He went into the study, lit the gas, and, locking the door, flung himself into an armchair.
“In the blood! in the blood!” he bitterly communed with himself. “And, with all our wild dreams and aspirations, we are but what science says we are, the conqueror of the lascivious ape, the offspring of some common ancestral bestiality, which transmitted to the simian its animalism free and unfettered except by appetite, and to man the germs of a moral law which must be for ever at variance with his sensual instincts. God! we are worse than apes—we the immortals, with our ideals of spirit and purity!”
He rose, and going across the room to the tall, carved oak cupboard, whose contents were a secret to all but himself, he unlocked it and opened the folding doors. The light fell on a large, beautiful statue of the Madonna, with the Infant Christ in her arms. The figure was in plaster, exquisitely coloured, and of a rare loveliness. He looked at it abstractedly for a long while.
“Mother of God!” he exclaimed at length, with passionate fervour. “Spotless virgin, woman above all women glorified, the solitary boast of our tainted nature—oh, dream and desire of men striving for their lost innocence, how vainly have I worshipped and prayed to thee! How ardently have I believed in thy immaculate motherhood! How yearningly I have cried to thee for thy aid and intercession! And no answer has been granted to my supplications. My feverish exaltation has passed from me, leaving me weak and at the mercy of my senses. Art thou, too, but a poetic myth of a later superstition—an idealization more beautiful, more divine than the frail goddesses of Greece and Rome? The art and poetry of the world have turned to thee for inspiration, the ascetic has filled the cold cell with the shining vision of thee, altars have been raised to thee over half the globe, the prayers of nations ascend to thee, and art thou but a beautiful conception of the heart, powerless to aid or to hear thy suppliants?”
He paused, as if, indeed, he expected some sign or word in answer to his wild appeal. Then, closing the doors again and locking them, he went towards his-desk. On it lay the manuscript of the sermon he had preached on the Unknown God.
“The Unknown God!” he exclaimed. “What if her husband is right! What if, indeed, there be no God, no God for us, no God of whom we shall ever be conscious! All science points that way. When the man is dead, his soul is dead too. We deny it; but what is our denial worth? It is our interest to deny it. All phenomena contradict our denial. No man has ever risen from the grave to give us assurance of our immortality. Ah, truly, ‘if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen; and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain!’”
He paced the room excitedly.
“Why act the knave and the hypocrite longer? Why delude the world with a false hope of a future that can never be? Why preach prayer and sacrifice, and suffering and patience, when this life is all? If Christ is not risen, our preaching is vain, and your faith is also vain.”
He again paced the room; and then, going to a drawer where the keys of the church were kept, he took them, and stole noiselessly out of the house. All was very still outside. The stars were shining, and it was duskily clear. He traversed the churchyard, and reaching the porch he unlocked the door and entered. It was quite dark, except that the tall, narrow windows looked grey against the blackness of the rest of the building, and a little bead of flame burned in the sanctuary lamp. He closed the door after him, and went up the echoing nave to the chancel. Thence he groped his way to the pulpit, and ascending he looked down into the darkness before him.
He stood there in silence, straining his eyes into the gloom, and gradually there came out of the darkness faint, spectral rows of faces, turned up to his with a horrified and bewildered aspect. He uttered no word, but in his brain he was preaching from the text of Paul, and proving that Christ, indeed, had never risen, and that their faith was vain. This world was all, and there was nothing beyond it. Vice and virtue were but social and physical distinctions, implying that the consequences of the one were destructive of happiness, of the other were conducive to happiness. Sin was a fiction, and the sense of sinfulness a morbid development of the imagination. Every man was a law unto himself, and that law must be obeyed. A mans actions were the outcome of his constitution. He was not morally responsible for them. Indeed, moral responsibility was a philosophical error. In dumb show was that long, phrenzied sermon preached to a phantom congregation. At the close the vicar, omitting the usual form of benediction, descended from the pulpit, staggered across the chancel, and fell in a swoon at the foot of the steps which led to the altar.