All Roads Lead to Calvary | Page 3

was glad to think, in her time. In
towns, the space would be required for other buildings. Here and there
some gradually decaying specimen would be allowed to survive, taking
its place with the feudal castles and walled cities of the Continent: the
joy of the American tourist, the text-book of the antiquary. A pity! Yes,
but then from the aesthetic point of view it was a pity that the groves of
ancient Greece had ever been cut down and replanted with currant
bushes, their altars scattered; that the stones of the temples of Isis
should have come to be the shelter of the fisher of the Nile; and the
corn wave in the wind above the buried shrines of Mexico. All these
dead truths that from time to time had encumbered the living world.
Each in its turn had had to be cleared away.
And yet was it altogether a dead truth: this passionate belief in a
personal God who had ordered all things for the best: who could be
appealed to for comfort, for help? Might it not be as good an
explanation as any other of the mystery surrounding us? It had been so
universal. She was not sure where, but somewhere she had come across

an analogy that had strongly impressed her. "The fact that a man feels
thirsty--though at the time he may be wandering through the Desert of
Sahara--proves that somewhere in the world there is water." Might not
the success of Christianity in responding to human needs be evidence
in its favour? The Love of God, the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost, the
Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Were not all human needs provided for
in that one comprehensive promise: the desperate need of man to be
convinced that behind all the seeming muddle was a loving hand
guiding towards good; the need of the soul in its loneliness for
fellowship, for strengthening; the need of man in his weakness for the
kindly grace of human sympathy, of human example.
And then, as fate would have it, the first lesson happened to be the
story of Jonah and the whale. Half a dozen shocked faces turned
suddenly towards her told Joan that at some point in the thrilling
history she must unconsciously have laughed. Fortunately she was
alone in the pew, and feeling herself scarlet, squeezed herself into its
farthest corner and drew down her veil.
No, it would have to go. A religion that solemnly demanded of grown
men and women in the twentieth century that they should sit and listen
with reverential awe to a prehistoric edition of "Grimm's Fairy Stories,"
including Noah and his ark, the adventures of Samson and Delilah, the
conversations between Balaam and his ass, and culminating in what if
it were not so appallingly wicked an idea would be the most comical of
them all: the conception of an elaborately organized Hell, into which
the God of the Christians plunged his creatures for all eternity! Of what
use was such a religion as that going to be to the world of the future?
She must have knelt and stood mechanically, for the service was ended.
The pulpit was occupied by an elderly uninteresting-looking man with
a troublesome cough. But one sentence he had let fall had gripped her
attention. For a moment she could not remember it, and then it came to
her: "All Roads lead to Calvary." It struck her as rather good. Perhaps
he was going to be worth listening to. "To all of us, sooner or later," he
was saying, "comes a choosing of two ways: either the road leading to
success, the gratification of desires, the honour and approval of our

fellow-men--or the path to Calvary."
And then he had wandered off into a maze of detail. The tradesman,
dreaming perhaps of becoming a Whiteley, having to choose whether to
go forward or remain for all time in the little shop. The
statesman--should he abide by the faith that is in him and suffer loss of
popularity, or renounce his God and enter the Cabinet? The artist, the
writer, the mere labourer--there were too many of them. A few
well-chosen examples would have sufficed. And then that irritating
cough!
And yet every now and then he would be arresting. In his prime, Joan
felt, he must have been a great preacher. Even now, decrepit and
wheezy, he was capable of flashes of magnetism, of eloquence. The
passage where he pictured the Garden of Gethsemane. The fair
Jerusalem, only hidden from us by the shadows. So easy to return to. Its
soft lights shining through the trees, beckoning to us; its mingled voices
stealing to us through the silence, whispering to us of its
well-remembered ways, its pleasant places, its open doorways, friends
and