The Missionary

by George Chetwynd Griffith

"Have I really?" said Vane, quietly, "I didn't know I had, but if I have done so, I am very glad. It was exactly what I intended to do, though I confess I had little hope of doing so. What is the matter? I hope I haven't got you into any unpleasantness, Father Baldwin."

"It doesn't very much matter if you have," replied the older priest, leaning back in his chair and looking at him keenly from under his thick, iron-grey eyebrows. "You only said what has been in the hearts and souls of a good many of us for a long time, but it was given to you to say it and, let us hope, also the inspiration to say it in the proper way."

"Please God!" said Vane. "And now what have I done; I mean as regards yourself and St. Chrysostom?"

"To begin with," replied Father Baldwin, "about half the wealthiest members of the congregation, men and women, but mostly men, have written to say that if they are to be publicly insulted from the pulpit, and told that they are liars and hypocrites, and not Christians, save in name, they will leave the church and withdraw all their subscriptions—which, of course, from quite a worldly point of view, would be somewhat a serious matter for the church."

"That simply proves that they are not Christians," said Vane, "and the church is better without their money. They practically confess that they never have been giving their money honestly for the service of God, but merely for self-advertisement or as a social obligation. It would be no loss to us, and little gain to anybody else they gave it to."

"Yes, I believe you are right," replied Father Baldwin. "It seems rather a hard thing to say, but people who would leave a church because the Sermon on the Mount was preached from its pulpit, must be a strange sort of Christians."

"They are not Christians at all!" exclaimed Vane, with a burst of righteous wrath, "they are the bane and curse of Christianity, and have been ever since Constantine made it official and fashionable. They are responsible for every corruption that has crept into the Church, for every blot that defiles the purity of the Creed. They are not Christians, and they never have been, for they cannot be what they are and followers of Christ at the same time. They and the wealthy clergy of all the churches are responsible for the unfaith, tacit and avowed, of what we are pleased to call the lower classes; the classes who compose the majority of Christ's Congregation; and they are responsible for all the cynicism of the open and active enemies of our faith. It is they who make it possible for the infidel and the atheist to point the finger of scorn at us and say, 'See how these Christians love to do the Will of their Master.'"

"I fully appreciate everything you say, Maxwell," replied Father Baldwin, with some little hesitation in his tone; for, although he was as good a Christian as ever gave up everything to serve his Master, and as earnest a priest as ever stood before the altar, yet he was getting on in years and found it hard to break away from the traditions amidst which he had grown up, and which he had accepted as a young man with little or no inquiry. "At the same time, I must candidly admit that I was a trifle startled by your absolutely uncompromising rendering of our Lord's words. Did you really intend that they should be taken literally?"

"It is not what I intended, Father Baldwin," replied Vane, rising from his seat and beginning to walk up and down the plainly furnished, book-lined common-room, "the question is what He intended, and surely no Christian in his senses could believe for a moment that our Lord intended to quibble with words and to play with double meanings. If He did not mean what He said, and intend those who followed Him to do what He said, what becomes of our faith? If that is not so, surely there is nothing left for us but to give up the doctrine of the Trinity altogether, and go back to the old Hebrew creed—which certainly did not forbid the accumulation of riches."

"May I come in?" said Sir Arthur Maxwell's voice through the open door, "they told me you were here, Vane. Good evening, Father Baldwin. Well, this is a nice sort of commotion that this son of mine has been kicking up. Do you know, Sir," he went on, turning to Vane, "that you have suddenly made yourself one of the most famous, or, perhaps, I should say notorious, persons in London by that sermon of yours? It was very fine I admit, and most desperately to the point, but I suppose you know that all the world and the newspapers are asking where does that point point to?"