While our hearts were still fond at these shows an acolyth who took his stand at the front and left of the stage vociferated the shout: "Blessed are the poor in spirit!" and at once there appeared on the stage a shoeblack, and also a young man rather shabbily dressed, with a bag in his hand; the young man begged the shoeblack to shine his boots, for he had stepped into bog: but he made the request with such polite shynesses and diffidences that the shoeblack at once put him down as a nobody, and cut some faces at him. When, however, the boots were shined the shabbily-dressed young man handed the shoeblack a handful of shillings for his pains. The shoeblack, seeing now that here must be a millionaire, gaped so open-mouthed at his riches, that only after some time did he observe that the young man had gone and forgotten his bag behind. The shoeblack then opened the bag, and drew out what was crowded within—an old lady's portrait, a lock of hair, a violin, an etching, and a copy of Ronsard: and the instant he drew out the Ronsard the acolyth who before had shouted out "blessed are the poor in spirit" rang now to the high dome his shout of triumph: "for theirs is the kingdom of the soul!"
The acolyth next shouted out: "Blessed are the pure in heart!" and at once there appeared an Egyptian man and woman—Joseph and Potiphar's wife; Joseph had bone tablets in his hand, adding up figures; Potiphar's wife tickled his neck and drew him: Joseph smiled, pinched her cheek, puzzling ever over his figures. Still the woman would have him, she coaxed, she intrigued: Joseph patted her shoulder, shook her ear, without ever budging or looking up out of his tablets. At last the woman drew him over to left-centre, Joseph going unconsciously with her; but at the door itself he woke up, laughed, escaped, as who should say "not for Joseph," leaving his garment in her hands, and instantly was puzzling over his figures again. But now all at once Joseph began to wave out gestures of glad new discovery! The man had detected some mistake in his arithmetic! and the instant he detected his mistake, the acolyth gave out the high shout of triumph: "for they shall see God!"
Then again the acolyth shouted out: "Blessed are the merciful!" and at once there came on a man in brown who cowed a hound, and another man in bright who was kind to it. Years passed: and Brown and Bright were both chased in a lane by a madman with a hatchet; but Brown's morose habit of mind had been the seed in him of biliousness and other ills; he hopped on crutches, could not escape; but Bright escaped: and the instant he escaped the acolyth shouted out in triumph: "for they shall obtain mercy!"
And so they tripped on through the Beatitudes, teaching the people biology in parables. Here was a whole new art: the old prejudice of "Christianity" in respect to the stage had ranged to the other pole, and Church had changed into stage. How fruitful within the last few years has been the evolution of these germs we know. At that time no use was made of the bioscope. The shows were changed each day.
All at once, when this was over, one was aware of the presence of Ambrose Rivers, whereat my eyes ran through the hall to its seventh heaven, and saw it all like leafage of the aspen-forest, while Rivers advanced from the stage-back bent beneath the storm of cheers. And poised just over the orchestra-pews, with a pure voice that pealed through the vast, he vociferated: "Let us reverence That Which made us!"
Thereupon he fell to his knees, with his arms stretched up straight and parallel; all the people did the same, while the orchestra rendered Vogel's "Eternal Tool"; and Rivers, gazing straight upward, shouted: "Father! hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Give us our bread to-day. And forgive us our debt as we forgive everyone who is in our debt. Amen."[1]
This said, after a minute his arms shot horizontal, his neck bowed, and, still kneeling, he shouted to us: "Let us reverence one another in our human ancestors!"
And while the choir gave "Mild son of man, thy front sublime," all our arms shot horizontal, each worshipper straining to touch the finger-tips of his neighbour to left and right, for the shoulder-joint is capable of no little stretching, with practice.
This done, Rivers rose to his feet with the shout: "Let us reverence the ape, without bending the knee or the neck!"
And thereupon, while the orchestra rendered Brewers' "Ye humble wombs with homage fraught," he put his finger-tips to the ground. Through the building everyone put his or her finger-tips to the ground.
When this was over Rivers shouted: "Let us reverence the half-apes!"
Whereupon, without bending the knees or the neck, he put the first finger-joint to the ground; and while the choir gave Thibaut's "Crooked shapes, the alphabet of life," everyone did the same—or tried to. As it were a wind of breaths began to whiff through the building.
Rivers next shouted: "Let us reverence the dog!"
And with this he put his fists to the ground. We all tried our best to do the same, while the choir gave Sauer-Motti's "Dark Backward and Abysm of Time."
