Anthony John

by Jerome K. Jerome

“There is a God I could believe in, worship and work for,” he said. “Not the builder of the heaven and of the earth, who made the stars also. Such there may be. The watch presupposes the watchmaker. I grant all that. But such is outside my conception—a force, a law, whatever it may be, existing before the beginning of Time, having its abiding place beyond Space. The thing is too unhuman ever to be understood by man. The God I could love and serve is something lesser and yet perhaps greater than such.”

He turned from the window and leaning against the mantelpiece continued:

“There is a story by Jean Paul Richter, I think. I read the book when I was a student in Germany. There was rather a fine idea in it: at least so it seemed to me. The man in the story dies and beyond the grave he meets Christ. And the Christ is still sad and troubled. The man asks why, and Christ confesses to him. He has been looking for God and cannot find Him. And the man comforts Him. Together they will seek God, and will yet find Him. I think it was a dream, I am not sure. It is the dream of the world, I suppose. Personally I have given up the search, thinking it hopeless. But I am not sure. Christ’s God I could believe in, could accept. He is the God—the genius, if you prefer the word, of the human race. He is seeking—still seeking to make man in His own image. He has given man thought, consciousness, a soul. It has been slow work and He is still only at the beginning of His labours. He is the spirit of love. It is by love, working for its kind, working for its species, that man has evolved. It is only by love of his kind, of his species, that man can hope to raise himself still further. He is no God of lightnings and of thunders. The moral law within us, the voice of pity, of justice is His only means of helping us. The Manichæans believed that Mankind was devil created. The evidence is certainly in their favour. The God that I am seeking is not the Omnipotent Master of the universe who could in the twinkling of an eye reshape man to His will. But a spirit, fighting against powerful foes, whom I can help or hinder—the spirit of love, knocking softly without ceasing at the door of a deaf world. The wonder of Christ is that He was the first man to perceive the nature of God. The gods that the world had worshipped up till then—that the world still worships—are the gods man has made in his own image: gods glorying in their strength and power, clamouring for worship, insisting on their ‘rights’; gods armed with punishments and rewards. Christ was the first man who conceived of God as the spirit of love, of service, a fellow labourer with man for the saving of the world.”

Anthony was still seated at the long table, facing the light.

“May it not be that you have found Him?” he said. “May He not be the God we are all seeking?”

Landripp gave a short laugh.

“He wouldn’t be popular,” he answered. “Not from Him would Job have obtained those fourteen thousand sheep and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand she asses as a reward for his patience. ‘The God from whom all blessings flow,’ that is the God man will praise and worship. The God I am seeking asks, not gives.”

The plans were finished; the builders got to work. On the very day of the laying of the foundation-stone the doctors pronounced Eleanor out of danger. Anthony forgot his talks with Landripp. God had heard his prayer and had accepted his offering. He would continue to love and serve Him, and surely goodness and mercy would follow him all the days of his life. One of the minor steel foundries happened to be on the market. He obtained control and re-established it on a new profit-sharing principle that he had carefully worked out. His system would win through by reason of its practicability; the long warfare between capital and labour end in peace. His business genius should not be only for himself. God also should be benefited. He got together a small company for the opening of co-operative shops, where the poor should be able to purchase at fair prices. There should be no end of his activities for God.

Eleanor came back to him more beautiful, it seemed to him, than she had ever been. They walked together, hand in hand, on the moor. She wanted to show him how strong she was. And coming to the old white thorn at the parting of the ways, she had raised her face to his; and he had drawn her to him and their lips had met, as if it had been for the first time.