one egg in the 
 belly of the herring which He has made also? 
 
 193 o 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 If the egg become a fish, it is well : if it be 
 destroyed or devoured, it is well, equally. So, 
 too, with the man. God has set the sun in 
 the sky to warm him by day, the moon and 
 stars to companion him by night. God says to 
 him, ' I have done My part, and done it well. 
 The way is clear for you. Go forth, now, 
 to fare for yourself, to sorrow or to be glad, 
 to be hungry or to be full, to be sick or 
 to be strong, to live or to die, as may chance 
 to you.'" 
 
 Then said I, "One Who cannot lie has 
 told us that the very hairs of our head are 
 numbered, and that not a sparrow shall fall, 
 and be forgotten before the Father." 
 
 " Whom mean you ? " asked the man. 
 
 "The Christ of God," I made answer. 
 
 Then said the man sadly, "Christ! There 
 is no Christ. Would God there were ! Until 
 I ceased to believe in the Christ, I realised not 
 that, except through Him, we know no more 
 of the Ruler of the Universe, than did he who 
 of old complained, ' Canst thou by searching, 
 find out God?' 
 
 194 
 
and the Devil 
 
 " Except God reveal Himself to man, man 
 knows not what God is, nor whether God be, 
 at all. 
 
 "Once I believed that God had so revealed 
 Himself, and then this earth was the ante- 
 chamber to heaven. Now it is but a prison, 
 whence there is no escape a prison in which 
 we are held captive at the will of an Unknown 
 Gaoler. What matters it to me that the earth 
 be beautiful ? What matters it to the prisoner 
 that his cell be painted, when he knows that 
 the skeleton-hand of Death, the executioner, 
 may at any moment drag him forth from the 
 dear companionship of his loved ones, and 
 hustle him or them away to an unknown fate ? 
 While I believed that God had through Christ 
 revealed Himself, every soul on earth was 
 sacred to me. We were members of one 
 divine family. We were brothers and sisters 
 in our Brother- Lord and Redeemer. Now, we 
 are but fellow-victims who are flung to life's 
 lions together in the same arena. Then, our 
 very bereavements were sanctified to us. Sor- 
 row was God's accolade. It was the sword 
 
 '95 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 stroke which bade us arise God's knights, 
 ready ever to draw sword in His service. 
 But now we have no such call to nobility, 
 for each lives to himself. We are no longer 
 knights, banded together in a noble cause, but 
 units in a mob, scrambling and fighting, one 
 with the other, for the trinkets which are 
 tossed to us by our capricious mistress, 
 Fate. 
 
 "When I believed that God Himself had 
 stooped to share our joys and our sorrows, 
 human life was made evermore beautiful and 
 divine. Then the very earth beneath our feet 
 was sacred, since He had trodden it ; then was 
 this robe of flesh, which He had worn, a white 
 garment that, for His dear sake, we must keep 
 unspotted from the world. Then did Art and 
 Song, picture and poem, sunrise and sunset, 
 and the play of evening light upon the sea, 
 combine in one divine conspiracy to urge us 
 heavenward ; then not a flower in the field, 
 not a face in the street, but called us to a 
 higher and holier life. But now our life ! 
 but what matters our life ? If Christ be 
 
 196 
 
and the Devil 
 
 not ; if God be not as Christ revealed 
 
 Him" 
 
 I heard no more, for the man had passed 
 on to seek elsewhere for the answer to the 
 Riddle of Life. 
 
 197 
 
Ill 
 
 IN my dream I beheld yet another picture 
 of the Christless world. 
 
 A woman lay dying in a garret, and to her 
 came one who was very wise, saying, " You 
 have sent for me, because you would have 
 word with me ere you die. If you know 
 aught which concerns me, or if there is any 
 matter upon which I can advise you, speak 
 now, and I will give heed." 
 
 And the woman said : " I was but a girl 
 vain and foolish, perhaps, but with no thought 
 of evil when evil befell me. 
 
 " I have done evil since, and by my own 
 choosing, but God, Who is my Judge, knows 
 that I fell into that first folly scarce knowing 
 what I did, save that I trusted the man to 
 whom my heart was given. 
 
 198 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 " But evil is like the sea, and has no pity 
 on the foolish or the ignorant. Just as deep 
 water sucks under, and swallows up the child 
 who has accidentally fallen into it, while it 
 bears harmlessly upon its bosom the man who 
 has learnt to swim, so the young man or 
 maiden, who ventures into evil ignorantly, 
 is swallowed up and drawn under, while 
 others who seek vice deliberately, may, at 
 least, evade if only by their very knowledge 
 of evil the outward penalty of their sin. I 
 slipt into sin unthinkingly, as a child might 
 slip from an unguarded place into deep water ; 
 and my sin was like the dead weight of wet 
 clothes about the drowning child, dragging 
 me down and down until the waters closed 
 over my head. Some, at whose door I 
 knocked when I set out to seek the work 
 which should keep my baby and myself in 
 bread drew back their skirts, as if my very 
 touch were contamination, and bade me be- 
 gone, for a wanton. Others spoke kindly 
 and pitifully, and would have sent me to a 
 ' Home for the Fallen,' but I told them that 
 
 199 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 it was work, not charity, which I needed, and 
 that, if they would but give me employment, 
 they should find me a diligent servant, and 
 true. But they shook their heads, and said 
 it was sad, very sad, and they were sorry. 
 This one excused herself because she feared 
 to seem to encourage immorality ; a second 
 hesitated to receive me into her household 
 lest she should give offence to those who were 
 already serving her. Others spoke uneasily 
 of * brothers ' or ' sons/ and though many 
 pitied me, and some offered me money, each 
 was anxious to pass me on. 
 
 " It seemed to me then, in my despair, as it 
 all women were either heartless or cowardly, 
 and all men vile ; and, as that which I 
 had lost could never be regained, I asked 
 myself of what use was it to continue the 
 hopeless struggle whether it were worse to 
 go clad in a garment of vice, than to slink 
 from door to door, scarce covered by the rags 
 of what had once been virtue. 
 
 " I need not tell you the familiar story. 
 Let me hasten on to say that, while I was 
 
 200 
 
and the Devil 
 
 leading a life of shame with no hope in 
 this world or in the next I met with an 
 accident in the street, and was carried to a 
 hospital, where, while I was recovering, the 
 good Sister, who tended me, talked much and 
 lovingly of the Christ." 
 
 " It is ever so with these Christians," said 
 the wise man, interrupting her. " A sick 
 woman is sent to them to be healed in the 
 body, and they let slip .no opportunity of 
 seeking to entice her away to follow after 
 superstition." 
 
 Then said the woman : " How comes it, 
 then, that you, who deny Christ, have built 
 no hospital of your own, to which to send 
 your sick ? " 
 
 But the wise man was silent. 
 
 Then said the woman, turning on him 
 fiercely : " What have you to give me in 
 return for the faith you have taken from me ? 
 Is there any hope for such as I, save in the 
 Cross of Christ? I was despised of all, a 
 thing of shame at which the very children 
 of the street old, alas ! in the knowledge of 
 
 201 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 evil pointed the finger of scorn ; and ONE 
 came to me, speaking me gently and lovingly, 
 and greeting me, the outcast, with such 
 greeting as is accorded only to women whom 
 men honour. He came to me, in my despair, 
 to bid me hope ; He came to me in my degra- 
 dation, to bring me back my self-respect. 
 
 " And when I said, ' Lord, it is too late ! 
 I have sinned away the very soul of me, and 
 can never be pure again/ He made answer, 
 1 Believe it not, daughter. It is devils' doc- 
 trine, even though they teach it in My 
 name. You can never regain your inno- 
 cence, for innocence (which is often but 
 another name for ignorance) is a flower that 
 once plucked, a vase that once broken, can 
 never be the same again. But purity is not 
 of earth, but of heaven. It is a white star 
 set in the sky a star which makes pure the 
 soul of all who look thereon steadfastly and 
 with longing/ 
 
 "Then said I, 'Yes, Lord, but though I 
 have striven oh, so despairingly! to clamber 
 out of the black and seething abyss into which 
 
 202 
 
and the Devil 
 
 I have fallen, the burden of my sin is ever 
 a clog around my neck to drag me back and 
 down to more shameful depths.' 
 
 " But He made answer, * Even now, I lift 
 the burden from your shoulders to Mine. That 
 you may be set free from your sins, and the 
 consequences of your sins, I bear, and have 
 borne, the burden of eternal sorrow.' 
 
 "And I said, ' Yes, Lord. Yet can I never 
 undo the past. The soul of me is black and 
 corrupt, and foul as with leprosy, and not all 
 the waters of the world can wash me clean 
 again.' 
 
 " But He made answer, * You can never 
 undo the past, but / can, and will ; and though 
 your soul be as black as you say, yet can I 
 make it whiter than the newly-fallen snow.' 
 
 " And I said, ' Yes, Lord, but I am weak 
 weaker and more unstable than water. Not 
 once, but ten thousand times, have I risen 
 from the mire, and striven, with all 'the 
 strength that was in me, to walk without 
 stumbling. And not once, but ten thousand 
 times, have I found myself low-grovelling in 
 
 203 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 the mire again. And now I have neither 
 heart nor hope to continue the unequal contest. 
 The sins that I have committed in the past, 
 those sins shall I go on committing to my life's 
 end, for I know myself too well not to know 
 my own weakness, and my inability to resist 
 temptation.' 
 
 " And He made answer, * Though your 
 stumblings were twenty times ten thousand, 
 yet so long as you will but arise after each 
 fall, so long will I have for you in My heart 
 an especial tenderness. And if you will but 
 come to Me, saying, " Lord, I bring to Thee 
 my sin, and I bring to Thee, too, mine inability 
 to resist sin. Help Thou me, for in myself 
 there is no help," then will I abide with you 
 by day and by night, then will I fight with 
 you and for you, until My strength has made 
 you strong, and you have learned to loathe 
 the sins which now you love, and so shall 
 come to conquer them for yourself.' ' 
 
 "And did you believe all this?" inquired 
 the wise man. 
 
 " I did," the woman answered. 
 204 
 
and the Devil 
 
 "You were easily comforted," said he. "But 
 what has it to do with me ? " 
 
 "You shall hear," replied the woman. 
 " This, of which I have told you, happened 
 years ago, and, from that time forward, I 
 turned my back on my old life. At first, I and 
 my babe were like to starve, but at last I 
 found honest work for my hand to do, and 
 at that I toiled diligently, seeking to make 
 amends for the past, and to follow after Him 
 who had done such wondrous things for me. 
 
 " But, not long since, there came upon me 
 a great temptation. The man, for whose sake 
 I had first sinned, found me out, and told me 
 that he loved me, and had long ago sought for 
 me, to make me his wife. He said that the 
 woman whom he had married, when he gave 
 up all hope of finding me, was his wife in name 
 only. He said that if I would but go to him 
 I and his child, for he had no other child of 
 his own he would make our little one's future 
 his care, and would watch over us, and work 
 for us to his life's end." 
 
 " And what did you ? " asked the wise man. 
 205 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 " I sent him away, telling him that I must 
 have time to consider. And when he was 
 gone, I left my home, and fled, with my little 
 one, where he could no longer find me." 
 
 " Why so ? " inquired the wise man. 
 
 11 Because I loved him, as we women God 
 help us ! sometimes love the men whom we 
 have most cause to hate," cried the woman 
 passionately. " But though I fled thus, from 
 the temptation to which I dared not trust 
 myself, my empty, aching heart cried out for 
 him, day and night, till I grew to loathe the 
 very sunshine that shone upon a world where 
 he and I were parted ; and but for the fact that I 
 could not so sin against the command of Jesus, 
 my Master, I had cast my scruples to the wind, 
 and gone to the man I loved. 
 
