by A. J. Cronin
When reasoned with for some misdemeanour, Paul would turn quite blank, staring away into space with evasive eyes. It was impossible to be severe with him, for the mere mention of correction caused him to wake up at night in fits of crying which left him, and the entire household, exhausted. In all but one respect he was devoid of gratitude. Passive in this attitude towards Betty and Louise, he blandly tolerated Henry and avoided Mrs Adams, who was sometimes sharp with him. Towards Sammy he displayed the most abject devotion; in fact, he followed him around in a fashion that was really embarrassing. He had loved the smaller boy at first sight and could scarcely bear to be away from him.
This was the situation when America entered the war. Henry bad harder work and longer hours, his salary didn’t go so far, a sense of strain seemed to fall upon the Adams home. However, they got through the winter without mishap and with the coming of spring everyone began to feel brighter.
Then, one hot day in June, Paul came down with a sore throat. He was put to bed and no one thought much about it. But next morning he was worse and Mrs Adams called in the family doctor. When he came down, after an absurdly long time upstairs, his serious words changed the complexion of the case. The boy, disregarding all injunctions, had gone swimming in a nearby creek, a place strictly forbidden to all children. Now he had a septic infection, probably streptococcal, was dangerously ill, and would certainly be worse.
For a week there was misery in the Adams home. Everyone moved on tiptoe while Paul, isolated in his attic bedroom, tossed and muttered in a raging delirium. The doctor held out little hope – it was a virulent germ, the patient’s resistance was nil. Yet, by the strange inconsistency of fate, he survived. At the end of a desperate ten days he was out of danger, feebly begging to see his beloved Sammy. This was impossible, because of the danger of contagion, but notes and fruit were sent up by the children, the house came to life again, and everyone was happy and relieved.
On Saturday, two mornings later, when Henry Adams went in to call Sammy for breakfast, he almost dropped from the shock of what he saw. In the bed with the sleeping Sammy, his arm thrown around his little friend’s neck, breathing close to him, was Paul. He had crept in without disturbing the other boy, content to be beside him, humble as ever in his affection. He sent his sliding gaze past Henry Adams and smiled. As for Sammy, he sickened the same week – never seemed to have a chance, though everything was done for him – and died of the infection four days later …
I was away at the time. The letter I sent Henry, though full of heartfelt sympathy, must have sounded trite and empty to the anguished father. I knew how deep had been this silent man’s affection for his son; Sammy had been the mainspring of his life. This was the thought which spurred me to bitter indignation as I wrote bidding him free himself of this insufferable brat for whom he had done everything, who had made him this tragic recompense. There were institutions for such children, suitable orphanages where everything would be done for the unhappy Paul. ‘For heaven’s sake,’ I said, ‘get rid of him.’
The autumn had gone and winter was in the air when I returned from California and went out to visit Henry Adams. As I came round the bend of the suburban road and approached the stricken house, I drew up with a queer pang, between amazement and disbelief. There, working in his garden, covering his herbaceous border, now bleak and flowerless, against the coming frost, was Henry, thinner, rather pinched with the cold, in the same old clothes. And helping him with rake and wheelbarrow … a small boy. For an instant my heart turned over within me, I thought that I had seen a ghost – then I saw that it was Paul.
I went slowly towards them.
‘Weil,’ I said, after an exchange of greetings, ‘you still have him?’
‘Yes.’ Henry paused, avoiding my gaze. ‘He’s improved quite a bit lately … He’s quieter and brighter … some gland tablets they’re giving him.’
There was a long silence while we both watched the boy carrying fresh salt hay from the wheelbarrow. As he drew near he flushed under my hostile stare: the most human sign I had yet discovered in him. But it was not enough to turn the edge of my indignation. Overcome by a sense of bitter injustice, I exclaimed:
‘All I can say … he’s lucky, this Paul Piotro … whatever his wretched name is!’
‘You’ll have no more trouble with the name.’ Henry put his arm round the boy’s shoulder, turned, and gave me a quiet, half-ashamed smile. ‘He’s Paul Adams now. You see, we’ve adopted him.’
Chapter Forty
As we grow older, the city of the spirit has more and more importance for us. Unless a man be a blind and heedless fool, when he reaches the years of maturity he will pause occasionally, amidst the racket of the world, to ask himself: ‘ Why am I here? And where am I going?’
In youth time moves too fast, distractions are too numerous, and the end of the road seems too far away to permit of such self analysis. At least, so it was with me. Medical students as a rule are not remarkable for their reverence, and I was no different from others of the breed. In the anatomy rooms, dissecting formalin-impregnated remains, the human body seemed to me no more than a complex machine. None of the autopsies showed anything I could identify with an immortal soul. When I thought of God it was with a superior smile, indicative of biological scorn for such an outworn myth.
But when, as a qualified doctor, I went out into the world, to the mining valleys in South Wales and, in the practice of my profession, saw life at first hand, observed the courage and good humour of my fellow creatures struggling under great hardships, for the first time I began to penetrate into the realm of the spirit. As I assisted at the miracle of birth, sat with the dying in still hours of night, heard the faint inexorable beating of the dark wings of death, my outlook became less self-assured. Through the slow pangs of experience, new values were made apparent to me. I realised that the compass of existence held more than my textbooks had revealed, more than I had ever dreamed of. In short, I lost my superiority, and this, though I was not then aware of it, is the first step toward finding God.
