The Last Miracle

by M. P. Shiel

"Talking of Burton," said he, "I have two letters of his which I will show you now"—and he rose and got them: one was a letter of sympathy, very feelingly worded, written to Langler on the second wounding of our friend; the other, written only five days before to Percival of Keble, was as follows:—"The Palace, Lambeth. P. + T. My dear Percival,—Forgive my silence, since you are continually in my heart. It is now confirmed that Diseased Persons will be thrown out; and as Israel prevailed over Amalek in Rephidim, so we shall ride over them that rise up against us. Hertford, Jersey, and Ellenborough have declared on our side, and the zeal of young Denman, who now has rooms in the Palace, is profitable to me: the Lord reward them according to their works.... There can be no looking back now, even if we would, being more strongly impelled against the Bill from the side of St Peter than many divine; and, in addition, there are forces, in their nature subterranean, which prompt and urge us, and make retreat impossible—even if we would! Bellini of the Maddallena writes that he does not consider the Bill contrary to Holy Writ! And is it? What say you? Give me of your wisdom. But however that be, on we must, the force behind is grim and deaf. I say that the whole truth is known to none: you will remember at some future day, if need be, that I have said it to you and to others; nor is what I now give you any whisper between ourselves. But is not the whole truth still good to speak? not the truth only, but the whole? We have Clement of Alexandria on 'uttering a lie, as the Sophists say'; but to utter a lie is it not to tell one? and to tell one is it not to lie? and to lie is it not to be a rotting liar? And to trim, and economise, and keep dark, and be shifty, is it not to utter many lies? To all which I say: 'Get thee behind me, Satan! I will wash my hands in innocency.' Forgive me if I am curious and obscure to-night, good friend, since I write in some gloom of mind. One short year ago I was a village-priest, and had songs in the night; at present I am full of tossings to and fro till the morning. But my every loss, were it of life and soul, I will count as gain, if only Zion prosper, though I warn you, Percival, of rocks ahead, and fears and doubts not to be formulated; at some hours I see the future dark as crape—I could not tell you. Our victory in Gloucester was ominously close, and here and there in the country one hears Old Adam growling. They must obey! they must submit themselves! stantes sunt pedes nostri in atriis tuis, Jerusalem: over all uprising we shall ride gloriously, God help us. Alas! sometimes when I am mightiest, then am I weakest: the solid Pisgah gives way under my feet, the wings of Icarus stream with melting; oh, for faith, and more faith, and still more: pray for me. Still, we shall ride, we shall triumph. As to the Lambeth degrees in medicine, and our right to grant them, this you shall see carried against all the rage of the heathen in the near future, so also as to the proposed new powers of Consistory Courts and of my Court of Audience, so also as to the restoring to Canterbury of her jurisdiction over wills and intestacies, so also as to the condign punishment of Ambrose Rivers: all these. Only, still the sleeplessness, no rest, no shutting of the eyelid, but tossings till the morning, and not poppy nor mandragoras shall medicine me now, I think. Oh, Percival, how happy is the obscure good man, the upright heart and pure, kept unspotted from the world! Down yonder in Ritching parish my garden grew wild, the vicarage was holey and ruined, but very pretty, very homely, and ever for me there was one sweetest, secret cruse of water from Siloa's brook, and my morsel of dry bread was like coriander seed, man, I tell you, and the taste of it like wafers made with honey. Percival, I warn you, fly from preferment: there is one sweeter sluice than all. Pray write as to the scripturalness of Diseased Persons. Farewell, dear friend.—In haste, yours faithfully in N.D.J.C., John Cantuar."

"Here, I think," said Langler when I had got through the two letters, "you have a soul in the toils," and we went on talking about Burton and other things, without coming to the point as to what we personally were now to do; moreover, I had promised to be back in London at once, and left Swandale that night, our friend being then definitely on the road to recovery.

