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Karol Pietrzak, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

THE MASTER-CHRISTIAN

By MARIE CORELLI

AUTHOR OF

"Thelma," "Ardath," "Innocent," "The Treasure of Heaven," etc.

TO ALL THOSE CHURCHES WHO QUARREL IN THE NAME OF CHRIST

The Master-Christian.

I.

All the bells were ringing the Angelus. The sun was sinking;--and
from the many quaint and beautiful grey towers which crown the
ancient city of Rouen, the sacred chime pealed forth melodiously,
floating with sweet and variable tone far up into the warm autumnal
air. Market women returning to their cottage homes after a long
day's chaffering disposal of their fruit, vegetable, and flower-
wares in the town, paused in their slow trudge along the dusty road
and crossed themselves devoutly,--a bargeman, lazily gliding down
the river on his flat unwieldly craft, took his pipe from his mouth,
lifted his cap mechanically, and muttered more from habit than
reflection--"Sainte Marie, Mere de Dieu, priez pour nous!"--and some
children running out of school, came to a sudden standstill,
listening and glancing at each other, as though silently questioning
whether they should say the old church-formula among themselves or
no? Whether, for example, it might not be more foolish than wise to
repeat it? Yes;--even though there was a rumour that the Cardinal-
Archbishop of a certain small, half-forgotten, but once
historically-famed Cathedral town of France had come to visit Rouen
that day,--a Cardinal-Archbishop reputed to be so pure of heart and
simple in nature, that the people of his far-off and limited diocese
regarded him almost as a saint,--would it be right or reasonable for
them, as the secularly educated children of modern Progress, to
murmur an "Angelus Domini," while the bells rang? It was a doubtful
point;--for the school they attended was a Government one, and
prayers were neither taught nor encouraged there, France having for
a time put God out of her national institutions. Nevertheless, the
glory of that banished Creator shone in the deepening glow of the
splendid heavens,--and--from the silver windings of the Seine which,
turning crimson in the light, looped and garlanded the time-honoured
old city as with festal knots of rosy ribbon, up to the trembling
tops of the tall poplar trees fringing the river banks,--the warm
radiance palpitated with a thousand ethereal hues of soft and
changeful colour, transfusing all visible things into the misty
semblance of some divine dwelling of dreams. Ding-dong--ding dong!
The last echo of the last bell died away upon the air--the last
words enunciated by devout priests in their cloistered seclusion
were said--"In hora mortis nostrae! Amen!"--the market women went on
their slow way homeward,--the children scampered off in different
directions, easily forgetful of the Old-World petition they had
thought of, yet left unuttered,--the bargeman and his barge slipped
quietly away together down the windings of the river out of sight;--
the silence following the clangour of the chimes was deep and
impressive--and the great Sun had all the heaven to himself as he
went down. Through the beautiful rose-window of the Cathedral of
Notre Dame, he flashed his parting rays, weaving bright patterns of
ruby, gold and amethyst on the worn pavement of the ancient pile
which enshrines the tomb of Richard the Lion-Hearted, as also that
of Henry the Second, husband to Catherine de Medicis and lover of
the brilliant Diane de Poitiers,--and one broad beam fell purpling
aslant into the curved and fretted choir-chapel especially dedicated
to the Virgin, there lighting up with a warm glow the famous
alabaster tomb known as "Le Mourant" or "The Dying One." A strange
and awesome piece of sculpture truly, is this same "Mourant"!--
showing, as it does with deft and almost appalling exactitude, the
last convulsion of a strong man's body gripped in the death-agony.
No delicate delineator of shams and conventions was the artist of
olden days whose ruthless chisel shaped these stretched sinews,
starting veins, and swollen eyelids half-closed over the tired
eyes!--he must have been a sculptor of truth,--truth downright and
relentless,--truth divested of all graceful coverings, and nude as
the "Dying One" thus realistically portrayed. Ugly truth too,--
unpleasant to the sight of the worldly and pleasure-loving tribe who
do not care to be reminded of the common fact that they all, and we
all, must die. Yet the late sunshine flowed very softly on and over
the ghastly white, semi-transparent form, outlining it with as much
tender glory as the gracious figure of Mary Virgin herself, bending
with outstretched hands from a grey niche, fine as a cobweb of old
lace on which a few dim jewels are sewn. Very beautiful, calm and
restful at this hour was "Our Lady's Chapel," with its high, dark
intertwisting arches, mutilated statues, and ancient tattered
battle-banners hanging from the black roof and swaying gently with
every little breath of wind. The air, perfumed with incense-odours,
seemed weighted with the memory of prayers and devotional silences,-
-and in the midst of it all, surrounded by the defaced and crumbling
emblems of life and death, and the equally decaying symbols of
immortality, with the splendours of the sinking sun shedding roseate
haloes about him, walked one for whom eternal truths outweighed all
temporal seemings,--Cardinal Felix Bonpre, known favourably, and
sometimes alluded to jestingly at the Vatican, as "Our good Saint
Felix." Tall and severely thin, with fine worn features of ascetic
and spiritual delicacy, he had the indefinably removed air of a
scholar and thinker, whose life was not, and never could be in
accordance with the latter-day customs of the world; the mild blue
eyes, clear and steadfast, most eloquently suggested "the peace of
God that passeth all understanding";--and the sensitive intellectual
lines of the mouth and chin, which indicated strength and determined
will, at the same time declared that both strength and will were
constantly employed in the doing of good and the avoidance of evil.
No dark furrows of hesitation, cowardice, cunning, meanness or
weakness marred the expressive dignity and openness of the
Cardinal's countenance,--the very poise of his straight spare figure
and the manner in which he moved, silently asserted that inward
grace of spirit without which there is no true grace of body,--and
as he paused in his slow pacing to and fro to gaze half-wistfully,
half-mournfully upon the almost ghastly artistic achievement of "Le
Mourant" he sighed, and his lips moved as if in prayer. For the
brief, pitiful history of human life is told in that antique and
richly-wrought alabaster,--its beginning, its ambition, and its end.
At the summit of the shrine, an exquisite bas-relief shows first of
all the infant clinging to its mother's breast,--a stage lower down
is seen the boy in the eager flush of youth, speeding an arrow to
its mark from the bent bow,--then, on a still larger, bolder scale
of design is depicted the proud man in the zenith of his career, a
noble knight riding forth to battle and to victory, armed cap-a-pie,
his war-steed richly caparisoned, his lance in rest,--and finally,
on the sarcophagus itself is stretched his nude and helpless form,
with hands clenched in the last gasping struggle for breath, and
every muscle strained and fighting against the pangs of dissolution.

