Chapter 9

The sermon began with the unaccustomed flatness of the rest of the service. Mr. Sumption’s voice had lost its resonance, his arms no longer waved like windmill-sails, nor did his joints crack like dried osiers. He made his points languidly on his fingers, instead of thumping them out on the pulpit with his fist. The congregation would have been disappointed if they had not known the reason for this slackness; as things were, it was part of the spectacle. They noticed, too, a certain bitterness that crept into his speech now and then, as when he described the Chief Priests and Scribes plotting together to take refuge behind the sacrifice of Christ. “It is expedient for us ... that the whole nation perish not.”

“Brethren, I see them nodding their ugly beards together, and saying: ‘Let this young man go and die for us. One man must die for the people, and it shan’t be one of us, I reckon—we’re too important, we can’t be spared. Let us send this young man to his death. It is expedient that he should die for the nation.’”

Then suddenly he stiffened his back, bringing his open Bible together with a thud, while his voice rang out with the old clearness:

“Reckon that was what you said among yourselves when you saw the young men we’re thinking of to-night go up before the Tribunal, or volunteer at the Recruiting Office. You said to yourselves, ‘That’s right, that’s proper. It is expedient that these young men should go and die for the people. I like to see a young man go to fight for his country. I’m too old.... I’ve got a bad leg ... but I like to see the young men go.’”

For a moment he stood and glared at them, as in the old days, his eyes like coals, his big teeth bared like a fighting dog’s. Then once again his weariness dropped [293] over him, his head hung, and his sentences ran together, husky and indistinct.

The congregation shuffled and coughed. The service required peppermint-sucking to help it through, and owing to war conditions no peppermints were forthcoming. Zacky Beatup made a rabbit out of his handkerchief and slid it over the back of the pew at Lily Sinden. Mus’ Beatup began to calculate the odds against the Bethel closing before the Rifle Volunteer. Old Mus’ Hollowbone from the Foul Mile crossed his legs and went to sleep, just as if he was sitting with the Wesleyans. Then Maudie Sinden pulled a screw of paper out of her pocket and extracted a piece of black gum—the very piece she had taken out of her mouth on entering the chapel, knowing that no sweet had ever been sucked there since Tommy Bourner was bidden “spue forth that apple of Sodom” two years ago. Thyrza had never seen a congregation so demoralised, but then she had never seen a minister so dull, so drony, so lack-lustre, so lifeless. “He shudn’t ought to have tried it, poor chap,” she murmured into the baby’s shawl.

Then suddenly Mr. Sumption’s fist came down on his Bible. The pulpit lamps shuddered, and rattled their glass shades, and the congregation started into postures of attention, as the minister glared up and down the rows of heads in the pod-like pews.

“Reckon you’ve no heart for the Gospel to-day,” he said severely. “Pray the Lord to change your hearts, [294] as He changed my sermon. This is not the sermon I had meant to preach to you, and if you don’t like it, it is the Lord’s doing. I had for my text: ‘The day of the Lord is at hand, as the morning spread upon the mountains.’ That was my text, and I had meant to warn you all of the coming of that day, as I have so often warned you. It is a day which shall burn like an oven, and the strong man shall cry therein mightily; it is a day of darkness and gloominess, of clouds and thick darkness. Then I was going forward to show you how the Sign of the Son of Man shall be in the heavens, and how He shall appear in clouds with great glory.... But the Lord came then and smote me, and I lay as dead before Him, like Moses in the Mount. And when I came to myself, I knew that the Sign of the Son of Man is already with us here—not in heaven, but on earth—rising up out of the earth ... over there in France—the crosses of the million Christs you have crucified.”

They were all listening now. He could see their craning, attentive faces, and their kicks and coughs had died down into a rather scandalised silence.

“The million Christs you have crucified, all those boys you sent out to die for the people. You sent them in millions to die for you and for your little children, and their blood shall be on you and on your children. Oh, you stiff-necked and uncircumcised—talking of Judgment as if it was a great way off, and behold it is at your doors; and the Christ Whom you look for has come suddenly to His temple—in the suffering youth of this country—all countries—in these boys who go out and suffer and die and bleed, cheerfully, patiently, like sheep—that the whole nation perish not.

“Think of the boys you have sent, the boys we’re specially remembering here to-day. There was Tom Beatup—a good honest lad, simple and clean as a little child. He went out to fight for you, but I reckon you never woke up in your comfortable bed and said: ’There’s poor Tom Beatup, up to the loins in mud, and freezing with cold, and maybe as empty as a rusty pail.’ The thought of him never spoiled your night’s rest, and you never felt, ‘I’ve got to struggle tooth and nail to be worth his sacrificing himself like that for an old useless [295] trug like me, and I’ll do my best to help my country at home in any way as it can be done, so as the War ull be shortened and Tom ull have a few nights less in the mud.’ That’s what you ought to have said, but I reckon you didn’t say it.

“There’s Stacey Collbran, too, who left a young sweetheart, and ull never know the love of wedded life because you had to be died for. Do you ever think of him when your Wife lies in your bosom, and say, ‘Reckon I’ll be good to my wife, since for my sake a poor chap never had his’?

“And there’s Fred Bourner, and Sid Viner, and Joe Kadwell, and Leslie Ades—they all went out to die for you, and they died, and you come here to remember them to-night; but in your hearts, which ought to be breaking with reverence and gratitude, you’re just saying, ‘It’s proper, it’s expedient that these men should die for the people, that the whole nation perish not.’

“And there’s my boy....”