 " And then it was, at this supreme crisis in 
 my life, when all my world was unsettled, and 
 when I most needed help and strength from 
 without, that your book, in which you seek to 
 destroy humanity's faith in the Saviour, was 
 put into my hand. My heart told me that its 
 teaching was false, but it is easy to believe the 
 
 206 
 
and the Devil 
 
 thing we wish to believe ; and so it came 
 about that I tried to persuade myself that your 
 arguments were unanswerable, and to persuade 
 myself, also, that my faith was shaken, and 
 that as I no longer believed in the Christ, I 
 need no longer count myself subject to His 
 command. 
 
 11 It is thus that we men and women palter 
 with our conscience, declaring that our life is 
 the outcome of our creed, whereas our creed 
 is too often the outcome of our life. 
 
 " I need tell you no more, except that I was 
 saved from the sin I would have committed by 
 the death of him, for love of whom I would 
 once more have sinned. 
 
 "But from the man or woman who has 
 played false with conscience, a dreadful 
 reckoning is ever exacted. I had strangled 
 the voice of God within me, as a woman 
 strangles the cry in the throat of the child 
 whose voice, were it heard, would make known 
 her shame. And now, though I would believe 
 again, I cannot, for the heart of me is dead, 
 is dead, and I have sent for you you who are 
 
 207 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 so wise to ask what you have to give me 
 a dying woman in place of the faith I have 
 lost?" 
 
 But the wise man was silent, and when next 
 I looked, he was gone, and the woman lay 
 dead. 
 
 208 
 
IV 
 
 ONCE more, in my dream, I saw, as in a glass, 
 a picture of a Christless world. 
 
 A strong man, the working of whose face 
 was terrible to behold, stood, in impotent 
 anguish, looking down upon the death-throes 
 of his only child. The little figure which had 
 been wont to leap with joy at sight of him ; 
 that he had many times caught up (oh ! so 
 tenderly!) to toss at arm's length aloft, or to 
 carry bundle-wise in his arms, that he and she 
 might be the first to welcome the new rose 
 just opened in the garden, lay with her limbs 
 drawn up like the claws of a dead bird to 
 her body. 
 
 The shining curls, yellow as fine spun flax, 
 soft as thistle-down, were damp and dull with 
 the dews of death. And oh! the poor, pinched, 
 suffering little face that had so often lain against 
 
 209 p 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 his ! Oh ! the grey shadows around the eyes, 
 which had looked sometimes into his eyes, as 
 if they saw down into his soul, as over the 
 brink of a well ; as if that little child had 
 been God's Sentry, set to guard the gates of 
 the Kingdom of the Pure. How often before 
 the challenging " Stand and make answer!" 
 of those eyes, the questioning " Thus am I. 
 Say now what art thou ? " had his own eyes 
 fallen! 
 
 And now he must stand by with idle, 
 helpless hands while the fingers of an invisible 
 enemy are, minute by minute, strangling the 
 life-breath in that little throat. 
 
 She is gone. . . . He is childless. . . . The 
 baby life, to have saved which he would have 
 laid down his own life gladly, is at end. The 
 ittle soul, which was dearer to him than his 
 own soul's hope of immortality, is fled. And 
 as the terrible realisation of his loss comes over 
 him, the old faith of his childhood reasserts 
 itself for one moment, and, falling upon his 
 knees, the stricken father-heart prays aloud in 
 his anguish : 
 
 210 
 
and the Devil 
 
 " Lord Jesus, Lover of little children ! Take 
 Thou my little maid. If she be with Thee, all 
 is well. Guard her, dear Lord, till I come to 
 Thee for her." 
 
 And then he remembers that there is no 
 Jesus, it may be even that there is no God, 
 and that he knows no more of what has become 
 of that little life, which owed its being to his 
 life, than he knows of the bubble that bursts 
 with the breaking wave. And despair takes 
 him. 
 
 But in heaven I saw the Divine Figure 
 of the Man of Sorrows; and lo! on His bosom 
 lay the little child. 
 
 And, looking down with streaming eyes upon 
 the childless father, the Christ cried out, as 
 in the days when He had walked the fields of 
 Palestine : 
 
 " O ! My people ! My people ! whom I have 
 carried in My heart, as a mother carries her 
 unborn babe beneath her bosom ! O brother ! 
 O sister ! at sight of whose sorrow this soul of 
 Mine has uttered a more terrible cry than any 
 
 211 
 
The Child, the Wise Man 
 
 cry thou hast uttered for a sight of the loved 
 faces thou hast lost ! 
 
 " How often would I have comforted thee ! 
 How often would I have gathered thee to My 
 heart, as now I gather this little one, and 
 thou wouldst not. 
 
 " Yet though thou wilt not bear My Cross, 
 I may, and will, for ever, bear thine, even as I 
 bear away from thee the burden of all thy sins. 
 
 " And though thou hast forsaken and denied 
 Me utterly, yet will I never forsake thee to all 
 eternity ! " 
 
 
 
 And on earth the wise men sat and smiled 
 to think how wise they were, and that by 
 their wisdom they had for ever destroyed the 
 Religion of Sorrow. 
 
 .* 
 
 And, in the Kingdom of Darkness, Satan 
 sat smiling to himself, and at them ; for though 
 he knew he was very wise, he knew, too, that 
 many a little child is wiser than himself or 
 than they. 
 
 212 
 
'A<PLOST@SOUl 
 
 A WOMAN, who was very fair, lay with 
 her new-born babe at her bosom ; 
 and as she lay, a Spirit, clad in 
 shining robes, appeared unto her, saying : 
 " Look, that thou mayest behold the Birth 
 of a Soul ! " 
 
 Then the woman looked, and saw, as 
 through a silver mist, a realm whether far- 
 off or near, she knew not over which there 
 rested a light as serene as that of moonlight 
 softened by clouds. 
 
 Many forms she saw therein, among which 
 was one that was like unto her own babe. 
 Then turning to the Spirit, she said : " What 
 place is this ? and whose is yonder child ? " 
 The Spirit made answer : " The place 
 which thou seest is the Abode of Souls, and 
 the child is the soul of thine own babe." 
 
 2I 5 
 
A Lost Soul 
 
 But the woman laughed, saying : " That 
 may not be, seeing that my child is alive, 
 and lies even now upon my bosom. It were 
 more easy for thee to persuade me that the 
 thing which I behold is my own soul, than 
 that it is the roul of my child ! " 
 
 "What, then, is the thing which thou 
 callest thy 'soul'?" asked the Spirit. 
 
 " I cannot tell," replied the woman. 
 
 Then said the Spirit : " Whenever a 
 human being is born into the world, there 
 is born in the Abode of Souls that human 
 being's spiritual counterpart. Thy soul abidest 
 there, as does the soul of every other human 
 creature ; and as is the growth of thy body 
 on earth, so is the growth of thy soul in the 
 Abode of Souls." 
 
 " Myself is where my body is, and there 
 only," said the woman; "and if, as thou 
 sayest, there is elsewhere another self which 
 thou callest my 'soul,' then is that other self 
 not truly I." 
 
 But the Spirit made answer : " Thy soul 
 is more truly thyself than thou art, for thy 
 
 216 
 
A Lost Soul 
 
 soul is what thou really art. The thing 
 which I see before me, which thou callest 
 thyself, is but what thou seemest to be. Thy 
 outward and bodily self may be white and 
 fair, but if thine inner and real self be evil 
 and unclean, then will thy soul be evil and 
 unclean to look upon, so that thou shalt be 
 known even as thou art. The thing which 
 thou didst in public, calling upon all men to 
 witness, shall not be more manifest than the 
 thing which thou didst steal away in secret 
 to commit. Thou didst double-lock thy 
 chamber-door, that none might see thee, but 
 I tell thee that every deed thou doest in the 
 body nay, not only every deed which thou 
 doest, but the most secret thought of thine 
 inmost heart, is recorded upon the face of 
 thy soul, and cannot be hid." 
 
 Then said the woman : " Why tellest thou 
 me these things? Are my sins greater than 
 the sins of others, that thou speakest thus ? 
 Are there not murderers and adulterers, 
 thieves and Sabbath-breakers enough, that 
 thou comest to me, who am none of these ? 
 
 217 
 
A Lost Soul 
 
 My sins, which are not many, I have long 
 since repented, and lo ! thou revilest me, as 
 if I were the chief of sinners ! 
 
 Then said the Spirit: "If thou hast truly 
 repented of thy sins, then is it well with 
 thee indeed! 
 
 " But for every sin which thou hast re- 
 membered and of which thou hast repented, 
 there are myriads which thou hast forgotten. 
 Dost thou think that because the very 
 memory of them has passed from thy mind, 
 so that they have become to thee as though 
 they had never been, that for this reason 
 they are not ? 
 
 " I tell thee that in the day wherein thou 
 shalt look upon thine own soul, be it fair or 
 foul, and see it in all its nakedness the day 
 which men speak of as the c Day of Judg- 
 ment,' thou shalt see the least of these 
 unremembered, unrepented sins, writ large 
 upon the face of thy soul. 
 
 " But answer me, ere I go from thee : Is 
 there any one under thy roof or among 
 those whose lives thou art able, for good or 
 
 218 
 
A Lost Soul 
 
 for evil, to influence, upon whose soul thou 
 dost seek to look ? " 
 
 And the woman made answer : " The 
 souls of all who are under my roof, I know, 
 and need not to see ; but one there is, my 
 neighbour, who is very fair, and concerning 
 whom I am curious. Show me, then, her 
 soul, that I may learn whether what men 
 say of her be true or untrue." 
 
 But the Spirit said : " God hath not re- 
 vealed unto thee a vision of souls that so 
 thou mayest gratify an idle curiosity, but 
 that thou mayest realise thy responsibilities 
 and profit thereby. 
 
 " And dost thou indeed think that thou 
 knowest the souls of all them that dwell 
 under thy roof, or that there is any one on 
 earth, who knoweth even his own soul, as it 
 is in the sight of God? 
 
 " The heart of man resembles a secret 
 chamber wherein stands like the block of 
 white unhewn marble, set in the studio of a 
 sculptor a veiled figure. Though the man 
 may not so much as lift the corner of the 
 
 219 
 
A Lost Soul 
 
 veil, yet must he forever and in secret work 
 to fashion and to form the figure that lies 
 beneath. 
 
 "And the figure is the Soul of the man, 
 and the unveiling thereof is called death ; 
 and until the figure be unveiled, the man 
 scarce knoweth what manner of man he is. 
 
 " And I tell thee that so far from knowing 
 the souls of all them who dwell under thy 
 roof there are some, among thy nearest and 
 dearest, into the secret places of whose heart 
 thou hast never looked, and of whose real 
 self thou knowest scarce more than thou 
 knowest of the stranger in the street. 
 
 " Is there no speck in thine own heart, or 
 in thine own past, which thou wouldst wish 
 that the husband, whose soul thou countest 
 one with thine, should see with thy eyes, 
 rather than with his, and which thou wouldst 
 not hesitate to reveal in all its nakedness? 
 And dost thou think thou knowest him 
 better than he knoweth thee? 
 
 "The very child whom for many years 
 thou didst scarce venture to let out of thy 
 
 220 
 
A Lost Soul 
 
 sight, that so thou mightest keep him from 
 knowledge of evil, whose innocent face 
 thou didst kiss this morning, hugging thyself 
 in thy heart that thou wast secure of his 
 confidence and love dost thou know that 
 that child has already a life apart from thee 
 that he lives in a world which is created 
 for him, less by thy teaching than by the 
 talk of his companions and that so far 
 from scarcely realising, as thou dreamest, the 
 existence of evil, it may be that he is 
 already old in the knowledge of sin ? " 
 
 The Spirit ceased, and through the silver 
 mist that veiled the Abode of Souls, the 
 woman saw many forms pass to and fro. 
 Some were fair to look upon, and some 
 were foul. Others were neither fair nor 
 foul ; and some few she saw which she 
 recognised readily, inasmuch as they differed 
 but little from the selves which she knew. 
 
