The Chest of Cedar

I

IN the central district of a large manufacturing town in the north of England stand two churches, on opposite sides of the street.

One of these churches, that on the south side, has a Palladian front and a gloomy portal. The smoke of the city has deeply engrained itself in the walls, and penetrated to the remotest recesses of the interior. The windows are few and dirty, the light is bad, and the interior, which is vast, smells like a sepulchre. A board on the outside informs those who can read the smoke-blackened letters that the minister is the Reverend Julius Sahara, D.D., and that divine service is held on Sundays at 11 A.M. and 6.30 P.M. Also that marriages are ‘solemnized.’ The word fits the place. If you wish to begin your wedded life in the depths of gloom, you should have the marriage ‘ solemnized ’ in Dr. Sahara’s church.

The church on the north side is the opposite in more senses than one. It is aggressively modern and ostentatiously artistic. Its architecture betrays no recognizable tradition, and is not even ecclesiastical. You might take it for a large and handsome private house were it not for the notice-board outside. In substance the information on this board is similar to that on its opposite neighbor, except that it bears, or bore not long ago, the name of another pastor — the Reverend Gabriel Saccarin, also D.D. The lettering is of brilliant gold and glitters in the morning sun. And near by is another board or tablet on which is inscribed a long list of the mighty dead, all of whom, says the legend below, threw in their lot with the enlightened denomination whose members worship within. It was perhaps a fortunate circumstance for Dr. Saccarin and his flock that the great men claimed by the board were beyond the reach of cross-examination.

The contrast in the outward appearance of these two churches was reproduced, at the time this history begins, in the doctrines preached within their walls. I forget at the moment the names of the sects severally represented by the two churches; but I remember that they were known locally as the Saharists and the Saccarists. And I regret to add that the two pastors, who were not on good terms, had worse names for each another. Saccarin called his rival a ‘Moribundist,’ which Sahara countered by calling Saccarin an ‘Ad Captandumist.’ Politeness apart, it must be confessed that these latter names were not altogether inappropriate. Sahara stood in the tradition of Calvin and had a horror of modern thought. Saccarin, on the other hand, knew of no ‘thought’ except the modern variety, and did not recognize any ‘thought’ as valid which was more than seven years old.

The contrast was further emphasized by the difference in the personalities of the two men. Sahara was old; Saccarin was relatively young. Sahara was the inflexible embodiment of Justice; Saccarin was, or was said to be, the pliant messenger of Love. The manner and voice of Sahara were attuned to the requirements of the Day of Judgment; Saccarin was most in his element at a tea-party. Sahara was cold and forbidding; Saccarin had a passion for shaking hands. You never dared to shake hands with Sahara; but when you met Saccarin you seemed to be shaking hands all the time.

Sahara’s church was empty; Saccarin’s was full; and the filling of this had resulted, in large measure, from the emptying of that. It was as if two great tanks had been placed side by side and the water of the one drawn off into the other by means of a subterranean pipe. Sahara’s income had gradually diminished until he had become as poor as the poorest of the church-mice who formed the bulk of his congregation. Saccarin was rich: he had an income which would have been acceptable to a Cabinet minister. Sahara lived in lodgings at thirty shillings a week, board included. Saccarin was building a huge house on a hill-top. Sahara wrote his sermons on the back of letters or money-lenders’ circulars, and kept them in a tub. Saccarin wrote his with an expensive typewriter and kept them in a chest of cedar, which he had purchased for ninety pounds. It was a noble chest, the work of cunning craftsmen in the olden time. It stood upon the feet of lions; a coat of arms was displayed on the lid; a bishop’s mitre was carved at either end, and a group representing Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac covered the front. ‘ The word of God must be worthily housed.’ A chest to house his sermons; a great mansion to house the chest; and a covering principle for both propositions. Saccarin’s conscience was at ease.