I have told you of Olwen Davies, the middle-aged district nurse who for more than twenty years, with fortitude and patience, calmness and cheerfulness, served the people of Tregenny. This unconscious selflessness, which above all seemed the keynote of her character, was so poorly rewarded, it worried me. Although she was much beloved by the people, her salary was most inadequate. And late one night after a particularly strenuous case I ventured to protest to her as we drank a cup of tea together.
‘Nurse,’ I said, ‘ why don’t you make them pay you more? It’s ridiculous that you should work for so little.’
She raised her eyebrows slightly. But she smiled.
‘I have enough to get along.’
‘No, really,’ I persisted, ‘ you ought to have an extra pound a week at least. God knows you’re worth it.’
There was a pause. Her smile remained, but her gaze held a gravity, an intensity which startled me.
‘Doctor,’ she said, ‘if God knows I’m worth it, that’s all that matters to me.’
The words were little enough, but the meaning in her eyes was plain to see. Never for a moment had she implied that she was a religious woman, yet now I realised that her whole existence, in its service and self-sacrifice, was a dedication, a perpetual testimony to her belief in a Supreme Being. And in a flash of understanding I sensed the rich significance of her life and the comparative emptiness of my own.
I am no professor of theology, I have never felt myself called upon to stand up in a public place to lead a prayer meeting. Nor am I concerned here with any one particular sect or creed to the exclusion of all others. I speak simply of belief in God, a subject which many shy away from as though it were in questionable taste, but which is today surely more deserving of attention than at any other period in human history.
Never before, indeed, has the matter been so urgent or so vital. One half of the world, bound by an atheistic ideology, has engaged itself in a r
elentless aggression against religion, a ruthless and tireless campaign to stamp into the mud forever the concept of a Creator. While we, the other half, despite the spiritual hunger gnawing persistently at our hearts, are in the main so apathetic in our attitude towards God, so dead to the true meaning of existence, as to be heedless of the dreadful dangers to the life of the spirit which now threaten us. For many, indeed, the trend of modern thought, stressing the advances of science and the obsolescence of tradition, has brought the reality of God seriously into question. Others, distrusting a universe which seems clouded with doubt, conflict, and fear, seek only to escape from the future in a variety of distractions.
It is the pressing consciousness of such a crisis in human affairs which leads me to define some of the processes of mind and spirit that have shaped my faith.
At the outset it should be stated that the only motivating power in supernatural faith must be God Himself, God cannot be proved like a mathematical equation, nor can His existence be demonstrated like a problem in a book of Euclid. Obviously an infinite Being, cannot be rationalised in finite terms – our human incapacity is utterly incapable of wholly understanding Him. Nevertheless there are certain simple arguments which help us to discover Him.
If we consider the physical universe, in its mystery and wonder, its order and intricacy, its awe-inspiring immensity, we cannot escape the notion of a primary Creator. Who on a still summer night dare gaze upward at the constellations, glittering in infinity, without the overpowering conviction that such a cosmos came to being through something more than blind indeterminate chance? And our own world, whirling through space in measured rhythm, unfolding its regular progression of the seasons, surely is more than a meaningless ball of matter, thrown off by merest accident from the sun?
Reject if you will as pure imagery the Biblical presentation of God, shaping the world with His own hands in six days. Smile – should you feel disposed – at Michelangelo’s bearded patriarchal figure in the Sistine chapel – prototype of that God the Creator whom men of humble faith accepted in the past – sending the spark of life from His finger into Adam. Accept evolution with its fossils and elementary species, its scientific doctrine of natural causes. And still you are confronted with the same mystery, primary and profound. Ex nikilo nihil, as the Latin tag of our school days has it: nothing can come of nothing.
Some years ago in London, where I had in my spare time organised a working boys’ club, I invited a distinguished zoologist to deliver an evening lecture to our members. His was a brilliant address, although to my concern rather different from what I had expected. Acting no doubt on the idea that youth should be told ‘the truth’, my friend chose as his subject. ‘The Beginning of Our World.’ In a frankly atheistic approach he described how, aeons and aeons ago, the pounding prehistoric seas upon the earth’s primeval crust had generated by physico-chemical reaction a pulsating scum from which there had emerged – though he did not say how – the first primitive form of animation, the protoplasmic cell. It was strong meat for lads who had been brought up on a simpler diet. When he concluded there was polite applause. In the somewhat awkward pause that followed, a mild and very average youngster rose nervously to his feet.
‘Excuse me, sir.’ He spoke with a slight stammer. ‘You’ve explained how these b-big waves beat upon the shore; b-b-but how did all that water get there in the first place?’
The naïve question, so contrary to the scientific trend of the address, took everyone by surprise. There was a silence. The lecturer looked annoyed, hesitated, slowly turned red. Then, before he could answer, the whole club burst into a howl of laughter. The elaborate structure of logic offered by this test-tube realist had been crumpled by one word of challenge from a simple-minded boy.