 Then said the Spirit : " Hast thou aught 
 to ask about any of these ? " 
 
 Pointing with her finger, the woman made 
 221 
 
A Lost Soul 
 
 answer : " One form I see which troubles 
 me, and which I seem to know, and yet 
 know not. Tell me, then, whose soul it is." 
 
 " Thy father's," answered the Spirit. 
 
 But the woman laughed, saying : " My 
 father's face is wrinkled, and his form feeble 
 and bent, but yonder figure is straight and 
 lusty as a sapling, and the face thereof hath 
 the bloom and the beauty of youth." 
 
 "The face of thy father is wrinkled," 
 answered the Spirit, "and his form feeble 
 and old, but years have not hardened his 
 heart, nor aged his soul, and therefore dost 
 thou see him young and fair in the Abode 
 of Souls." 
 
 As the woman turned again to look into 
 the Abode of Souls, there arose before her 
 the form of a beautiful girl, who gazed upon 
 her with eyes full of pity and love. 
 
 "Behold! the soul of thy sister," said the 
 Spirit. 
 
 But the woman made answer: "The face 
 of my sister is as ill-favoured as mine is fair, 
 and yonder girl is more beautiful than I." 
 
 222 
 
A Lost Soul 
 
 Then said the Spirit : " Dost thou think 
 because God hath chosen to make thee fair 
 of face, and thy sister ill-favoured, that thou 
 shalt be fair and she ill-favoured to all 
 eternity ? " 
 
 As the woman, much wondering, turned 
 from him to gaze again upon the Abode of 
 Souls, another face rose up before her, upon 
 which she could not but look. 
 
 It was the face of one who had once been 
 fair ; but as the woman looked upon it, she 
 saw something written thereon, which re- 
 pelled her more than did the faces she had 
 seen that were low and animal. No sensual 
 vice had loosened the lip, bleared the eye, 
 or bloated the complexion ; but meanness 
 had set its mark upon the mouth and 
 pinched the nostrils ; and sordid, respectable 
 self-seeking and self-righteousness had made 
 hard the heart, and deadened the spiritual 
 nature more surely than vice or sin ; so that 
 the woman felt, as she looked, that she was 
 gazing upon the face of one who was lower 
 in the scale of being and farther from the 
 
 223 
 
A Lost Soul 
 
 Kingdom of God, than are the wretched 
 creatures whom this world calls " fallen " or 
 "lost." 
 
 Then turning to the Spirit, she said : 
 " Who art thou ? and what is yonder evil 
 shape ? " 
 
 And the Spirit replied : " I am the Angel 
 of Death and Judgment, and the thing 
 which thou beholdest is thyself, and the soul 
 which thou hast made." 
 
 But, laughing scornfully, the woman made 
 answer : " By this I know that thou art a 
 lying Spirit, whom I need neither fear nor 
 heed : for behold ! I have but dreamed a 
 dream ! " 
 
 And the Spirit replied: "Thou hast indeed 
 dreamed a dream, but the name of that 
 Dream was Life, and now thou dr earnest no 
 longer" 
 
 224 
 
JDNELY'GOD 
 
 A MAN lay on his bed at midnight, and 
 dreamt that he stood alone by the 
 sea, and that his hour of death was 
 nigh. 
 
 From the gates of night and across the sea 
 there blew a wind that made him shiver less 
 with physical cold than with a sense of soul 
 desolation and loneliness ; a wind which chilled 
 the heart of him even more than the body. 
 
 And as he looked up to sky and stars 
 his lonely spirit, losing itself in the infinite 
 abyss, turned sick and giddy at the thought 
 of dying, and reeled shuddering to earth 
 again. 
 
 Then the man thought of the woman he 
 227 
 
The Lonely God 
 
 loved, the wife of his heart and mother of 
 his children, and that if he and she might 
 but die together if he might but set out 
 with her hand in his, he should no longer 
 fear to make death's journey ; and, even as 
 he so thought, he awoke with pounding heart 
 and panting breath ; awoke to shudder at the 
 darkness and the loneliness, and with a 
 nameless fear lying at the centre of life, like 
 the lurking shadow of an unknown, unseen 
 foe. 
 
 As he lay he heard the low breathing of 
 his sleeping wife, and with a sigh of relief, 
 and with all sense of lonesomeness gone, the 
 man closed his eyes and fell asleep. 
 
 Again he dreamed a dream in which he 
 thought that he stood in the presence of 
 God. 
 
 Whether he had been borne to the infinite 
 regions which stretch on and away, and yet 
 away, and yet again away, beyond the limits 
 of our universe ; or whether he were still on 
 the earth ; or had soared to a distant star, 
 or to the vast and void sky spaces that lie 
 
 228 
 
The Lonely God 
 
 between the worlds ; or had crept into the 
 narrow chamber ot the human soul, the man 
 knew not, but he was aware in some won- 
 derful way of all that was taking place on 
 all God's myriad worlds. 
 
 He saw circling planets sweep faster and 
 faster on their ever-narrowing orbit, until at 
 last they fell and flew, like moths to a 
 candle, to feed the flaming furnace of the 
 sun ; and he looked upon his own home, 
 and saw the billowy rise and fall of his 
 wife's bosom, and heard the cry of the child 
 who lay in a cot by her side. 
 
 He gazed upon burnt-out worlds, moons 
 that had once been astir with life, and heard 
 their cooling and cinderous surfaces crack 
 into chasm and cave ; and he looked into 
 the bowels of the earth, and saw strange 
 creatures breeding and sporting amid the 
 central fires. 
 
 He watched comets, those vagabonds of 
 the heavens, wandering gipsy-like between 
 the worlds, or weaving out-lying system to 
 out-lying system, like nebulous shuttlecocks 
 
 229 
 
The Lonely God 
 
 of the skies ; and he saw into the secret 
 workings of human souls. 
 
 He looked upon the planet Jupiter, that 
 laboratory of God, and beheld moving 
 athwart the thin atmosphere, strange shapes, 
 uncanny as a half-formed, prematurely-born 
 babe, that seemed neither spirit nor flesh, 
 but which he knew were the soul-embryos 
 of creatures which, developing by progressive 
 stages and from age to age, should, in the 
 aeons to be, become beings infinitely greater 
 than man, and scarcely less glorious than 
 God ; and he peered beneath the earth's 
 surface, and watched the anxious running to 
 and fro of innumerable ants. 
 
 Then raising his head the man looked into 
 the eyes of God, and saw eternity lying 
 therein. 
 
 And at that sight the man fell back with 
 a cry like that of one smitten by the light- 
 ning, and with the very soul of him sick 
 and swooning with fear. 
 
 But in a voice of infinite tenderness, God 
 spake, bidding him be of good cheer. 
 
 230 
 
The Lonely God 
 
 And God said: "Art thou he who feared 
 death because of its loneliness ? " 
 
 And the man said : " I am he." 
 
 And to him the Almighty spake again : 
 " Thou diest alone, but I live alone ; and as 
 is the sound which thou hearest in the hollow 
 convolutions of a shell, to the roar of the 
 central sea, so is thy loneliness to Mine. 
 When God throws His arms around a soul 
 and draws that soul away from its com- 
 panions, and to Himself, then is that soul 
 very lonely, but the loneliness is but the being 
 gathered to the heart of God" 
 
 Then said the man : " By Thee all that is 
 in heaven above or in the earth beneath was 
 created. Thou hast but to speak the word, 
 and lo ! a legion of angels are at Thy 
 side to bear Thee company by night or by 
 day." ' 
 
 But God made answer : " That which I 
 create, be it angel or archangel, is but My 
 creature, and can never be My companion." 
 
 And again the man : " Thou art God the 
 Eternal One, Ruler of Earth and Sea. Is 
 
 231 
 
The Lonely God 
 
 it nothing to Thee that all men worship 
 Thee and hold Thee in reverence ? " 
 
 But to him the Almighty made answer : 
 "The thought of God is, to most men, but 
 a plank to which they hope to cling when 
 the waters of death are closing over their 
 heads. How many are there, thinkest thou, 
 who love the God they have never seen, as 
 thou lovest thy wife and child ? " 
 
 And the man said : " Thou hast but to say 
 the word, and behold all men must love 
 Thee." 
 
 But God answered him : " For the love 
 which I compel, I care not." 
 
 Then said the man : " Thou art God, the 
 Omnipotent One. Sun, moon, and stars 
 sprang into being at Thy bidding. Thou 
 hadst but to say, ' Let there be light,' and 
 there was light ; and Thou didst but 
 breathe upon inanimate clay, and lo ! it 
 became an immortal soul, clothed in a form 
 divinely fair, and fashioned in Thine own 
 likeness ; and man, the heir of eternity and 
 image of God, came into being. To Thee 
 
 232 
 
The Lonely God 
 
 all things are possible. Thou hast but to 
 say, * Let be ! ' to set at Thy side another 
 God, like even unto Thyself, that so Thou 
 mayst be alone no more." 
 
 And yet again God said : " That which I 
 create is but My creature, and can never be 
 My companion ; and from My loneliness, 
 even Mine own omnipotence is powerless to 
 deliver Me. 
 
 "Rememberest thou not of Him who was 
 slain on Calvary, that men taunted Him, 
 saying, * He saved others : Himself He cannot 
 save ' ? 
 
 " Even so from the loneliness wherefrom 
 God saveth others, Himself God cannot save. 
 
 "The cry in loneliness that rang from Cal- 
 vary's Cross rings throughout creation still. 
 Thou lookest out into the night, and thou 
 shudderest not because of the blackness 
 that broods between earth and sky, but 
 because thou hast looked, as into an abyss, 
 into the lonely soul of God. Nature is lonely 
 because of God's loneliness. On every breeze 
 is borne were the ear of man attuned to 
 
 233 
 
The Lonely God 
 
 hear it the sound of innumerable lamenta- 
 tions, which is Nature's echo of God's lonely 
 cry. 
 
 " God shudders and, over the shining sur- 
 face of the sea, a sudden tremor flits. 
 
 " God hides His countenance and the 
 sunshine fades from meadow and field, and 
 darkness covers the face of the sky. 
 
 " But on the shadowless, shining peaks of 
 Eternity, God sits lonely forever; and into 
 His loneliness neither man nor Nature can 
 enter. Nay, of such loneliness as God's, the 
 soul of man cannot even conceive, for man's 
 death is not more lonely than God's life. 
 
 " I am the Loneliness." 
 
 The voice ceased, and the man awoke to 
 know that he had been dreaming. 
 
 Outside the wind made moan continually, 
 and from the tossing tree tops there came a 
 sound like the ceaseless sighing of the sea. 
 
 For one moment the man gazed into the 
 black and brooding night, whence it seemed 
 to him that eyes of infinite sadness looked 
 out of the darkness into his own. 
 
 234 
 
The Lonely God 
 
 In the next, he had drawn the curtain and 
 turned from the window, that in the warmth 
 and light of the room, and in the caresses of 
 his waiting wife, he might cease even to 
 remember that he had dreamed a dream. 
 
 Yet sometimes, as he stands and listens 
 to the sea at midnight, there seems borne 
 to him on every breeze a sound like that of 
 innumerable lamentations, and then the man 
 thinks again of his dream, and fancies that 
 in sobbing surge and wailing wind he hears 
 the cry of the lonely God. 
 
