The Mark of the Beast Part 6

He was very pale, but the light of a rare courage flashed in his eyes.

He acknowledged the recognition of himself by an inclination of the head. Then amid a strange hush he began to speak, his voice husky, at first, rapidly clearing as he went on:

"Friends, I take it that this is the most momentous Sunday that has ever been, since the first one--the day of the resurrection of the Christ. Our friend who has just spoken has surely voiced the question of many hearts here this morning, and many other troubled hearts the wide world over.

"Let me say, right here, that my friend and colleague, Mr. Tom Hammond, the originator and late editor of 'The Courier,' was in the very act of explaining the wonderful, expected return of Christ (expected by him though scoffed at by myself) when he was 'caught up' from my very presence, and then I knew what a fool I had been to neglect G.o.d and His salvation."

The nut-cracking interrupter in the gallery, with a burst of laughter, began mockingly to sing the old revival chorus, "Come to Jesus, come to Jesus, come to Jesus, just now, just----"

"Silence! you blasphemous, ribald fool!" The words leaped from the lips of Ralph Bastin, in a tone of command that literally awed the interrupter. The effect, too, upon the hesitating, vacillating ma.s.s of people was, for the moment at least, to arouse their sympathy with Ralph, and a little murmur of applause followed.

At the same time a soldier in uniform, a man of giant proportions, who was sitting almost immediately behind the disturber, rose in his seat, and addressing the man in front of him, cried, in a stentorian voice:

"See here, mouthy, we're about fed up with your gas, so if you give us so much as one wag of that cursed red rag of yours, I'll pick you up and snap you in half across my knee, as I would snap a stick."

This time the applause broke out all over the crowded church. When it ceased, Ralph standing straight as a larch, and looking up at the soldier, gave a military salute, as he said: "Thank you, brave soldier."

Coming back to his audience, he went on, as if there had been no interruption:

"I, too, like the gentleman who addressed us just now, have read the whole of the Bible through, and the New Testament _twice_, and I can find no _definite_ provision or Revelation for those who are left behind--that is as to the _how_, I mean, of salvation. Yet that there are to be many saved during the next seven years, is evident, since there is to be a great mult.i.tude come out of _The Great Tribulation_, and thousands of these will be martyrs for G.o.d, refusing to wear the Mark of the Beast.

"In one of the pamphlets I have been studying on 'The second coming of the Lord,' I have found this statement, that Christ, during His ministry, preached the Gospel _of the Kingdom_, which is explained as referring to the fact that, as a Jew, as the Messiah, He came to His own people the Jews, the chosen _earthly_ people of G.o.d, and that if they would have accepted Him as their Messiah, His Kingdom--with Himself reigning as King--might have been set up there and then. But they rejected Him, yes, even when Peter, at Pentecost, after the Ascension of Christ, made the final offer in those wonderful words of his.

"As a nation, they rejected Him, rejected their Lord and King, and henceforth, until He should come again. (He came last week, as we know, now that it is too late for us to share in the glory of that coming.) Until that coming, as I said, the Gospel to be preached was to be the 'Gospel of the Grace of G.o.d,' and not the 'Gospel of the Kingdom.' 'The Gospel of the Grace of G.o.d,' included all peoples, Gentile as well as Jew, while 'the Gospel of the Kingdom,' in its first preaching, was especially a message to the Jew.

"Now, friends, since there appears to be no _special_ Revelation left as to how men and women are to be saved, I have been forced to the conclusion that we must go back to the Old Testament word: 'Seek ye the Lord'--'Call upon the Name of the Lord'--'Trust ye in the Lord'--'Come now and let us reason, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.' 'The Lord is nigh unto them who are of broken heart, and _saveth_ such as be of a _Contrite_ spirit.'

