Part 20

She pulled back her hood, and a ripple of smiles played over her countenance--the Lepchas laughed too. Then as if they were all friends together, she asked: “Can you take us in--take us in?” and began shaking the rain from her garments at the outer stone. It must have been her cheerful manner that induced one of the women to make room next herself on a seat; the Lepcha men were more stolid, but all began to move when the strangers entered.

The Doctor soon detected a goat in the shanty--there was no doubt about it--and concluded to escape as soon as possible. But there they were--caught; caught as in a net of circumstances. Little did he or Adele know to what the circumstances would lead, but he said afterwards that it reminded him of St. Paul’s experience at Joppa with a sheet-net full of common things, four-footed beasts and fowls, unclean things in general; which later on proved not so unclean as he had at first thought; only in this case Adele and he were inside the net with the rest.

Some of the Lepchas knew a few words of English, but the more ancient universal language of signs and grunts proved to be more useful. Adele patted a chicken, and a Lepcha damsel patted the young goat, a kid. Both chicken and kid seemed of special value to the natives. Adele could not conjecture the reason. When the rain ceased and they all stepped outside she was further enlightened. Neither the wet Lepchas nor the bedraggled Christians desired to remain in that stuffy hut, both hurried to seek the fresh air and to reach the open; the whole crowd in fact, kid and chicken included. And out they scrambled, pell-mell, with a unanimity of action as natural as it was prompt. The natives formed a little group in the open, looking around to satisfy themselves that the clouds were dispersing. Through rifts in the mist near them came the clearer morning light, to all, from whatever part of the earth they had come, a foretaste of the brightest of days.

The natives gathered together, a little company, their leader carrying the kid, a boy following with the fowl, others straggling by twos and threes, yet now all of sober countenance.

Adele and the Doctor looked after them; there was evidently some purpose in the manner of those natives as they proceeded up the hill towards its crest, to the very place of observation they themselves had selected for the best view, and where they were going when they had been arrested by the shower. More than mere curiosity, a fellow-feeling, now suggested that they all go together; so, regardless of their wet and soiled garments, Adele and the Doctor soon found themselves willingly tramping up that hill along with the ragged natives. The leader looked askance at first, but when he noticed Adele beside one of his women, and the Doctor with his men, he made the best of it, accepted the situation, and kept ahead carrying the kid.

The path wound upwards, the ascent growing more steep. None could see far ahead when the processional commenced. Not until their march was well under way, not until the very last stage of the climb, not until near approach to the place they sought, not in fact until their own forms arose above the near foreground, did they witness the Glory in nature which was, and is, and is to be.

And as they surmounted the crest of the hill, so did the Celestial scenery beyond become visible to their mortal eyes, rising before them a sublime transformation scene--an ascension of truth beautiful in nature.

To Adele and the Doctor, a veritable transfiguration of the earth as they might imagine it glorified on the morning of a Resurrection.

The mighty summits, the eternal peaks, on this first day of the week, shone forth in the purer atmosphere of greater altitude, magnificent in proportions as a work in Creation, impressive in their glorious grandeur, refulgent as with the sacred glow of a physical rebirth.

The clouds were moving aside, as a curtain is withdrawn; and from the depths below, the valley and ravine, from forest and waterfall, rose the mist. That which covers, screens, or conceals in nature, like the fog, was passing away; that which is more permanent, ascending heavenward to form clouds; ascending as incense ascends; incense symbolic from ages past of the prayers of humanity.

The Holy of Holies of the Himalaya Cathedral was open before them.

The Veil of the Temple had been rent in twain.

XLII

ON HOLY GROUND

As the impressive scene unfolded, the Cathedral becoming more sublimely beautiful each moment, Adele watched the wonderful play of light--the refulgence. She was also profoundly impressed by the magnificent proportions of the picture then being illuminated before her very eyes by the Creator; and felt the breath of life come and go with emotion.

“It is the Glorious Beauty of Holiness,” she murmured, and then, kept silence before Him.

Now, next to Adele stood the native woman; and before them both was unrolled the same scene. To this Himalaya worshiper, Lepcha, Bhootanese, Nepaulese, Thibetan, or whatever tribe she might have been born, the effect was not the same as upon Adele. Familiarity with such sunrises in the mountains had dulled what little appreciation she might ever have had; but her religion had told her something which Adele did not know. From untold generations her people had been taught to regard that place as sacred. She had been brought there as a child, and now she was leading her own children there; and told the little ones: “The place whereon thou standest is holy ground.” She had also her own ideas as to why it was sacred; and that very morning had come to the holy ground to show the children why it was holy; but Adele knew nothing of all this.

Worldly wisdom might have judged this woman and Adele to be in no way alike, yet, here in this presence, where the holiness of beauty and the beauty of holiness were both in evidence, there was really a fundamental similarity.