 235 
 
OUTACHILD 
 
 PROEM 
 
 THE night of New Year's Eve had come, 
 and I stood under the stars in a garden 
 brimmed with white moonlight and set 
 around with trees. In the garden all was 
 still, and the sky was clear overhead, but, low 
 down on the horizon, Night was plying her 
 spindle, weaving floating and fleecy cloud- 
 flax into the dark fabric of cloud-curtains, 
 to be drawn ere long around the sleeping 
 place of the moon. As a veil of fine lawn 
 might cover a girl's face, so suddenly a wisp of 
 white cloud-rack drifted across the moon. I 
 say " across the moon," but so undimmed 
 was her splendour that one might have 
 
 239 
 
A World 
 
 supposed the veil had been draped about her 
 face, instead of drawn across it. 
 
 As metal is cut by a die, as flesh is cut 
 by a knife, so the moving mist seemed to be 
 cut through as it met the moon's edge. 
 And so sharp was the severance, that when 
 the cloud-rack which aureoled the moon was 
 suddenly stained luminous cinnamon as a 
 cloth is stained amber or topaz by spilt 
 wine, as the clothing of a duellist is stained 
 crimson by a wound it seemed to me as 
 if the white cloud-rack were stained with 
 the ebbing of its own blood. 
 
 Suddenly, faint and far, wind-borne upon 
 the breeze, came the first chime of a church 
 bell striking the hour. The old year was 
 irrevocably gone a year of sin and shame 
 and cowardice, of mean aims, mean acts, 
 mean defeats, and meaner triumphs. 
 
 Looking back upon the track I had 
 trodden, it seemed to me like some slimy 
 serpent-trail upon the face of God's fair 
 world. I could not bear to think of it ; 
 and as an archer wings a shaft into the 
 
 240 
 
Without a Child 
 
 blue, so I strove to wing my thoughts, 
 arrow-wise, into the as yet unstained future. 
 
 I looked upon that future as a traveller 
 standing upon a hill looks at dawn upon 
 a far stretch of unknown country. 
 
 As to morrow, and the days of the week 
 which lie before us, differ not greatly from 
 yesterday and the days of the week that 
 have just gone, so, to the traveller, the 
 face of the landscape before him fields 
 and lanes and highways, with here and 
 there a common, and here and there a 
 church is not unlike the face of the land- 
 scape through which he has just passed. 
 
 In the immediate future there is no 
 menace of that Unknown which is always 
 the dreaded. 
 
 But beyond this near stretch of country 
 the traveller realises that hidden in mists 
 he cannot pierce lies a strange and unknown 
 land. 
 
 And looking into the year that lay before 
 me, I fancied that glittering above the 
 smoking plain I caught a glimpse of the 
 
 241 R 
 
A World 
 
 towers and pinnacles of a great city. The 
 next moment, towers and pinnacles were 
 gone, and I saw only a desolate land of 
 dark, the shadows of bare rock and brooding 
 mountain, and, beyond the mist, the utter 
 loneliness of the sea. 
 
 4 'The coming year! O God!" I cried, 
 "what holds it for me of good or evil? 
 Shall my feet indeed tread the streets of 
 some city of light which I have seen 
 miraged only in my dreams ? or shall they 
 lead me to the sullen shore of Death's in- 
 exorable sea?" 
 
 But on the night there came no answer 
 save the answer of my own soul : 
 
 "To all men, even to the impure, God 
 gives the gift of memory. But the memory 
 of the impure is like an opaque-backed mirror 
 hung on a wall. It shows only what lies 
 behind. But sometimes, to those who are 
 crystal-pure of heart, God gives, in place of 
 memory's mirror, a magic glass, as crystal-pure 
 even as their hearts a glass in which may be 
 seen, not only the mirrored picture of what lies 
 
 242 
 
Without a Child 
 
 behind, but also of what lies before. These 
 are they whom men call poets and prophets, 
 and of all men they most resemble God, inas- 
 much as in a measure they share the power to 
 foresee what is to come, as well as to remember 
 what is past. These are the pure in heart, 
 and thou art not as they. Therefore, to look 
 into the future is denied thee. Look back 
 upon thy past thou mayest, for the past lies 
 hidden in thine own thoughts. But the future 
 lies hidden in the thoughts of God, and, into 
 the thoughts of God, the impure of heart 
 may never see. 
 
 243 
 
PART I 
 I 
 
 THAT night as I slept I had a dream of the 
 future. I seemed to be looking upon London 
 as it will be a hundred years hence. Changes 
 had come about of necessity changes in 
 methods of locomotion, changes in costume, 
 changes in many public buildings and public 
 streets. Except, however, for the fact that 
 parks and pleasure grounds had multiplied on 
 every side, the London on which I looked was 
 not greatly different from the London of to- 
 day. One change, however, attracted my 
 attention many churches and chapels had 
 entirely disappeared, and most of those which 
 remained seemed to have lost their sacred 
 character. At one time these churches had 
 
 244 
 
A World Without a Child 
 
 been among the most distinctive buildings in 
 , every quarter, but now, wherever one looked, 
 huge palaces of entertainment or refreshment 
 sought if only by their very bulk to shoulder 
 all other buildings out of sight. Colossal of 
 scale, superbly proportioned, these palaces 
 of delight dominated the place in which they 
 stood, as a pyramid dominates its immediate 
 surroundings in the desert. Upon them had 
 been lavished all the imaginings of the architect, 
 all the magnificence of design and decoration 
 which art could conceive and money buy. 
 Nor did these splendours go unappreciated. 
 Sunday though I knew the day to be, the 
 theatres and music halls were open and filled 
 to overcrowding. In the cafes, restaurants 
 and drinking places, gaily-dressed throngs 
 lounged, smoking, or sipping the nectar of 
 rare wines and liqueurs. Bands played in 
 the public squares ; and, in the parks and 
 open spaces, games of skill and strength were 
 watched by eager crowds. 
 
 I remember, however, that what I most 
 missed in this new world, thus given up to 
 
 245 
 
A World 
 
 pleasure and delight, was the laughter of little 
 children. Children there were, but only a few, 
 and their faces seemed to have lost something 
 of the freshness of childhood. It often happens 
 that when youth and maiden, man and woman, 
 love God, and love each other so purely that 
 they take no thought of aught but of God and 
 of their love God takes thought for their 
 children, that they be straight and strong and 
 very beautiful. But when the man and the 
 woman make not love their world, but the 
 world their love ; either delaying marriage 
 till youth be gone, lest by living simply they 
 lose something of ease and comfort, or, if they 
 marry, hoping that their union be childless, 
 lest the dear and lovely burden of babyhood 
 (a burden which no true woman would willingly 
 forego) lie upon a bosom which, but for that 
 burden, had been bared, not to the sweet 
 pressure of baby lips and fingers, but to the 
 eyes of partners in a dance, of fellow-guests at 
 a dinner, or of utter strangers in a theatre ; 
 when those, who love, thus take thought to 
 
 evade love's sacred obligation, take thought of 
 
 246 
 
Without a Child 
 
 money and position and worldly pleasure, it 
 often happens that upon the faces of their 
 children, if children come, is to be seen some- 
 thing of the ageing anxiousness which had 
 filled the thoughts of their parents. 
 
 The faces of the children, upon whom I was 
 now looking, seemed to me strangely worn 
 and wizened. They were like the faces of the 
 children of the old. 
 
 Wondering at all this, I walked slowly on, 
 and, before long, found myself approaching 
 St. Paul's. When last I had seen the great 
 Cathedral, hemmed in as it was among mean 
 surroundings of mart and shop and warehouse, 
 I had likened it in my mind to some magnifi- 
 cent tropical plant, the seed of which had 
 chanced to drop among rank and closely grow- 
 ing weeds, and so, in the struggle for existence, 
 had been compelled to tower above its fellows, 
 that thereby it might thrust upward, to the 
 light and to the sun, the purple closed-flower 
 of its dome. 
 
 Now I was rejoiced to see it surrounded by 
 spacious grounds, for these baser growths had 
 
 247 
 
A World 
 
 been swept away ; and bole and branch and 
 blossom stood open to the sky. As I drew 
 near I heard, coming from within, the sound 
 of cheers and laughter and stamping feet ; and 
 a venerable old man, still hale of body and with 
 the light of undimmed intellect flashing in his 
 eyes, was coming from the portal, his face 
 ablaze with wrath, as he shook off, as it were, 
 the very dust of the place from his shoes. 
 
 To him I addressed myself : 
 
 " Sir, what means this unseemly disturbance 
 in the House of God? I am but newly arrived 
 in this country, and in this city, after an absence 
 of many, many years ; and the sights I see, 
 the sounds I hear, but most of all this sacri- 
 legious uproar coming from the nation's house 
 of prayer, make me ask myself what change 
 has come to Christian England that such things 
 can be on the day of rest." 
 
 " Your absence must indeed have been long 
 and your wanderings far and many," he made 
 answer with sad courtesy, " if you know not of 
 the changes that have come about in England 
 and in Europe this many a year. If your 
 
 248 
 
Without a Child 
 
 object be but to mock an old man's grief at the 
 godlessness that has spread like a canker in 
 this city and in this nation, I pray you to stand 
 aside and let me pass." 
 
 " Sir," I said, " believe me that I am one 
 who has so long been dead to the world which 
 once I knew, that all I see around me is strange 
 and unfamiliar. That which I ask you, I ask 
 in all sincerity. What means, then, this un- 
 seemly disturbance in God's house and on 
 God's day ? " 
 
 " Did God dwell in houses builded of men, 
 He might often go homeless in England to-day," 
 was the answer. " Know ye not that save for 
 a faithful few, the setting apart of one day in 
 the week for the worship of God has long 
 ceased in this country, even as what were once 
 Houses of Prayer have now been converted to 
 the people's use as Places of Entertainment or 
 Palaces of Delight ? " 
 
 "Has this country no national religion then?" 
 I asked. 
 
 "None," was the reply. "England of to-day 
 is divided into two great parties the Pleasurists 
 
 249 
 
A World 
 
 and the Pessimists. The former preach the 
 familiar doctrine, ' Eat, drink, and be merry, 
 for to-morrow we die.' They acknowledge no 
 responsibility to any Supreme Being, nor to 
 posterity, declaring that each is here to find in 
 life what pleasure he can. The Pessimists, on 
 the other hand, preach, as of old, that this is the 
 worst of all possible worlds. They denounce 
 it as a crime to bring a child into a world where 
 all must of necessity surfer pain of body and 
 fear of mind, until called on to undergo the 
 final mind-agony and body-pangs of death. 
 Suicide they hold to be no sin, since the sooner 
 the human race comes to an end, the better for 
 all concerned. Whether one be a Pleasurist 
 or Pessimist is very much a question of tem- 
 perament or of health, and matters very little 
 in the end, since each is equally Godless 
 in life." 
 
 " Is this then the reason why I see so few 
 children, and that the few I see, look as if they 
 no longer knew all men and women even the 
 veriest stranger to be the little ones' lover 
 and friend?" 
 
 250 
 
Without a Child 
 
 And sadly the old man made answer : 
 
 " Very lovely is the confidence of childhood. 
 We do well to speak of ( King Baby,' for the 
 right, by which a little child shall rule, is a 
 diviner, sweeter right and sanctity than ever 
 was accorded to kings. It is the unalienable 
 right, the royal prerogative, of every child to 
 come into this world assured that its coming 
 will set joybells of the heart a-ringing. 
 
