September 1930
T h e
K i n g ' s
B u s i n e s s
426
had bruised her self-esteem and “ the blueness of the wound” was cleansing away evil—and what a lot of it there was to cleanse away! “ When Franz talked with me one day,” Constance was saying to Bill the Brilliant, “ he spoke of a play that set forth the negro’s simple conception of God. I was troubled because there was something false in it and I could not give him the answer I felt he needed. I wish you could talk to us about it. Such things bewilder us!” Bill’s usual reserve unbent for a moment. “ I should say 1 would talk about it!” And then, more quietly: “ I’ve read about that play on .the London stage,” he said. “ It went there from New York. It took a prize in America, too, sad to relate! The newspaper comments are enough. The wise shall understand. ‘Jehovah on the stage— the portrayal of God by an old negro who smokes cigars—an uneducated negro’s conception of God—an attempt to pre sent certain aspects of a living religion in terms of its be lievers,’ and so on ! I, for one, have never met a converted negro with any such concept of God. The dialogues be tween God and Noah, all in negro dialect, I have Sampled, too. The whole performance patronizes Christianity' at best. ‘The simple and sincere belief of an ignorant and uneducated people’ and so on! But that is far too mild a criticism. The blasphemous caricature of that Holy One is unspeakable. Added to this, it is bound to create in our modern, irreligious public an increasing contempt for what is really genuine—divinely and simply genuine. I mean the basic truths of the Bible. God, a personal God, a just, as well as a loving God disciplining the wicked because He is just and yet loving us and dying for u s ! The compas sionate Father you longed for, and turned to, in your hour of need, Josef! All this and more, is set forth in a ribald buffoonery; or as one favorable critic says, with a ‘back- chat comedian effect,’ that is a seriously blasphemous tra vesty upon the ineffable. For any human creature to be allowed to so portray our Holy God, is sufficient comment upon the standards of our age. One reviewer says, as well: ‘Who has not been touched by conceptions almost as primitive on the lips of a street corner evangelist at home?’ I, myself, have preached on a street corner, at home —mot qui vous parle, mon prince! And I am not an uneducated primitive. The ‘pity’ of the reviewers for this ‘unquestioning faith of a simple race’ and their everready generosity in admitting its sincerity are all too obvious to me. It is one of the cleverest dodges the great enemy has used as yet, against the believer’s state of faith. It makes ridiculous that which is truly sublime.” The princeling and Constance listened and Eleanor lis tened to o ! “ Granted that the playwright may not have intended this, or not have realized the depth of the blasphemy; granted too, that the reviewers show a surprising sense of proportion in their handling of this matter; the whole presentation in press, and on the boards, is an offense against the Lord who bought us—a hideous and mon strous offense.” There was silence over the little group for a moment as Bill’s earnest, quiet, well-considered utterances ceased. “ You are right,” said the princeling at last. “ It had effected me. I did not realize that the deep things of God are, as you say, divinely simple; not with an uninformed, crude simplicity—you understand me? But simple, as eternity is simple, with a grand perfection of plan through Christ our Saviour’s sacrifice for us, that the unspiritual cannot understand.” ( Continued on page 427)
fied them, they asked nothing. They do not even know that I was longing to desert their camp and go over to the Communists. I could never explain to them the unrest that was driving me on.” 4 Eleanor turned suddenly so that her face was averted. What would her “ boy friend” at home—what would all of her set say, if they could know that she, Eleanor Gorham, was lying in a hammock, on an Alp, listening to such talk ? And not listening derisively either! Actually on the verge of “ going haywire” herself, as she put it ! What had she, Eleanor, first cousin of that nice girl, Constance—a bit contemptuous, that “ nice girl”—what had she to do with spiritual seekings and longings such as these the princeling was describing? She, whose very return to her college up the Hudson was even now a matter of grave question before the faculty! A matter of grave question for reasons so cogent that it made her positively writhe on her comfortable pillows to remember them—here, with such companions as these. Why was it, she wondered helplessly, that all of a sudden the girls of this day and age had been plunged into such problems? Problems of which her own mother was unaware, and of which she, Eleanor, could not bear to give her family any idea? What had happened to the world in the past generation ? How was it that her mother and her aunts had grown up reading “ Lit tle Women” and the Hildegarde books, and being shocked if a young man walked with them with a cigarette in his mouth, while she had been forced into the most perilous situations? Well, she was forced, if she was to keep up with the crowd! And one had to keep up with the crowd or else drop out altogether. Well, what if she should do just that? How about quietly dropping out? It was rather a peaceful idea, some how. But could she ? Wouldn’t the old habit paths be too much for her? “ It’s lack of reverence, Franz,” Bill the Brilliant was saying, “ that’s what ails us, since you ask me.” “ What is reverence then?” the princeling inquired po litely. “ Is it ceremonial, bowings and ritual ?” “ N o ! n o ! It’s awareness of what God really is and the consequent effect upon our attitude toward Him, and our conduct. No one who really knows what the Shekinah glory is, would have the temerity to be anything but rev erent in speaking of God. Our generation needs to have the fear of God injected into their consciences. Why Franz, He hangeth the earth upon nothing! Think of His power!” Eleanor was off again, on her own train of thought. Reverence! Not one of her friends could by any possibil ity either be governed by it, or ever desire it. Could they not? How about her own little self? Why was she so completely stirred up that she had to assume her “ poker face” that the rest might not find her out? She knew at once that if certain of her friends could be for a time with Bill the Brilliant and Connie and the princeling that they might be stirred too. “ Fear o f God,” which Bill was say ing, really meant a proper reverence for God, would keep them decent, and oh, it might have averted many a situa tion ! “ But we are two generations away from the Bible, Cousin Elizabeth says.” Thus Constance in her pretty low voice. “ Yes, and it’s His Book that the whole world needs today.” His Book ! How dead in earnest they were! Eleanor ha^Lalways avoided earnest people. But she no longer wished to avoid them. The experiences of the past weeks
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