His voice gurgled away into a faint tremolo.
“Chance! You’ve had a thousand chances!” retorted the Goblin, scornfully, “And you’ve thrown them all away! Now you’re asking for one chance! Oh, hoo-roo! Come and see how Christians love one another! With a love that perhaps you may appreciate, because it is so like hate! Come and hear an ‘ordained’ clerical Judas deny his Master! You and such men as YOU—gorged with gold, and diseased with Self,—are chiefly to blame for the wicked blasphemies which to-day brand the Christian world with infamy! Come—come! Blasphemy will suit you! You have aided it and abetted it many a time, even though you are a ‘churchwarden.’ Oh, hoo-roo, hoo-roo! Come in the spirit of One Timothy Two! Come!—come! Come!”
And like a great phantom of black Night descending, the Goblin swooped upon Josiah once more;—the little quiet room,—where Willie Dove, his wife and friend were all cheerily drinking “A Merry Christmas,”—was blotted from his sight, and again limitless space enshrouded and enveloped him in darkness.
A muffled and monotonous sound of chanting—the twinkling of many bright lights,—and the subdued rustling movement of many people gathered together,—these were the next impressions that awakened McNason to renewed consciousness. He stood in what seemed a shadowy forest of architecture;—there were great marble monuments all round him inscribed with the names of famous poets, warriors and historians, and on one of these the Goblin squatted cross-legged beside him, blinking with its owl-like eyes.
“There’s not a seat to be had, McNason!” it remarked, with a leer—“You must stand! Oh, Beelzebub! What a thing it is to be a ‘fashionable’ preacher! Nothing ‘draws!’ so well nowadays as an Atheist in Holy Orders! Not even our reverend brother ‘Firebrand’! Oh, hoo-roo!”
McNason looked bewilderedly about him. Surely he knew the place he was in?—its blackened arches, its shadowy aisles were not wholly unfamiliar? Gradually he recognised it as that melancholy Valhalla of English departed greatness, Westminster Abbey. But why had his uncanny incubus, “Professor” Goblin, brought him hither? What had he to do with the dense crowd of people massed round him—all looking—all listening——!
Hush! The monotonous chanting ceased—there was a brief pause of pretence at prayer—and then a man’s voice, clear and incisive, but with a falsetto ring of cold superciliousness and irony in its tone, sounded vibratingly on the silence. The Church’s ordained Preacher of the Gospel began to preach, and Josiah McNason, more than any other human unit in the congregation, was compelled to listen. And as he listened, he became aware that this same ordained preacher was calmly, but none the less surely, doing his best to undermine the very faith of which he was a professed disciple. Craftily, and with cunningly devised arguments, which held their meaning deftly secreted under a veil of choice expressions and well-turned phrases, he spoke of “old” beliefs with delicate tolerance and compassion—throwing in occasional questionings as to the meaning of “miracles,” and setting down “Divine” interposition as a fable, or rather as a beautiful myth which in the “darker” ages of the world was eminently useful as a means of intimidating and chastening the spirits of the ignorant. He spoke much of a “New Feeling” which was awakening among more advanced and civilised human kind,—that special “New Feeling” which looks upon Man as in himself supreme, and answerable to no Higher Tribunal than His Own for his actions. He deprecated the unfortunately chaotic state of things in the Churches which prevented a full inquiry into the foundations of belief, and hoped that the time was fast approaching when a larger and broader view might be obtained, and humanity be absolved from special duties to a Supernatural Conception which might possibly be a mistaken conception after all. In fine, the drift of his involved and euphuistic eloquence was to imply that pigmy Man would in due course be permitted to fathom the Mind of God,—and not only be permitted to fathom it, but to criticize it, question it and possibly condemn it after the same easy style, and in the same casual fashion, in which all human criticism condemns what it is too limited to comprehend. And gradually it was forced in upon Josiah McNason’s not always receptive intelligence that the rankest heresy, the vilest blasphemy was being preached from a Christian pulpit, by one who, passing for a “Christian” minister, was nothing more nor less than a foul hypocrite, and a disgrace to his sacred calling. Yet the congregation listened. They did not rise at once and make a quiet exit as they should have done, had they been honest and brave,—had they truly loved the Faith which leads to Heaven! Yet their faces expressed a certain dull bewilderment,—some looked worried and sad—others perplexed,—though many of them appeared indifferent. And certain words which he had heard often, yet which he had scarcely heeded while hearing them, came ringing across McNason’s mind as clearly as though they had just been spoken into his ears:
“And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold!”
He trembled. His eyes were dim,—but he could still see the Atheist-Preacher’s cold, intellectual face,—he was still in a vague way conscious that the sermon was going on, and that a human creature, full to the very brows of self-sufficiency and conceit, was presuming to lay down the law concerning the possible limitations of the Divine—a human creature moreover who occupied his very position in the Church through having solemnly sworn fidelity to the Master whom now, by the most covert subterfuges and sophistries, he was denying,—and he was aware that a sense of uneasiness and discomfort affected nearly all present, including even himself. He turned to look at the Goblin,—but to his amazement it had disappeared! Was he free then?—free once more to go where he liked and do as he liked?