The truth is, in all the investigations of science into the nature and purpose of these tremendous awe-inspiring processes, these processes stretching backward into the incalculable abysses of time, of which we can have no more than a fleeting glimpse, there is no valid basis for denying the existence of God. Rather is one driven to conclude that in primordial creation, in the motivation of the universe and the operation of the natural laws, there is, has been, and always will be a Supreme Intelligence.
The stumbling block to this belief, for many earnest and well-intentioned people, lies in the evil and pain so widely prevalent in the life of the world. How can this Divine Being be credible, they ask, in the face of a tormented world – a world afflicted by storm and flood, by famine, pestilence, earthquake, and lightning stroke, by dreadful and agonising diseases, by death in its cruellest forms? Surely, they cry, your God was a most imperfect Architect to produce so ungodly a result.
There is an answer to this difficulty, and nowhere has it been expressed more simply, or in more beautiful words, than in that great cry from the heart which is found in the Book of Job. Here, indeed, was one who understood the true meaning and purpose of the brief span of man’s earthly years. But we, alas, in this materialistic age, obsessed by the pursuit of pleasure, driven by an insatiable craving for distraction, forget that mere enjoyment is not the be-all and end-all of existence. If we accept God and our own immortality, we understand that our lives are not meant to be a joy ride but a time – all too short – of preparation; a moment, in terms of eternity, of testing and endurance, when we stand poised, so to speak, upon the threshold of the hereafter. We are indeed destined to suffer, and the more we try to insulate ourselves against suffering the more we shall suffer. One of the wisest yet humblest men who ever lived, Thomas à Kempis, wrote this: ‘So long as suffering appears grievous to thee and thou seekest to fly from it, so long will it be ill with thee and the tribulation from which thou fliest will everywhere follow thee.’
By our acceptance of discomfort and pain, of disappointment and misfortune, by drinking to the dregs the bitter cup of sorrow, we survive the supreme test of submission to the will of God. We acknowledge the vanity of our desires, of the earthly treasures we so feverishly seek and cherish. Strengthened in spirit we submit. Thus it was with Job when, he cried aloud in that sublime, that tremendous act of faith: ‘Let come on me what Will … Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.’ Then; went on joyfully, rapt with a new vision: ‘I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee.’
It is this ‘seeing eye’, this inner infusion of light which alone can show us God, for in the last analysis, reason as we may, burrowing inward with our feeble antlike processes of thought, we cannot even scratch the surface of the Infinite. The revelation of God comes only from the heart.
During a recent visit to Italy I drove out from Florence one glorious afternoon to a famous monastery in the hills near Fiesole. There I was privileged to visit the beautiful fifteenth-century church, to examine the exquisite illuminated manuscripts, to view the magnificent works of art, all ‘raised to the honour and glory of the Lord.’ But it was later, when I wandered into the little monastery garden, that I discovered the greatest treasure of them all. There I fell into conversation with an old man, a gentle soul, bent with toil and rheumatism yet still bright of eye, who for more than thirty years had tilled that patch of earth, making work his constant prayer, and who, answering the question which I put to him, pointed to the orchard which was his special care and smiled. ‘I see my cherry trees in bud, and then in flower, and then in fruit. And then I believe in God.’
If we could have one-hundredth part of such faith, such trust, if we could only give ourselves up with such completeness, then should we find ourselves upon the path towards God. The first step is surrender: ‘ I am nothing, I know nothing.’ Yet the farther our steps continue along that pathway, the greater our confidence becomes, the more our knowledge increases, until at last it reaches a sure conviction. And when one beholds, even though it be faintly, the first glimmer of that ultimate vision, there comes upon one a terrible awareness of the blind futility, the worthlessness of life without it.
While still a practising physic
ian, I attended a man, a public figure in a northern town, who had all his life prided himself upon his atheism. He had quarrelled with his only daughter and disowned her because she married a schoolmaster who was devoutly religious. Towards the end of his life, however, when stricken by an incurable malady, a strange change came over this old sceptic Now that death’s shadow lay painfully upon him he was taken less by a change of heart than by an almost passionate desire to justify himself m the eyes of his son-in-law. Time and time again he would wander round to his daughter’s home to engage the younger man in argument If he wavered he did not show it, for always he concluded with the remark:
‘Don’t delude yourself. I’m not repentant. I still don’t believe in God.’
To which one day his daughter, by a stroke of genius, replied:
“But, Father, He believes in you.’
This simple remark swept away the last of the old man’s resistance. And it is indeed a thought which might serve for all of us. Whatever we may think, whatever we may do, we are still God’s children. He is waiting for us. And it takes only one word of faith to acknowledge Him.
Abraham Lincoln went upon his knees each night and turned his thoughts towards heaven. Are we now too worldly-wise to follow this great example? Through the centuries, countless human beings have shaped their lives, with true nobility and shining example, upon God. He has brought courage to the weak, strength to the weary, hope to those lost in the shadows of despair. He is everywhere, above and around, on the ocean and in the sky. He is in each one of us, if we will only seek Him.