 "Ere that child came to earth, God stooped 
 to take into His arms the tiny image of Him- 
 self, to breathe between the little lips the breath 
 of His own life, to set upon the baby brow the 
 kiss of which dreaming children think when 
 suddenly they smile in their sleep. Then with 
 infinite tenderness He laid the little flower-like 
 form in the hands of an angel, kneeling to 
 receive the precious burden : 
 
 " 'Out of God's hands, and the hands of God's 
 angels in heaven, thou shalt pass into the care 
 of God's angels on earth. Thou shalt enter 
 the world, speeded of God, and tended by the 
 hands of God's dear women, even as when 
 thou leavest it, God's dear women shall tend 
 
 251 
 
A World Without a Child 
 
 thee to the last, and God and His Son, thy 
 Saviour, shall wait to welcome thy return. 
 
 " 'Go forth little one, and may thy coming 
 make glad the hearts of women and men, for I 
 have sent thee, I am with thee. Go !' '' 
 
 252 
 
II 
 
 THE old man's voice broke, and with pity that 
 was wrathful, and wrath that was pitiful, he 
 cried : 
 
 " And now the little children, whom God has 
 sent, are no longer welcome in a world given 
 up to selfish seeking after pleasure and after 
 vanity. 
 
 " I say not that the world has grown worse 
 in all respects. Many evils, which I remember, 
 disfigure the face of civilisation no more. Crime 
 is in many, if not most, cases, the result of 
 upbringing and surroundings. Society saw 
 this, and, seeing, too, that crime was a menace 
 to herself society, for her own protection, so 
 ordered things that the incentives to crime are 
 gone. Therein is the world the better, and 
 therein am I grateful and glad. But my glad- 
 
 253 
 
A World 
 
 ness and my gratitude cannot make me forget 
 the fact that the world has grown Christless 
 and Godless. 
 
 "It is nigh a hundred years ago since the 
 change began. Till then, Religion though 
 the world was slowly becoming secularised, and 
 faith in Revealed Religion was on the wane 
 was still a power in the land. But, inch by 
 inch, Secularism gained ground. At first only 
 in the great cities, then like some huge octopus, 
 she stretched forth her tentacles to the towns, 
 making wherever she established herself, new 
 centres, from which stealthily to protrude fin- 
 gers that, as they neared a victim, shot out 
 suddenly into interminably extended arms ; till 
 at last she laid hold on the villages, and, finally, 
 sprawled herself obscenely over the land, suck- 
 ing, leech-like, at the life-blood of the nation, 
 crushing religion, cobra-wise, in her folds, and 
 suffocating faith by her voided slime. 
 
 " All this took long to accomplish ; and 
 possibly Secularism had not throttled Religion 
 in England thus easily, had not other causes 
 contributed to the same end. During the first 
 
 2 54 
 
Without a Child 
 
 quarter of the twentieth century, there came 
 to this country a season of unprecedented 
 prosperity. Trade throve as trade had never 
 thriven before. Money accumulated on all 
 hands, and at such a rate that some of those 
 whose tempers had once been soured and their 
 faces sharpened by the constant and irking 
 need of money, at last became newly sharpened 
 of feature and temper, because they could not 
 fast enough devise new pleasures upon which to 
 squander their wealth. 
 
 " At first the sudden influx of money into 
 the land, with the consequent cessation of the 
 necessity to work, brought no ill-effects in its 
 train. The mass of the people abandoned 
 themselves, it is true, to the pursuit of pleasure, 
 but the pleasure-seeking took a healthy turn. 
 Field-sports and games of every sort were 
 ardently followed. Those who had formerly 
 spent their days working at a desk, serving in 
 a shop, or toiling in a factory or warehouse, 
 were now for the first time, and for a great 
 portion of the day, in the fresh air, with 
 benefit both to body and to brain. Our 
 
 2 55 
 
A World 
 
 national physique improved, and with it our 
 morals. 
 
 " But in course of time the reaction came. 
 Not all at once, for, to this day, those who 
 occupy themselves in games and sports may be 
 reckoned by millions. Once, however, let the 
 necessity to work be removed, and it is sur- 
 prising how swiftly the individual or the nation 
 lapses into idleness, how inevitably idleness 
 becomes self-indulgence, and how easily con- 
 sistent self-indulgence passes by slow stages 
 first into luxuriousness, next into licence, and 
 finally into vice. 
 
 " The people grew more lazy, more luxurious, 
 more disinclined to bestir themselves every day. 
 Instead of themselves taking part, as of old, in 
 the sports they loved, they now allowed them- 
 selves the luxury of paying other and poorer 
 folk to play these sports for them, while 
 they, inactive themselves, lounged smoking and 
 drinking, to look on. And so insensibly the 
 manhood of the race softened. While the 
 people of England could afford to buy wheat 
 from other lands, what need for them to till or 
 
 256 
 
Without a Child 
 
 to toil in their own fields ? While they could 
 travel long distances in cars provided with 
 every luxury, why trouble themselves to ride or 
 to walk ? While they could pay Chinamen to 
 work their mines, Lascars to man their ships, 
 Negroes, Indians, and Arabs to fight their 
 battles, and other mercenaries to fetch, carry, 
 cook, scrub, bake, why task themselves un- 
 necessarily? Their very children, the women 
 at last ceased to suckle, laying the lips of their 
 little ones to strange breasts, and leaving them 
 when older to Ayahs to tend and to women of 
 other lands to teach. 
 
 " Then against child-bearing itself the women 
 of England began to rebel. ' Too long have 
 we borne this heavy and unequal affliction,' 
 they cried. 'Why should God penalise us 
 thus from our birth laying the burden and the 
 suffering upon the weaker sex, instead of upon 
 the sex which is strong ? Scarcely are we out 
 of our own childhood before this life-long 
 humiliation is laid upon us, to rack us with 
 ache in brain and limb and body; to wound, 
 with crueller ache, our sensitive and shrinking 
 
 257 s 
 
A World 
 
 spirit, and to terrify us with the threat of 
 possible anguish to come. The Psalmist, being 
 a man, could write merrily of the bridegroom 
 coming " rejoicing out o his chamber." It was 
 like a man to forget that every woman who of 
 her great love, gives herself to wife, knows well 
 that it may be her own death-sentence which 
 she hears, when they two are declared to be 
 man and wife. If she bear a child to her 
 husband, and bear in safety, she is but as one 
 who has been reprieved ; and has no assurance 
 that a time may not come thereafter when the 
 dread sentence will be carried out. 
 
 " ' From birth to burial, the days of a woman 
 are but cycles and seasons of sickness of body 
 and sadness of mind, of travail and torture that 
 must be faced with the consciousness that she 
 may never live to look upon the features of the 
 child for whose sake her travail and her torture 
 are borne. 
 
 11 * Let us make an end of this cruelty, of this 
 life-long iniquity. Wives we will be, if so it 
 pleases us, but mothers we will be no more. 
 We, no less than men, have our individual lives 
 
 258 
 
Without a Child 
 
 to live, we have other vocations to follow than 
 the bearing of children at the will of a man or 
 at the bidding of a God. Of the two who are 
 responsible for the coming of a child, one, and 
 that one the strong and sturdily framed, goes 
 free, while the pain and the torture in their 
 entirety are appointed to be the lo* of women, 
 soft of flesh, delicate of frame, and exquisitely 
 sensitive to anguish of body and fear of mind. 
 
 " ' If God, as men assert, be responsible for 
 all this, and for more than this, for if it happen 
 that the child be born out of wedlock, once 
 again it is the woman who pays, once again the 
 man goes free, while upon the woman who, 
 haply, is more sinned against than sinning, the 
 direst and most cruel consequences fall, if 
 God, as men assert, be answerable for all this, 
 is it not time that we women dethroned in our 
 hearts the unjust Judge and dishonest Appor- 
 tioner of life's good and evil, either refusing to 
 believe in a God at all, or else setting up in 
 His stead another God of our own to worship ? 
 If the Christ approve this cowardly, cruel and 
 iniquitous scheme, then say we to the Christ : 
 
 250 
 
A World Without a Child 
 
 " ' By this we know that Thou wast but a 
 man, with all a man's injustice to women ; and 
 though Thou dost claim to have shared, with 
 Thy fellow men, all that a man may endure of 
 human suffering, yet have we women no part 
 in Thee, for though Thou hast shared all else, 
 at least Thou hast never shared the heaviness 
 and the anguish of a woman's lot. We owe no 
 allegiance to a Divinity be he God or be he 
 Christ who has doomed unresisting, defence- 
 less women to such a lot. The right of such 
 an one to sit in judgment upon us, thus to 
 sentence us and to cast us, untried and unheard, 
 into such dungeons of despair, we henceforth 
 and for ever repudiate and deny.'" 
 
 260 
 
Ill 
 
 THE old man paused, white and trembling. 
 
 " Blasphemy such as this one shrinks even 
 from repeating, but so it was that many women 
 spoke a century's half ago, and so it is that 
 many more speak to-day. That the mystery 
 of human suffering, and, most of all, the 
 mystery of woman's suffering, gives cause and 
 gives colour to their bitterness and even to 
 their blasphemy, I who seek the truth may not 
 deny. 
 
 4< But creed is more often the outcome of con- 
 duct than conduct is of creed. To decide to 
 disobey God, to persist in that disobedience, 
 means that you have decided to do without 
 God in your life. And when you have decided 
 to put God out of your life, you are already an 
 atheist by choice, and must not complain if you 
 end in becoming one by conviction. 
 
 261 
 
A World 
 
 "So it was with these women of whom I 
 have spoken. Their denial of God was the 
 result, the inevitable result, of a godless life. 
 
 "Even when I was a lad, in the second 
 quarter of the twentieth century, I remember 
 hearing my father say that the growing godless- 
 ness of women was the most appalling sign of 
 the times. The women, even more than the 
 men, had become selfish, sensual, and worldly. 
 I mean not that all women were so, for the 
 godly women far outnumbered the ungodly, if, 
 alas ! the ungodly outnumber the godly to-day. 
 But no fact was so significant, no fact seemed 
 more to menace the end of all things earthly, 
 than the terrible change for the worse which 
 had come over women. Among women of all 
 classes, the drink-habit and the drug-habit were 
 enormously on the increase. In 'society/ so 
 called, the home life was almost entirely a thing 
 of the past, and the majority of marriages 
 were childless. The women occupied them- 
 selves chiefly in card-playing, gambling on race- 
 courses, speculating on the Stock Exchange, 
 and in wantonness which was all the worse 
 
 262 
 
Without a Child 
 
 not because it led, but because it did not 
 lead, to the Divorce Court. Violation of the 
 marriage vow was so common as scarcely to 
 cause surprise ; and men, perhaps because of 
 their evil living, had become too shamelessly 
 craven and complacent to trouble themselves to 
 make an exception by sueing for a divorce. 
 
 " Among the women of the middle classes, 
 the semblance of morality and respectability 
 remained, but child-bearing had for the most 
 part ceased. As of old, the man desired a 
 wife, as of old, the woman desired a husband, 
 but whereas of old, a marriage was counted 
 to be crowned and made newly holy, newly 
 honourable, and newly happy by the birth of 
 a child that marriage had come to be counted 
 most fortunate where child there was none. 
 
 " And so too, among the women who stood 
 lowest in the social scale. They also refused 
 to bear children to their husbands; and if actual 
 immorality was less common than among the 
 women who constituted ' society ' coarseness, 
 even shamelessness of speech and action were 
 only too frequent. Many of them were to be 
 
 263 
 
A World 
 
 seen with lover or with husband, sitting long 
 evenings through in the public-house, bandying 
 unclean jests, and setting vile slanders afoot 
 about their neighbours. 
 