"But," said the Cardinal half aloud, with the gentle dawning of a
tender smile brightening the fine firm curve of his lips,--"it is
not the end! The end here, no doubt;--but the beginning--THERE!"

He raised his eyes devoutly, and instinctively touched the silver
crucifix hanging by its purple ribbon at his breast. The orange-red
glow of the sun encompassed him with fiery rings, as though it would
fain consume his thin, black-garmented form after the fashion in
which flames consumed the martyrs of old,--the worn figures of
mediaeval saints in their half-broken niches stared down upon him
stonily, as though they would have said,--"So we thought,--even we!-
-and for our thoughts and for our creed we suffered willingly,--yet
lo, we have come upon an age of the world in which the people know
us not,--or knowing, laugh us all to scorn."

But Cardinal Bonpre being only conscious of a perfect faith,
discovered no hints of injustice or despair in the mutilated shapes
of the Evangelists surrounding him,--they were the followers of
Christ,--and being such, they were bound to rejoice in the tortures
which made their glory. It was only the unhappy souls who suffered
not for Christ at all, whom he considered were truly to be
compassionated.

"And if," he murmured as he moved on--"this knight of former days,
who is now known to us chiefly, alas! as 'Le Mourant', was a
faithful servant of our Blessed Lord, why then it is as well with
him as with any of the holy martyrs. May his soul rest in peace!"

Stopping an instant at the next sculptural wonder in his way--the
elaborately designed tomb of Cardinal Amboise, concerning the
eternal fate of which "brother in Christ" the good Felix had no
scruples or fears whatever, he stepped softly down from the choir-
chapel where he had been wandering to and fro for some time in
solitary musings, and went towards the great central nave. It was
quite empty,--not even a weary silk-weaver, escaped from one of the
ever-working looms of the city, had crept in to tell her beads.
Broad, vacant, vast, and suggestive of a sublime desolation, the
grand length and width of the Latin Cross which shapes the holy
precincts, stretched into vague distance, one or two lamps were
burning dimly at little shrines set in misty dark recesses,--a few
votive candles, some lit, some smouldered out, leaned against each
other crookedly in their ricketty brass stand, fronting a battered
statue of the Virgin. The Angelus had ceased ringing some ten
minutes since,--and now one solemn bell, swinging high up in the
Cathedral towers, tolled forth the hour of six, slowly and with a
strong pulsating sound which seemed to shake the building down to
its very vaults and deep foundations. As the last stroke shivered
and thundered through the air, a strain of music, commencing softly,
then swelling into fuller melody, came floating from aloft,
following the great bell's vibration. Half way down the nave, just
as he was advancing slowly towards the door of egress, this music
overtook the Cardinal like an arresting angel, bringing him to a
sudden pause.