The minister’s voice hung paused for a minute. He leaned over the pulpit, his hands gripping the wood till their knuckles stood out white from the coarse brown. His eyes travelled up and down the pew-pods of staring heads, as if he expected to see contradiction or mockery or surprise. But the Sunday Street face is not expressive, and except for the utter stillness, Mr. Sumption might have been reading the chapel accounts.

“There’s my boy, Jerry Sumption; Maybe you thought I wouldn’t talk of him to-night, that I’d be ashamed, that I’d never dare mention his name along of your gallant boys. Besides, you say, What’s he got to do with it? He never died for the people. But you thought wrong. I’m not ashamed to speak his name along of Tom and Stace and Fred and Sid and Joe, and he hasn’t got nothing to do with it, either. For I tell you—my boy died for [296] your boys. He died as an example and warning to them, to save them from a like fate, and if that isn’t dying for them.... These are Mr. Archie Lamb’s very words: ’Your son is dying so that other men may be warned by his fate and stick to the ranks and do their duty as soldiers; therefore, in that sense he has died for his country.’ I reckon it seems a big thing to shoot a boy just for going off to see his girl when the company’s marching; but if it weren’t done then other boys ud stop away and the regiment go to pieces. Mr. Archie and the other officers said, ‘It is expedient that one man should die for the regiment, that the whole army perish not.’...

“No! I am not ashamed of my boy! If he was led astray at the last moment by his evil, human passions, who shall judge him?—Not I, and not you. He did not desert because he was a coward, because he funked the battle before him. Listen again to Mr. Archie Lamb; he says, ‘Sumption is not a coward—I have seen him in action, and I repeat that he is as plucky as any one.’ And he joined up as a volunteer, too—he didn’t have to be fetched, he didn’t go before the Tribunal and say he’d got a bad leg, or a bad arm, and his father couldn’t run the business without him. He joined up out of free-will and love of his country. The Army was no place for him, for his blood was the blood of the Rossarmescroes or Hearns, which knows not obedience. When he joined he risked his life not only at the hands of the enemy but at the hands of his own countrymen, and it is his own countrymen that have put him to death, ‘that the whole nation perish not.’

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“I tell you, my boy died for your boys; my boy died for you, and you shall not look down on his sacrifice. Over his grave is the Sign of the Son of Man, Who gave His life as a ransom for many. To save your boys from the possibility of a disgrace such as his my boy died in shame. When they see the grave of Jerry Sumption they will say: ‘That is the grave of a man who died because he could not obey laws or control passions, because he was not master of his own blood. Therefore let us take heed by him and walk warily, and do our duty as soldiers; and if we must die, not die as he died....’ So my son died for your sons, and my son and your sons died for you; and I ask you: ‘Are you worth dying for?’”

Again the minister was silent, staring down at the rows of wooden, expressionless faces, now faintly a-sweat in the steam and heat of the Bethel. Then suddenly he burst out at them, loudly, impatiently:

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“I’ll tell you the truth about yourselves; I’ll tell you if you’re worth dying for. What has this War meant to you? What have you done for this War? There’s just one answer to both questions. Nothing. While men were fighting for their own and your existence, while they were suffering horrors out there in France which you can’t think of, and if you could think of could not speak of, you were just muddling about there in your little ways, thinking of nothing but crops and prices and the little silly inconveniences you had to put up with. Ho! I reckon you never thought of the War, except when you got some cheery letter from your boy, telling you he was having the time of his life out there, or when the price of bread went up, or you had to eat margarine instead of butter, or you couldn’t get your Sunday joint. All that war meant to you was new orders about lights, and tribunals taking your farm-hands, and prices going up and food getting scarce, and the War Agricultural Committee leaving Cultivation orders. And all the time you grumbled and groused, and wrote out to your boys that you were dying of want, weakening their hearts—they who wrote you kind and cheery letters out of the gates of hell. You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You little, little souls, that only bother about the little concerns of your little parish in the middle of this great woe. The end of the world is come, and you know it not; Christ is dying for you and you heed Him not. Are you worth dying for? Are you worth living for? No—you’re scarce worth preaching at.”

By this time there were signs of animation among the pea-pods. The peas rolled from side to side, and a faint rustle of indignation came from them.

“I know why you’re here to-night,” continued Mr. Sumption. “You’ve come to gaze on me, to watch me in my trouble, to see how I take it. You haven’t come to [299] hear the Gospel—you yawned and wriggled all the time I was preaching it. You haven’t come just to think of the dead boys—you did that in church this morning. You’re here to gaze at me, to see how I take it. Well, now you see how I take it. You see I’m not ashamed. Why should I be ashamed of my son? He’s worth a bundle of you—he’s died a better death than anyone in this church is likely to die; and if he lived a vessel of wrath, at all events he was a full vessel, not just a jug of emptiness. He lived like the wild man he was born, and he died like a poor wild animal shot down. But I am not ashamed of him. And though he died without baptism, without conversion, without assurance, I cannot and I will not believe that he is lost. Somewhere the love of God is holding him. The Lord tells me that my fatherhood is only a poor mess of His; well, in that case, I reckon He won’t cast out my lad. Willingly I’d bear his sins for him, and so I reckon Christ will bear them even for the child of wrath. Where I can love, He can love more, and since He died as a felon, reckon He feels for my poor boy. He knows what it is to stand with His back to the wall and see every man’s hand raised against Him, and every man’s tongue stuck out. And because He knows, He understands, and because He understands, He forgives. Amen.”

The windows of the Bethel shook mournfully in the wind, and the rain hissed down them, as if it shuddered and wept to hear such doctrine within its walls. But the sounds were lost in the shuffle of the rising congregation, standing up to sing the psalm.