II

Dr. Saccarin was ‘a live man.’ No fine-spun theories, no obsolete theological dogmas, no antiquated notions of any kind about him. All was up-todate. His sermons were ‘right there.’ They hit modern life, and the latest phase of modern life, in the very bull’s eye. They were discussed on the Exchange and at the political clubs; they were reported verbatim in Monday’s paper on the next page to the ‘ Market Intelligence ’; and it is authentically related that a great surgeon, in the midst of a capital operation on the brain, paused at a critical moment to remark to his colleague, ‘I say, Biggar, you ought to come and hear Saccarin. His sermon last Sunday on the Progress of Surgery was the finest utterance I ever heard.’

Dr. Saccarin’s philosophy, which had a fine note of modernity, may be summarized as follows. The end for which the world is created is not happiness (an obsolete conception) but — education. The Universe is best understood by thinking of it as a university. The human race is a vast mutual improvement society; the nations of the world are affiliated academies in the Cosmic School; and God is the Supreme Author of the educational code and sole Minister of Instruction — a schoolmaster and not a taskmaster. All events, all objects, all laws, whether of nature or morality, have an educational reference; they are ‘lessons’ in disguise; to find their ‘lesson’ is to find their reason and their final cause.

Saccarin had discovered a new variety of the philosopher’s stone, by means of which he could, at a moment’s notice, transmute any object in the world or any event in daily life into the pure gold of an edifying ‘lesson.’ His discernment of the educational significance of things had the quality of genius. An item of news would furnish him with a theme, a change in the weather would give him a text. If, at ten o’clock on Saturday night, the boys in the street were calling a ‘ late special ’ of the evening paper, Saccarin would rush out, buy the sheet, turn up the special news,— a revolution in Turkey, a prize-fight in Nebraska, — and next morning the ‘ lesson’ of that event would be served up piping hot to a packed congregation of the most impressionable heads in the city. There was scarcely a great poem in the language, a picture in the National Gallery, or a statue in the public park, which the genius of this preacher had not forced to yield a contribution to the educational designs of the universe. Artists would occasionally write to him suggesting their works as appropriate topics of discourse. A young poet in the congregation produced a volume of verse, bearing evident signs of an expectation (which was not disappointed) that Saccarin would preach on the poems. The poems were atrocious but the sermons were admirable. The whole scheme of things, as Saccarin saw it, was acting on the principle of that poet.

The ‘lessons’ were all of the same type. The assassination of the Czar, rightly interpreted, was a proof of the Moral Order; the victory of the local champion illustrated the friendliness of nature. Whatever your first impressions of these things may have been, Saccarin’s sermon would bring you round in a trice to a proper frame of mind. Had the malignancy of all the evils in the world been suddenly increased a thousandfold, it would have made no difference. Had the planet exploded under his nose and the whole human race been blown sky-high, leaving him and his congregation intact on some fragment of the debris, it would have been a mere opportunity for the exercise of Saccarin’s genius, and next morning would have found him explaining to the crowded pews that it was all right. Unless a planet occasionally exploded, he would have asked, how would the other planets ever learn to behave themselves properly? His principles were so elastic that they could be stretched to cover anything; and their elasticity was their strength. Crimes and calamities, plotted treacheries and disastrous mistakes — all were for edification. For this the bird sings, the sunset glows, the butterfly spreads her wings, the gale makes music in the trees; for this the captive moans, the lover sighs, and the murderer whets his knife; for this men perish in the coal-mine, sink in the shipwreck, rot in the slums.

For twenty years Saccarin had been engaged in this occupation, and during that time he had extracted from the universe over seventeen hundred lessons, all new and all up-to-date. I cannot say that the whole seventeen hundred were in perfect harmony with one another. There were discrepancies. But inasmuch as nobody, not even Saccarin himsel f, remembered more than a small fraction of the total, the discrepancies were not observed and can hardly be counted as a drawback. The congregation was held together, not by the memory of the lessons already given, but by the expectation of the lessons yet to come. They would have been content to continue forever on that basis, supported by the comfortable faith that all these ‘ lessons,’ if thrown into the pot and boiled together, would yield some sort of nutritive broth for the soul.

