53. Then, secondly, though Christ bears not His cross, the mourning prophets,—the persecuted apostles—and the martyred disciples do bear theirs. For just as it is well for you to remember what your undying Creator is doing for you—it is well for you to remember what your dying fellow-creatures have done: the Creator you may at your pleasure deny or defy—the Martyr you can only forget; deny, you cannot. Every stone of this building is cemented with his blood, and there is no furrow of its pillars that was not ploughed by his pain.
54. Keeping, then, these things in your heart, look back now to the central statue of Christ, and hear His message with understanding. He holds the Book of the Eternal Law in His left hand; with His right He blesses,—but blesses on condition. "This do, and thou shalt live"; nay, in stricter and more piercing sense, This be and thou shalt live: to show Mercy is nothing—thy soul must be full of mercy; to be pure in act is nothing—thou shalt be pure in heart also.
And with this further word of the unabolished law—"This if thou do not, this if thou art not, thou shalt die."
55. Die (whatever Death means)—totally and irrevocably. There is no word in thirteenth-century Theology of the pardon (in our modern sense) of sins; and there is none of the Purgatory of them. Above that image of Christ with us, our Friend, is set the image of Christ over us, our Judge. For this present life—here is His helpful Presence. After this life—there is His coming to take account of our deeds, and of our desires in them; and the parting asunder of the Obedient from the Disobedient, of the Loving from the Unkind, with no hope given to the last of recall or reconciliation. I do not know what commenting or softening doctrines were written in frightened minuscule by the Fathers, or hinted in hesitating whispers by the prelates of the early Church. But I know that the language of every graven stone and every glowing window,—of things daily seen and universally understood by the people, was absolutely and alone, this teaching of Moses from Sinai in the beginning, and of St. John from Patmos in the end, of the Revelation of God to Israel. [Pg 136] This it was, simply—sternly—and continually, for the great three hundred years of Christianity in her strength (eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries), and over the whole breadth and depth of her dominion, from Iona to Cyrene,—and from Calpe to Jerusalem. At what time the doctrine of Purgatory was openly accepted by Catholic Doctors, I neither know nor care to know. It was first formalized by Dante, but never accepted for an instant by the sacred artist teachers of his time—or by those of any great school or time whatsoever. [4-30]
56. Neither do I know nor care to know—at what time the notion of Justification by Faith, in the modern sense, first got itself distinctively fixed in the minds of the heretical sects and schools of the North. Practically its strength was founded by its first authors on an asceticism which differed from monastic rule in being only able to destroy, never to build; and in endeavouring to force what severity it thought proper for itself on everybody else also; and so striving to make one artless, letterless, and merciless monastery of all the world. Its virulent effort broke down amidst furies of reactionary dissoluteness and disbelief, and remains now the basest of popular solders and plasters for every condition of broken law and bruised conscience which interest can provoke, or hypocrisy disguise.
57. With the subsequent quarrels between the two great sects of the corrupted church, about prayers for the Dead, Indulgences to the Living, Papal supremacies, or Popular liberties, no man, woman, or child need trouble themselves in studying the history of Christianity: they are nothing but the squabbles of men, and laughter of fiends among its ruins. The Life, and Gospel, and Power of it, are all written in the mighty works of its true believers: in Normandy and Sicily, on river islets of France and in the river glens of England, on the rocks of Orvieto, and by the sands of Arno. But of all, the simplest, completest, and most authoritative in its lessons to the active mind of North Europe, is this on the foundation stones of Amiens.
58. Believe it or not, reader, as you will: understand only how thoroughly it was once believed; and that all beautiful things were made, and all brave deeds done in the strength of it—until what we [Pg 138] may call 'this present time,' in which it is gravely asked whether Religion has any effect on morals, by persons who have essentially no idea whatever of the meaning of either Religion or Morality.
Concerning which dispute, this much perhaps you may have the patience finally to read, as the Flèche of Amiens fades in the distance, and your carriage rushes towards the Isle of France, which now exhibits the most admired patterns of European Art, intelligence, and behaviour.
59. All human creatures, in all ages and places of the world, who have had warm affections, common sense, and self-command, have been, and are, Naturally Moral. Human nature in its fulness is necessarily Moral,—without Love, it is inhuman, without sense, [4-31] inhuman,—without discipline, inhuman.