 "When such changes can come about in 
 woman and, alas ! we have gone from bad to 
 worse during the last fifty years one is tempted 
 to think that the end of the world must be nigh. 
 At one time the history of religion seemed to 
 be written in the hearts of good women. They 
 were the mainstay of morality, pity, purity, and 
 of the spirit of utter selflessness, which is to be 
 seen in all its immeasurable majesty in the 
 Christ. Their very sufferings made them 
 nearer to Him, liker to Him, than man can 
 ever be. Every woman, most of all every 
 mother, is, by her very nature, a Christian. 
 Now one meets everywhere old women, young 
 women, wives and maidens, comely of face and 
 figure, soft- voiced, friendly-seeming the ghost, 
 the shadow, the mere semblance of what woman 
 once was, yet seemingly happy and satisfied 
 and in no way suspecting that the soul of their 
 womanhood is gone who tell you smilingly 
 
 264 
 
Without a Child 
 
 that Christ was a man, that God is not, that 
 Heaven or Hereafter there is none. I am an 
 old, old man, but to me, even to-day, the horror 
 of it is haunting. 
 
 " The words ' atheist ' and * woman ' seem to 
 be the very antithesis of each other. That a 
 woman might fall, might sin, was, I knew, 
 possible ; but that, so long as she drew the 
 breath of life, so long as she retained her 
 woman's nature, she could deny or defy God, 
 seemed to me unimaginable. Such a creature 
 is a monster, a contradiction of the name of 
 woman, the very apostate of her sex. 
 
 " The immorality of her renunciation of 
 motherhood (an immorality which is, I believe, 
 a greater offence against God, against humanity, 
 against nature, and against the nation, than 
 that she should be a mother and no wife) 
 threatens, it is true, the very existence of our 
 race; but remembering what women are to-day, 
 I could go on my knees to thank God that at 
 least such women bear no children." 
 
 Again the old man's voice broke, and he 
 uplifted eyes and hands in prayer : 
 
 265 
 
A World 
 
 11 God of Hosts, Lord of Childhood, look 
 down on this people, that corruptly disobey 
 Thy primal precept and command. Thou seest 
 that we are drunken of pleasure, eaten up of 
 luxury, rotten of ease, as were the people 
 of Sodom and Gomorrah and of Ancient 
 Rome. 
 
 "Let there not fall upon us that most terrible 
 of all Thy vengeances which Thou didst visit 
 upon Ephraim of old, when Thou didst say, 
 ' Ephraim is joined to idols : let him alone ! ' 
 Let us not alone, great God, we pray Thee. 
 Cleanse us of our corruption, purge us of our 
 sin, even though Thou slayest, for it is better 
 that God scorch with fire, or smite with thunder- 
 bolts, than that the sinful be left to his sin, and 
 be let alone of God. For the sake of Thy 
 Son, the Lord Christ, hear us and save us. 
 Amen." 
 
 In my dream, it seemed to me that God 
 made answer saying : 
 
 " The prayers of the righteous avail ; and 
 because even now there are many among this 
 
 266 
 
Without a Child 
 
 nation who follow after My commandments, 
 I will visit upon this people that which shall 
 turn them from their sin. It has of old time 
 been decreed that, of this world, an end should, 
 in God's good time, be made ; but whereas 
 man has believed that the world's end should 
 come suddenly and in a moment by fire, or 
 slowly, by the dying out of life on the face of 
 the earth by cold, I, WHO AM, decree that 
 in another way that end shall be. 
 
 " Behold now I make barren the womb of 
 the world. 
 
 " Spring-time shall come again, but with it 
 shall come no new flower, no new bud on bush 
 or on tree. 
 
 " Spring-time shall come again, but with it 
 shall come no new bird, no new beast, no new 
 creature of any kind. 
 
 " Spring-time shall come again, but with it 
 shall come no new child. 
 
 " Henceforth creation and procreation shall 
 cease. God has said it, and what God has said 
 shall be." 
 
 267 
 
PART II 
 
 I 
 
 IN my dream I looked upon the world, and, as 
 a peach hangs by the wall, so the world seemed 
 to me to hang against the wall of the heavens, 
 like over-ripe fruit, ready to drop off and fall 
 away from the world-tree which stands in God's 
 great garden of the skies. The clock of the 
 world was running down, and God's hand would 
 wind it never again. The generation upon 
 which I looked was to be the world's last, for 
 the life of the world had become a fire that has 
 no power to kindle new flame, and so must 
 burn itself out into eternal dark. 
 
 The world was dying, but as yet the world 
 knew it not, for many there were who discoursed 
 learnedly of sun-spots and star changes, of 
 
 268 
 
A World Without a Child 
 
 diverted warm streams from the south, and 
 floating iceberg islands and continents from 
 the north, which, by chilling the world's atmo- 
 sphere, had confused the seasons and so affected 
 life on the globe. 
 
 But at last there came a time when, watching 
 the more thoughtful and more observant, I saw 
 upon their faces some puckering as of undefined 
 perplexity. Just as at the approach of a 
 thunder-storm there falls upon nature even 
 before thunder clouds appear a sudden hush, a 
 rumour as of coming disaster, which drives the 
 cattle of the field, the creatures of the air to 
 shelter so over city and country there lay a 
 sense of impending calamity. Men and women 
 seemed dimly to realise that a change was 
 taking place, of the exact nature of which they 
 were not as yet aware. They would stop in 
 their walking or in their talking to peer queerly 
 about them, like those to whom familiar sur- 
 roundings seem suddenly to have grown 
 unfamiliar, but who fear to speak what is in 
 their thoughts lest they be ridiculed of their 
 fellows. Yet each day the faces, upon which 
 
 269 
 
A World 
 
 uneasiness was written, multiplied ; and I saw 
 that both men and women began to look fur- 
 tively, fearsomely, strangely, at each other. 
 And with reason, for now I saw that women 
 were fast losing their woman's loveliness ; men, 
 their manhood's splendour and strength. 
 
 In all the world there is no lovelight so 
 divine as the light which shines in the eyes of 
 a father, of a mother, at first sight of their 
 child. In all the world there is no sight more 
 sweet, more sacred, more solemn, than the 
 sight of the little child lying sheltered on the 
 bosom of the mother, who, in her turn, 
 seeks loving shelter and shepherding from the 
 strong man against whose protecting breast 
 she leans. 
 
 It is in Fatherhood, in Motherhood, that 
 men and women become likest God ; since in 
 a sense they are permitted to share with Him 
 the joy and the mystery, the majesty and awe 
 and wonder of creation. For this were they 
 born into the world, born as it were in the 
 purple. When man and woman, youth and 
 maiden, love each other purely and truly, then 
 
 270 
 
Without a Child 
 
 be their place high or be it humble, they become 
 princes and princesses by right of succession 
 and by right of royal birth, then to them comes 
 naturally the voice and the manner of courts ; 
 and when they marry, be their home cottage or 
 be it castle, they shall enter it as prince and 
 princess into a palace. 
 
 But they shall come to higher estate than 
 this. There be who maintain that love and 
 life are consummated by the coming together 
 in marriage of those who love ; but so to speak 
 is to misread the sacred mysteries. Is the 
 means to an end of more moment than the end 
 itself? Is it the scattering of the grain in 
 springtime or the reaping of the ripe corn at 
 harvest which crowns the husbandman's year ? 
 When a man becomes a father, a woman a 
 mother, then is he a king and a creator indeed, 
 then is she a queen, and crowned with the 
 rarest diadem that womanhood may wear. It 
 is that men and women may be drawn together 
 in love and marriage, thereby to carry on the 
 work of creation which God Himself has 
 begun ; that earth may not be lacking in the 
 
 271 
 
A World 
 
 laughter of little children, nor heaven in the 
 lovely light upon the face of angels, who of 
 their purity may see God it is for this that 
 God makes women divinely fair, makes men 
 straight and strong and fearless. 
 
 But now from the faces and forms of the 
 women upon whom I looked something of 
 the fairness and sweetness of womanhood were 
 gone ; from the faces and figures of the men, 
 much of their manly beauty and strength. 
 They were like flowers upon whom the frost 
 has fallen and that wither blossomless and 
 seedless upon their stalks. They were kings 
 and queens of love no longer, but base-born 
 subjects and thralls of lust. And of their lust 
 came not love, nor affection, nor even liking, 
 but hatred and scorn. And of their hatred and 
 scorn came fear fear of each other, fear of foe, 
 and fear of friend. 
 
 For now at last they knew that they walked 
 a world whose days were numbered. What 
 had been but a rumour in the air, a whisper in 
 the ear, soon came to be murmured under the 
 breath in the market-place, then to be openly 
 
 272 
 
Without a Child 
 
 discussed in the streets, and at last to be shouted 
 from the housetops. 
 
 For spring-time had come again, but with it 
 had come no new flower, no new bud on bush 
 or tree. Spring-time had come again, but with 
 it had come no new bird, no new beast, nor 
 creature of any kind. Spring-time had come 
 again, but with it had come no new child. 
 
 Wherefore men and women looked into each 
 other's faces and were afraid, for they knew 
 now that the end of the world was nigh. 
 
 2 73 
 
II 
 
 THEN madness seized them. They were like 
 shipwrecked sailors who, hopeless of rescue, 
 and knowing that ere long they must be sucked 
 under of the waters, seek to evade the horror 
 of the last awful moment by stupefying them- 
 selves with drink. But that the winter of the 
 world had come that last winter to which 
 shall succeed no spring, was now plain to all ; 
 and men cursed the fate by which their time 
 on earth had fallen at such a season. "Why 
 should we, of all earth's generations, be thus 
 singled out," they said, " to come into the 
 world, only to witness and to share in the 
 world's doom ? " 
 
 " To our fathers and our fathers' fathers," 
 one cried, " life was a V-shaped vista of happi- 
 ness. A starting point there was, and this 
 starting point men called birth : but the arms 
 of the V opened out, broadening on either side, 
 
 274 
 
A World Without a Child 
 
 in a sweep so wide as to embrace the whole 
 visible world, and stretching unendingly on 
 into Eternity. Now the V of life's vista is 
 inverted. We men and women walk its ever- 
 narrowing sides ; and as we walk, the point 
 where the sides run together in eternal dark 
 the point where there is no outlet, and no turn- 
 ing back, is even now in sight. Where lurks 
 he god or devil who has thus lured us into 
 life's cul-de-sac ? Let him come forth that we 
 may have speech of him, sight of him, and 
 curse him for a monster ere we die." 
 
 Then, when the outbreak of blasphemy had 
 spent itself, there came a season of reaction. 
 As a condemned prisoner sits hunched or 
 huddled in his cell, body and limbs ice-cold 
 and motionless, as if carved in stone ; the brain 
 and the burning eyes of him all that is alive ; 
 as he sits, unseeing for all his stare, unthinking 
 for all his intentness, every mental faculty fixed 
 and focussed upon his approaching fate, so men 
 and women sat or stood or walked apart. In 
 the sullenness of despair the world was settling 
 itself down to die. 
 
 275 
 
Ill 
 
 WHEN again in my dream I looked upon the 
 world, I knew that the end was not far. Some 
 twenty years or more must have passed since 
 the world's doom was first pronounced. Those 
 who had then been children were now women 
 and men. Of those who had then been 
 women and men, some were middle-aged, 
 others were old and grey, and many were dead. 
 The faces of all were strangely changed, but 
 whereas the men seemed stern and worn and 
 haggard, the faces of the women seemed to 
 me to have regained all, and more than all of 
 woman's loveliness. Sad-faced they were, even 
 as she who was honoured above all women ; 
 but so beautiful, so divine, were they in their 
 sorrow that it was not difficult to understand 
 how it is that men and women can see in the 
 
A World Without a Child 
 
 Virgin- Mother that supremest type of pure 
 and perfect and sorrowing womanhood some- 
 thing of such sacred beauty that they are 
 tempted to forget her humanity, and to yield 
 to her such homage as should be accorded only 
 to her Divine Son. 
 
