He had seized upon a clue to the ills of the world and he pursued it feverishly. "If men realised, as they realise that physical illness follows physical excess, that for every moment of pain unnecessarily inflicted upon any living creature—a horse, a dog, a cage-bird—they must suffer themselves a worse pang, would not the world be a better place?" he asked. "That fighting peer is accounted a fine fellow by his companions, and in an earlier life, when the unshaped destinies of men were being rough-hewn with sword and axe, he was a fine fellow. But that earlier influence now is checking his development. If he could realise that he will probably be reborn a weakling doomed to suffer the buffets of the physically strong, he would doubtless reconsider his philosophy. He has lost track of himself. Our childish love of animals, which corresponds to a psychic pre-natal phase, is a memory which becomes obscured as the fleshly veil grows denser—which the many neglect, but which the wise man cherishes."
"Heredity plays its part, too," said Thessaly.
"Quite so. It is difficult, sometimes almost impossible, to distinguish between the influences of heredity and those of pre-existence."
"More especially since few of us know our own fathers, and none of us our grandfathers. If our family tree record a line of abstemious forbears, and we mysteriously develop a partiality for neat rum and loose company, we hesitate whether to reproach ourselves for the vices of a previous existence or to disparage the morality of our grandmother."
Strange stories won currency at this time, too. Arising as he had done out of a cataclysm, Paul Mario by many was accepted as the harbinger of a second Coming. His claims were based upon no mere reiteration of ancient theories, but upon a comprehensible system which required no prayer-won faith from its followers, but which logically explained life, death, and those parts of the Word of Jesus Christ which orthodoxy persisted in regarding as "divine mysteries." Paul's concept of God and the Creation was substantially identical with that of Jacob Boehme and the Hermetic Philosophers. He showed the Universe to be the outcome of a Thought. Unexpressed Will desired to find expression, to become manifest. Such was the birth of Desire. Since in the beginning this Will was an Eye which beheld nothing because nothing outside Itself existed, It fashioned a Mirror and therein saw all things in Itself. This Mirror was the Eternal Mother, the Will the Eternal Father. The Eternal Father, beholding Himself and His wonders mirrored in the Eternal Mother, willed that being passive they should become active. Thought became materialised, force and space begot Motion and the Universe was. As illustrating the seven qualities through which the Divine energy operated, Paul quoted the following lines:—
| "There are seven degrees in the holy sphere That girdles the outer skies; There are seven hues in the atmosphere Of the Spirit Paradise; And the seven lamps burn bright and clear In the mind, the heart, and the eyes Of the angel-spirits from every world That ever and ever arise. There are seven ages the angels know In the courts of the Spirit Heaven: And seven joys through the spirit flow From the morn of the heart till even; Seven curtains of light wave to and fro Where the seven great trumpets the angels blow, And the throne of God hath a seven-fold glow, And the angel hosts are seven. And a spiral winds from the worlds to the suns, And every star that shines In the path of degrees for ever runs, And the spiral octave climbs; And a seven-fold heaven round every one In the spiral order twines. There are seven links from God to man, There are seven links and a threefold span; And seven spheres in the great degree Of one created immensity. There are seven octaves of spirit love In the heart, the mind, and the heavens above: And seven degrees in the frailest thing, Though it hath but a day for its blossoming." |
It seemed as though all mysticism had culminated in Paul Mario, and so immense was his influence that the English Church was forced into action. Such heterodox views had been expressed from the pulpit since The Gates had cast its challenge at the feet of orthodoxy that the bishops unanimously pronounced its teachings to be heretical, and forbade their adoption under divers pains and penalties. A certain brilliant and fashionable preacher resigned his living, and financed by a society established for the purpose, prepared to build a great church upon a site adjoining the Strand, to be called the New Temple. A definite schism thereupon was created, and so insistent became the demand for more light, for a personal message, that Paul was urged by a committee, including some of the foremost thinkers of the day, to deliver a series of addresses at the Albert Hall. He had lighted a veritable bonfire, and its flames were spreading to the four points of the compass. Even Islâm, that fanatic rock against which reform dashes itself in vain, was stirred at last, and the Sherîf of Mecca issued a firmân to the mosques within his province authorising an intensive campaign against the Korân Inglîsi—for Paul had embraced the tenets of the Moslem faith within his new Catholic creed.
At one of his clubs, which he visited rarely, he met one evening a bishop famed as a religious educationalist, a large red cleric having bristling eyebrows resembling shrimps and the calculating glance of a judge of good port. This astute man of the world attacked him along peculiar lines. "There must always be a hierarchy, Mr. Mario," he said. "Buddha—if such a personage ever existed—endeavoured to dispense with a priesthood and a ritual, but his followers have been unable to do so. You aver that the Kingdom of God is within ourselves, but if every man were able to find the Kingdom of God within himself he would have no occasion to pay others to find it for him. What would become of the poor churchman?"
"I have not proposed the abolition of the old priesthood," Paul replied. "I have proposed the establishment of a new. Only by appreciation of the fact that Man is the supreme Mystery can man solve the Riddle of the Universe, and what is there of mystery about your tennis-playing curate? The gossiper whom we have seen nibbling buttered scones at five o'clock tea mounts the pulpit and addresses us upon the subject of the Holy Trinity. On this subject naturally he has nothing to tell us, and naturally we are bored. Rather than abolish ritual I would embellish it, calling to my aid all the resources of art and music. I would invest my ritual with awe and majesty, and my priests should be a class apart."
"Such an appeal is not for every man, Mr. Mario. Your New Temple would be designed to inculcate the truth upon minds which have already received it; a thankless task. We seek the good of the greatest number, and you must bring your gods to earth if you would raise your worshippers to heaven. After all, simplicity rather than knowledge is the keynote of happiness."