Adele drew near the Doctor; he, too, had been keeping silent in the Holy Place.

“The Veil has been taken away,” said she.

“H’m, yes.”

“It is the most impressive sight I ever beheld.”

“Why so?”

“It is as a chancel should be.”

“Of course, the most beautiful portion of a cathedral.”

“Beauty is not all, I feel more than I see; the beauty is sacred here; the sacred feeling comes first, and then--oh, it is so beautiful!”

“It must be a Holy Place if it affects you that way.”

“Yes, a place for prayer, it seems natural to pray here; here one thinks upwards, and looks upwards.”

“Then the effect is spiritual as well as artistic.”

“Oh, don’t analyze! I don’t wish to reason at all,” said Adele. “For me it’s perfect. I’m satisfied. Just let me rest here, let me go and sit down, _and be a part of it_.”

She seated herself at the foot of a tree.

It would have been sacrilege to disturb her at that moment--a violation of sacred things in her experience. So, on the instant, thought the Doctor.

After a little reflection, the Doctor said to himself that this was not the time for Adele to “loaf and invite her soul.” He feared lest she was carrying her idealization entirely too far. Even the best in the world, if carried to excess, leads one into danger; and spiritual excesses are especially dangerous, either to youth or old age.

To sit at the feet of Nature, to admire and enjoy the Creator’s work, was one thing; to be so absorbed in Nature’s moods, and to become such a slave to emotion that all else is forgotten, would be quite another thing. Adele seemed to have forgotten the Lepchas, and himself, and even her own self; and to be totally absorbed in adoration of the scenery.

The Doctor had many times seen pious worshipers in certain phases of Hindooism, Buddhism, and Christianity, indulge in that sort of thing; but never in Shintoism or any really old form of faith which brought one close to nature, through nature’s activities and manifestations unidealized; where nature spoke for herself and mankind was silent before her. He suspected this excess of idealization, this becoming “a part of it,” as Adele had wished for, might become really a weakness in her character, and might lead her into danger. Such a frame of mind would certainly be fascinating to Adele, she was so made, she was constitutionally an idealist; but certainly it was not mentally healthful in relation to her duty to others; not a thing to be rooted out, but to be controlled lest the result should prove injurious.

The Doctor determined to break in upon her mood in some way. He recalled her last remark, that she was perfectly satisfied with her Cathedral, and only wished to rest and be a part of it.

“Adele, you said this Cathedral was complete.”

“It is to me.”

“Not if it is a cathedral as usually understood.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have idealized what we now see as the chancel?”

“Certainly, the place where the service is conducted.”

“May I ask what is the central feature in the service to which you and I are accustomed?”

“To administer; no doubt.”

“To administer; certainly--but what?”

She thought very seriously, trying to find suitable words. She was not accustomed to this sort of stand-up-and-deliver catechism; but finally she spoke:

“Some might say to administer the sacrifice; but I do not see how this can be possible. It is not a fact in nature; I cannot consider it true.”

“May I ask, why not?”

“You can never kill the truth; and Christ is not dead, but living; they are the same no matter how you think about it--Christ and the Truth.”

“But Truth was sacrificed in Him.”

“Never!” she cried. “That is an impossibility in nature. It only seems sacrificed; it never really is.”

“But He was sacrificed.”

“His great sacrifice of Himself for Truth’s sake was really His whole life work, and it was Perfection,” said Adele.

“His life, as well as His death,” acquiesced the Doctor, solemnly.

“Yes, a perfect work.”

“Well then, Adele, no other _idealized sacrifice_ in administering could make the service more complete, nor the atonement more adequate than it is.”

The atonement!

Yes. The at-one-ment--the Saving of the World--the Salvation of Mankind by the Truth.

* * * * *

And as they conversed thus, upon the Lepcha Holy Ground, the Doctor concluded that Adele’s meditations had not led her astray; but he felt constrained to say something further which had been on his mind from the first.

“Adele, with us the ministration is usually at the chancel rail.”

“Yes, or what corresponds to it.”

“Where from?”

“The altar; why do you ask?”

“Have you seen any altar in this Cathedral?”

Adele looked around in different directions, continually reverting to the chancel region she had idealized, as if it ought to be there. Surely there must be an altar in nature, or something she could idealize as such; for so many religions professed to have altars, from the earliest times down to the present day. She began to fear lest her imagery as to the Cathedral had failed her in a vital point. Once before she had thought she could discover some form or shape in the higher altitudes which might suggest an altar; in every case the light had been so dazzling, or what she tried to see was so vague, that her ideal had never been satisfied in its most vital need; and now with the chancel itself open, the veil rent, she saw nothing to suggest an altar. Where was it? Had it been there? If so, then what had become of it--the altar?