"The organist practises late," he said aloud, as though speaking to
some invisible companion, and then was silent, listening. Round him
and above him surged the flood of rich and dulcet harmony,--the
sunset light through the blue and red stained-glass windows grew
paler and paler--the towering arches which sprang, as it were, from
slender stem-like side-columns up to full-flowering boughs of Gothic
ornamentation, crossing and re-crossing above the great High Altar,
melted into a black dimness,--and then--all at once, without any
apparent cause, a strange, vague suggestion of something
supernatural and unseen began suddenly to oppress the mind of the
venerable prelate with a curious sense of mingled awe and fear.
Trembling a little, he knew not why, he softly drew a chair from one
of the shadowy corners, where all such seats were piled away out of
sight so that they might not disfigure the broad and open beauty of
the nave, and, sitting down, he covered his eyes with one hand and
strove to rouse himself from the odd, half-fainting sensation which
possessed him. How glorious now was the music that poured like a
torrent from the hidden organ-loft! How full of searching and
potential proclamation!--the proclamation of an eternal, unguessed
mystery, for which no merely human speech might ever find fit
utterance! Some divine declaration of God's absolute omnipresence,--
or of Heaven's sure nearness,--touched the heart of Felix Bonpre, as
he sat like an enchanted dreamer among the tender interweavings of
solemn and soothing sound;--carried out of himself and beyond his
own existence, he could neither pray nor think, till, all at once,
upon the peaceful and devout silence of his soul, some very old,
very familiar words struck sharply as though they were quite new,--
as though they were invested suddenly with strange and startling
significance--

"When the son of Man cometh, think ye He shall find faith on earth?"

Slowly he withdrew his hand from his eyes and gazed about him, half-
startled, half-appalled. Had anyone spoken these words?--or had they
risen of themselves as it were in letters of fire out of the sea of
music that was heaving and breaking tumultuously about him?

"WHEN THE SON OF MAN COMETH, THINK YE HE SHALL FIND FAITH ON EARTH?"

The question seemed to be whispered in his ears with a thrilling
intensity of meaning; and moved by a sudden introspective and
retrospective repentance, the gentle old man began mentally to grope
his way back over the past years of his life, and to ask himself
whether in very truth that life had been well or ill spent? Viewed
by his own inner contemplative vision, Cardinal Felix Bonpre saw in
himself nothing but wilful sin and total unworthiness;--but in the
eyes of those he had served and assisted, he was a blameless
priest,--a man beloved of God, and almost visibly encompassed by the
guardianship of angels. He had been singularly happy in his election
to a diocese which, though it had always had an Archbishop for its
spiritual head, boasted scarce as many inhabitants as a prosperous
English village,--and the result of this was that he had lived
altogether away from the modern world, passing most of his time in
reading and study,--while for relaxation, he permitted himself only
the innocent delight of growing the finest roses in his
neighbourhood. But he had pious scruples even about this rose-
growing fancy of his,--he had a lurking distrust of himself in it,
as to whether it was not a purely selfish pleasure,--and therefore,
to somewhat smooth the circumstance, he never kept any of the choice
blooms for his own gratification, but gave the best of them with a
trust, as simple as it was beautiful, to the altar of the Virgin,
sending all the rest to the bedsides of the sick and sorrowful, or
to the coffins of the dead. It never once occurred to him that the
"Cardinal's roses," as they were called, were looked upon by the
poor people who received them as miraculous flowers long after they
had withered,--that special virtues were assigned to them--and that
dying lips kissed their fragrant petals with almost as much devotion
as the holy crucifix, because it was instinctively believed that
they contained a mystic blessing. He knew nothing of all this;--he
was too painfully conscious of his own shortcomings,--and of late
years, feeling himself growing old, and realising that every day
brought him nearer to that verge which all must cross in passing
from Time into Eternity, he had been sorely troubled in mind. He was
wise with the wisdom which comes of deep reading, lonely meditation,
and fervent study,--he had instructed himself in the modern schools
of thought as well as the ancient,--and though his own soul was
steadfastly set upon the faith he followed, he was compassionately
aware of a strange and growing confusion in the world,--a
combination of the elements of evil, which threatened, or seemed to
threaten, some terrible and imminent disaster. This sorrowful
foreboding had for a long time preyed upon him, physically as well
as mentally; always thin, he had grown thinner and more careworn,
till at the beginning of the year his health had threatened to break
down altogether. Whereupon those who loved him, growing alarmed,
summoned a physician, who, (with that sage experience of doctors to
whom thought-trouble is an inexplicable and incurable complication)
at once pronounced change of air to be absolutely necessary.
Cardinal Bonpre must travel, he said, and seek rest and
minddistraction in the contemplation of new and varying scenes. With
smiling and resigned patience the Cardinal obeyed not so much the
command of his medical attendant, as the anxious desire of his
people,--and thereupon departed from his own Cathedral-town on a
tour of several months, during which time he inwardly resolved to
try and probe for himself the truth of how the world was going,--
whether on the downward road to destruction and death, or up the
high ascents of progress and life. He went alone and unattended,--he
had arranged to meet his niece in Paris and accompany her to her
father's house in Rome,--and he was on his way to Paris now. But he
had purposely made a long and round-about journey through France
with the intention of studying the religious condition of the
people; and by the time he reached Rouen, the old sickness at his
heart had rather increased than diminished. The confusion and the
trouble of the world were not mere hearsay,--they in very truth
existed. And what seemed to the Cardinal to be the chief cause of
the general bewilderment of things, was the growing lack of faith in
God and a Hereafter. How came this lack of faith into the Christian
world? Sorrowfully he considered the question,--and persistently the
same answer always asserted itself--that the blame rested
principally with the Church itself, and its teachers and preachers,
and not only in one, but in all forms of Creed.

