The Dawn of All

by Robert Hugh Benson

He had seen men who had already all that the world could give, men who, he had thought, lusted only for power, go to an unknown and yet a certain death for the sake of a world over which he had thought they cared only to reign—and go with smiles and cheerfulness. And while he still hung in indecision, still hesitated as to whether this or that were the Kingdom of God—this shrinking dream of a world sufficient to itself, or this brightening vision—then the last light had come, and he had seen one to be victor by sheer self-abnegation, by contempt of his own life, by the all but divine power of an ordinary man walking in grace. There had been no rhetoric in that triumph, no promises, no intoxication of phrases, no overwhelming personality such as that which had faced him. There had been nothing but a little quiet personage with a father's heart, who by his very fidelity to his human type, by the absolute simplicity of his presence had first climbed to the highest point that man could reach, and then by that same fidelity and simplicity, had cast himself down, and in the very hour that followed the unconditional surrender which his enemies had made, had granted them a measure of liberty such as they had never dreamed of. In the name of the Powers, whose super-lord and representative he was, he had abolished the death-penalty for opinions subversive of society or faith, substituting in its place deportation to the new American colonies; he had flung open certain positions in Catholic states hitherto tenable only on a profession of the Christian religion to all men alike; and he had guaranteed to the new colonies in America a freedom from external control and a place among civilized powers such as they had never expected or asked.

This then was the new type of man who had at last conquered the world. It was not a superman that had been waited for so long, not a demigod armed with powers of light; not man raising himself above his stature, building towers on earthly foundations that should reach to heaven; but just man, utterly true to himself and his instincts, walking humbly before his God; looking for a city that has no foundations, coming down to him out of heaven. It was supernature, not superman; grace and truth transfiguring nature; not nature wrenching itself vainly towards the stature of grace. It was man who could suffer, who could reign; since he only who knows his weakness, dares to be strong. . . . Vicisti Galilaee!

(II)

Slowly then he had come to see that, as had been told him long before, the kingdoms of this world were already passing into the hands of a higher dominion—and this was the significance of this microcosm of those kingdoms that now lay before his bodily eyes.

There, opposite to him, in the blaze of sunlight, stood the throne that for a thousand years had faced the throne of the Fisherman, now as a dependant, now as a rebel—stable and fixed at last in its allegiance. Here beneath him lay London, the finest city in the world, where, if ever anywhere, had been tried the experiment of a religion resting on the strength of a national isolation instead of an universal supernationalism;—it had been tried, and found wanting. Beneath him lay his own cathedral, already blazing within like a treasure-cave, ready for its consummation, without, tranquil and strong; behind him the ancient Abbey once again in the hands of its children; far away to the right, seeming strangely near in this lucid atmosphere, hung, like a bubble, the great dome below which, as he knew, stood the first basilican altar in London, newly consecrated as a sign of its papal dignities and privileges. And beyond that again London; and yet again London, a wonderful white city, gleaming at a thousand points with cross and spire and dome and pinnacle, patched with green in square and park and open space—London come back again at last to her ancient faith and her old prosperity.

But this was not all.

For he knew and his imagination circled out wider and wider that he might take it in—he knew that Europe itself at last dwelt again with one mind in her house. There beyond the channel—across which ten minutes ago, as the thunder of guns had told him, the Arbiter of the World had come at last with his train of kings behind him—there lay the huge continent, the great plains of France, the forests of Germany, the giant tumbled debris of Switzerland, the warm and radiant coasts, the ancient world-stage of Italy, passionate Spain which never yet had wholly lost her love. There all lay, at one at last, each her own, with her own liberties and customs and traditions, yet each in the service of her neighbour, since each and all alike lay beneath the Peace of God.

Still wider fled his thought. . . . He saw to the southwards and far away westwards across the seas, how now this country, now that, flew its flag and administered its laws, yet how those flags all together saluted the Crossed Keys; how those laws, however diverse, bowed all together before the Law of Liberty; and how there, farther yet, already the gates of the East had rolled back, and how there peered out across half the world the patient seeking faces of those old children of earth, awakened at last to destinies greater than their own—awakened, not as men had once feared, by the thunder of Christian guns, but by the call of the Shepherd to sheep that were not of His Fold. . . .

So there the vision lay before him—this man who had lost his memory and had found a greater gift instead.

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