Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli

by Marie Corelli

  With the cessation of the Cathedral choir there came a great silence, and after the usual prefatory prayer he stood for a moment absorbed in thought. Just below him was seated his son Laurence, the pride of his heart, — the handsome young face was the stronger image of Azalea’s — the clear dark blue eyes the very copies of his own. The lad was looking up at him in awed admiration, and almost he smiled. Then, with a magnetic thrill in his voice which expressed the greater thrill at his heart, he gave out the text of what the current press’ next day called ‘A Startling Sermon,’ and which afterwards brought down upon him the withering condemnation of that singular section of the community which, by dint of doing nothing but waste time and money, calls itself ‘smart society.’

  “Hear, O earth; behold I will bring evil upon this people, even the ‘fruit of their thoughts.”

  After pronouncing these words slowly and with emphasis he waited a moment. The stillness; of the congregation was remarkable, — not a man or woman moved, and all eyes were directed towards him.

  “You will find this passage,” — he said, “in the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, — in the sixth chapter, at the nineteenth verse. I will repeat it again, for I want you all to remember it. ‘Hear, O earth; behold I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts.’”

  Once more he paused. He had no written notes before him to refer to, — nothing but the open Bible from which he had just read out the quoted verse. And on the pages of the Holy Book he rested one hand as he turned full upon his audience.

  “What is the fruit of a thought?” he began, and his voice rang clear through the great Cathedral like a silver clarion— “Have we ever rightly understood that a thought can bear fruit at all? We, whose brains in this present generation more resemble empty gourds in which dried peas are put to rattle for the amusement of children, than that complex, beautiful and wonderful God’s design of fine cells for the storage of the honey of wisdom, — do we, can we realize the mechanism and evolvement of thought? The fruit of a thought! It is a notable expression, and proves that the prophet who made use of it had a clear conception of what we call our ‘latest’ science. For psychology teaches us that thoughts are things; and that the delicate movements of the brain-cells emit invisible fine exhalations containing the seed from which, as from the pollen of a flower, actual forms take shape and grow into substance. The thoughts of a man are the man himself; and according to the way he thinks, so is the life he leads. His thought is the seed, — his life is the ‘fruit of his thoughts.’ Moreover, he has still a greater and graver responsibility set upon him than that which pertains to his own existence, for his thoughts are not allowed to belong to himself exclusively. He is unconsciously compelled to transmit them to others, — to his children, his friends and his neighbors. In his children the ‘fruit’ of his thoughts yields oftentimes strange harvests for their future good or evil, — in his friends and neighbors it results in a crop of pleasant or unpleasant associations, which spreading from himself as a center of radiation, make the happiness or unhappiness of a whole community. In the same way a nation, like an individual, is expressed by the ‘fruit of its thoughts.’ The lines on which its people are taught to think are the lines on which its honor is uplifted or its shame disclosed. Its responsibility, too, is the same, for the thoughts on which it dwells now will be the ‘fruit’ on which the next generation will have to feed, — or starve!”

  He paused for a moment; then, with a slight change of attitude which brought his eyes more keenly upon the greater bulk of the congregation, he resumed: —

  “It would trouble you too much, and by many of you be considered a waste of your time, if I were to ask you to go back with me in history and try to realize the splendors of past civilization in those great empires and kingdoms of ancient days when Britain was unknown, and which are now mere dust-heaps in the world for occasional antiquarians to explore. Our learned men tell us about them; our literature teems with speculative matter concerning them, — but the chief point about them to my mind, seems that neither their former-time magnificence, nor their present degradation teaches us in our generation any lesson. Yet, were we to probe to the very core of the causes involved in the ruin of communities once progressive and prosperous, we should find it to be the ‘fruit of their thoughts.’ No more and no less! No extraordinary or unjust visitation of Divine wrath swept the corrupt ‘cities of the plain’ out of existence as in the smoke of a furnace and covered their ruins with the salt and bitter flood of the Dead Sea, — their destruction was the working of the inviolable Law, — that unalterable Law which is the foundation of all mathematics—’ the fruit of their thoughts.’ Thoughts beginning inwardly in imperceptible brain-throbbings, and from their inward working manifesting themselves outwardly in word and deed, ripened into the poison-fruit of sin; and this fruit becoming the favorite food of the dwellers in those cities, destroyed them according to the natural action of poison. Tyre and Sidon, Carthage and Babylon, all show the same cause and effect. When Jeremiah foretold the doom of Jerusalem, he spoke of thoughts that had ripened into their fruit of deed, thus:— ‘I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing; they commit adultery and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evil doers that none doth return from his wickedness; they are all of them unto me as Sodom and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah. Therefore, thus saith the Lord of Hosts — Behold I will feed them with wormwood and make them drink the water of gall, for from the prophets of Jerusalem is profaneness gone forth into all the land.’ In these words, uttered in ancient times of growing evil, do we see no application to ourselves? No fitness as concerns our Church, our Government, our country, our society? Are our eyes too blinded by egotism to see likewise ‘an horrible thing’ among our own ‘prophets’ — that is to say among many of our preachers and teachers, who ‘commit adultery and walk in lies and strengthen the hands of evil doers that none doth return from his wickedness’? Are not the unnamable sins of the ‘cities of the plain’ familiar following among our devotees of ‘court and society’ to-day? — sins, which like foul cancers spread quickly and steadily till they infect the whole body social and politic? Are we not ripe for another rain of fire from heaven, and the desolate pall of another Dead Sea? We are! — and it is with an unspeakable love for my country and fear for its future destinies, that I seek to remind you to-day of the long-ago pronounced Divine warning:—’ Hear, O earth: behold I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts.’”

