THE BREATH UPON THE SLAIN
Shall these bones live? God knows.The prophet saw such clothed with flesh and skin.A wind blew on them, and Life entered in;They shook and rose.Shorten the time, O Lord! Blot out their sin!Let Life begin!Christina Rossetti.
Shall these bones live? God knows.The prophet saw such clothed with flesh and skin.A wind blew on them, and Life entered in;They shook and rose.Shorten the time, O Lord! Blot out their sin!Let Life begin!Christina Rossetti.
Shall these bones live? God knows.The prophet saw such clothed with flesh and skin.A wind blew on them, and Life entered in;They shook and rose.Shorten the time, O Lord! Blot out their sin!Let Life begin!Christina Rossetti.
Shall these bones live? God knows.
The prophet saw such clothed with flesh and skin.
A wind blew on them, and Life entered in;
They shook and rose.
Shorten the time, O Lord! Blot out their sin!
Let Life begin!
Christina Rossetti.
Thewind was blowing through the heather, singing softly from the distant sea. The tiny tinkling sound of the purple bells was like faint music of faery.
They lay on an ancient barrow—three men on a summer holiday by the southern sea.
One was a thin, nervous-looking man, who knew much of the purlieus of the “primrose path,” wherein he strayed to gather up its wreckage and mend it if he might, by the power of a God in whom he said he did not believe.
The second was an ascetic, devout, and hard-working priest of the Anglican Church.
The third was a man still young, but looking even younger than his years. Dennis Barra was his name; a man with a smooth, boyish face, strange yellow-grey eyes, and thick hair streaked a little with grey; it gave the effect of dark hair lightly powdered, and added to the lack of modernity about the face. It was not a modern face; it had delicate irregular features, and a wide, thin-lipped mouth; the face looked curiously luminous in the strong sunlight.
The first man—Ralph Ingram—was speaking.
“No, Cardew,” he said to the priest, “I tell you if I did not hold to that belief I should go mad. If it be not thus, the world is based on injustice. If we climb a ladder rung by rung, if we work out the result of our deeds—that’s just. But no other theory is. What! a man murders and wipes out all his past by ‘grace at the last,’ ‘forgiveness of sins’ and ‘faith’ which his victim never had.
“You speak of these things as though they were outer contracts or a mental attitude,” said the priest, “whereas they are real spiritual forces, definite powers of the unseen. I do not see that you can parcel out guilt thus, according to your system. If life be as you say it is, the fine threads of cause and effect, of will, speech, thought, impulse, action, are endless. It appears to me that by pushing ‘causes’ so far back, you have complicated everything so hopelessly that you need some universal solvent to melt the bonds. If you accept Adam as collective man rather than as an individual ancestor, then Man—collective, heavenly man—has chosen his own lot; he has chosen his fall. His true life is elsewhere; in some mysterious Eden of the spirit he views all our inequalities with a wider view. Our misfortunes may be his opportunity; and our happiness his slough of despond. The view of man spiritual and man carnal may be diametrically opposed. His justice may be your injustice.”
“Well! I should as soon believe in the sea-serpent as in the doctrine of regeneration, grace, and faith.”
At this point Dennis Barra laughed.
“Are you laughing at Ingram or at me?” said the priest.
“I was laughing because I believe I once saw a sea-serpent off the coast of Scotland, and I would say so if I were not afraid of Ingram. And I was also laughing because I thought you didn’t see that your views fit and where they fit. Ingram believes in the law which governed the past and governs the majority in the present; you believe in a possibility of the present—the certain law of the future.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well! because it struck me it was true! And regeneration is a possibility, regeneration of body and soul; and grace is a fact, and the swift transmutation of the sinner into the saint I believe to be possible.”
“Are these things facts? I don’t believe they are.”
“Will you believe me if I tell you a story?”
“If you vouch for it.”
“I do vouch for it. I know it’s true. There was a man once who had just come out of prison. He deserved his punishment. His friends cut him—quite justly; and he did not greatly care, save that he was angry. He had some means; he was not in want; he was independent both of work and friends. He drank a little when he came out of prison, not much. He would drink for a day or two, and then keep sober for a week. In the place where he was, a mission was being held; and with no great result.”