I did not, I think, return to Swandale during some two weeks, and meanwhile twice saw Archbishop Burton, once in the Lords on the night when Diseased Persons was being debated for the second time; all the world was there: I saw Mr Edwards peeping behind the throne; I saw Baron Kolár ironing his thigh, while his eyes dwelt upon the primate, who, somehow, denounced the bill less loudly than I had expected to hear. I thought that Dr Burton's girth was less outgrown, his visage less brown than usual; indeed, I have grounds to know that about that time the archbishop was putting himself to cruel tortures with regimen, the thongs of discipline, and other articles of piety. Twice to my knowledge, while speaking, he glanced up at Baron Kolár in the gallery, and I witnessed the meeting of their eyes. Well, the bill, which had been sent up this second time with an ominous drop in Edwards' majority from twelve to nine, was anew mutilated; and at this thing the sort of ecstasy which marked the mood of the country can only be recalled, not described, for Diseased Persons and the Education Bill (setting up lycees on the French model) were the two main items in the King's Speech, the Church withstood both, and the deadlock was complete. Edwards would not yield, for if ever man knew England and Englishmen it was he, and a sort of world-wide mutter against churchmen, which did not dare express itself, yet could be felt, was abroad. It was at this juncture that I again saw the archbishop one night at a political crush at the Duchess of St Albans'. I was making my way through a throng when I caught a view of Baron Kolár's head above a press of men, and, the hall being full of a noise of tongues, I won near to the group around him to hear, for he was talking; in doing which I caught sight of the robed figure of the archbishop sitting on an ottoman, silent, solitary, but within earshot of the baron's talk; indeed, I fancied that the baron's voice was purposely pitched so that Dr Burton might overhear. As I won near the first words of the baron which reached my ears were: "but Jesus did not believe in the immortality of the soul: no, he didn't believe in it; he never heard of such a thing: not in our sense of the term——"

I stood astonished at this drowsy outrage upon the ears of a devout crowd, though a year previously his words would have been ordinary enough, and I saw Dr Burton's eyes fixed sideward upon the baron with I know not what musketry of meanings in them.

"Oh no," the baron went on, "he had no notion of our 'immortality.' Our notion of a ghost distinct from the body, of 'spirit' distinct from matter, is, of course, an Aryan-Greek one, quite foreign to the Hebrew mind: the very angels of the Hebrews ate mutton like Charles II., their very God was material, with hind parts and front parts; and you will burrow through the Old Testament in vain for a valid hint that men may live after their body is livid."

No one answered anything; only Dr Burton's eyes aimed a ray of keener and keener meaning at the speaker.

"However," the baron went on, "there arose at a late date a crowd among the Hebrews called Pharisees, who said: 'no, all is not over at death, for some day there will be a resurrection, and we shall then live again'; opposed to whom were the Conservatives—the Sadducees—who denied that there would be a resurrection: and Jesus was a Pharisee in this belief in a resurrection of the body. But as to our fantastic Greek ghost and its immortality, it was quite outlandish to all Hebrews, to Pharisee, Essene, and Sadducee alike: Jesus hardly heard of it."

I glanced toward Dr Burton's face: it had in it reproach, shame, and anger together: and still the baron droned on: "hence the frequency of this word 'resurrection' in the Gospels, in spite of the fact that their writers were tinged with Greek ideas: for Jesus believed that we ceased to live at death, but afterwards should have a 'resurrection': he was a good Hebrew. On the other hand, in the writings of St Paul, who was both a Hebrew and a man learned in Greek ideas, we have a perfect confusion of the two ideas, Greek 'immortality' and Pharisee 'resurrection.' Sometimes Paul believes in one, sometimes in the other, sometimes somehow in both together. Where he says, 'to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord,' he is a Greek; where he says, 'I have fought a good fight ... henceforth there is laid up for me a crown which the Lord will give me in the day of his appearing,' he is a Hebrew: for he won't get the crown at once, oh no, it is laid up for him till resurrection-day, when he will wake up out of the dust. And so all through that epistle——'"

But at that point the baron stopped, looking with a delicious fat chuckle after the flight of Dr Burton, who was off through the throng. Nobody made any reply to the baron's words. I wish that one could describe the man's tones, his eyes!—wandering, fishy, light grey, the whites fouled yellowish; but so strong somehow! They would light upon one a moment in a preoccupied way, and wander off again, as if one was not of worth enough to engage their attention. But I'm afraid that my pen was not made to paint. At any rate, his words were always most weighty, living, memorable, and overbearingly authoritative—not in themselves perhaps, but in some way because they came from him.

I happened to overhear a few private words between him and Dr Burton that same night which I should recount, but before then I was in a crowd with Mr Edwards, who was looking rather harassed, though quick-eyed as ever, and appeared from his talk to be less bitter against Dr Burton's big attacks than against the "pin-pricks "; "the face of Europe was turned towards the future," one heard him say, "and now come the parsons twisting it about, and saying, 'look back to the past.' It can't be done, you know: neck'll break. And such pettifogging, penny-ha'penny, antediluvian antics! How is an archbishop to grant degrees in medicine at this time of day? As for Ambrose Rivers, all I can say is, if the church-party should succeed in laying a finger upon that harmless lunatic, then the Government will begin to ask itself whether the time is not come to throw up the cards. May the dickens fly away——!" he stopped, but I understood him to mean "with the church-party, and all things, save the multiplication-table and the present Prime Minister of England." He was a man of many sterling qualities of mind, and exercised a true influence over his countrymen, perhaps through his very actuality and directness; and though he ever refused to embellish himself with one touch of personal stateliness, he was listened to with attention.