Marie Corelli, by the words of Manuel, as we think it is recognized, gives a truer interpretation of the Divine Will. Even the title page contains a quotation from St. Luke that is a protest against many of the practices of the Romish and other Churches: “Why call ye Me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?”
The story of “The Master Christian” opens in Rouen, where a Roman Catholic prelate, Cardinal Felix Bonpré, is seen in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. This Cardinal is a pious and true man who has for many years contented himself with the administration of his diocese and the performance of good work. His Rouen visit is a portion of a tour of several months taken for purposes of health, and with the object of judging for himself how the great world, of which he has seen little, is faring, “whether on the downward road to destruction and death, or up to the high ascents of progress and life.” The farther he travels the more depressed he becomes by the results of his observations. Within Rouen Cathedral Cardinal Bonpré hears singularly soothing music, though whence it comes he is unable to perceive. He is impressed with a peculiar sense of some divine declaration of God’s absolute omniscience, and a question seems to be whispered in his ears:
“When the Son of Man cometh, think ye He shall find faith on earth?”
With his growing experience of the confusion and trouble of the world, the Cardinal is forced to the conclusion that there is an increasing lack of faith in God and a Hereafter; and of the reason for it he thinks: “We have failed to follow the Master’s teaching in its true perfection. We have planted in ourselves a seed of corruption, and we have permitted—nay, some of us have encouraged—its poisonous growth till it now threatens to contaminate the whole field of labor.”
Cast down by these reflections, the good Cardinal proceeds to the Hotel Poitiers, a modest hostelry preferred by him to the Palace of the Archbishop of Rouen, another “Prince of the Church,” a term which Cardinal Bonpré—like Miss Corelli—finds particularly detestable, especially when used in connection with a Christian Church wherein she thinks distinctive ranks are a mistake and even Anti-Christian.
At the inn a striking picture is drawn by the novelist of the evil effect upon the children of France brought about by the removal of religious instruction from the schools. The two charmingly precocious children of Jean and Madame Patoux are quite old in agnostic views and doubts. There also Bonpré has his first serious religious argument with the Archbishop of Rouen, whom he astonishes by declaring that the Church herself is responsible for the increase of ungodliness.
“If our Divine faith were lived Divinely there would be no room for heresy or atheism. The Church itself supplies the loophole for apostasy.... In the leading points of creed I am very steadfastly convinced;—namely, that Christ was Divine, and that the following of His Gospel is the saving of the immortal soul. But if you ask me whether I think that we (the Church of Rome) do truly follow that Gospel, I must own that I have doubts upon the matter.”
We are informed here, also, through Cardinal Bonpré, of what Marie Corelli means by Paulism. Ministers of religion, he declares, should literally obey all Christ’s commands:
“The Church is a system,—but whether it is as much founded on the teaching of our Lord, who was Divine, as on the teaching of St. Paul, who was not divine, is a question to me of much perplexity.... I do not decry St. Paul. He was a gifted and clever man, but he was a Man—he was not God-in-Man. Christ’s doctrine leaves no place for differing sects; St. Paul’s method of applying that doctrine serves as authority for the establishment of any and every quarrelsome sect ever known.... I do not think we fit the Church system to the needs of modern civilization ... we only offer vague hopes and dubious promises to those who thirst for the living waters of salvation and immortality.”
Cardinal Bonpré that night has a vision of the end of the world, and in his agony at the spectacle he cries: “Have patience yet, Thou outraged and blasphemed Creator! Break once again Thy silence as of old, and speak to us! Pity us once again, ere Thou slay us utterly! Come to us even as Thou camest in Judea, and surely we will receive Thee and obey Thee, and reject Thy love no more.” And a divine voice replies: “Thy prayer is heard, and once again the silence shall be broken. Nevertheless, remember that the light shineth in Darkness, and the Darkness comprehendeth it not.” At this juncture a plaintive cry falls on his ears, and he goes out into the night to discover the cause. He proceeds to the Cathedral, and there, in the deeply hollowed portal, discovers the slight shrinking figure of a child—