“They needed you there, Barra!”
The young man smiled.
“The people were indifferent. Something was lacking. The mission was to last a week. The clergy paraded the streets each night with a cross and the choir and banners. On the third night the man of whom I speak joined the procession and entered the church. It was a gloomy church; the singing was bad; the preacher had little power. There was nothing to stir the emotions. It was dull; the man was just sitting there, bored. He was thinking he would go out, when something—Something, I say—Some one—stood beside him. He saw no one, but some one was there; and that some one laid a hand upon his head. What that touch did to him he did not know; he never knew. It revolutionised him mentally, morally, yes, and bodily. There came to that man a bodily change, as though he was fused and re-made in a crucible of the spirit,—a cup of the Holy Graal. The only words which were clear to him were: ‘The Fire of the Sacred Heart, the Fire of the Heart of the Ascended.’ They were not spoken, but he knew they were there. And he knew too, that he, the drunkard, the criminal, the man fresh from gaol, must speak to the people. It was not a case of what spiritualists call ‘control.’ No; but God had laid a measure of His power in the trembling hands of that sinner, and said to him: ‘Own thy sins in humbleness, and then—not thyself but Myself; give Me to my children!’
“He stood up and walked to the pulpit steps; the preacher was just coming down and he laid his hand on his arm and said: ‘Let me speak to them.’
“It seems little less than a miracle; for it was a church of the Established Church in England and he an unknown layman. But the preacher let him stand on the altar steps and speak. He told them very quietly and briefly who he was, and what was his character, and that he was sorry; and then he spoke.
“He had not spoken for three minutes before the women were sobbing, and the men were white as ashes, and many of them shaking like reeds in a wind. There was a great ‘revival,’ and people laid themselves, body, soul, and spirit, at the Feet of God.”
“It must have been such a power as I have known you wield over people, Barra.”
“It was the Fire of the Lord that had struck one man, and he passed it on. Of course some went back; but others didn’t, and their lives were changed. But what I want to make you see is that what happened to that man could happen to all men; and his sins and his past were made naught when God’s Hand touched him. It didn’t matter so much that he didn’t know how it was done. It was done. That is a living Power that could work in the world at any minute if the time was ripe; and if and when it does we shall have a new heaven and a new earth.”
“It seems to me hard that this fellow’s sins and past were blotted out, and not those of the other poor wretches. Why should he escape suffering he had earned by the touch of a hand on his head? You say he deserved what he got. I daresay he deserved much more. Most likely he was a scoundrel who deserved the cat.”
“Very likely he did. He never thought anything else. He always admitted his sins. But don’t mistake. I never said he escaped suffering. The sins of the other poor wretches were blotted outin himfor the time being only, of course. They swept into him like a tide of foulness and anguish, and the Fire burned them. They were its fuel; so that it swept out in a fuller flood and touched the people with its power and cleansed them. Escaped suffering! People who feel the burden of their own sins and sorrows to be too much to bear, little realise what it means to feel other people’s as well. Do you know there are simple, unlearned, unknown women, secluded from the world, whopraythe temptations of the strong (the ‘vibrations’ or ‘magnetisms,’ to use the popular shibboleth) into their own bodily frames, and then endure their anguish to ease others’ burdens? Theyendurethem, I say; they offer them to be transmuted in their own bodies and souls by the spiritual force they call the Blood of Christ; and that Force flows out from them to the people for whom they pray. That is true, possible, a fact. Many a time, maybe, have those very people laughed at their inactive lives, simple faith, superstitious creeds, and all the rest of it. They’d be wallowing deep in mud, many of those strong ones, if it were not for that very superstitious creed that prompts the women’s prayers. That is the real meaning of the Cross to these women; that is the vital, poignant meaning to them of being crucified with Christ.”
The wind muttered in the heather, and the corncrake called from a distant field. The speaker’s voice deepened a little; but it was quite steady, there was in it neither emotion nor excitement.
The priest raised himself a little on his elbow and looked at him thoughtfully. He did not speak.
“Barra,” said Ralph Ingram, “do youknowthis story of your inspired criminal to be true?”
“I know it to be true,” said Dennis Barra, quietly, “I know it, because I was the man!”