But, though forgotten, the lesssons were not lost. They were carefully preserved in the great chest of cedar. By virtue of its contents this chest had acquired in Saccarin’s eyes the character of a sacred object. It was his Ark of God, and the scent of the precious wood pervading his study, and steeping his manuscripts, was like the odor of incense to a devotee. Within the six sides of that fragrant tabernaculum lay the Meaning of Things. The Concentrated Extract of the Universe was there. There, unveiled by Saccarin, were the educative purposes of the whole world, and the moral lesson of every important event that, had happened in twenty years, arranged under heads, expressed in irreproachable English, and plainly stamped in imperishable ink by the most expensive typewriter on the market.

III

On a certain Sunday evening when Saccarin, tired with a hard day’s work, was reposing in his big study chair, he suddenly thought that the fragrance of the cedar had lost its freshness, while another and less pleasant odor seemed to be arising from the neighborhood of the chest. He had preached two sermons that day: the first on the riots in Chicago, the second on the lesson of a Norwegian waterfall. In both of them he had surpassed himself in eloquence. But the effort had left him exhausted and depressed, and he was in the act of asking himself whether a man who has drawn seventeen hundred lessons from the universe may not justly claim a long holiday, when the change in the odor of the chest arrested his attention and diverted his thoughts.

He crossed the room, opened the chest, buried his head in the interior; and for some moments, his wife, who was seated by the fire, heard him sniffing loudly.

‘My dear,’ he said at length, ‘I am convinced that a fermentation of gases is going on among the contents of this chest. I believe there is something wrong with the ink of my typewriter. I noticed it gave out a pecul iar odor yesterday when I was composing my notes on the Norwegian waterfall. I must send the ink to be analyzed.’

Resuming his seat he relapsed into silence. After a time he continued, —

‘ My dear, I’m not easy in my mind. I don’t like the odor of the chest. And I’m anxious about myself. I feel that I am coming to the end of my tether. There’s a great dearth of edifying matter in the world just now. I believe we are on the eve of a moral famine. I’ve often thought it might come — a time when the universe shuts off the supply of all the indications which m ight reveal its educational purpose. If that happens we shall go to the workhouse.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Mrs. Saccarin, ‘you’re only tired. There’s sure to be something good in to-morrow’s paper. And even if there is n’t, what does it matter? Preach your old sermons over again.’

‘They would n’t be up-to-date,’ said Saccarin.

‘Touch them up a bit, or change the texts.’

‘H’m — I don’t know. Not so easy as you think. And what if fermentation has really begun in the chest? I believe it has. I heard a distinct sound of fizzing when I opened the chest a moment ago. It’s just possible that to-morrow morning we shall find the whole seventeen hundred manuscripts reduced to a mass of pulp.’

‘Rubbish!’ cried Mrs. Saccarin. ‘You need a holiday. We’ve plenty of money. Why not take a trip to the United States? You’d enjoy it. And you’d get a new stock of lessons. I’m told there’s no place like America for providing a live preacher with subjects.’

‘Yes, America’s a great country,’ said Saccarin, as he rose to go to bed. ‘I think I’ll take the trip. But meanwhile I feel as though something horrible was going to happen. I tell you, I don’t like the odor of the chest. It doesn’t smell right.’

Saccarin’s dreams that night were nothing less than awful. He thought he stood beside the chest and heard the sound of a diabolical fermentation going on within. The interior was boiling like a cauldron and froth was issuing from the joints and from underneath the lid. The froth formed itself into great balls, which grew and grew, and filled the house, and poured from the chimneys, and spread into space, until they covered the church and overwhelmed the new mansion on the hill. Finally a huge globe of froth descended just where Saccarin stood and suffocated him. He awoke in agony, to find his head under the bedclothes.

He rose early and his first act was to examine the chest. It was all right. He sniffed it all round; the cedar had recovered its fragrance. He stopped the clock on the mantelpiece that he might listen more attentively. The fizzing had subsided. There was no sign of fermentation within.

A moment later Mrs. Saccarin, excited and radiant, rushed into the room with the morning paper in her hand.

