Robert Williams Buchanan

“ Bradley was turned thirty years of age, but he was as capable of a grande passion as a boy of twenty—as romantic, as high-flown, as full of the fervour of youth and the brightness of dream. With him, to love a woman was to love her with all his faith and all his life; he was far too earnest to trifle for a moment with the most sacred of all human sentiments. ”

“ There is no shadow of sin upon us to darken our loving dream: we have nothing to undo, nothing to regret; and surely our spiritual union is blest by God. For myself, I want only one thing yet to complete my happiness—to see you raised as he was raised to a crown of honour and glory in the world. What I think of you, all mankind must think of you, when they know you as I know you, my apostle of all that is great and good. Ah, dearest, I would gladly die, if by so doing I could win you the honour you deserve. ”

“ Bradley paced up and down the chamber in agitation.
‘Such a life is an infamy,’ he at last exclaimed. ‘It is an offence against man and God.’
‘I know all that cant, and I suppose you speak as a clergyman; but I do my duty by the man who keeps me, and never—like some I could name—have intrigues with other men. It wouldn’t be fair, and it wouldn’t pay. I hope,’ she added, as if struck suddenly by the thought, ‘you have not come here to-night imagining I shall return to you?’ He recoiled as if from a blow. ”

“ Is the deathblow of foolish supernaturalism the destruction also of heavenly love and hope? Nay, God forbid! But this hideous pessimism is the natural revolt of the human heart, after centuries of optimistic lies. Perhaps, when another century has fled, mankind may thank God for Schopenhauer, who proved the potency of materialistic Will, and for Strauss, who has shown the fallacy of human judgment. The Germans have given us these two men as types of their own degradation; and when we have thoroughly digested their bitter gospel, we shall know how little hope for humanity lies that way. ”

“ At first shadowy and almost sinister, then clearer and more beautiful; then, descending through the ages, acquiring at every step some new splendour of self-sacrifice, some new consecration of love or suffering, from every heart that suffered patiently, from every soul that fed the lamp of a celestial dream with the oil of sweet human love. And now, far removed as is man himself from the archetypal ape, is the Christ of modern Christendom, this spiritual Saviour of the world, from the ghostly skeleton of the early martyrs, from the Crucified One of early Christian art. ”

“ Why should I keep your secret and countenance your infamy? Do you take me for one of those men who have no souls, no consciences, no honour? Do you think that I will bear the horror of a guilty secret, now I know that you live, and that God has not been merciful enough to rid me of such a curse?’
It was the first time he had seemed really violent. In his pain he almost touched her with his clenched hand.
‘You had better not strike me!’ she said viciously.
At this moment the door opened, and a little boy (the same Bradley had seen at the theatre) ran eagerly in. ”

“ Well, since the English Establishment has rejected you, why not, in the greatest city of the world, form a Church of your own? I have often thought of this, but never so much as lately. There you are tongue-tied and hand-tied, at the mercy of the ignorant who could never comprehend you; here you could speak with a free voice, as the great Abelard did when he defied the thunders of the Vatican. Remember, I am rich. You have only to say the word, and your handmaid (am I not still that, and your spouse and your sister?) will upbuild you a Temple! ”

“ It’s a mean thing, in my opinion, to take money for preaching opinions in which a man does not believe.’
‘Only just now you said that he preached heresy—or atheism—whatever you like to call it.’
‘Yes; and is paid for preaching the very reverse.’
Alma could no longer conceal her irritation.
‘Why should we discuss a topic you do not understand? Mr. Bradley is a gentleman whose aims are too high for the ordinary comprehension, that is all.’
‘Of course you think me a fool, and are polite enough to say so!’ persisted George. ”

“ It is precisely because I love the Church, because I believe in its spiritual mission, that I would wish to see it reorganised on a scientific and rational basis. When all is said and done, I am a Christian—that is, a believer in the Divine Idea of self-sacrifice and the enthusiasm of humanity. All that is beautiful and holy, all that may redeem man and lead him to an everlasting righteousness, is, in my opinion, summed up in the one word, Christianity.’
‘But, my dear Bradley, you have rejected the thing! ”

“ Do you think to daunt me when you say that I must not be your wife? Do you think your handmaid cares so long as she may serve at your feet? Call her by what name you please, spouse or sister, is it not all the same? Your hope is my hope, your country my country, your God my God—now and for ever. Only let us labour together earnestly, truthfully, patiently, and all will be well.—Yours always faithfully and affectionately,
Alma. ”

“ The idea of this Heliogabalus of pessimism was that life is altogether an unmixed evil; that all things are miserable of necessity, even the birds when they sing on the green boughs, and the babes when they crow upon the breast; and that the only happiness, to be secured by every man as soon as possible, and the sooner the better, was in Nirwâna, or total extinction. A cheerful creed, without a God of any kind—nay, without a single godlike sentiment! There are pessimists and pessimists. Gautama Buddha himself, facile princeps, based his creed upon infinite pity ”

“ Meantime, the Divine Ideal, the spiritual Christ survives—the master of the secret of sorrow, the lord of the shadowy land of hope. He turns his back upon the temple erected in his name; he averts his sweet eyes from those who deny He is, or ever was. He is patient, knowing that his kingdom must some day come.
More than ever now do I feel what a power the Church might be if it would only reconstruct itself by the light of the new knowledge. Without it, both France and Germany are plunged into darkness and spiritual death. ”

