The Master-Christian

by Marie Corelli

"All right! We'll be there to-night for sure!" And then Aubrey, gravely content, walked slowly out of the little churchyard still bare-headed, his eyes dark with thought,—and the reluctant sun came out of the gray sky and shone on his pale face and bright hair—and one or two of the widowed women timidly touched his arm as he passed, and murmured, "God bless you!" And Mary Bell, the sorrowful and sinning, clinging to the waist of the woman she had wronged, looked up at him appealingly with the strained and hunted gaze of a lost and desperate creature, and as he met her eyes, turned shudderingly away and wept. And he, knowing that words were useless, and that even the kindliest looks must wound in such a case, passed on in silence, and when he reached his own lodging took some of the newspapers which spoke of himself and his book, and after marking certain passages, tied them up in a packet and sent them to the curate with whom he had crossed swords that morning, accompanied by a note which briefly ran thus:—

"You asked me how I 'dared' to speak to you about your duty. I reply—By the force of truth and the power of the pen I dare!—and I shall be ready to answer to God for it, as you must answer to him for leaving any part of YOUR duty undone.

"AUBREY LEIGH."

And the day passed on, half in drifting clouds, half in glimpses of sunshine, till late afternoon, when the sky cleared altogether, and the waves sank to a dead calm;—and with the night a shield-like moon, all glistening pearl and silver, rose up out of the east with a royal air of white and wondering innocence, as though she proclaimed her entire blamelessness for any havoc wrought by storm. And in the full radiance of that silvery splendour Aubrey Leigh, leaning against the sea-weed covered capstan of the quay, round which coils of wet rope glistened like the body of a sleeping serpent, told to an audience of human hearers for the first time the story of his life, and adventures, and the varied experiences he had gone through in order to arrive at some straight and clear comprehension of "the Way, the Truth, and the Life" of the Gospel of Love and Mutual Labour. His practised voice, perfect in all modulation, inflexion, and expression, carried each simple, well-chosen word home to the hearts of his hearers,—not one so ignorant as not to understand him—not one so blind as not to see the beauty of work and creative effort as he depicted them,—not one so insensate as not to feel the calm, the grandeur, and repose of the strong soul of a man in complete sympathy with his fellow-men. They listened to him almost breathlessly—their bronzed weather-beaten faces all turned towards his; forgetting to smoke, they let their pipes die out and drop from their hands—and no interruption broke the even flow and cadence of his earnest language, save the slow ripple of the water beating against the quay, and the faint, occasional sigh of a stirring wind. Silhouetted black against the radiant sky were the masts of the fishing fleet, and the roofs of the fishermen's cottages—dwellings so often made desolate by death—and as Aubrey noted the fascinated attention with which these rough men heard him, his heart grew strong. "If a few listen, so will many," he said to himself, "The Master of our creed first taught His divine ethics to a few fishermen,—to them the message was first given . . . and by them again delivered,—and it is through our having departed from the original simplicity of utterance that all the evil has crept in. So let me be content with this night's work and await the future with patience." Then lifting up his voice once more he said,—

"You think your lot a hard one—you, friends and brothers, who set the brown sails out to sea on a night of threatening storm, and bid farewell to your homes built safe upon the shore. You must meet all the horror of white foam and cloud-blackness, to drag from the sea its living spoil, and earn the bread to keep yourselves and those who are dependent upon you,—you MUST do this, or the Forces of Life will not have you,—they will cast you out and refuse to nourish you. For so is your fate in life, and work ordained. Then where is God?—you cry, as the merciless billows rise to engulf your frail craft,—why should the Maker of man so deliberately destroy him? Why should one human unit, doing nothing, and often thinking nothing, enjoy hundreds of pounds a day, while you face death to win as many pence? Is there a God of Love who permits this injustice? Ah, stop there, friends! There is no such thing as injustice! Strange as it sounds to this world of many contradictions and perplexities, I repeat there is no such thing as injustice. There is what SEEMS injustice—because we are all apt to consider the material side of things only. That is where we make our great mistake in life and conduct. We should all remember that this world, and the things of this world, are but the outward expression of an inward soul—the Matter evolved from Mind—and that unless we are ourselves in harmony with the Mind, we shall never understand the Matter. Your millionaire is surrounded with luxuries,—your fishermen has dry bread and herring,—your millionaire dies, with a famous doctor counting his pulse-beats, and a respectable clergyman promising him heaven on account of the money he has left to the church in his will; your fisherman goes down in a swirl of black water, without a prayer—for he has no time to pray—without leaving a penny behind him, inasmuch as he has no pence to leave; and for both these different creatures we judge the end is come? No,—the end is NOT come! It is the beginning only! If the millionaire has died with a thousand selfish sores in his mind,—if his life's privileges have been wasted in high feeding and self-indulgence,—if he has thought only of himself, his riches, his pride, his position, or his particular form of respectability, he will get the full result of that mental attitude! If the fisherman has been content with his earnings, and thanked God for them,—if he has been honest, brave, true, and unselfish, and has shared with others their joys and sorrows, and if at the last he goes down in the waves trying to save some other life while losing his own,—depend upon it he will rise to the full splendour of THAT mental attitude! For both millionaire and fisherman are but men, made on the same lines, of the same clay, and are each one, personally and separately responsible to God for the soul in them,—and when both of them pass from this phase of being to the next, they will behold all things with spiritual eyes, not material ones. And then it may be that the dark will be discovered to be the bright, and the fortunate prove to be the deplorable, for at present we 'see through a glass darkly, but then, face to face.' The friends whom we have buried to-day are not dead,—for death is not Death, but Life. And for those who are left behind it is merely a time of waiting, for as the Master said, 'There shall not a hair of your head perish. In your patience possess ye your souls.'"