"I have taken my own stand upon this, that G.o.d, the G.o.d of the Old Testament, is the same G.o.d, who pities like a father, and that if we confess our sin, and witness a true confession, He will forgive us our sin, and though we can never be part of that wondrous _Bride_ of Christ, whom, last week He caught up to Himself into the Heavenlies, yet we may be eternally saved. And, friends, whether I am right or wrong, I am daily pleading the Name of Jesus Christ in all my approaches to G.o.d. I plead the Blood of Jesus Christ, and the power of that Blood, to save me; for, as far as I understand myself, in this matter, my belief, my trust is the same as that which inspired the saints who were translated at the 'Rapture'--as that event has come to be called.

"In my studies during the past week--would G.o.d I had been wise, and given myself to all this a month ago, I should then have shared in the glory of that Rapturous event of which all our minds are so full.

"But, as I was saying, in my studies during the past week, I have seen that in Revelation Seven, in the account of those who are to be saved _during_ the seven years of the present dispensation, (and which has just begun) that they 'have washed their robes and made them white _in the blood of the Lamb_.' So that though I am not able to reduce my standing to an actual theological position--statement--yet I pin my soul, my faith on the Eternal character of G.o.d, and on the efficacy of the Blood of Jesus, as shown in Revelation Seven, fourteen."

He paused for an instant, and his eyes swept the great a.s.sembly sorrowfully, sadly, as he went on:

"But it is forced upon me that what is done by us, in this matter of seeking G.o.d, must be done by us _now, at once_. Every hour increases the danger of delay because the powers of evil, of the Antichrist, are already growing more and more rampant, more and more p.r.o.nounced.

Presently, friends, we know not but that any hour or even moment now, the awful delusion of the Antichrist lie, may be actually formulated into speech and print, and it will be so almost universally absorbed by mankind, and its influence be so pervading, so saturating, in every cla.s.s, of society, that it will every hour become harder, more difficult for the individual soul to turn to G.o.d."

He paused again for one instant. Then startlingly, suddenly, the words "Great G.o.d!" leaped from his lips. They sounded like a mighty sob.

"Great G.o.d!" he repeated with an anguish that awed the people. "The great ma.s.s of people in London, are already mocking G.o.d. They laugh at the notion of there being a G.o.d, of there being any Retribution. The great ma.s.s of the people are ripe for anything, even for a public, official denial of the very existence of G.o.d. Deluded, they will believe any lie, THE FOUL LIE.

"How long is it since, in France, in the Revolution, the leading men, the 'flower' of that capricious nation, carried in triumph in grand procession the most beautiful harlot of Paris, to the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and, unveiling and kissing her before the high altar, proclaimed her as the 'G.o.ddess of Reason,' exhorting the mult.i.tude of people to forget all the childish things that they had been taught as to the thunders of the wrath of G.o.d, for G.o.d was not, and had never been.

"And all that happened while the 'salt of the earth,' was abroad, and while that great, divine restrainer of evil, the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, was still upon the earth exercising His restraint.

"And, in a week from to-day, I believe it will be absolutely impossible to get a gathering like this. The world, the Flesh, the Devil, the Antichrist, will have almost absolute sway, and if any of us will live to G.o.d, we must be prepared to suffer the direst persecution, and all the horrors of the Great Tribulation, with its thousands of martyrs, will be the portion of those who will cleave to G.o.d, and flout Antichrist."

A deep, sullen growl, like that of some huge savage beast, rose here and there from a number of dissenters to these predictions.

Ralph lifted his head proudly, and fearlessly for his G.o.d, as he cried:

"There rises the first growl of the slumbering demon of Antichrist, which, only too soon, shall possess almost the whole world. Soon, a year, or two, less than that, doubtless. Antichrist will dominate the earth's peoples. None will be able to trade, to buy or sell, unless they bear on their forehead or their _right_ hand, the Mark of the Beast. What will that mark be? I cannot tell. I do not know, no one save Antichrist, and the Devil who has incarnated him, can as yet know, I think."

Again that growl rose from the throats of some of the listeners. This time it was deeper, fuller more voices joined in it, and the savage note was more p.r.o.nounced.

