Yet—what manner of prayer was this? Herein were no phrasings from Holy Writ; no humble appeals to a pitying Christ, a personal God.
Sidney Martin, standing amid this congregation of orthodox souls, was pouring forth what was neither more nor less than a pantheistic invocation to the Spirits of Nature, bidding them be beneficent; addressing them with Shelleyan adoration, and with as strong a sense of their existence as ever inspired Shelley’s immortal verse. And thus within these walls wherein was preached naught but “Christ and Him crucified,” Sidney Martin addressed himself to “Nature—all sufficing Power,” and did it, moved by no irreverence, stimulated by the same needs which had wrung forth the few pleading words from pious Mary Shinar. And whilst he, in bitterness of spirit, realized afterwards the grotesquerie of his action, yet those who were his hearers that night, and for many times afterwards, never saw the great gulf fixed between his adorations and their beliefs. And is it not a hopeful and solemn thing to find the Faith in a living Christ so closely allied to honest reverence for nature? To find Nature so close akin to God that their worshippers may interchange their petitions? It is very significant that—significant as all things are of the immutable and sacred Brotherhood of Man.
Christian, Deist, Buddhist, Atheist, by whatsoever name we choose to call ourselves, we are all bound together by the thongs of human needs and aspirations.
How vain to seek to deny that kinship. How futile to strive to blot out the family resemblance betwixt our prayers and theirs!
For malgré himself man prays always. His mere existence is a prayer against the darkness and the chaos of the void.
Sidney’s voice rose thrillingly through the tense silence. He had that God-like gift—natural eloquence, and under its spell his hearers forgot in part their woes, and began to take heart of hope whilst he plead with Mother Nature not to be a step-dame to her sons, and besought the “beloved Brotherhood,” earth, air and ocean, to withdraw no portion of their wonted bounty.
As his eloquence carried his listeners beyond their fears, it bore himself beyond their ken, till suddenly alight upon the highest pinnacle of thought, he paused to look beyond—hoping to behold
“Yet purer peaks, touched with unearthlier fire,
In sudden prospect virginally new,
But on the lone last height he sighs, ’tis cold,