Rivers next shouted: "Let those of us who can reverence all That Which is below the dog!" And with this, without bending the knees or the neck, while the orchestra gave the overture to "The Creation," he put his palms on the ground.
But it was no easy matter to reverence all That Which is below the dog! I can now do it with nonchalance, but it tried me then. It was not a mere question of putting the palms on the ground, but of keeping them there during three straining minutes, with the eyes of ladies criticising your performance! However, I rose from the effort a straighter man: it is this touching what is beneath without bending the knees which makes soldiers, and also saints. Meantime, I was charmed with the movements of the hosts of nuns and other ladies, who, it was clear, vied with one another in ease and achievement: I thought that some of them must certainly have a selection of lovers.
When this was over Rivers called to us: "Let us sum up and reverence all!" whereat everyone held up a bamboo rod behind the back with the stretched arms, and, sitting tight, swung the shoulders smartly, this way and that alternately, thus hardening the muscles of the back. And so it was during twenty minutes: when we reviewed the Past we stood fronting the stage, but with our necks strained back, looking at the opposite wall; when we aspired to the Future we struck our chests with our knees, an exaggerated going-upstairs; when we were meek we dropped our body upon our heels with force enough to bounce us up again, an exaggerated curtsey, thus oiling the hinges of the knee-joints; when we were merciful we bent far sideward to left and right, trying to touch the ground; when we were pure in heart we bent backward at the waist to touch the ground behind, and so on.
All this was, of course, highly exhilarating, both in itself, and because done in fellowship with a host of people all making the same gestures at the same moment; but it did not yet edify, did not move me religiously; and, because it did not, I thought to my self: "it is not a fitting function fora Church." Within a few weeks, however, I was to find how very far at fault I was in this, for the gestures only failed to edify me at first for the reason that in my consciousness there was no correlation between each gesture and its husband idea:habitwas essential for that. Thus to nations that do not kneel to pray, nor raise the hand to say "hist!" these gestures are destitute of pertinence: there is no correlation. But when habit had once set up in my mind a wedlock between gesture and idea, then the gestures became as touching to the soul as they were teaching of a wonder of buoyancy and joy to the body.
When the exercises were over Rivers spoke to the people. By birth or learning he had the lungs of a bull, and to the giddiness of the seventh gallery, I believe, his bellows must have blown. On the whole, he impressed me as a real prophet or outspeaker, speaking his truth like the wayfaring of a force of nature, without humour, ire, respect, or prospect. I can't recall much that he said, but he called the people to joy, telling them that a bad tree could not bring forth good fruit, neither could unhappy men beget happy generations. Joy of heart was their obligation, for they were the ancestors of God, the future hung on their joys. "Behold!" he howled, "I bring you word! your life is worth living if you live it a little well." Of course, no one yet half knew how to live it well; but, thanks to the pryers and the tryers, one knew a little. Already a howling gaiety might be theirs. One rather good thing was to live a moment at a time, ruminating the moment's relish deliciously, as when that morning on opening his eyes he had said to himself: "Alive! and still young! not a twinge nor a grief throughout! refugee of a thousand hungry hells! this, then, is my turn in the turning of Eternity: for the men of Misgab and of Bagdad are dead, but I am alaugh for a little while." Then he had run round Hyde Park, and half-way round could not help howling all hey and conversant with wind and the Holy Ghost, to the disgusting of everyone. If there was one thing in this marsh of Divinity more divine than all the rest, it was wind, and ever in March and big November God was with men; but only those dreamed how divine who ran far into it, and breathed it deeply, and drowned in it, and browsed bedrowsedly upon all the sound and sounds of it. Then he had returned home, and had eaten a ton. If they wished to have boisterously high and holy joy of their breakfast, they must work for it, should run at least a mile or two. Joy, then, gushing health, and they knew what went all in fusion with gushing health—chastity, fortnights of titanic continence. Who was the happiest and best of men? He happened to know, and would tell them: not essentially the saint, the philosopher, the plutocrat, but essentially the acrobat—the man with his fibres mobile, his breast like pent Pentecost. The saint, the philosopher, the artist, were happy also, but only because they were acrobats in their fashion. This was just the news of Christianity, that along the path of self-torture lay in ambush a marvel of awaking, a scarlet dawn: to evolve they must twist themselves. And let them know that the soul was a trick of the body. The result of a beauish body was a religious saltarello. Were they covetous to stride out into the infinite?