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............