The Towers of Trebizond Read online

  I did not want to vex aunt Dot. I did things to please her; sometimes I went to see the camel in its quarantine, and petted it and fed it roots, and I thought it seemed to know me, and looked at me with spiteful memories in its insane eyes and stamped with its paws. The quarantine keepers told me they were watching it carefully, and giving it small jobs to do, dragging lawn mowers and things about and carrying workmen and their tools from place to place, as physical labour was better for its mind than standing about chewing and brooding all the time. When its quarantine was over, I meant to leave it at the Zoo, until aunt Dot's return, where it would have healthy companionship and take children for rides.

  The clergy of Father Chantry-Pigg's church kept ringing me up in case there should be any news. What was in their minds was that the time would probably come eventually for a Requiem Mass. I wondered if, later on, when hope dwindled, they would perhaps have a conditional one, but I saw that this would be awkward. They prayed for him often, and so did aunt Dot's church pray for her, but always as prisoners and captives and those in distress of mind, body or estate, not that they might have rest eternal and perpetual light, which would have been premature, though actually rest and light would have been nice for them to have, wherever they now were, and it was terrible to think that instead what they were now having might be labour and darkness.

  When I got time, I was thinking a good deal about religion just now. I would go to High Mass in some church or other, and the Christian Church would build itself up before me and round me, with its structure of liturgical words and music which was like fine architecture being reared up into the sky, while the priests moved to and from before the altar in their glittering coloured robes and crosses, and the rows of tall candles lifted their flames like yellow tulips, and the incense flowed about us. Here was the structure, I would think, in which the kingdom was enshrined, or whose doors opened on the kingdom, and sometimes the doors would swing ajar, and there the kingdom was, clear and terrible and bright, and no Church is able for it, or can do more than grope. Churches are wonderful and beautiful, and they are vehicles for religion, but no Church can have more than a very little of the truth. It must be odd to believe, as some people do, that one's Church has all the truth and no errors, for how could this possibly be? Nothing in the world, for instance, could be as true as the Roman Catholic Church thinks it is, and as some Anglicans and Calvinists and Moslems think their Churches are, having the faith once for all delivered to the saints. I suppose this must be comfortable and reassuring. But most of us know that nothing is as true as all that, and that no faith can be delivered once for all without change, for new things are being discovered all the time, and old things dropped, like the whole Bible being true, and we have to grope our way through a mist that keeps being lit by shafts of light, so that exploration tends to be patchy, and we can never sit back and say, we have the Truth, this is it, for discovering the truth, if it ever is discovered, means a long journey through a difficult jungle, with clearings every now and then, and paths that have to be hacked out as one walks, and dark lanterns swinging from the trees, and these lanterns are the light that has lighted every man, which can only come through the dark lanterns of our minds. Ficino and the Florentine Academy used to light lamps before the bust of Plato, and were called heretics because they wanted the light of Greek learning let into the Church, and Erasmus and Colet and More were called heretics because they too wanted that light of Greek learning, and to correct the mistakes in the Vulgate by it, and the Cambridge Platonists were called Latitude men, for wanting the same kind of thing, and all these people knew that if we stop trying to get fresh light into the Church, the Church will become dark and shut up. Yet human beings are so strange and mixed that though More was for humanism and fresh light in the Church, he was also for burning people for heresy, and said of one who had been burnt for erroneous opinions about the date of the Judgment, "Never was a knave better worth burning," and, looking at it all round, churchmen and the Church have greatly advanced in humanity since then.

  Most of my friends are not Christians, but I have some who are Anglicans or Roman Catholics, and some who belong to no Church but are interested in Churches and in the history of religion and like to discuss such things, even when they do not know much about them, so sometimes the question turns up among us. Vere said one day, did any clergymen believe all of the Thirty Nine Articles, which they have to read aloud when they are inducted into a church, and, if no one believed them, why were they not abolished? And, as they are really German and Lutheran, and taken from the Augsburg and Württemberg Confessions four hundred years ago, what are they doing in the Anglican Prayer Book at all, since some of them say the exact opposite to what most Anglicans believe, and this goes for the clergy as well as the laity. So we sent for a Prayer Book, though it was difficult to get hold of one, because the people we were spending the week-end with did not go in for Prayer Books, but in the end the cook had one, so we read the Articles aloud, to see which of them we should have been able to say if we had been clergymen being inducted, and had had the ordinary Anglican beliefs. As I was the only practising Anglican, though I did not practise much, the others asked me to say which I should have had to leave out or alter, and it came to quite a lot. There was all that about the Fall, and man being far gone from original righteousness, whereas I suppose most people think that man was never very righteous, but has crept slowly up to a greater righteousness than any he had when he was neanderthal or otherwise primitive, though he has not yet got at all far. So all that about the fall of Adam, though it is an interesting story, probably does not mean anything to most Christians now, except as a symbol. But a Roman Catholic who was there said it was still believed, though allegorically, by his Church, which of course does not drop so many things and leave them behind, because it believes more in the faith once delivered, and, though it adds a good many things to this, it does not take them away, but is very tenacious. Of course the other Churches too are tenacious, though less so, and theology seems the only science which does not keep adapting its views and its manuals to new knowledge as it turns up, as history does, and geography, and medicine, and anthropology, and archaeology, and most people think this is a pity, and part of the reason why Christianity is less believed than once it was. But others, such as Roman Catholics, think the Church should stand firm and change nothing. The Anglican Church compromises, and discards things little by little, leaving them behind casually and quietly, as if it had never really had them, but it has not yet succeeded in mislaying those of the Articles which are not now held, and this is perhaps because they are all numbered; anyhow some of them annoy a lot of people, and particularly the clergy, who have to repeat them every time they get a new church, and the churchwardens have to go into the vestry and sign something which records that the new incumbent has done this.