Suddenly, a mighty roar of thousands of voices, mingled with the blare of bra.s.s instruments penetrated into the building from the street.

There followed, instantly, a general rising to their feet, and a rush of the people to the exits. The crush at the exits was terrible.

Screams of women mingled with the hoa.r.s.e cursings of men--men who had never uttered an oath before, found their mouth filled with hideous, blasphemous oaths. It was as if the very devil himself had suddenly possessed the crowd.

Ralph found himself alongside the Secretary of the church, the man who had preceded him in speaking. The pair watched and listened for a moment while noisily, slowly, painfully the people pa.s.sed out of the building.

Involuntarily there sprang to Ralph's lips, and, before he realized it, he was uttering the words:

"The whole herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and was choked."

The two men were strangers, yet as they turned and faced each other, by some common impulse they clasped hands. For one instant it looked as though each would have spoken. Then, as though some strange power had tied their tongues, they moved on silently, side by side, down the wide aisle of the church, and pa.s.sed out through the entrance doors of the now empty building.

The streets were filled with surging ma.s.ses of people, and there was a glare of ruddy flames, while dense volumes of smoke poured into the upper air from the first of two huge cars drawn by hundreds of excited men, boys, and even women and girls.

In the center of the platform of the first car was a huge, altar-like construction in polished iron or steel. The center of the altar was evidently a deep hollow cauldron, into which a score of men, costumed as satyrs, were pitchforking Bibles. The four sides of the Altar-cauldron had open bars, so that, fanned on every side by the double draught of the car's motion, and the fairly stiff breeze that was blowing, the furnace roared fiercely, fed, as it incessantly was by the copies of G.o.d's Word.

Hundreds of wildly-excited men and women--many seemed semi-drunken--attired in every conceivable grotesqueness of costume, and forming a kind of open-air fancy-dress ball, disported themselves shamelessly about the cauldron car, and the triumphal car that followed in its wake.

The latter was a gorgeous structure, finished in gold, purple, and imitation white marble. Its center was a kind of _tableaux vivant_.

On one side was an effigy of a parsonic kind of man, crucified head downwards upon a cross. A second side showed a theatre front with a staring announcement "_seven_ day performances." A third side showed a figure of "Bacchus" crowned with vine-leaves and grape-bunches. A fourth side showed an entrance to a Law Court, with an announcement: "Closed Eternally, for since there is no marriage, there is no divorce."

Above all this was a golden throne, and in a deep purple-plush-covered chair sat a florid, coa.r.s.ely-beautiful woman, with long hair of golden hue hanging down upon her shoulders and blowing in the breeze. She was literally naked, save for a ruffle of pink muslin about her waist.

Upon her head was a crown, in her right hand she held a gilded crozier.

The most wanton, hideous licentiousness was the order of the hour among the mob of fancy-costumed people.

Ralph Bastin and his companion followed in the wake of the foaming, raging sea of semi-mad people.

"The French Revolution business over again," said Ralph--he had to shout into his friend's ear to be heard.

His companion nodded an a.s.sent, then bawled back:

"Whither are they bound, I wonder?"

Ralph pointed to a banner bearing the inscription. "To St. Pauls."

The procession swept on, and seven minutes later the cars were rounded up in front of the open s.p.a.ce before the Cathedral.

A score of policemen had managed to muster on the upper step of the flight. But the rush of the mob was irresistible. They took entire possession of the steps and all the open s.p.a.ce around even to the head of Ludgate Hill.

Ralph had got separated from his companion, and found himself swept close up to the great triumphal car. Above him seated smilingly on her purple throne, in all her shameless nakedness, was the beautiful form of the foul souled harlot. Her gilded crozier was upheld between her naked knees, and now, in her right hand she held a goblet of champagne, just pa.s.sed up to her.

A bugle sounded for silence. The hush was instantaneous. Then as she held the goblet high aloft, her clear, shrill voice rang out in the toast she gave: