The Captives [81]
to laugh at bare and conventional words stripped of the atmosphere and significance of their original surroundings. The merest baby in this twentieth century can laugh at the flames of hell and advance a string of easy arguments against the probability of any such melodramatic fulfilment of the commonplace and colourless lives that the majority of us lead, but Maggie was in no mood to laugh that night.
Before five minutes had passed she found herself shivering where she sat. The Chapel was convicted of Sin, and of Sin of no ordinary measure. The head that rested like a round ball on the surface of the desk thrust conviction into every heart: "You think that you may escape, you look at your neighbours, every one of you, and say, 'He is worse than I. I am safe,' but I tell you that not one man or woman here shall be secure unless he turn instantly now to God and beg for mercy . . ."
As he continued he did indeed bear the almost breathless urgency of one who has been sent on in advance to announce the imminence of some awful peril. No matter what the peril might be; simply through the Chapel there passed the breath of some coming danger. Impossible to watch him and not realise that here was a man who had seen something with his own eyes that had changed in a moment the very fabric of his life. Thurston might be a charlatan who played with the beliefs of his dupes, Warlock might be a mystic whose vision was in the future and not in the past--Crashaw knew.
He painted, quietly, without fine words but with assurance and conviction, his belief in the punishment of mankind. God was almost now upon the threshold of their house. He was at the very gates of their city, and with Him was coming a doom as sure and awful as the sentence of the earthly judge on his earthly victim.
"Punishment! Punishment! . . . We have grown in this careless age to laugh at punishment. A future life? There is no future life. God? There is no God! Even were He to come upon us we could escape from Him. We could make a very good case for ourselves. This world is safe, secure, founded upon our markets, our treasuries, our laws and commandments, our conventions of decent behaviour, our police and our ministers. God cannot touch us. We are secure . . . I tell you that at this very moment this earth in which you trust is trembling under you, at this instant everything in which you believed is undermined and is betraying you. You have been given your opportunity--you are refusing it--and God is upon you."
His voice changed suddenly to tones of a marvellous sweetness. He appealed, pleaded, implored. The ugliness of his face and body was forgotten, he was simply a voice issuing from space, sent to save a world.
"And we here--the few of us out of this huge city gathered together here--it is not too late for us. Let us surrender ourselves. Let us go to Him and say that we are His, that we await His coming and obey His law . . . Brothers and sisters, I am as you are, weak and helpless and full of sin, but come to Him, come to Him, come to Him! . . . There is help for us all, help and pity and love. Love such as none of us have ever known, love that cannot fail us and will be with us until eternity!"
He stepped out from behind the desk, stood before them all with his little stunted, twisted body, his arms held out towards them. There followed then an extraordinary scene--from all over the Chapel came sobs and cries. A man rose suddenly from the back of the building and cried aloud, "Lord, I believe! Help Thou mine unbelief." One of the women who had come with Miss Avies fell upon her knees and began to sob, crying hysterically: "Oh God, have mercy! God have mercy!" Women pressed up the two aisles, some of them falling on their knees there where they had stood, others coming to the front and kneeling there. Somewhere they began to sing the hymn that had already been sung that evening, a few voices at first, then more, then all singing together:
"By the blood, by the blood, by the blood of the Lamb We beseech Thee!"
Everywhere now women were crying,
Before five minutes had passed she found herself shivering where she sat. The Chapel was convicted of Sin, and of Sin of no ordinary measure. The head that rested like a round ball on the surface of the desk thrust conviction into every heart: "You think that you may escape, you look at your neighbours, every one of you, and say, 'He is worse than I. I am safe,' but I tell you that not one man or woman here shall be secure unless he turn instantly now to God and beg for mercy . . ."
As he continued he did indeed bear the almost breathless urgency of one who has been sent on in advance to announce the imminence of some awful peril. No matter what the peril might be; simply through the Chapel there passed the breath of some coming danger. Impossible to watch him and not realise that here was a man who had seen something with his own eyes that had changed in a moment the very fabric of his life. Thurston might be a charlatan who played with the beliefs of his dupes, Warlock might be a mystic whose vision was in the future and not in the past--Crashaw knew.
He painted, quietly, without fine words but with assurance and conviction, his belief in the punishment of mankind. God was almost now upon the threshold of their house. He was at the very gates of their city, and with Him was coming a doom as sure and awful as the sentence of the earthly judge on his earthly victim.
"Punishment! Punishment! . . . We have grown in this careless age to laugh at punishment. A future life? There is no future life. God? There is no God! Even were He to come upon us we could escape from Him. We could make a very good case for ourselves. This world is safe, secure, founded upon our markets, our treasuries, our laws and commandments, our conventions of decent behaviour, our police and our ministers. God cannot touch us. We are secure . . . I tell you that at this very moment this earth in which you trust is trembling under you, at this instant everything in which you believed is undermined and is betraying you. You have been given your opportunity--you are refusing it--and God is upon you."
His voice changed suddenly to tones of a marvellous sweetness. He appealed, pleaded, implored. The ugliness of his face and body was forgotten, he was simply a voice issuing from space, sent to save a world.
"And we here--the few of us out of this huge city gathered together here--it is not too late for us. Let us surrender ourselves. Let us go to Him and say that we are His, that we await His coming and obey His law . . . Brothers and sisters, I am as you are, weak and helpless and full of sin, but come to Him, come to Him, come to Him! . . . There is help for us all, help and pity and love. Love such as none of us have ever known, love that cannot fail us and will be with us until eternity!"
He stepped out from behind the desk, stood before them all with his little stunted, twisted body, his arms held out towards them. There followed then an extraordinary scene--from all over the Chapel came sobs and cries. A man rose suddenly from the back of the building and cried aloud, "Lord, I believe! Help Thou mine unbelief." One of the women who had come with Miss Avies fell upon her knees and began to sob, crying hysterically: "Oh God, have mercy! God have mercy!" Women pressed up the two aisles, some of them falling on their knees there where they had stood, others coming to the front and kneeling there. Somewhere they began to sing the hymn that had already been sung that evening, a few voices at first, then more, then all singing together:
"By the blood, by the blood, by the blood of the Lamb We beseech Thee!"
Everywhere now women were crying,