God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest,
Thunder, Thy clarion, and lightning, Thy sword!
and the “long prayer” for victory to the nation's armies. As the prayer closes a white-robed stranger enters, moves up the aisle, and takes the preacher's place; then, after some moments of impressive silence, he begins:
“I come from the Throne-bearing a message from Almighty God!....
He has heard the prayer of His servant, your shepherd, & will grant
it if such shall be your desire after I His messenger shall have
explained to you its import—that is to say its full import. For it
is like unto many of the prayers of men in that it asks for more
than he who utters it is aware of—except he pause & think.
“God's servant & yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused & taken
thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two—one uttered, the other
not. Both have reached the ear of Him who heareth all
supplications, the spoken & the unspoken....
“You have heard your servant's prayer—the uttered part of it. I am
commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it—that
part which the pastor—and also you in your hearts—fervently
prayed, silently. And ignorantly & unthinkingly? God grant that it
was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our
God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is
completed into those pregnant words.
“Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken
part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go
forth to battle—be Thou near them! With them—in spirit—we
also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to
smite the foe.
“O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody
shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields
with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the
thunder of the guns with the wounded, writhing in pain; help us
to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help
us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with
unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their
little children to wander unfriended through wastes of their
desolated land in rags & hunger & thirst, sport of the sun-
flames of summer & the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit,
worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave &
denied it—for our sakes, who adore Thee, Lord, blast their
hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage,
make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain
the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask of
one who is the Spirit of love & who is the ever-faithful refuge
& friend of all that are sore beset, & seek His aid with humble
& contrite hearts. Grant our prayer, O Lord; & Thine shall be
the praise & honor & glory now & ever, Amen.”
(After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it,
speak!—the messenger of the Most High waits.”
...............
It was believed, afterward, that the man was a lunatic, because
there was no sense in what he said.
To Dan Beard, who dropped in to see him, Clemens read the “War Prayer,” stating that he had read it to his daughter Jean, and others, who had told him he must not print it, for it would be regarded as sacrilege.
“Still you—are going to publish it, are you not?”
Clemens, pacing up and down the room in his dressing-gown and slippers, shook his head.
“No,” he said, “I have told the whole truth in that, and only dead men can tell the truth in this world. It can be published after I am dead.”
He did not care to invite the public verdict that he was a lunatic, or even a fanatic with a mission to destroy the illusions and traditions and conclusions of mankind. To Twichell he wrote, playfully but sincerely:
Am I honest? I give you my word of honor (privately) I am not. For seven years I have suppressed a book which my conscience tells me I ought to publish. I hold it a duty to publish it. There are other difficult duties which I am equal to, but I am not equal to that one. Yes, even I am dishonest. Not in many ways, but in some. Forty-one, I think it is. We are certainly all honest in one or several ways—every man in the world—though I have a reason to think I am the only one whose blacklist runs so light. Sometimes I feel lonely enough in this lofty solitude.
It was his Gospel he referred to as his unpublished book, his doctrine of Selfishness, and of Man the irresponsible Machine. To Twichell he pretended to favor war, which he declared, to his mind, was one of the very best methods known of diminishing the human race.