When It Was Dark: The Story of a Great Conspiracy

"We do not therefore propose to take the widest view of probable contingencies and events, for that would be impossible within the limits of a single article. It must be enough that with a sense of the profoundest responsibility, and with the deep emotions which must arise in the heart of every man who is confronted by a vast and sudden overthrow of one of the binding forces of life, we briefly recapitulate the events of the last few days, and attempt a forecast of what we fear must lie before us here in England.

"Four days ago we published in these columns the first account of a discovery made by Mr. Cyril Hands, M.A., and confirmed by Dr. Herman Schmöulder, in the red earth débris by the 'Tombs of the Kings,' beyond the Damascus gate of Jerusalem. The news arrived at this office through a private channel, in the form of a long and detailed account written by Mr. Hands, the archæologist and agent of the Palestine Exploring Society. Before publishing the statement the editor was enabled to discuss the advisability of doing so with the Prime Minister. A long series of telegrams passed between the office of this paper, the Foreign Office, and the gentlemen at Jerusalem during the day preceding our publication of the document. Hour by hour new details and a mass of contributory evidence came to hand. All these papers, together with photographs, drawings, and measurements, were placed by us in the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury. A conference of the greatest living English scholars was summoned. The result of that meeting has been that a committee representing the finest intellect and the most unsullied integrity is now on its way to Jerusalem. Upon the verdict of Sir Robert Llwellyn and his fellow-members, together with the distinguished foreign savants M. Clermont-Ganneau and Dr. Procopides, the Ephor-General of Antiquities in the Athens Museum, the Christian world must wait with terrible anxiety, but with a certainty that the highest human intelligence is concentrated on its deliberation.

"What that verdict will be, seems, it must be boldly said and faced, almost a foregone conclusion. We feel that we should be lacking in our duty to our readers were we to withhold from them certain facts. Not unnaturally His Grace the Archbishop and many of his advisers have wished the press to preserve a complete silence as to the result of the conference, a silence which should continue until the report of the International Committee of Investigation is published. We have endeavoured to preserve a reticence for two days, but at this juncture it becomes our duty to inform the people of England what we know. And we do not take this step without careful consideration.

"We have informed the Prime Minister of our intention, and may state that, despite the opposition of the Church Party, Lord – is in sympathy with it.

"Briefly, then, Sir Robert Llwellyn, the acknowledged leader of archæological research, has given it as his opinion that Mr. Hands's discovery must be genuine. Sir Robert alone has had the courage to speak out bravely, though he did so with manifest emotion and reluctance. The other members of the conference have refused to express an opinion, though of at least three from among their number there can be little doubt that they concur with Sir Robert's view.

"Private telegrams, which we have hitherto refrained from publishing, show that the cultured people of Germany, from the Emperor downwards, are persuaded that the story of Jesus of Nazareth has at last been told. Many of the most eminent public men of France agree with this view. These are statements borne out by the evidence of our correspondents in foreign capitals who have secured a series of interviews with those who represent public opinion of the expert kind.

"The Roman Church, on the other hand, with that supreme isolation and historic indifference to all that helps the cause of Progress and Truth, has not only loftily declined to recognise the fact that any discovery has been made at all, has not only absolutely declined to be represented at Jerusalem, but has issued a proclamation forbidding Roman Catholics to think of or discuss the events which are shaking the fabric of Christendom.

"In saying as much as we have already said, in placing our melancholy conviction on record in this way, we lay ourselves open to the charge of prejudging the most important decision affecting the welfare of mankind that any body of men have ever been called upon to make. Not even the startling and overwhelming mass of support we have received would have led us to do this were it not our conviction that it is the wisest course to pursue in regard to what we feel almost certain will happen in the future. It seems far better to prepare the minds of Christian English men and women for the terrible shock that they will have to endure by a more gradual system of disclosure than would be possible were we to adopt the suggestion of the bishops and keep silent.