 Most sad it was to see the younger women 
 gather around one who was stricken in years. 
 
 " Dear mother," one of them said, " we were 
 children ourselves when God called the green 
 grass and the flowers and the young creatures 
 of every sort, and the little children, back to 
 Himself, and so we remember not the world 
 as the world was then. Will you not tell us of 
 it, again?" 
 
 " Ah ! the world as it was then ! " sighed the 
 old woman. " I wonder whether any of us 
 realised how beautiful it was ? In those days 
 the wind, which now blows scentless and joyless 
 on our cheeks, would come on June mornings 
 to call in at my window : 
 
 " ' Lie-a-bed ! Lie-a-bed ! ' he would say. 
 ' While you slept, I have been a hay-making 
 this many an hour, tossing the mown sweetness 
 
 277 
 
A World 
 
 aloft, tumbling it, toying with it, diving into 
 warm, ungathered waves of it, as a swimmer 
 dives into the sea ; and then, like the swimmer, 
 coming laughingly to the surface to shake 
 myself free of the sweet foam and spray of the 
 fields, as he shakes himself free of the salt foam 
 and spray of the sea.' But now the wind comes 
 to us no more to whisper of the sweetness of 
 hayfields, for the solace of green grass nowhere 
 makes glad the eye. Dear God ! I had not 
 thought so to have missed the grass. I am 
 not sure that I do not miss it even more than 
 I miss the flowers. In them, much as I loved 
 them, I miss but the exquisite broidery on 
 Nature's mantle. But by the loss of the grass, 
 Nature seems to have been ravished of the 
 robe which covers her nakedness, and she 
 cowers, shamed, unbefriended, and shivering 
 before me ! " 
 
 " Tell us again of the flowers, dear mother," 
 pleaded a listener. 
 
 " Ah ! the flowers ! " cried the old woman 
 brokenly, " the flowers ! The very heart within 
 me grows faint with the sickness of my longing 
 
 278 
 
Without a Child 
 
 The earliest snowdrops those nuns among the 
 flowers, crystal-chaste and celibate from birth 
 which it may be, we first see standing 
 'little Sisters of the Poor' beside some humble 
 door or in some cottage garden, wearing the 
 white robe of their order, and with downcast 
 eyes and drooped head, that they may not so 
 much as look on evil. 
 
 " Sometimes I think of them as dear children 
 who have crept too early from bed, and so 
 stand with little bare feet and inclined head, 
 listening for the step of old Nurse Nature, and 
 ready, should she chide, to scamper back and 
 hide beneath the coverlet of snow. 
 
 " When first I saw the snowdrops, I was as 
 sure there is a God in Whom purity and love 
 and loveliness abide, as if that God had Him- 
 self stooped down from heaven to give them to 
 me. And never did this soul of mine utter 
 itself forth in intenser, purer prayer than when 
 I first saw the miracle of the snowdrop's green 
 and silver bells among the snow. 
 
 " Yet scarcely had I assured myself that this 
 or that flower the snowdrop or the wood- 
 
 279 
 
A World 
 
 anemone was indeed come, before it was gone 
 again, and I remember, that to me it was as 
 if I had let the angel-soul of some dear one 
 from heaven come hither and return with cold, 
 ungrateful welcome. 
 
 " The secret of the flowers, God never lets 
 us make our own." 
 
 "And now," said another voice softly, 
 " speak to us of childhood and little children." 
 
 " Childhood," answered the old woman, 
 " was, in those happy days, the magic fountain 
 at which we, who were old, drank to renew our 
 youth. Looking upon those sweet child-faces, 
 we grew young again, even as now, looking 
 only upon the faces of the aged, we grow old 
 before our time. Life was then an unending 
 chain of flowers, which God's own hand was, 
 day by day, drawing upward from earth to 
 heaven, and to Himself. Each of us was a 
 single flower, a single link, upon the chain ; 
 and though many of those we loved passed 
 upward and out of sight, we knew that they 
 had come to a fairer garden, whither the Father 
 of flowers and little children would one day call 
 
 280 
 
Without a Child 
 
 us, and whither, in God's good time, those we 
 loved and left behind would follow in their 
 turn. But now it is as if the flower chain lay 
 bruised and broken. God's hand draws us 
 heavenward no more, and we are become 
 worthless as weeds that die and wither unwept. 
 It is as if we had neither child on earth nor 
 Father in heaven. 
 
 " Around our dying bed neither son nor 
 daughter of ours shall gather in love's last 
 tender ministry. Our darkening eyes no dear 
 familiar touch shall close ; our failing hands 
 our children's hands may never hold in life's 
 last moments, nor cross upon our breast when 
 life has fled." 
 
 " A world without a child!" broke in another 
 woman. " A world without a child ! And 
 women in it ! One had thought that, finding 
 herself in such a world, every woman had slain 
 herself, or had not dared to be seen save 
 betwixt the twilight and the dawn. 
 
 "Into London's river many an erring woman 
 has leapt, rather than become a mother ere yet 
 she was a wife. From London's bridges many 
 
 281 
 
A World 
 
 a poor creature, weary of a life of shame, has 
 cast herself, and wherein is our estate more 
 honourable than hers? A world without a 
 child ! Yet a world in which men and women, 
 for lust's sake, make counterfeit love ; for lust 
 and lucre's sake make believe to marry for 
 how can they be man and wife, whom God has 
 for all time put asunder ! 
 
 " Sister woman, upon the very earth we 
 tread, the shadow of our shame has fallen. 
 This earth has become human as we are, a 
 woman as we are, sterile even as we, our 
 Mother no longer, since, because of our sin, 
 she is pregnant with new life no more. Happy 
 are ye who are young, for knowing not the 
 world as it was, you know not what you have 
 lost. A world without a child ! The silence 
 of it ! Dear God, that silence hammers at my 
 ears more loudly than the clanging of a 
 thousand anvils. If, ere I die, it be mine 
 no more to hear the fledgling birds telling 
 their tiny beads of song among the 
 branches ; the milky call of calves to cows, 
 standing udder-deep in the meadow, and the 
 
 282 
 
Without a Child 
 
 lazy bass of the deep reply ; the high 
 treble of lambs upon the hillside, now dying 
 down upon the wind to a trembling sigh, now 
 assailing the ear in a very storm of gusty and 
 quavering plaint ; if it be mine to hear all these 
 no more, yet give me, ere I die, O God ! at 
 least to hear the patter of little feet upon the 
 stairs ; the soft pounding of wee fists upon my 
 door ; the babble of a baby-mother's chats and 
 confidences and chidings among her dolls ; the 
 chiming of child-laughter rippling and inter- 
 mittent as of wind-swayed silver bells among 
 the flowers from garden and meadow and 
 lane ; the soft intaking of a baby's breath, what 
 time the flushed cheek lies warm against my 
 bosom ; the placid sigh when the little one 
 stirs in its sleep ; the wee, fretful wail, which 
 changes to low crooning and ceases contentedly 
 as the baby lips end their search, and settle 
 down to that sweet indrawing at thought of 
 which even now this milkless bosom tingles and 
 thrills God of mercy, Christ of consolation, 
 hadst Thou been woman, as we are, Thou hadst 
 taken pity on us and pardoned us ere this. 
 
 283 
 
A World 
 
 s 
 
 " Lord, in our ears there sounds the wailing 
 of little souls unborn little souls shut out and 
 prisoned from the sunlight in some far place, 
 more drear and cruel than any imagined purga- 
 tory, in which the souls of men and women 
 who have lived and died must suffer for 
 their sins. 
 
 " And as those who have taken life, think 
 that they see ghost-forms beckoning to them 
 from afar, so are we haunted by souls unborn, 
 yet not unslain. We, who should have been 
 their mothers, have become as it were their 
 murderesses, since, because of our sins they 
 are denied the gift of life. And ever these 
 little ghosts haunt us. Little frightened faces 
 look out at us from the dark ; little eyes grown 
 weary of watching for the mother who never 
 comes, follow; us wistfully in the daylight. 
 Little forms, oh, so cold ! creep close to us at 
 night, crying out vainly for the warmth and 
 food and comfort which we may not give. 
 
 " Dear God, Father of the Saviour, take 
 back this curse from us. Add, if it be Thy 
 will, anguish to anguish, labour to labour. In- 
 
 284 
 
Without a Child 
 
 crease, if so it seem good to Thee, the travail 
 and the pain a thousand fold : but have pity on 
 us and pardon us, and of Thy mercy give us 
 a child!" 
 
 She ceased, and my dream dimmed, but ere 
 it passed I heard the sound of many women 
 sobbing in the night. 
 
 285 
 
IV 
 
 WHEN next in my dream I looked upon the 
 world, it seemed to me that yet another ten 
 years had passed, that thirty years had gone 
 by since any new child, new bird, new beast, 
 new creature of any sort had come to bring 
 new life into the veins of an ageing world. 
 These ten years had worked a terrible change. 
 When travellers who have visited the ruins of 
 some dead city of the past, wish to convey 
 a sense of utter desolation, they tell us that, 
 in the streets and public places, grass was 
 growing. 
 
 There grew no grass in the deserted streets 
 of London, when in my dream I looked upon 
 the great city, for every manner of green thing 
 was dead. What had once been parks were 
 now deserts of dust or caked clay. Every sign 
 
 286 
 
A World Without a Child 
 
 of shrub and flower was gone. What had once 
 been avenues of trees were now rows of jagged 
 stumps which, when the branches had rotted 
 and fallen, none had been at the trouble to 
 remove. Unsightly, grisly objects, they still 
 stood on either side of the roadway, like 
 decayed stumps in the jaws of an unclean hag. 
 Offal and refuse had gathered in the corners of 
 the city, blown scraps of straw and paper littered 
 the streets. Nine-tenths at least of the build- 
 ings were tenantless, and bills declaring that 
 "this commodious residence" or that " double- 
 fronted shop " was " to be sold or to be let " 
 grinned mockingly through windows, some 
 broken and all grimed with dirt, as if in enjoy- 
 ment of the jest of offering houses in which to 
 dwell, shops wherein to vend merchandise, to a 
 world which was so soon to end. 
 
 In keeping with the silence and tomb-like 
 aspect of the city was the singular whiteness 
 which the houses and public buildings had now 
 assumed. As for some years all manufactures 
 had ceased, and shops and factories were con- 
 sequently closed, the pall of smoke which 
 
 287 
 
A World 
 
 formerly lay over London was gone, and for 
 the first time I saw the great city glittering 
 in the smokeless morning air. The houses and 
 buildings which had once worn the city's soot- 
 coloured livery, had, in the absence of smoke, 
 been rain- washed from black to grey, and from 
 grey to white, and now stood bleaching in the 
 sun, like tombstones in a cemetery. Dust and 
 decay were upon everything. So deserted was 
 the place that when, here and there, a solitary 
 man, or perhaps a man and a woman, walked 
 in what had once been a noisy thoroughfare 
 the uncanny clattering and echoing of their 
 footsteps could be heard long after they had 
 passed. 
 
 Had it been a waking instead of a dream- 
 world on which I was looking, I should pro- 
 bably have asked myself whether it were 
 possible that, from such a cause, so great a 
 change could come whether, in thirty years, a 
 world, which had ceased to bring forth children, 
 would already be approaching extinction or 
 would let its cities thus come to ruin. 
 