—let them scout in the finite on every side.Mens sancta in corpore sancto.No more, then, of the old necks, teeth, effete souls. With respect to teeth, there was a misconception abroad which he wished to correct: they all knew that in a few ages man was fated to become a toothless gumption: well, but there were two paths to that gate, not only through decay, but, secondly, through the decrease of the teeth in size, till at last they disappeared. Let them choose the latter by chary mating. Devotion to evolution was for the future their only possible piety; so their own bodies must be their care all day long, till their every movement of muscle or brain was a pattern of grace. Perfection! it had to be: why not now? greyhounds were perfect. The men of late generations had really been rather grotesque, crowds of them strutting their personalities about in some rag or gaud of spiritual skill, yet glaring with the lues of a low evolution. One of the most highly-famed poets of the nineteenth century had had—what did they think?—a paunch. "Ho! Ho!" he howled, "think of the pure grotesqueness of it! a poet with a pouch! no wonder he was obscure! it is like a poet with spectacles on his nose! or a poet with bo-peep in his teeth, whom no pious miss would kiss!" No, that wouldn't do. The chimpanzee vaunted a paunch, and we were devoutly getting done with paunches now, thank God. From men of this age God did not so much need glorious books, of which He was choke-full, but was greedy for glorious children, darting eyes, laughing caverns. The men of the past had learned from St Paul that "bodily exercise profiteth little"; for us it was the main means of grace and the sole hope of glory, of grace for the Roman, of glory for the race. By it they would attain to harmony with God. It had been said by men of old: "God is Love." "How could they possibly know it?" he shouted: "how profound an insight! for this that to us is old science and certainty to them was only surmise. But what, then, does God love? Not apes, not men, His taste being a bit touchy: God, we know, did once love, or press toward, apes when only dogs and half-apes were; and He did once love men when only ape-people were; but the moment men appeared He left off loving them, and was for loving their children: always it is evolution that He loves, change, the future, with urge and urge and urge." So in loving the future they would be all in harmony with Him, loving what He loved. That future was full of shapes and plays. Happily, they could shape themselves to pledge and usher it in: for that was the right of man—to change himself; that was the definition of man—"a self-changing midget"; and an age was in the eye of the Highest when, by the heightening of this right of self-change, earthly lives would writhe in a trice into any shape of wyvern, or moose, or shivering seraph, or moon-eyed octopus, or quadruped with its belly to the sky and its back to the earth. Meantime, by pitifuler pantings, they, if they were fat, could make themselves fit; if they were short, they should, by taking thought, add one quarter-cubit to their stature; if they were bow-legged like the orang, self-bearding would get themselves knock-kneed like the cock; if they were starting and rapturous like the gorilla, they could get themselves impregnably calm like the overman; in an age or two they could change or redress their quite unnecessary length of arm, of spine, their over-plump shortness of leg, their base remoteness of sex-organ from brain, their too shameful "ears," sham thumbs. They must tackle themselves humbly and in detail. Christianity had been far too heady and star-drunken, had made a leap three feet high to pluck Venus from the sky. We of this age must be more grave and grown-up, more self-conscious and disabused, must use a ladder, come back to the classic. The romantic would return some day in some new dress, for classic and romantic were alternate moods of the mind, neither could ever die. But for us of this age it was the classic, the austere, bare comeliness of reason. If our life and worship was barer and harder than that of the past, it was also far higher. But let them not view our worship as yet worthy to be so called. The idol of the worship of the time to come would be the nightly sky. Man, so far, though with a much larger subconsciousness, looked forth at the stars with a consciousness little larger than that of gorillas, even with some fatigue; was still a villager of the earth, not yet a civilian of the universe; a few of the most elfin ears, they were told did, it was true, by an effort, and dullishly, catch some actual tollings of the chiming and dulcimers; but he believed that brains larger than ours, when they came, would pass pretty nearly all of life in brooding upon the runes of that writing. Let them wait, meekly grooming themselves to greet that "come to the marriage" which they would hear, and soon, lo, the scales would fall from man's eyes, his tongue should be loosed and enchanted, and the earth should arise at last as the mourning-dove to hie to her room in the chancel of the heavens.
When Rivers had finished speaking we sang another hymn; again the trumpets pealed, organs braved, while the road-march and high brotherhood of it brushed in shiverings over one's back, and troubled the vast building to its base:
"Time like an ever-rolling streamBears all his sons away,They fly forgotten. :::"
"Time like an ever-rolling streamBears all his sons away,They fly forgotten. :::"
[1]The whole of "The Lord's Prayer" as uttered by Jesus; the rest added by commonplace rude people.
[1]The whole of "The Lord's Prayer" as uttered by Jesus; the rest added by commonplace rude people.
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH
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