"And now, in the concluding portion of this article, we must briefly consider what the news that it has been our responsible and painful duty to give first to the world will mean to England.

"We fear that the mental anguish of countless thousands must for a time cloud the life of our country as it has never been clouded and darkened before. The proof that the Divinity of the Greatest and Wisest Teacher the world has ever known, or ever will know, is but a symbolic fable, will for a time overwhelm the world. A great upheaval of English society is beginning. Old and venerated institutions will be swept away, minds fed upon the Christian theory from youth, instinct with all its hereditary tradition, will be for a while as men groping in the dark. But the light will come after this great tempest, and it will be a broader, finer, more steadfast light than before, because founded on, and springing from, Eternal Truth. The mission of beneficent illusion is over. Error will yet linger for a generation or two. That much is certain. There will be more who will base their objections to the New Revelation upon 'the unassailable and ultimate reality of personal spiritual experience,' forgetting the psychological influences of hereditary training, which have alone produced those experiences. But, alas! the knell of the old and beautiful superstitions is ringing. The Doom is begun. The Judge is set, who shall stay it? Let us rather turn from the saddening spectacle of a fallen creed and rejoice that the 'Infinite and eternal energy' men have called God – Jah-weh, θεος – that mysterious law of Progress and evolution, is about to reveal man to himself more than ever completely in its destruction of an imagined revelation."

During the afternoon preceding the publication of the above article, the three principal proprietors had met at the offices of the paper and had held a long conference with Mr. Ommaney, the editor.

It had been decided, as a matter of policy and in order to maintain the leading position already given to the paper by the first publication of Hands's dispatch, that a strong and definite line should be taken at once.

The other great journals were already showing signs of a cautious "trimming" policy, which would allow them to take up any necessary attitude events might dictate. They feared to be explicit, to speak out. So they would lose the greater glory.

Once more commercial and political influences were at work, as they had been two thousand years before. The little group of Jewish millionaires who sat in Ommaney's room had their prototypes in the times of Christ's Passion. Men of the modern world were once more enacting the awful drama of the Crucifixion.

Constantine Schuabe was among the group; his words had more weight than any others. The largest holding in the paper was his. The tentacles of this man were far-reaching and strong.

"For my part, gentlemen," Ommaney said, "I am entirely with Mr. Schuabe. I agree with him that we should at once take the boldest possible attitude. Sir Robert's opinion before he left was conclusive. We shall therefore publish a leader to-morrow taking up our standpoint. We will have it quite plain and simple. Strong and simple, but with no subtleties to puzzle and obscure the ordinary reader. It's no use to touch on history or metaphysics, or anything but pure simplicity."

"Then, Mr. Ommaney," Schuabe had said, "since we are exactly agreed on the best thing to do, and since these other gentlemen are prepared to leave the thing in our hands, if you will allow me I will write the leading article myself."

CHAPTER VI

HARNESS THE HORSES; AND GET UP, YE HORSEMEN, AND STAND FORTH WITH YOUR HELMETS; FURBISH THE SPEARS, AND PUT ON THE BRIGANDINES. – JER. XLVI: 4

Father Ripon sat alone in his study at the Clergy House of St. Mary's. The room was quite silent, save for the occasional dropping of a coal upon the hearth, where a bright, clear fire glowed.

Three walls of the room were lined with books. There was no carpet on the floor; the bare boards showed, except for a strip of worn matting in front of the little cheap brass fender. Over the mantel a great crucifix hung on the bare wall, painted, or rather washed with dark red colour.

The few chairs which stood about were all old-fashioned and rather uncomfortable. A great writing-table was covered with papers and books. Two candles stood upon it and gave light to the room. The only other piece of furniture was a deal praying-stool, with a Bible and prayer-book upon the ledge.

A rugged, ascetic place, four walls to work and pray in, with just the necessary tools and no more. Yet there was no affectation of asceticism, the effect was not a considered one in any way. For example, there was an oar, with college arms painted on one blade, leaning against the wall, a memory of old days when Father Ripon had rowed four and his boat at Oxford had got to the head of the river one Eight's week. The oar looked as if it were waiting to be properly hung on the wall as a decorative trophy, which indeed it was. But it had been waiting for seven years. The priest never had time to nail it up. He did not despise comfort or decoration, pretend to a pose of rigidness; he simply hadn't the time for it himself. That was all. He was always promising himself to put up – for example – a pair of crimson curtains a sister had sent him months back. But whenever he really determined to get them out and hang them, some sudden call came and he had to rush out and save a soul.

Father Ripon looked ill and worn. A pamphlet, a long, thin book bound in blue paper, with the Royal Arms on the top of the folio, lay upon the table. It was the report of the Committee of Investigation, and the whole world was ringing with it.

The report had now appeared for two days.

The priest took up The Tower, a weekly paper, the official organ, not of the pious Evangelical party within the Church, but of the ultra-Protestant.

His hand shook with anger and disgust as he read, for the third time, the leading article printed in large type, with wider spaces than usual between the lines:

"We have hitherto refrained from any comment on the marvellous discovery in Jerusalem, being content simply to record the progress of the investigations, which have at last satisfied us that a genuine discovery has been made.

"In the daily special issues of the organs of the sacerdotal party we find much more freedom of expression. They have run the whole gamut – Disbelief, Doubt, Desolation, Detraction, Demoralisation, and Dismay. Rome and Ritualism have received a shock which demolishes and destroys the very foundation of their sinful system.

"Carnal in its conception it cannot survive.

"'The worship of the corporeal presence of Christ's natural flesh and blood' (vide the so-called Black rubric at the end of the order of the administration of the Lord's Supper) was always prohibited in the Protestant Reformed Communion, but this idolatrous practice has been the glory and boast of Babylon, and the aim and object of the Traitors, within the Established Church of England, whom we have habitually denounced.'

"'The times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent.'

"Hidden by the Divine Providence till the fulness of time, a simple inscription has taught us the full meaning of Paul's mysterious words, 'Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more.' – 2 Cor. v. 16.

"Paul and Protestantism are vindicated at last. 'There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body.' The spiritual body that manifested the resurrection of Jesus to His disciples has too long been identified with the natural body that was piously laid to rest by Joseph and Nicodemus. Much that has been obscure in the Gospel narratives is now explained.

"Men have always wondered that the Apostles, in preaching their risen Lord, attempted no explanation of His manifestations of Himself.

"We can understand now why it was that they were divinely protected from imagining that the spiritual Body is a dead body revived.

"How often have perplexed believers been troubled by the questions of our modern scientists as to the physical possibilities of a future resurrection of the body! The material substance of humanity is resolved into its elements, and again and again through the centuries is employed in other organisms.

"'How then,' men have asked, 'can you believe that the body you have deposited beneath the earth shall collect from the universe its dissipated particles and rise again?'

"Hitherto we have been content to put the question aside with a simple faith that 'with God all things are possible.' But to-day we are enabled to have a further comprehension of the Lord's words, 'It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.'

"Doubtless those who, even among our own company of Evangelical Protestants, have attached too much importance to the teaching of the so-called 'Fathers of the Church' (who so early corrupted the sweet simplicity of the Gospel) will find themselves compelled to a more spiritual explanation of some passages of Holy Scripture; but Faith will find little difficulty in rightly dividing and interpreting the word of Truth.

"The Protestant cause has little to fear from facts. We have been by God's Providence gradually prepared for a great elucidation of the truth about the Resurrection.

"Those who studied with attention the treatise of the late Frederick W. H. Myers (the man who, of all moderns, has best appreciated the personality of Paul the apostle) had come to a conviction on the survival of Human Personality after death on scientific grounds.

"The Resurrection of the Lord Jesus was no longer to them 'a thing incredible,' its unique character was recognised as consisting in its spiritual power.

"'Some doubted,' as on the mountain in Galilee. Protestantism on the Continent, especially in Germany, the home of what is misnamed the 'Higher Criticism,' has been hampered in this way by the study of the 'letter,' and so in some degree has lost the assistance of 'the spirit which giveth life.'

"But the great heart of Protestant England is still sound, and whilst Rome and Ritualism are aghast as the foundation of their fabric of lies crumbles into dust, we stand sure and steadfast, rejoicing in hope.

"Some readjustment of formularies may be conceded to weak brethren.

"Our great Reformers drew up that marvellous manifesto of the Protestant faith – 'Articles agreed upon by the archbishops and bishops of Both Provinces, and the whole clergy in the Convocation holden at London in the year 1562 for the avoiding of diversities of opinions, and for the establishing of consent touching True Religion.'

"England was at that time – alas, how often has it been so! – inclined to compromise.

"There were timid men amongst the great divines who brought us out of Babylon, and the 4th article of the Thirty-nine was notoriously drawn up in antagonism to the teaching of the holy Silesian nobleman, Caspar Schwenckfeld, to satisfy the scruples of the sacerdotal party, which clung to the benefices of the Establishment then as now.

"The omission of twelve words would remove all doubt as to its interpretation. We may be content to affirm that 'Christ did truly rise again from death' without stating further 'and took again his body with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining.'

"It has always been the curse of Christendom that man desired to express in words the ineffable.

"'Intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind.'

"But it need not now be difficult with the aid of a Protestant Parliament, which has so recently and so gloriously determined on the expulsion of sacerdotalists, to modify, in deference to pious scruples, too rigid definitions. Time will suffice for these necessary modifications of sixteenth-century theology.

"In the present, the gain is ours. We shall hear less of the cultus of the 'Sacred Heart' in future. The blasphemous mimicry of the Mass will perish from amongst us.

"No man, in England at least, will dare to affirm that the flesh in which the Saviour bore our sins upon the Cross is exposed for adoration on the so-called 'altar.'

"As Matthew Arnold put it, on the true grave of Jesus 'the Syrian stars look down,' but the risen Christ, glorious in His Spiritual Body, reigns over the hearts of his true followers, and we look forward in faith to our departure from the earthly tabernacle, which is dissolved day by day, knowing that we also have a spiritual house not made with hands eternal in the heavens."

As he read the clever trimming article and marked the bitterness of its tone, the priest's face grew red with anger and contempt.

This facile acceptance of the Great Horror, this insolent conversion of it to party ends, this flimsy pretence of reconciling statements, which, if true, made Christianity a thing of nought, to a novel and trumped-up system of adherence to it, filled him with bitter antagonism.

But, useful as the article was as showing the turn many men's minds were taking, there was no time to trouble about it now.

To-morrow the great meeting of those who still believed Christ died and rose again from the dead was to be held.

The terrible "Report" had been issued. During the forty hours of its existence everything was already beginning to crumble away. To-morrow the Church Militant must speak to the world.

It was said, moreover, that the great wave of infidelity and mockery which was sweeping hourly over the country would culminate in a great riot to-morrow…

Everything seemed dark, black, hopeless…

He picked up the Report once more to study it, as he had done fifty times that day.

But before he opened it he knelt in prayer.

As he prayed, so sweet and certain an assurance came to him, he seemed so very near to the Lord, that doubt and gloom fled before that Presence.

What were logic, proofs of stone-work, the reports of archæologists, to This?

Here in this lonely chamber Christ was, and spoke with His servant, bidding him be of good comfort.

With bright eyes, full of the glow of one who walks with God, the priest opened the pamphlet once more.

CHAPTER VII

THE HOUR OF CHAOS

Although, during the first days of the Darkness, hundreds of thousands of Christian men and women were chilled almost to spiritual death, and although the lamp of Faith was flickering very low, it was not in London that the far-reaching effects of the discovery at Jerusalem were most immediately apparent.

In that great City there is an outward indifference, bred of a million different interests, which has something akin to the supreme indifference of Nature. The many voices never blend into one, so that the ear may hear them in a single mighty shout.