  The Article about the fall from righteousness was really St. Augustine's fault. St. Paul got the idea from somewhere, no one seems quite to know where, but it was not from Genesis, which does not mention that Adam and Eve were ever righteous, and in point of fact they were not, and it was not from the Gospels, as Christ made no reference at all to the affair. Augustine took it up and nailed it on to the Church, as he did Predestination and Election, which come in Article 17, but only very neutrally, and not as Augustine would have wished, for, though the first half of the Article says how nice this doctrine of election is for the elect, and how much it elevates and improves them, it does not recommend it to the reprobate, because for curious and carnal persons to have continually before their eyes the sentence of Goďs Predestination is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the Devil doth thrust them down either into desperation or into wretchedness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation. So, though this doctrine makes the good better, it makes the bad worse, and, as there are always more of the bad than of the good, it does not break even, but does more harm than good, and on the whole Article 17 does not seem to advise it. This Article
ends very sensibly, saying that we must all follow the will of God in our doings, and washing its hands of election and reprobation, which the translators must have seen looked pretty silly in English and in print, so there is really not much harm in Article 17, though it does not seem to mean anything in particular, and any one except Calvinists would feel rather foolish saying it; as Sir Thomas Browne said, that terrible term Predestination hath troubled so many weak heads to conceive, and the wisest to explain. But St. Augustine, being so intellectual and dominating, managed to put it across in a large way, and got the better of Pelagius, who was right, but much less intellectual and dominating, not being Carthaginian but only Welsh, and later Aquinas, who was intellectual and dominating too, took it up and spread it about, and Duns Scotus, who was Semi-Pelagian, never had so much influence as he did, so that, owing to all this, Predestination, in spite of being the sort of idea really only suitable for lunatics (who have often had it, and it has made them worse, like poor Cowper) took a firm hold on the Christian religion, and was always waiting like a wild jungle animal to spring on this or that schoolman or divine and drive them mad. It sprang powerfully on Zwingli and on Calvin. Erasmus and Colet and More hated it, and if they had been allowed to go on with their reforming of the Church, and if this reforming had not instead fallen into the hands of Augustinians, it would have been quite a different reformation, and very much better, and both Protestants and Catholics would have a better Church now, one they had reformed between them. But the Augustinians were got down in the end, and the Arminians and the Pelagians, or perhaps they are Semi-Pelagians, now have it all their own way, and it is the Predestinators not the Pelagians who, as it says in the 9th Article, do vainly talk.

  "But there are plenty of them," said the Roman Catholic, who meets them on account of going to Scotland and sometimes Wales for fishing purposes. "They are by no means an extinct species. They flourish on Celtic mountains, like wild goats."

  "But not now in my Church or yours," I said. "So we ought not to keep that article about them, because articles about dissenters ought not to be bound up with the Church of England Prayer Book. Nor the one saying that the Athanasian Creed can be proved by Scripture. My aunt Dot, who is the most devout Anglican, always sits down when they say the Athanasian Creed, because of hell fire and without doubt perishing everlastingly on account of not thus thinking of the Trinity."

  The Roman Catholic, who was a very thoughtful, truthful man, considered for a moment, then said that he could thus think, and every one applauded him, in the way we applaud Roman Catholics, because they can thus think about so many things, and it is a great feat.

  I said, "So can aunt Dot," in order to keep up the Anglican end, but I did not actually know whether aunt Dot could or not.

  "Well," said one of our hosts, who is not a religious man, "these Churches are really the most extraordinary contraptions. Where did they get it all from? I mean, the way they've built it all up, tier on tier, pinnacle on pinnacle, without any apparent relation to its base? Of course it's a wonderful artifact, and very magnificent, but what's it all about?"

  The Roman Catholic and I started to explain the relation of the edifice to its base, which always does need some explaining. After all, I said, the Christian Church is the tabernacle and shrine of a God, as the pre-Christian temples had been shrines of gods, and these tabernacles and shrines have always been as elaborate and imposing and highly organized as their builders could make them, and have had hierarchies of priests and prophets and rulers to preside and to mediate with the gods. Look at Delphi, I said, and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, and the Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem. People don't want to worship God in a barn with no liturgy and no rites, unless they are Quakers. So of course the Christian Church, once it had got out of the catacombs, grew and grew till it towered like a Christmas tree, hung with glittering things and shining lights, because it is the shrine of a God, and all its walls and doors and roofs were carved and sculptured and painted and mosaicked, because human beings are artists, and like to build their shrines like that. That is partly what draws people to the shrine; then, once in it, they discover what it is all about. But of course if you like, I said, you can have it penny plain and no nonsense, as the predestinating Calvinists in the Celtic mountains do. Their rites are probably more like what the apostles did.