He paused a moment,—the moon rays illumined his delicate features, and a half sorrowful smile rested on his lips.

"I am no clergyman, my friends! I have not been 'ordained'. I am not preaching to you. I will not ask you to be good men, for there is something effeminate in the sound of such a request made to brawny, strong fellows such as you are, with an oath ready to leap from your lips, and a blow prepared to fly from your fists on provocation. I will merely say to you that it is a great thing to be a Man!—a Man as God meant him to be, brave, truthful, and self-reliant, with a firm faith in the Divine Ordainment of Life as Life should be lived. There is no disgrace in work;—no commonness,—no meanness. Disgrace, commonness, and meanness are with those who pretend to work and never do anything useful for the world they live in. The king who amuses himself at the expense and ruin of his subjects is the contemptible person,—not the labourer who digs the soil for the planting of corn which shall help to feed his fellows. And the most despicable creature of our time and century, is not the man who doubts Christ, or questions God—for Christ was patient with the doubter, and God answers, through the medium of science, every honest question—it is the man who pretends to believe and lives on the pretence, while his conduct gives the lie to his profession! That is why you—and why thousands of others like you, are beginning to look upon many of the clergy with contempt, and to treat their admonitions with indifference. That is why thousands of the rising generation of men and women will not go to church. 'The parson does not do anything for me,' is a common every-day statement. And that the parson SHOULD do something is a necessary part of his business. His 'doing' should not consist in talking platitudes from the pulpit, or in sending round a collection plate. And if he has no money, and will not 'sell half that he has and give to the poor' as commanded, he can at any rate give sympathy. But this is precisely what he chiefly lacks. The parson's general attitude is one of either superiority or servility,—a 'looking down' upon his poor parishoners—a 'looking up' to his rich ones. A disinterested, loving observation of the troubles and difficulties of others never occurs to him as necessary. But this was precisely the example Christ gave us—an unselfish example of devotion to others—a supreme descent of the Divine into man to rescue and bless humanity. Now I know all your difficulties and sorrows,—I have worked among you, and lived among you—and I feel the pulse of your existence beating in my own heart. I know that when a great calamity overwhelms you all as it has done this week, you have no one to comfort you,—no one to assure you that no matter how strange and impossible it seems, you have been deprived of your associates for some GOOD cause which will be made manifest in due season,—that they have probably been taken to save them from a worse fate than the loss of earth-consciousness in the sea. For that, scientifically speaking, is all that death means—the loss of earth-consciousness,—but the gain of another consciousness, whether of another earth or a heaven none can say. But there is no real death—inasmuch as even a grain of dust in the air will generate life. We must hold fast to the Soul of things—the Soul which is immortal, not the body which is mortal. 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul!' That is what each man of us must find, and hold, and keep,—his own soul! Apart from all creeds, and clergy, forms and rituals—that is the vital matter. Stand clear of all things,—all alone if need be, surrounded by the stupendous forces of this great universe,—let us find,—each man of us—his own soul; find and keep it brave, truthful, upright, and bound straight on for the highest,—the highest always! And the very stars in their courses will help us—storms will but strengthen us—difficulties but encourage us—and death itself shall but give us larger liberty."

He ceased, and one by one the men drew closer to him, and thanked him, in voices that were tremulous with the emotion he had raised in them. The instinct which had led them to call him "Gentleman Leigh" had proved correct,—and there was not a man among them all who did not feel a thrill of almost fraternal pride in the knowledge that the dauntless, hard-working "mate" who had fronted tempests with them, and worked with them in all weathers, had without any boast or loquacious preparation, made his name famous and fit for discussion in the great world of London far away, a world to which none of them had ever journeyed. And they pressed round him and shook his hand, and gave him simple yet hearty words of cheer and goodwill, together with unaffected expressions of regret that he was leaving them,—"though for that matter," said one of them, "we allus felt you was a scholard-like, for all that you was so handy at the nets. For never did a bit of shell or weed come up from the sea but ye was a lookin' at it as if God had throwed it to yer for particular notice. And when a man takes to obsarvin' common things as if they were special birthday presents from the Almighty, ye may be pretty sure there's something out of the ordinary in him!"

Aubrey smiled, and pressed the hand of this roughly eloquent speaker,—and then they all walked with him up from the shore to the little cottage where he had lived for so many months, and at the gate of which he bade them farewell.

"But only for a time," he said, "I shall see you all again. And you will hear of me!"