"We have erred in some vital manner," mused the Cardinal, with a
feeling of strange personal contrition, as though he were more to
blame than any of his compeers--"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 labour."

And he thought of the words of St. John the Divine to the Church of
Sardis--

"_I_ KNOW THY WORKS,--THAT THOU HAST A NAME THAT THOU LIVEST AND ART
DEAD.

"BE WATCHFUL, AND STRENGTHEN THE THINGS THAT REMAIN, THAT ARE READY
TO DIE,--FOR _I_ HAVE NOT FOUND THY WORKS PERFECT BEFORE GOD.
REMEMBER THEREFORE HOW THOU HAST RECEIVED AND HEARD, AND HOLD FAST
AND REPENT.

"IF, THEREFORE, THOU SHALT NOT WATCH, _I_ WILL COME ON THEE AS A
THIEF, AND THOU SHALL NOT KNOW WHAT HOUR I WILL COME UPON THEE.

"THOU HAST A FEW NAMES EVEN IN SARDIS, WHICH HAVE NOT DEFILED THEIR
GARMENTS, AND THEY SHALL WALK WITH ME IN WHITE, FOR THEY ARE WORTHY.

"HE THAT OVERCOMETH, THE SAME SHALL BE CLOTHED IN WHITE RAIMENT; AND
I WILL NOT BLOT HIS NAME OUT OF THE BOOK OF LIFE, BUT I WILL CONFESS
HIS NAME BEFORE MY FATHER AND BEFORE HIS ANGELS."

Dimmer and duskier grew the long shadows now gathering in the
Cathedral,--two of the twinkling candles near the Virgin's statue
suddenly sank in their sockets with a spluttering noise and guttered
out,--the solemn music of the organ continued, growing softer and
softer as it sounded, till it crept through the vastness of the
building like a light breeze wafted from the sea, bringing with it
suggestions of far flower-islands in the tropics, golden shores
kissed by languid foam, and sweet-throated birds singing, and still
the Cardinal sat thinking of griefs and cares and inexplicable human
perplexities, which were not his own, but which seemed to burden the
greater portion of the world. He drew no comparisons,--he never
considered that, as absolutely as day is day and night is night, his
own beautiful and placid life, lived in the faith of God and Christ,
was tortured by no such storm-tossed tribulation as that which
affected the lives of many others,--and that the old trite saying,
almost despised because so commonplace, namely that "goodness makes
happiness," is as eternally true as that the sun shines in heaven,
and that it is only evil which creates misery. To think of himself
in the matter never occurred to him; had he for a moment entertained
the merest glimmering of an idea that he was better, and therefore
happier than most men, he would, in his own opinion, have been
guilty of unpardonable arrogance and presumption. What he saw, and
what sincerely and unselfishly grieved him, was that the people of
this present age were unhappy--discontented--restless,--that
something of the simple joy of existence had gone out of the world,-
-that even the brilliant discoveries of science and the so-called
"progress" of men only served apparently to increase their
discontent,--that when they were overcome by sorrow, sickness, or
death, they had little philosophy and less faith to support them,--
and that except in the few cases where Christ was still believed in,
they gave way altogether and broke down like frightened children in
a storm.