  Again he paused. A faint movement stirred the congregation like an expectant sigh. His eyes flashed over the crowd, — his voice grew fuller and more resonant.

  “The fruit of our thoughts!” he exclaimed— “The fruit of the thoughts of our nation to-day! Friends, what will it be? Poison or sweet food to those who come after us? Whichever it is, it will be our growing, our giving, our responsibility. We alone must decide its nature and quality. Of what are we, as a nation, thinking? What occupies us most from morning to night? To what do we give our best of care and toil? Is it not Self? The pampering of selfish lusts, the humoring of selfish whims, the delight of selfish ends? We play a blasphemous farce when we assume for mere appearance’ sake to consider God greater than Self, if all our plans of action in this world are conceived and carried out for the advantage of Self only. Self must be to our true minds greater than God if we give it most of our time and service. And if our thoughts dwell upon this Self, which is perishable, the ‘fruit’ of our thoughts is perishable likewise, and leaves nothing for future generations to live upon. Of what, I ask, is the nation thinking? Question any man we casually meet concerning his thoughts, and we shall find they chiefly turn on money-getting, while with a woman they are bent on money-spending. Little ‘fruit’ can be expected from thoughts such as these, the casual surface thoughts of casual surface men and women, — but let us go deeper and try to read thoughts of a different nature, — terrible thoughts that have lately been carelessly and
wickedly sown among our once God-fearing people by a terrible press and a terrible literature — a press that makes light of the sanctity of marriage, and publicly condones the ‘social’ sway of women of easy virtue, — a literature that teems with indecency and open blasphemy. These are ‘thoughts’ whose ‘fruit’ is national corruption. The thinkers of such thoughts — the writers of such thoughts are the worst of criminals, — they are the murderers of innocence and the thieves of honor. The ‘fruit’ of the brain-seed they scatter will be seen in the degeneration of our country’s manhood, and the degradation of its womanhood — it is seen even now, and the evil increases daily and hourly. Amid it all stands the Church of Christ, which should be a Pharos shedding clear radiance over the dark and troubled waters, — but the light is obscured, for the men who should be on the watch to avert danger to the Ship of State are absent from their posts and asleep — wrapped in a blanket of comfortable conventionalities and too lazy to stir!”

  He flung the words out with passion, — and a thrill of something like excitement ran through his crowded audience.

  “If you saw,” he went on, leaning from the pulpit with one hand outstretched, “if you saw the Mother of Christ represented in a semi-nude dancer on a ‘variety’ stage, would you resent it? Would you be shocked and outraged? I suppose you would. But would you show your indignation publicly by leaving the music-hall where such an exhibition was tolerated, and never entering it again? Almost I doubt it! Some of you would watch the dance to a close, — others would say it was ‘the reverent poetry of motion!’ I doubt if one of you would have the courage to rise up and say: ‘In the name of the Christian Religion, on which the nation professes to base its law and morality, I protest against this hideous blasphemy.’ You might perhaps hold that it was a matter for the censure of the Church. Well! Our Archbishops and Bishops would ‘consider’ the position before pronouncing the urgently needed condemnation. And their consideration would probably end, as usual, in inaction. They have remained dumb and inert in these latter days when crowds have gathered to see a scene of Gospel history turned into an indecent ‘variety’ show. King, Queen, Premier and Court have all tolerated the representation of the daughter of Herodias’s dance with the head of John the Baptist, — he who was the herald and forerunner of Christ, — forgetful, apparently, that the scene thus vulgarized is from positive Holy Writ, and is not the diseased emanation of the brain of an unspeakable criminal. Greater honor could scarcely have been paid to a world’s noblest thinker, a world’s greatest benefactor, a world’s highest teacher than the representatives and defenders of England and England’s Christian faith have shown to a public exponent of shameless indecency and blasphemy. Such an act on the part of those who should be leaders of principle and supporters of honor, marks our ‘Christian’ epoch with a brand of disgrace. But no rebuke is launched from the Church whose Gospel is thus vulgarly outraged, — and I, a minister of that Church, shall probably be told that I am taking too much upon myself to condemn what the silence of a Primate condones. But for that I do not care. Consider, if you please, that I have no ‘tact’ — no skill to seem what I am not, — that I have none of the ‘diplomacy’ practiced by such members of my calling as find it convenient to preach Christ to others while they themselves serve Satan. I hold myself responsible for all I say and do to a Master who is above Archbishops and Bishops, — whose commands are clear, and beyond all worldly conventions — and to whom I must render an account of my service in the honor of His Name when I die. And I say straightly and fearlessly that if His words are true, and if Christian England still holds and believes them to be true, then the ‘fruit’ of the thoughts that can tolerate such a public mockery of the Gospel as that which our ‘social’ leaders have lately approved and applauded, can be but bitter and poisonous, — an evil suggestion to the nation, sinking into the very marrow of life and rotting it to the bone!”