XLIII

SACRIFICE

Adele was still sitting at the foot of the tree; some said it was a bo-tree; others did not have knowledge enough to tell what kind of a tree it was. She did not think of this at all, as she sat dreaming upon the magnificent spectacle before her. In her mind she was seeking for an answer to the Doctor’s inquiry; then her eyes, while searching for some object which might be idealized in some degree as an altar, were drawn to the immediate foreground, away from the chancel, to something in her own vicinity, quite near herself.

Upon the same knoll, a short distance from her, boughs of foliage were festooned with cords and ropes upon which hung hundreds of small pieces of bright-colored muslin cut fantastically; also pieces of white textile, the size of a large napkin, covered with printed or crudely stamped characters in the native language. Hanging in garlands from bough to bough, fluttering in the wind among the leaves, they were about as effective as yacht signals strung out for decoration. Signals they were, indeed, but of quite another kind; the fluttering prayer-signals of the poor Lepchas, or Bhootanese, or Thibetans, arranged in a semi-circle around their sacred place. Wafted heavenward by the breeze, such signals were presented as acceptable to the Good Spirits, and were considered to bear upwards the supplications of poor humanity. They were the symbols of prayer used by the same worshipers in whose hut Adele and the Doctor had found a welcome shelter from the storm.

At first sight Adele thought: “How very crude and tawdry!” A second glance told her the decorations symbolized something, and she felt more sympathetic. The bright colors and the printed texts on white were certainly newer, fresher, and cleaner than the garments of the Lepchas themselves; they must have been selected, and they had cost something; only a few annas perhaps, or possibly some widow’s mite.

“Yes, the effect is cheerful; a happy one,” thought Adele. “One doesn’t feel despondent when looking at them.” How could it be otherwise when each praying-signal fluttered a message of thanks, or propitiation?--all of them in remembrance of the Good Spirits. And then she thought she detected among them a familiar arrangement of colors; what!--could it be possible? Yes, an old faded-out, partly-torn specimen of “Old Glory,” hardly recognizable, but yet there, for the sake of its being a new arrangement of colors, probably its true significance utterly unknown. This moved Adele intensely, giving her a curious new emotion, blending her patriotic feeling with the sacred things of others. Finally she concluded that all the signals were really artistic from the Lepcha point of view, for she noticed an expression of much satisfaction pass over the countenances of the natives when they found their sacred prayer-colors were still so bravely fluttering after the storm; still in motion where the Spirit of the Air could easily see and hear. The poor woman with whom Adele had walked up pointed to some as if they were her own private signals, but as Adele did not manifest much outward enthusiasm about them, a sad expression came over the face of the nature-worshiper. She seemed to realize that she ought not to expect these strangers to understand her feelings. Perhaps the strangers would scorn such things--old pieces of muslin picked up in the bazaar; they could afford yards and yards of it if they chose. So the poor woman turned away disappointed, to seek sympathy among her own kindred who could better understand how such things were acceptable to the Good Spirit.

It was profoundly interesting to see those two at this time, so near in body, and yet so far apart in religious interpretations; yet each upon what was to her “holy ground.” Such are the mysterious operations of the Spirit of Religion in Nature.

Adele was just beginning to realize the varied conflicting elements in her surroundings when she and the Doctor heard voices behind them--a weird chant--a primitive monotonous crooning, but wild--the natives’ hymn. Around a thicket the people had gathered, singing this invocation. Adele and the Doctor drew near, and both of them being musical they involuntarily attempted to catch the higher notes and to join in; but it proved to be too much for them in every way, especially to Adele’s cultivated ear. The very simplicity of the strange sounds, all spirit and no art, made it difficult to detect any method, only variations of monotonous notes and cries; sometimes rhythm, but no trace of melody, at least to civilized ears. It was painfully monotonous; aye, there was pain indeed in that native chant of invocation. No grand aria of the art divine, nor “wail of the orchestra” in modern times, had more pain to the spirit in man, than that primitive wail. All that Adele and the Doctor could do was to feel for them, yet not be of them.

The thicket was formed by underbrush which had sprung up around some taller trees. There was an open space inside, with several rocks and stones which had evidently been brought there by the worshipers. One rock larger than the rest stood on one side, the others scattered with apparent lack of method. The entrance was wide, so that all near at hand could witness what was going on within the circle. And while the weird song continued outside, the people drew nearer and nearer; the solemn moment arrived for the Leader and his Helper to enter this thicket--the Lepcha Holy of Holies--and stand before their altar.

As Abraham of old, in mature manhood, Leader of “the Chosen People” among races, did enter a thicket and there offer a sacrifice well pleasing to the Lord: so did this poor native at the end of the Nineteenth Century, enter his Holy Place, a thicket in the Creator’s Cathedral of the Himalayas; and there did offer a sacrifice well pleasing to the Good Spirit to whom a thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand years.