"Thou hast a few names, even in Sardis!" A few names! But how few!
Universal weariness of life seemed a disease of the time,--there was
nothing that seemed to satisfy--even the newest and most miraculous
results of scientific research and knowledge ceased to be
interesting after the first week of their triumphant public
demonstration and acceptance.

"The world must be growing old," said the Cardinal sadly,--"It must
be losing its vigour,--it is too tired to lift itself to the light;
too weary and worn out to pray. Perhaps the end of all present
things is at hand,--perhaps it is the beginning of the promised 'new
heavens and new earth.'"

Just then the organ-music ceased abruptly, and the Cardinal, waking
from his thoughts as from a trance, rose up slowly and stood for a
moment facing the great High Altar, which at that distance could
only just be discerned among its darkening surroundings by the
little flickering flame of the suspended lamp burning dimly before
the holy Tabernacle, wherein was locked with golden key behind snowy
doors of spotless marble, the sacred and mysterious Host.

"WHEN THE SON OF MAN COMETH, THINK YE HE SHALL FIND FAITH ON EARTH?"

Again that searching question repeated itself in his mind so
distinctly as to be echoed in his ears,--the deep silence around him
seemed waiting expectantly for some reply, and moved by a strange
spirit of exaltation within him, he answered half aloud--

"Yes! Surely He will find faith,--if only in the few! There are 'a
few names, even in Sardis!' In the sorrowful and meek,--in the poor
and patient and downtrodden martyrs of humanity, He will find
faith;--in the very people He died to save He will discover that
most precious and inspiring of all virtues! But in the so-called
wise and brilliant favourites of the world He will not find it,--in
the teachers of the people He will search for it in vain. By the
writers of many books He shall find Himself scorned and rejected,--
in the cheap and spurious philosophy of modern egotists He will see
His doctrines mocked at and denounced as futile. Few men there are
in these days who would deny themselves for His sake, or sacrifice a
personal passion for the purer honouring of His name. Inasmuch as
the pride of great learning breeds arrogance, so the more the wonder
of God's work is displayed to us, the more are we dazzled and
confounded; and so in our blindness we turn from the worship of the
Creator to that of His creation, forgetting that all the visible
universe is but the outcome or expression of the hidden Divine
Intelligence behind it. What of the marvels of the age!--the results
of science!--the strange psychic prescience and knowledge of things
more miraculous yet to be!--these are but hints and warnings of the
approach of God himself--'coming in a cloud with power and great
glory'!"

As he thus spoke, he raised his hand out of old habit acquired in
preaching, and a ray from the after-glow of the sunken sun lit up
the jewel in the apostolic ring he wore, warming its pale green
lustre to a dim violet spark as of living fire. His fine features
were for a moment warm with fervour and feeling,--then,--suddenly,
he thought of the great world outside all creeds,--of the millions
and millions of human beings who neither know nor accept Christ,--of
the Oriental races with their intricate and beautiful systems of
philosophy,--of savage tribes, conquered and unconquered,--of fierce
yet brave Turkish warriors who are, with all their faults, at any
rate true to the faith they profess--and lastly--more than all--of
the thousands upon thousands of Christians in Christian lands, who
no more believe in Him whose holy name they take in vain, than in
any Mumbo-Jumbo fetish of untaught barbarians. Were these to perish
utterly? Had THEY no immortal souls to save? Had the churches been
at work for eighteen hundred years and more, to bring about no
better results than this,--namely that there were only "A FEW NAMES
IN SARDIS"? If so, were not the churches criminally to blame? Yea,
even holy Mother-Church, whose foundation rested on the memory of
the Lying Apostle? Rapidly, and as if suggested by some tormenting
devil, these thoughts possessed the Cardinal's brain, burning into
it and teasing and agonising the tender fibres of his conscience and
his soul. Could God, the great loving Creator of countless
universes, be so cruel as to wantonly destroy millions of helpless
creatures in one small planet, because through ignorance or want of
proper teaching they had failed to find Christ?--was it possible
that he could only extend his mercy and forgiveness to the "few
names in Sardis"?