When It Was Dark Part 60

From his oak chair behind the altar rails Dean Gortre came down towards the pulpit.

Young still--strangely young for the dignity which they had pressed on him for two years before he would accept it--Basil ascended the steps.

Christ is risen!

The organ crashed; there was silence.

All the lights in the church were suddenly lowered to half their height.

The two candles in the pulpit shone brightly on the preacher's face.

They all saw that it was filled with holy fire.

Christ is risen!

"IF CHRIST BE NOT RISEN YOUR FAITH IS VAIN"

The church was absolutely still as the words of the text rang out into it.

The people were thinking humbly, with contrite hearts, of the shame five years ago.

"Would that our imagination, under the conduct of Christian faith, could even faintly realise the scene when the Human Soul of Our Lord came with myriads of attendant angels to the grave of Joseph, to claim the Body that had hung upon the cross.

"To-night, with the promise and warrant of our own resurrection that His has given us, our thoughts involuntarily turn to those we call the dead. We feel that this Easter is for them also an occasion of rejoicing, and that the happiness of the earthly Church is shared by the loving and beloved choir behind the veil.

"Christ is risen! Away with the illusions which may have kept us from Him. Let us also arise and live. For, as the spouse sings in the Canticles, 'The winter is past, ... the time of the singing of birds is come; ... arise, my love, my fair one, and come away!'"

Christ is risen!

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This article has already been seen in the preceding chapter.

[2] This particular instance of the Nurie woman is _not_ all fiction. An incident much resembling it actually occurred to a well-known writer on the intimate life of Eastern peoples. For the purposes of the narrative the _locale_ has been changed from the Jaffa Road--where the event took place--to Jerusalem itself.

THE END