  "They have such ghastly hymns," the Roman Catholic said. "The words, I mean. I saw one of their hymn books once."

  I said, "All churches have a lot of ghastly hymns. Mine has; yours has. Most people have ghastly taste, and always have written bad religious verses and painted bad religious pictures, and had tiresome thoughts about religion. That doesn't interfere with the structure. Nor does the nonsense people talk about it. Nor does all the quarrelling and the wickedness, and the frightful damned things the Church has done since it got power to do them. Human beings have always done frightful damned things. But they are improving, and so is the Church. It's working its way through."

  "Well, through to what exactly? I mean, to what more than all the well-meaning people outside it are working their way to?"

  I said, "Oh, it's so obvious," but I thought they had better work it out for themselves, as I couldn't begin on it.

  The Roman Catholic thought it was time he took a hand, so he said that the point about the Church was that it was a supernatural body, not man-made. He looked polite and reserved, and we could see that he was referring to his own Church, which he knew was the only Catholic part of the Christian Church, and he was remembering that no other Church has priests or orders or sacraments or Mass, or could rate as supernatural in any at all high-grade way. I did not start to argue about this, as I did not want to vex him or tire myself or bore the others, and the Pope had said once for all that Anglicans do not have orders, so for him it could not be an open question, and it vexed him to know that Anglicans even thought they had such things, which were quite above their station. I once heard an argument between him and aunt Dot on this matter, and it lasted quite a long time, though both are by nature eirenical, but they did not get anywhere, though they each thought they had won. Aunt Dot ended by saying that even if we had no altars and no Blessed Sacrament on them, it would be only polite of outsiders to bow to where we thought we had them, especially at requiem and nuptial Masses, also to join in the Creed and the Lord's Prayer at christenings instead of shutting the mouth tight as if afraid of infection, which looked so unchristian and stuck up.

  "I suppose," said aunt Dot, "you would walk into a mosque with your shoes on," which was not really fair, as Roman Catholics do take off their hats in Anglican churches, and even, I think, in dissenting ones.

  "And I suppose you," said the Roman Catholic, "would, if you had been an early Christian, have offered a pinch of incense to Diana, out of politeness to the pagans."

  So they left the subject and played croquet, which is a very good game for people who are annoyed with one another, giving many opportunities for venting rancour.

  Anyhow, I did not take up the question of the Anglican Church with this papist now, but while he was talking I thought how the Church was meant to be a shrine of the decencies, of friendship, integrity, love, of the poetry of conduct, of the flickering, guttering candles of conscience. And, above all this, it seems to be playing some tremendous symphony; the music drifts singing about the arches and vaults, only faintly and partly apprehended by us, the ignorant armies that clash by night in perpetual assault and rout, defeated by the very nature of their unending war, for ever on the run, for ever returning to the charge, then on the run again, like the surging of the waves of the sea.

  Then I thought, the Church is like a great empire on its way out, that holds its subjects by poetic force, its fantastic beauty heightened by insecurity; one sees it at times like a Desiderio fantasy of pinnacles and towers, luminous with unearthly light, rocking on their foundations as if about to crash ruining in decadence and disaster into the dark sea that steals up, already lapping and whispering
at the marble quays. Yet, though for ever reeling, the towers do not fall: they seem held in some strong enchantment, some luminous spell, fixed for ever in the imagination, the gleaming, infrangible, so improbable as to be all but impossible, walled kingdom of the infrangible God.

  Such to me, I thought, is the Christian Church. The fact that at present I cannot find my way into it does not lessen, but rather heightens, its spell; a magic castle, it changes down the ages its protean form, but on its battlements the splendor lucis aeternae inextinguishably down all the ages lies.

  When I had done thinking all this, and the Roman Catholic had done his piece about his Church, we all felt that we had had the Church, and we passed on to the affairs of the people we knew, who were, as usual, behaving in a great number of strange ways. Some of them had lately returned from Turkey or the Levant, as I had, and some had been there last year or the year before that and had had time to get on with their travel books, which were now cheeping and chipping at the shell, almost ready to hatch out. There was a little friction because some of the ones about the same part of Turkey, or the same bit of the Levant, seemed likely to hatch round about the same week or month, and authors do not like this, though it may be a good thing, as it shows they are in the fashion; you get a Cilician season, or an Ionian season, or a month when the books about Istanbul or the Lebanon or the Dead Sea hatch out, and they have a modish air, like fashions in clothes, but still it annoys authors, though reviewers rather like it, as they can get several books, or anyhow two, into one article, and make invidious comparisons between them, which pleases one author but vexes another, or several others. "Mr. So and So's is the best of this Cilician batch," they will say; or "It is a far cry from Mr. Flatfoot's rather pedestrian description of the Syrian scene to the fireworks of Mr. Pyrotechnic," and they find it is easier to utter this far cry than merely to plod with Mr. Flatfoot about the Syrian sands of which they know so little themselves.