‘Great news!’ she cried, ‘Button’s Bank has failed!’

‘Glorious!’ answered Saccarin, as he snatched the paper from his wife’s hands. ‘Too good to be true! I ’ve been longing for a great bank failure for years. It’s the finest subject a man can have — teeming with lessons. Yes, here it is! “ Failure of Button’s Bank. Widespread financial ruin.” Why, it gives me a new lease of life! We shall have to enlarge the church again.’

‘But suppose our leading people are involved in the ruin?’ said his wife.

‘Pooh!’ answered the doctor, ‘that will make no difference to us. Or if it does, it will be a difference on the right side. You wait and see! W7hcn the ruined people have heard my sermon next Sunday they’ll double their subscriptions. I’ll make them! See if I don’t.’

The good news of the morning was not yet exhausted. Among the letters on the breakfast table was one with an American stamp. Saccarin, whose mind was preoccupied with elation over the bank failure, had read the others without paying much attention to their contents. But when he came to this one he uttered a cry of joy.

It was an invitation to the pastorate of a Fifth Avenue church in New York.

IV

Next Sunday Saccarin preached, morning and evening, on the failure of Button’s Bank. An hour before the morning service the church was thronged to the doors. A special force of police was in attendance to manage the crowd at the gates. Hundreds were unable to obtain admittance. Arrangements were rapidly made for holding the evening service in the City Drill Hall, which had an auditorium for four thousand persons.

The evening sermon was the masterpiece. With an eloquence which, people said, recalled his great discourses on the Messina earthquake and the loss of the Titanic, Saccarin showed that the failure of Button’s Bank was a signal triumph in the march of eternal Justice. It was a necessary incident in the progress of the world to the commercial millennium. Without the lessons learned from such catastrophes mankind would be unable to find its way to the promised land. A certain number of them was imperatively required by the moral order. No bank failures — no millennium. Such were the terms of the moral order. They were cheap terms. They were reasonable terms. Will you accept them? Or do you reject them? Then you reject the millennium.

The majority of the audience showed by their manner, and by their singing of the last hymn, that they wrere prepared to accept the terms. Saccarin had conquered. And the chest of cedar would duly receive the record of his victory.

One man, however, remained unconverted.

He was a grim Highlander named McTavish, who had lost all his money by the failure of Button’s Bank. This man belonged to the remnant of Dr. Sahara’s once flourishing Calvinistic flock; but hearing a rumor that the catastrophe would be treated by Saccarin from a metaphysical point of view, he had listened to the advice of a friend and allowed himself for once to join the crowd of ‘misguided bodies’ assembled in the City Drill Hall.

He listened to the sermon without stirring a muscle and without moving his eyes from the preacher’s face — a stern figure of stone, carved out of the Grampian rock. A close observer, however, might have noticed a gradual darkening in the deep shadows on his face, a tenser line in the firm mouth, and a growing light of battle in the sunken eyes. When the congregation rose to sing the last hymn McTavish remained seated in the same motionless attitude.

As Saccarin, full of the triumph of the sermon, was walking home, somebody touched him on the shoulder. It was McTavish.

‘I’ve been thinking you’ve given us a grand argument this night, Dr. Saccarin,’ said he.

‘Thank you, Mr. McTavish,’ said Saccarin.

‘But it has no convinced me,’ said McTavish.

‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘You see, I’ve been asking myself a question. You see, I’ve lost a wean of money. And an auld friend of mine has lost his.’

‘You have my heartfelt sympathy, Mr. McTavish. But who is the old friend?’

‘It’s Dr. Sahara. Three hundred pun’ o’ hard-saved money. A wee bit for the puir body’s auld age.’

‘Very sad; very sad, indeed, Mr. McTavish; but we must bow before the wisdom of the general laws of the universe.’

‘It’s no bowing you’ll get from me this night, Dr. Saccarin. I’m thinking that Button had a verra respectable bank.’

‘Yes; but honorable men must suffer at times.’

