第46章 THE SEVENTH - THE SECOND VISION(6)

"Yes, science.My young brother--oh, he's a clever one--he says such things! He says that it's science that they won't always go on like this.There's more sense coming into the world and more--my young brother says so.Says it stands to reason;it's Evolution.It's science that men are all brothers; you can prove it.It's science that there oughtn't to be war.Science is ending war now by making it horrible like this, and making it so that no one is safe.Showing it up.Only when nobody is safe will everybody want to set up peace, he says.He says it's proved there could easily be peace all over the world now if it wasn't for flags and kings and capitalists and priests.They still manage to keep safe and out of it.He says the world ought to be just one state.The World State, he says it ought to be."("Under God," said the bishop, "under God.")"He says science ought to be King of the whole world.""Call it Science if you will," said the bishop."God is wisdom.""Out of the mouths of babes and elementary science students,"said the Angel."The very children in the board schools are turning against this narrowness and nonsense and mischief of nations and creeds and kings.You see it at a thousand points, at ten thousand points, look, the world is all flashing and flickering; it is like a spinthariscope; it is aquiver with the light that is coming to mankind.It is on the verge of blazing even now.""Into a light."

"Into the one Kingdom of God.See here! See here! And here!

This brave little French priest in a helmet of steel who is daring to think for the first time in his life; this gentle-mannered emir from Morocco looking at the grave-diggers on the battlefield; this mother who has lost her son....

"You see they all turn in one direction, although none of them seem to dream yet that they are all turning in the same direction.They turn, every one, to the rule of righteousness, which is the rule of God.They turn to that communism of effort in the world which alone permits men to serve God in state and city and their economic lives....They are all coming to the verge of the same salvation, the salvation of one human brotherhood under the rule of one Righteousness, one Divine will....Is that the salvation your church offers?"(8)

"And now that we have seen how religion grows and spreads in men's hearts, now that the fields are white with harvest, I want you to look also and see what the teachers of religion are doing," said the Angel.

He smiled.His presence became more definite, and the earthly globe about them and the sun and the stars grew less distinct and less immediately there.The silence invited the bishop to speak.

"In the light of this vision, I see my church plainly for the little thing it is," he said.

He wanted to be perfectly clear with the Angel and himself.

"This church of which I am a bishop is just a part of our poor human struggle, small and pitiful as one thinks of it here in the light of the advent of God's Kingdom, but very great, very great indeed, ancient and high and venerable, in comparison with me.

But mostly it is human.It is most human.For my story is the church's story, and the church's story is mine.Here I could almost believe myself the church itself.The world saw a light, the nations that were sitting in darkness saw a great light.Even as I saw God.And then the church began to forget and lose itself among secondary things.As I have done....It tried to express the truth and lost itself in a maze of theology.It tried to bring order into the world and sold its faith to Constantine.

These men who had professed the Invisible King of the World, shirked his service.It is a most terrible disaster that Christianity has sold itself to emperors and kings.They forged a saying of the Master's that we should render unto Ceasar the things that are Ceasar's and unto God the things that are God's....

"Who is this Ceasar to set himself up to share mankind with God? Nothing that is Ceasar's can be any the less God's.But Constantine Caesar sat in the midst of the council, his guards were all about it, and the poor fanatics and trimmers and schemers disputed nervously with their eyes on him, disputed about homoousian and homoiousian, and grimaced and pretended to be very very fierce and exact to hide how much they were frightened and how little they knew, and because they did not dare to lay violent hands upon that usurper of the empire of the world....

"And from that day forth the Christian churches have been damned and lost.Kept churches.Lackey churches.Roman, Russian, Anglican; it matters not.My church indeed was twice sold, for it doubled the sin of Nicaea and gave itself over to Henry and Elizabeth while it shammed a dispute about the sacraments.No one cared really about transubstantiation any more than the earlier betrayers cared about consubstantiality; that dispute did but serve to mask the betrayal."He turned to the listening Angel."What can you show me of my church that I do not know? Why! we Anglican bishops get our sees as footmen get a job.For months Victoria, that old German Frau, delayed me--because of some tittle-tattle....The things we are! Snape, who afterwards became Bishop of Burnham, used to waylay the Prince Consort when he was riding in Hyde Park and give him, he boasts, 'a good loud cheer,' and then he would run very fast across the park so as to catch him as he came round, and do it again....It is to that sort of thing we bearers of the light have sunken....

"I have always despised that poor toady," the bishop went on.

"And yet here am I, and God has called me and shown me the light of his countenance, and for a month I have faltered.That is the mystery of the human heart, that it can and does sin against the light.What right have I, who have seen the light--and failed, what right have I--to despise any other human being? I seem to have been held back by a sort of paralysis.