The first offering was the fowl; and as the dying spasms of the bird scattered blood upon the stones, and upon the primitive priest, and upon others who stood near enough, the wild chant rose above the sound of flapping wings, and with the final throes of death mingled the wails of the worshipers.

To Adele, whose experience in killing of any kind was limited, the sight of life-blood flowing was most painful, even obnoxious. When a little girl in the country during her school-day vacations, she had always avoided seeing the fowls killed; not only because it destroyed her appetite for them afterwards, but because she felt a most positive and acute sympathy for the fowls. In later years, if anyone had called such proceedings “a sacrifice,” she would have been much surprised. On this occasion, face to face with it, her sympathy was strong enough to give her a sympathetic pain in the back of her own neck when the fowl was stabbed, pierced unto death.

When Adele was in the hospital acting as volunteer nurse, her experience had been to assist in curing, not in the surgical department; and if such had been the case, she would not have remained there a day. Now, when she found herself a quasi-participant in these Lepcha proceedings, eye-witness of a bloody wounded fowl flapping about, the situation was positively repulsive; and very difficult to sympathize with, even when she knew the act to be a feature in religious worship. She looked up at the Doctor.

Doctor Wise was absorbed in studying the movements of the priest.

The Lepcha stood over the kid, with his knife drawn ready to take its innocent life.

Adele caught sight of him in that attitude, and gave a shudder. She knew she could not endure to witness the next act. Naught could have induced her to turn spiritually from the poor nature-worshipers at such a moment, yet she could not accept their primitive methods as other than downright cruelty to-day. The sharp glittering knife, the rough stone, the priest’s stolid expression; and above all else, the unsuspecting little kid, so docile, as if among friends. Verily, the trustful eyes of the little animal seemed to speak the very words: “Ye are my friends, while I am yet with you.”

Adele buried her face upon the Doctor’s shoulder, and only heard without seeing the sacrifice which followed.

And behold! one of the most natural yet mysterious of all the phenomena in nature at once followed: Adele, embodying in her own personality the progress made in appreciation of religious ritual upon earth since primitive times, while spared the terror of realism, was more deeply affected than by realism itself; the things done had greater scope and power, the spiritual impression was far more profound and lasting than the effect of any spectacle which had actually been witnessed, and this in the very nature of truth progressive. The mind is greater than the eye, the Spirit of Truth is greater than the mind, the real growth is not in the intellect but in the spirit; aye, “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. Knowledge is power, but the spirit giveth immortality.”

Adele heard the cry of pain, the cry of life departing. It was only that of an animal, an innocent kid, but it and its innocence stood in lieu of many human beings. She heard the chant of the natives calling aloud, heavenward! above the cries of the innocent sacrifice; the people seemed themselves to be suffering. They were, yet they were not; not physically, yet their cries sounded as if the knife might be entering their very vitals. No realism apparent to mortal eyes could have been so powerful to affect them spiritually--the noblest, the divine in their personality; not unless nature itself had witnessed by taking part; not unless the veil of the Himalaya Temple had closed again, or “the sun had been darkened over all the earth,” or some such occurrence had transpired to direct attention to an event affecting humanity at large.

Then the strangest part of this primitive ritual followed; enduring in its action, and lasting in memory. An event implying mystery took place, a seeming mystery was suggested, a philosophic truth inculcated. How so by such a primitive uneducated people, yet able to embody what to this day dominates the profoundest concepts of philosophic man?

With the passing of the life by sacrifice, the life from the shed blood as it curdled and sank into the ground, went also the moans and dirges of those for whom the sacrifice had been made. The Lepcha voices changed in quality, manifesting great gain in force of conviction, rose higher and higher, and finally gave vent to cries of exultation, aspiration, exaltation--they chanted a triumph: a victory leading them onwards and upwards towards something beyond in the direction of the Eternal Summits magnificent before their very eyes. It was as if they saw the truth in their faith no longer militant and sacrificing, but triumphant in the Celestial Realm.

Strange, yet a natural consequence of the truth as they saw it: as the life of the kid departed by the blood of sacrifice returning into the earth among the grass of the field from which it had come and upon which it had fed, there arose a new life--a resurrection from the depths of misery and woe; a new song--a triumphal song--a song of the Saved Ones. The native choristers seemed possessed with renewed hope and vitality; and acting under these influences they found the burden of their song changed to suit a new condition which they certainly discerned.

In the case of these Himalaya nature-worshipers, this ordinary killing of a beast for food, as practiced by their ancestors from time immemorial, had been used by the Mind of Nature, the Creator Father, to teach a philosophic truth through the religious sense; the full significance of which was not learned by humanity until millenniums after those primitive ancestors had found it to be a fact in nature.

Truly, this ancient ritual was profound in significance; it had been so from the beginning.