“ You shall not bear the burthen of my unfortunate opinions as a clergyman, now that my social and religious plans and aims have fallen like a house of cards. It is not that I have ceased to regard you as the one human being that could make martyrdom happy for me, or existence endurable. As long as life lasts I shall know that its only consecration would have come from you, the best and noblest woman I have ever met, or can hope to meet. ”

“ How low must a nation have fallen when one of its politicians dares to measure with a social foot-rule the holiest of human covenants! If marriage is a bond to be worn or abandoned at pleasure, if there is nothing more sacred between man and woman than the mere union of the body, God help us women, and me most of all! For has not God already united my soul to yours, not as yet by the sacrament of the Church, but by that sacrament of Love which is also eternal ”

“ Alma Cram to Ambrose Bradley.
Be true to your old dream, dearest Ambrose, and remember that in its fruition lies my only chance of happiness. Do not talk of unworthiness or unfitness; you are cruel to me when you distrust yourself. Will you be very angry if I tell you a secret? Will you forgive me if I say to you that even now the place where you shall preach the good tidings is rising from the ground, and that in a little while, when you return, it will be ready to welcome its master? ”

“ Does it matter so much, after all, whether we worship a person or an idea, since, as I suggest, the Idea has become a Person, with all the powers and privileges of divinity? Nay, who in this world is able, even with the help of philosophy, to distinguish what is from what seems—the phenomenal from the real? So long as Our Lord exists as a moral phenomenon, so long in other words as we can apprehend him as an ideal of human life, Christ is not dead, and his resurrection is not a dream. ”

“ If you had not taught me a purer and a better faith, I think I should be a Roman Catholic, and even as it is, I can feel nothing but sympathy for the Church which, after all, possesses more than all others the form of the Christian tradition.
Agatha Combe has returned to London. She is still full of that beautiful idea (was it yours or mine, or does it belong to both of us?) of the New Church, in which Religion, Science, and Art should all meet together in one temple, as the handmaids of God. ”

“ In any case, you will do no good by abusing an innocent man who is vastly your superior.’
All the bad blood of George Craik’s heart now mounted to his face, and his frame shook with rage.
‘Bradley will have to reckon with me,’ he exclaimed furiously. ‘What right has he to raise his eyes towards you? Until he came down here, we were the best of friends; but he has poisoned your heart against me, and against all your friends. Never mind! I’ll have it out with him, before many days are done!’
Without deigning to reply, Alma walked from him into the house. ”

“ This being so, how does it behove a Christian minister, eating the Church’s bread, but fully alive to her mortal danger, to steer his course?
Shall he, as so many do, continue to act in the nineteenth century as he would have acted in the fifteenth, or indeed in any century up to the Revolution? Shall he base his teaching on the certainty of miracles, on the existence of supernaturalism, on the evil of the human heart, the vanity of this world, and the certainty of rewards and punishments in another? ”

“ I begin to think that I am a sort of modern Diogenes, seeking in vain for a people with a Soul. I went first to Berlin, and found there all the vice of Paris without its beauty, all the infidelity of Frenchmen without their fitful enthusiasm in forlorn causes. The people of Germany, it appears to me, put God and Bismarck in the same category; they accept both as a solution of the political difficulty, but they truly reverence neither. The typical German is a monstrosity, a living-contradiction: intellectually an atheist, he assents to the conventional uses of Deity ”

“ Knowing in his heart that these things are merely the cast-off epidermis of a living and growing creed, he may, in perfect consciousness of God’s approval, put aside the miraculous as unproven if not irrelevant; warn the people against mere supernaturalism; proclaim with the apostles of the Renaissance the glory and loveliness of this world—its wondrous scenes, its marvellous story as written on the rocks and in the stars, its divine science, its literature, its poetry, and its art ”

“ Such a congregation asks for bread, not for precious stones of oratory; for kindly promise, not for mystical speculation. That you have seriously questioned, even in your own mind, any of the Divine truths of our creed, as expressed in that Book which is a light and a Jaw unto men, I will not for a moment believe; but I shall be glad to receive forthwith, over your own signature, an assurance that my surmise is a correct one, and that you will be careful in the future to give no further occasion for misconception.—I am, my dear Mr. Bradley, yours,
W. H. Darkdale and Dells. ”

“ The mystery of life remains just the same when all is said and done; and I see as great a miracle in a drop of albumen passing through endless progressions till it flowers in sense and soul, as in the creation of all things at the fiat of an omnipotent personal God and Father. ”

“ How calmly she wore her infamy! how lightly she trafficked with him for his silence, for his complicity! Unconscious of her own monstrosity, she dared to bargain with him—her husband—a priest of Christ!
Let those who sympathise with Bradley in his despair beware of sharing his revengeful thoughts. In simple fact, the woman was rising, not falling; her life, bad as it was from certain points of view, was still a certain advance upon what it once had been—was certainly a purer and an honester life than that of many men ”

“ But I sat down to write you a letter about myself, and here I am prosing about the idle topics of the day, from religion to the matrimonial musical glasses. I am wonderfully well in body; in fact, never better. But oh, my Alma, I am still miserably sick of soul! More than ever do I perceive that the world wants a creed. ”