But in the grimmer North public opinion is heard more readily, and is more quickly visible. In the great centres of executive toil the vital truths of religion seem to enter more insistently into the lives of men and women whose environment presents them with fewer distractions than elsewhere. Often, indeed, this interest is a political interest rather than a deeply Christian one, a matter of controversy rather than feeling. Certain it is that all questions affecting religious beliefs loom large and have a real importance in the cities of the North.

It was Wednesday evening at Walktown.

Mr. Byars was reading the service. The huge, ugly church was lit with rows of gas-jets, arranged in coronæ painted a drab green. But the priest's voice, strained and worn, echoed sadly and with a melancholy cadence through the great barn-like place. Two or three girls, a couple of men, and half a dozen boys made up the choir, which had dwindled to less than a fifth of its usual size. The organ was silent.

Right down the church, those in the chancel saw row upon row of cushioned empty seats. Here and there a small group of people broke the chilling monotony of line, but the worshippers were very few. In the galleries an occasional couple, almost secure from observation, whispered to each other. The church was warm, the seats not uncomfortable; it was better to flirt here than in the cold, frost-bound streets.

Never had Evensong been so cheerless and gloomy, even in that vast, unlovely building. There was no sermon. The vicar was suffering under such obvious strain, he looked so worn and ill, that even this lifeless congregation seemed to feel it a relief when the Blessing was said and it was free to shuffle out into the promenade of the streets.

The harsh trumpeting of Mr. Philemon, the vestry clerk's final "Amen," was almost jubilant.

As Mr. Byars walked home he saw that the three great Unitarian chapels which he had to pass en route were blazing with light. Policemen were standing at the doors to prevent the entrance of any more people into the overcrowded buildings. A tremendous life and energy pulsated within these buildings. Glancing back, with a bitter sigh, the vicar saw that the lights in St. Thomas were already extinguished, and the tower, in which the illuminated clock glowed sullenly, rose stark and cold into the dark winter sky.

The last chapel of all, the Pembroke Road Chapel, had a row of finely appointed carriages waiting outside the doors. The horses were covered with cloths, the grooms and coachmen wore furs, and the breaths of men and beasts alike poured out in streams of blue vapour. These men stamped up and down the gravel sweep in front of the chapel and swung their arms in order to keep warm.

On each side of the great polished mahogany doors were large placards, printed in black and red, vividly illuminated by electric arc lights. These announced that on that night Mr. Constantine Schuabe, M.P., would lecture on the recent discovery in Jerusalem. The title of the lecture, in staring black type, seemed to Mr. Byars as if it possessed an almost physical power. It struck him like a blow.

THE DOWNFALL OF CHRISTIANITY

And then in smaller type,

Anthropomorphism an Exploded Superstition

He walked on more hurriedly through the dark.

All over the district the Church seemed tottering. The strong forces of Unitarianism and Judaism, always active enemies of the Church, were enjoying a moment of unexampled triumph. Led by nearly all the wealthy families in Walktown, all the Dissenters and many lukewarm Church people were crowding to these same synagogues. At the very height of these perversions, when Christianity was forsworn and derided on all sides, Schuabe had returned to Mount Prospect from London.

His long-sustained position as head of the antichristian party in Parliament, in England indeed, his political connection with the place, his wealth, the ties of family and relationship, all combined to make him the greatest power of the moment in the North.

His speeches, of enormous power and force, were delivered daily and reported verbatim in all the newspapers. He became the Marlborough of a campaign.

On every side the churches were almost deserted. Day by day ominous political murmurs were heard in street and factory. The time had come, men were saying, when an established priesthood and Church must be forced to relinquish its emoluments and position. The Bishop of Manchester, as he rolled through the streets in his carriage, leaning back upon the cushions, lost in thought, with his pipe between his lips, according to the wont and custom which had almost created a scandal in the neighbourhood, was hissed and hooted as he went on his way.