CHAPTER TWENTY-TWOIntimations of Immortality
WHEN nations which preach Christianity go to war, their truth has necessarily to become relative; they cannot tell the truth about themselves; they cannot tell the truth about their enemies; still less can they tell the truth about Christianity. For doing that last, a Free Church minister in a certain land of hope and glory lying West,—he had merely issued the Sermon on the Mount as a circular—was tarred and feathered as a demonstration of Christian-mindedness by his belligerent fellow-countrymen. And nearly everybody said that it served him right.
So when Relative Truth became a spiritual as well as a military necessity, Mr. Trimblerigg, the inventor of the doctrine in its most modern form, came gloriously into his own. In other words he became the fashion.
The War gave him the time and the opportunity of his life. He had begun by adopting—first pacifism, then benevolent neutrality; but he saw quickly that there was not a public for either. And as he listened to the heart-beats of his countrymen roused for battle, a quick application of his doctrine of Relative Truth restored his mind to sanity. After that he never wavered; and though he often spoke with two voices, one day telling the workers, whom he was sent to preach to, that they were heroes, and another that they were slackers, and victims of drink; one day demonstrating that the National Executive’s action had always come just too late, another that it had always come miraculously up to time; one day protesting the mildness and equity of his country’s intentions toward those who were unnecessarily prolonging the war, another—whenprospects began to look brighter—threatening things of a much more drastic character, in terms drawn from the prize-ring; though thus from day to day and week to week, he spoke in varied tones, fitting himself to the occasion, always a forefront figure, occasionally pushing others out of his way; nevertheless his motive and aim remained constant (nor when nations go to war is anything more necessary for their salvation)—the ardent assertion, namely, of the absolute righteousness of his country’s cause, and of the blameless antecedents leading up to it.
And though Mr. Trimblerigg’s truth was often extremely relative, it was nearly always successful; and if any man by tireless energy, resilient spirits, continuous ubiquity in pulpit and on platform, alertness, invention, suggestiveness, adaptability, rapid change of front in the ever-shifting tactics of propaganda,—now conciliatory and defensive, meek but firm; now whole-heartedly aggressive and vision-clear of coming victory—if by such qualities, richly and rapidly blended outside the direct line of fire, any man could ever be said to have won a war, in a larger and wider sense than the little drummer boy who lays down his life for his drum,—that compliment might have been paid, when all was done, to the unbloodstained Mr. Trimblerigg,—and was.
In the person of Mr. Trimblerigg the Free Evangelical Church had lifted up its head and neighed like a war-horse, saying among the trumpets, ha! ha! to the thunder of the captains and the shouting: and in the person of Mr. Trimblerigg thanks were publicly tendered to it, when all the fighting was over. And though Mr. Trimblerigg received neither title, nor outward adornment, nor emolument, he became, from that day on, a figure of internationalsignificance,—the first perhaps since great old combative Martin Luther, to attain so high and controversial a prominence in divided Christendom on his spiritual merits alone.
It may sound cynical to say that the greatness of nations has very largely been built up on the lies they have told of each other. And yet it is a true statement; for you have only to compare their histories, and especially the histories of their wars (upon which young patriots are trained to become heroes), in order to realize that the day of naked and unashamed truth has not yet arrived: that so long as nations stand to be worshipped, and flags to be fought for, truth can only be relative. From which it follows that while nations are at war too much truth is bad for them; and not only for them but for religion also. And that is where and why Mr. Trimblerigg found his place, and fitted it so exactly. I leave it at that. He became a national hero; and truly it was not from lack of courage or conviction that he had seen no fighting. He was short, and fat, and over forty; and his oratorical gifts were more valuable where the sound of gunfire did not drown them; otherwise he would have preached his gospel of the relative beatitudes as willingly from the cannon’s mouth as from anywhere.
A day came, gunfire having ended, when he, and an Archbishop, and a Prime Minister all stood on a platform together, and spoke to an exalted gathering too glittering in its rank and distinction to be called an assembled multitude, though its mere numbers ran into thousands. The Archbishop sat in the middle; and the two ministers, the political and the spiritual, sat on either side of him; and if they were not as like each other as twopeas, and did not, by both speaking at once, rattle together like peas upon a drum, they were nevertheless birds very much of a feather; and when it came to the speaking, they fitted each other wonderfully. The Archbishop came first and spoke well; the Prime Minister followed and spoke better; Mr. Trimblerigg came last and spoke best of all. The audience told him so; there was no doubt of it. Field-Marshals and Rear-Admirals applauded him, Duchesses waved their handkerchiefs at him; a Dowager-Countess, of Low Church antecedents, became next day a member of the Free Evangelicals; the mere strength of his personality had converted her.
Mr. Trimblerigg might well think after this that a visible halo, though not necessary, had it reappeared just then, would not have come amiss. From his point of view the meeting could not have been more successful; he went down from the platform more famous than when he went up on it. And it was not his speech alone that did it: it was in the air.
The great Napoleon was said to have a star: Mr. Trimblerigg had an atmosphere; and though it was not really the larger of the two, to his contemporaries on earth it seemed larger.
It was just about this time, when Mr. Trimblerigg was obviously becoming a candidate for national honours after his death, that he attended the public funeral of a great Free Church statesman whose war-winning activities had been closely associated with his own. And as of the two, Mr. Trimblerigg had played the larger part, the prophetic inference was obvious; and though in that high-vaulted aisle, amid uniforms and decorations and wands of office, his demure little figure looked humble and unimportant,he was a marked man for the observation of all who had come to observe.
It was an occasion on which Free Churchmen had reason to feel proud. Impelled by the feeling of the nation—still in its early days of gratitude before victory had begun to taste bitter—the Episcopal Church had opened her doors to receive, into that place of highest honour, the dust of one who had lived outside her communion and politically had fought against her. But it was dust only (ashes, that is to say); and while to Mr. Trimblerigg’s perception the whole ceremony, the music, the ritual, the vestments, the crape-scarved uniforms, and the dark crowd of celebrities which formed a background, were deeply impressive in their beauty and symbolism, the little casket of cremated ashes at the centre of it all was not.
In that forced economizing of space, the sense of the individual personality had been lost, or brought to insignificance. It gave him an uncomfortable feeling; he did not like it; he wondered why. So long as his thoughts went linked with the indwelling genius of that temple of famous memories he felt thrilled and edified; but whenever his eye returned to the small casket, he experienced a repeated shock and felt discomfited. The condition here imposed, to make national obsequies possible, seemed to him not merely a humiliating one; it spelt annihilation; what remained had ceased to be personal. The temple became a museum; in it with much ceremony an exhibit was being deposited in its case.
And so, pondering deeply on these things, he returned home; and added to his will (signing and dating it with a much earlier date) an instruction for his executors, ‘My body is not to be cremated.’
Genius is economy. It could not have been more modestly done.
Somewhere or another, very near to where he had stood that afternoon, a grave was waiting for him. Those few strokes of the pen had decided that its dimensions should be not eighteen inches by ten; but five feet four by two.
But the time was not yet: the instruction added to his will need not begin to take effect for a good many years. Meanwhile his corner of immortality waited for him, measured by himself to suit his own taste.
It came back to him then as a pleasant simile of fancy, that he had had an uncle who was an undertaker. It ran in the family. Here was Mr. Trimblerigg—his own!