 I have said, too, that in my dream I saw the 
 288 
 
Without a Child 
 
 "world" a-dying, for so at the time it seemed 
 to me. Yet when, as must now be recorded, I 
 learned in my dream that, in some parts of the 
 world, life was but at its morning, that nations 
 multiplied in numbers and waxed greater in 
 strength, I saw no cause for wonder. In a 
 dream, though all be inconsistent and contra- 
 dictory, we ask no question. 
 
 And though I have said that in my dream, 
 London seemed to me a deserted city of the 
 dead, yet when in my dream I entered the 
 cathedral of St. Paul, and saw a great congre- 
 gation gathered together, I was not conscious 
 of any sense of wonder or surprise. 
 
 Under the dome a space had been cleared, 
 in the middle of which a venerable man was 
 kneeling in prayer, surrounded on every side 
 by a vast congregation of men. 
 
 1 'Weighty are the words of the dying," he 
 said, " wherefore, Lord God, we ask Thee to 
 give ear. Already we are a dying race, our 
 very existence menaced among the nations. 
 For thirty years no child has been born to 
 us, whereas the yellow races so multiply and 
 
 289 u 
 
A World Without a Child 
 
 increase that even now they overrun the world. 
 Out of Africa, India, Australia have they driven 
 us, and now of all our empire, of which we once 
 boasted that upon it the sun never set, this our 
 England only is left, and even now they are at 
 our doors. 
 
 " They who were once our slaves threaten to 
 become our masters. They whom we despised 
 as heathen and uncivilised, now hold Christen- 
 dom and civilisation in thrall. They have 
 boasted, and called their gods to witness, that 
 of the women of England they will make 
 daughters of shame ; of the men of England, 
 bondsmen and slaves to work a taskmaster's 
 will. God of Christendom, wilt Thou suffer 
 this thing to come to pass? Take back the 
 curse which Thou hast laid upon us. Give 
 us but one sign that Thou hast heard and 
 pardoned, and we will go forth in Thy strength 
 to do battle with our enemies and to overcome ; 
 but hear us, and haste Thee, for even now the 
 heathen are at our gates ! '* 
 
 290 
 
ONCE more I passed out into the sunshine, and 
 as inside the cathedral a great congregation of 
 men was gathered, so outside, gathered an 
 even greater congregation of women, to whom 
 a woman was then speaking. 
 
 " Dear sisters," she said, "let us not forget 
 that us women God hath supremely honoured, 
 since, of a woman, He who is the world's 
 Saviour was born. At God's altars, men may 
 minister, but ere those altars were builded, God 
 had made of our knees a thrice holier altar, at 
 which God's children first bowed themselves in 
 prayer. By man's voice God may speak to the 
 nations, but, to the lips of God, the ear of every 
 mother is laid. Wherefore is ours the greater 
 sin, in that we have refused to listen. Where- 
 fore is ours the greater shame, in that some of 
 
 291 
 
A World 
 
 us have forgotten the seal of chastity which 
 God set upon us when He chose a woman for 
 the white casket which should bear to earth the 
 Heavenly Pearl of God's incarnate Son. Let 
 us therefore be constant in prayer before Him 
 by whom all women are dear and sacred, since 
 Him, in anguish and travail, a woman bore. 
 Him, ere yet He was born, a woman saluted 
 as the Saviour which was to come. Him, 
 thereafter, good women hailed Lord and 
 Master, faithful even when the chosen ol 
 His disciples forsook Him and fled first 
 at the sepulchre, as last beside Him at the 
 Cross. 
 
 " Dear sisters, small wonder is it that we 
 women bend the knee in worship and love to 
 Him who is not only our Saviour and our God, 
 but our Elder Brother, our Defender and our 
 Friend. 
 
 " And when had woman such a friend as He ? 
 To Him the very harlot might come, knowing 
 that, because of her womanhood, He held her 
 honoured and holy. To Him the precious 
 ointment, wherewith the Magdalen anointed 
 
 292 
 
Without a Child 
 
 Him for His burial, was less precious than her 
 tears. When to Him they brought the woman 
 taken in sin, for her had He no word of con- 
 demnation, save ' Go and sin no more ! ' whereas 
 at those who cried out that she be stoned, He 
 thundered that terrible indictment, ( He that is 
 without sin among you, let him first cast a 
 stone.' At those words they saw themselves 
 branded before God and man, for the unclean 
 things they were ; and shrank away, one by 
 one, from that avenging presence, and from the 
 challenging purity of those eyes. 
 
 " Small wonder, I say, that all that is holy 
 in humanity should compel us to kneel to such 
 a Master ; small wonder that all that is hateful 
 and hypocritical should cry out 'Away with 
 Him! Crucify Him! To the cross.' 
 
 " Sisters, He hears us still, though we be 
 sinful even as she whom He bade to go and 
 sin no more. Sisters, let us kneel to Him in 
 prayer that He may intercede for us to our 
 Father and His." 
 
 For a moment the woman ceased, as, still 
 standing, she raised piteous hands to heaven, 
 
 293 
 
A World 
 
 and then while some knelt, some stood, some 
 flung themselves face downward to the ground, 
 her voice broke out again in prayer : 
 
 " Lord God of the Living and of the Dead, 
 hear and save. Thou wast the God of our 
 fathers, and of our fathers' fathers, of our 
 mothers, and of our mothers' mothers, even as 
 Thou wast ours, ere we in our waywardness 
 and wilfulness turned aside. Lord, we are like 
 foolish children who would be women and men, 
 and so wander from home, thinking of their 
 own puny strength to battle with, and to 
 conquer the world. 
 
 " But when, bleeding and faint, and by the 
 world cruelly mistreated, they would crawl 
 home again were it only to die too often 
 they have wandered so far that they can find 
 no way back. And we, Lord, have wandered 
 so far from home and heaven and Thee, that 
 we stand alone in the world, orphaned even 
 of God. 
 
 " Thou knowest that we women have no 
 strength in ourselves. Alike in girlhood, 
 womanhood, wifehood, motherhood if only by 
 
 294 
 
Without a Child 
 
 our very woman's nature we, more even than 
 men, have constant need of Thee. 
 
 " Since to our human comprehension it is 
 not possible to picture what Thou art, Thou 
 permittest us to think of Thee as our Father, 
 perhaps because when we think of motherhood 
 we think most of love, when we think of father- 
 hood, we think of love allied to strength. Yet 
 know we well that even as Thou art incom- 
 prehensibly Three in One, and One in Three, 
 so art Thou mystically and incomprehensibly 
 Two in One, and One in Two. 
 
 " Thou art our Mother, no less than our 
 Father ; and sometimes to us women it seems 
 as if there were more of motherhood in God 
 than of aught else, as if only a woman could 
 understand the heart of God. 
 
 " We women carry our child long time under 
 our heart, even as Thou hast carried us next 
 to Thine. 
 
 " We women fashion our children of our 
 body, feed them with our own life, suckle them 
 at our breasts, even as Thou fashionest and 
 feedest and sucklest us. For their sake we 
 
 295 
 
A World Without a Child 
 
 yield ourselves, and gladly, to suffer, even as 
 Thou, O God of suffering, didst sorrow and 
 suffer upon the Cross for us. 
 
 " For them it may even be that we are called 
 upon to lay down our lives ; even as Thou, 
 Lord of Love, didst lay down Thy life for us. 
 
 " Because Thou didst lay down Thy life for 
 us, we ask Thee to forgive. 
 
 " Because Thou didst lay down Thy life for 
 us, we beseech Thee to show us Thy mercy. 
 
 " Because Thou didst lay down Thy life for 
 us, we beseech Thee to give us a child. 
 
 4 'God our Father, God our Mother, God 
 our Saviour, we beseech Thee to give us a 
 child." 
 
 And from that great assembly went up a cry 
 of sterile anguish, infinitely more terrible than 
 the cry of a woman in labour : 
 
 "God our Father, God our Mother, God 
 our Saviour, we beseech Thee to give us a 
 child." 
 
 296 
 
VI 
 
 THE woman ceased as if strength had gone out 
 of her. The uplifted arms dropped like dead 
 weights and hung heavy and inert at her sides. 
 The head, which had been thrown back, so 
 that her face looked heavenward, slowly fell 
 forward over her breast. She stood there 
 rocking backwards and forwards monotonously, 
 weeping meanwhile, the very picture of despair. 
 
 And again the cry welled up to heaven : 
 "God our Father, God our Mother, God our 
 Saviour, we beseech Thee to give us a child." 
 
 And then, it seemed to me as if, unseen of 
 all, there stood among them One whose hands 
 and feet and side were wounded ; as if, unheard 
 of all, He spoke words that were like the 
 death-cry of a God : 
 
 " O sisters ! O daughters ! O children 
 297 
 
A World 
 
 think ye that I, whom your every cry crucifies 
 afresh, have heard unheeded. Think ye there 
 is any sorrow of yours that I share not, and 
 may not share? 
 
 " Dear mothers who have looked on the 
 little dead face of the child that was so young, 
 and yet had seemed to have been part of your- 
 self, from all time ; the child whom perhaps ye 
 laid cold in his coffin, clad in the white gar- 
 ments you had worked to keep warm his tiny 
 body in the cot dear mothers, know ye not 
 that never woman mourned a little one gone, 
 but My heart brake at sight of her sorrow ? 
 
 " And you, dear daughters, dear childless 
 women, who desire and entreat the pangs of 
 travail, crying out ' Let this body of mine 
 endure a thousand fold the anguish, if only, ere 
 I die, I may clasp to my bosom, body of me, 
 blood of me, soul of me, a very child mine, 
 mine, mine, in this world, the next world, mine, 
 for ever and all time.' 
 
 "So have you spoken, many of you; but 
 think you that any of you have yearned for a 
 child of the body, as I, in the body, have 
 
 298 
 
Without a Child 
 
 yearned to call one single child My own, yet 
 may not, since every child in the world is 
 Mine ? 
 
 " Behold now, I who share your sorrow, as 
 no woman, be she mother, sister, daughter or 
 friend, has shared woman's sorrow before, I 
 kneel with you to intercede for you to the God 
 Who is My Father and yours." 
 
 Again, as of old time in the garden, He knelt 
 in prayer ; and as He prayed so terrible was 
 His agony that once again beads of a bloody 
 sweat stood out upon His brow. 
 
 Upon such awful sight God wrestling with 
 God in prayer it was not for human eyes to 
 look, and turning away, I fell with bowed head 
 and closed eyes to the ground. How long 
 I remained thus I know not, but suddenly 
 there came to me the sense of something un- 
 accustomed in the world. What meant this 
 new sweetness in the air, this strange stirring 
 as it were at the heart of old earth, this loosen- 
 ing as of bonds, this feeling as of gentle thaw 
 after iron months of frost? 
 
 Lifting my head, with open eyes I gazed 
 299 
 
A World Without a Child 
 
 around. The Sacred Figure of the Saviour 
 was gone, but looking at the spot where He 
 had knelt, and where His tears had fallen, 
 I saw sweeter, surer pledge of God's forgive- 
 ness than the covenant bow the tender verdure 
 of new grass, the wonder of white flowers 
 abloom. 
 
 And as the breaking crest of a wave whitens 
 in the wind, so suddenly, in the sunshine, 
 I saw a living green break foam-like over the 
 brown and barren fields, and tip with emerald 
 fire the dead branches of bush and tree. 
 
 And by this sign men and women knew that 
 into a dying world new life had entered, unto 
 a dying race the promise of a child had come. 
 
 And to heaven went up a great cry : 
 
 "-Christ has pleaded, 
 God has pardoned." 
 
 And with that cry ringing anthem-wise in 
 my ears, I awoke from my dream of a world 
 without a child, to hear the sweet clamour of 
 a little voice calling " Father ! dear father ! " at 
 my door. 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON. 
 
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