  The great crowd stirred uneasily. Glances full of fear and amazement were turned upon him, but his own eyes seemed to absorb all the questioning, all the wonder, and shine back with the brave light of a truth that would not be gainsaid.

  “You shrink at my words,” — he said— “because I am bold enough to speak my mind on what I consider the wicked and pernicious example shown to the people of this land by those who should be their guides to the noblest heights of conduct. Cramped by conventions as most of you are, you think it is not the business of men in the Church to rebuke persons of rank and position. It is unwise — it is unsafe! My friends, who is it that an ordained minister is bound to serve?— ‘Persons of rank and position’? Is it not rather the Man of Nazareth who on earth had no rank or position, and never, so far as we may know, associated with any class save the poor and the suffering? There is no rank or position before God. No section of a nation is set apart for special honor by the powers of Heaven. But whereas in our class distinctions we make a High and a Low, the social crimes of the higher ranks are tenfold more mischievous than those of the lower, and deserve more scathing rebuke. For these higher ranks have every advantage and opportunity given them to live in clean and upright ways and to show an example to their less fortunate brethren — and when they voluntarily sink into the slime of demoralization, they bring upon themselves and their country the ‘fruit of their thoughts’ — that ‘evil ‘which breeds anarchy and revolution, ending oftentimes in the complete downfall and destruction of a once great and powerful empire. For the old warning rings down the ages with conviction to this day—’ I will bring evil upon this people, — even the fruit of their thoughts!’

  “But I freely admit that the Church, as a rule, says little or nothing to ‘persons of rank and distinction.’ It occupies itself much with reproaches to the already over-reproved poor for their sins and follies and mistakes, which are chiefly the result of the ignorance in which they have for centuries been allowed to live by their ‘betters.’ The drunkenness, the immoralities of the poor are themes on which the full-pursed man is never tired of expatiating. On the drunkenness and the immoralities of the rich he preserves a discreet silence. And it may be that some of the money which makes his purse bulge with so much comfortable excess, is drawn from this very drunkenness and immorality which he so unctuously deplores. I find, for example, at the present time a dozen Bishops of the Church of England most strenuously supporting the vested interests of brewers and distillers, and opposing the Government efforts to lessen the material curse of Drink. These gentlemen apparently are not considering the ruin, ill-health and moral degradation of thousands of living men and women and unborn children which must occur if these vested interests in the liquor traffic are to continue unabated, — their sole thought is ‘property’! Can any of these shepherds of Christian flocks tell me that this great anxiety about ‘property’ is a permitted canon of the Christian creed? Was it not Christ who said: ‘One thing yet thou lackest; sell all thou hast and give to the poor, and follow Me’? The lives of men and women in this generation, — the health and sanity and strength of the generation to come, depend on the crushing of the tyrannous devil of Drink that holds Great Britain in its grip, and yet certain prelates, professing Christ, do not hesitate to array themselves on the side of ‘interest in property,’ as if money or land could be matched against the value of one human soul! And what sort of rights are these in ‘property’ that has been wrested out of national vice and degradation? It is property that should be flung away in horror and fear, with tears of shame that it was ever held under such conditions, — for the ‘evil’ brought upon this people by Drink, — the ‘fruit of the thoughts’ engendered by Drink, is an evil so vast and terrible that the brain recoils from it, and the heart grows sick. In the streets of this great London, this core of modern civilization, we are shamed day and night by the crowds of unhappy degraded creatures, the miserable victims of the liquor traffic, who crawl and reel and shuffle their way from one public-house to another, living for the delirium of drink alone, — in Edinburgh, in its very center thoroug
hfare of Princes Street, we may meet on any evening groups of young girls barely fifteen, staggering along in companionship with youths as drunken as themselves, — in Glasgow it is still worse, and yet with all this misery visibly increasing around us, — with the knowledge that the money spent by the nation on Drink alone averages one hundred and sixty-six millions of money a year, making nearly four pounds a head for every man, woman and child, — we can still talk of protection for a Trade that fills our lunatic asylums and hospitals, and crams our workhouses with the wastrels and waifs of humanity! Let such a Trade be ruined a thousand times over than that the nation should be robbed of its moral force and physical well-being! No trade can be called honest that makes its profit from the degradation of a people!”