‘And I’m thinking, Dr. Saccarin, there are ither banks that are no respectable. There’s Hook’s.’

‘I don’t quite follow you, Mr. McTavish.’

‘ And I’m thinking that if Providence was as wise as ye mak’ oot, Hook’s Bank would ha’ failed instead o’ Button’s.’

‘The ways of Providence are inscrutable, Mr. McTavish.’

‘Ye’ll no escape on that, Dr. Saccarin. Ye’ve been doing your best this night to show us that the ways of Providence are no inscrutable at all. Did n’t ye tell us what Providence meant by closing the door o’ Button’s Bank? Man, ye’re contradicting yourself.’

Dr. Saccarin was silent. McTavish went on.

‘Ye see, I’m asking a question: Why Button and not Hook?’

‘ I can’t answer that, Mr. McTavish.’

‘Then ye are a man of a small intelligence. It’s the only question before us this night.’

No answer.

‘I’m thinking, Dr. Saccarin, that Hook would ha’ fitted the bill better than Button. Ye may tak’ your general laws of the universe to hell with ye, along with all the rest of your bad doctrine. Ye’ll no convince me that a philosophic God mak’s general laws and leaves the Deil to bring them down on the wrong man. Canna’ ye see that Button’s the wrong man? Canna’ ye see that it ought to be Hook? I’m verra disappointed in ye, Dr. Saccarin. Ye’re no the preacher that Sahara is. And I’ll wish ye a verra good-night.’

V

Saccarin pursued his homeward way, much preoccupied. He had chosen a circuitous route among the byways, wishing to avoid the crowd in the main street and the frequent encounters with people he knew. McTavish’s question haunted him. ‘Why Button rather than Hook?’ He could not answer. Presently the question transmuted itself into another form, ‘Why Saccarin rather than Sahara ¥’ and it seemed to him that a mocking voice was bidding him take that question for his subject next Sunday. ‘Your own success and Sarara’s failure; your own affluence and Sahara’s poverty,’ the voice was saying; ‘take that for your subject and draw the lesson.’ And again the feeling came over him that he was at the end of his tether. Then he remembered the invitation from New York. And swiftly he resolved to accept it and begin afresh on another line.

Had Saccarin followed his usual route by the main street his preoccupation would have been sooner interrupted. He would have seen the crowd streaming in one direction — that of the hillside on which his new residence, just completed, stood out against the sky-line. Many were running at the top of their speed, or racing on bicycles, and the air was full of shouts. Then a great bell began to ring and a fire-engine, driven furiously, dashed through the crowd.

Saccarin heard the bell in the bystreet, and turning quickly into the main thoroughfare, looked ahead. The sky in front of him was crimson, and great masses of flame were leaping round the summit of the hill.

A motor stopped at the curb by his side. ‘Quick, doctor!’ cried a voice. ‘The suffragettes have fired your new house. Jump in.’

One thought only filled his mind. A portion of his goods had been moved into the house in the previous week. Among them was the chest of cedar.

In a few moments he was on the spot. Leaping from the car he dashed among the firemen and cried in a voice of frenzy, ‘The cedar chest! the cedar chest! A hundred pounds to any man who will make his way into the study and bring out my cedar chest! ’

‘We’ve saved it already,’ said one of the men. ‘You’ll find it on the top of yonder bank, beyond the reach of the flames.’

‘Thank God!’ cried Saccarin. ‘The rest does n’t matter. Let it burn.’

A moment later you might have seen an interesting sight. On the top of a high bank overlooking the conflagration, brilliantly lit up by the glare of the flames, was the figure of a man seated alone on a great oblong box. His hat was off, and the high brow of Dr. Saccarin gleamed in the light of the blazing house.

The firemen’s efforts were hopeless from the first. An engaging young creature of nineteen, named Audrey, not approving of certain ‘lessons’ drawn by Saccarin from the woman’s movement, had purchased two pennyworth of paraffin and tow, and, sneaking into the house when everybody was at church, had set it afire beyond remedy; thereby providing another lesson for future Saccarins to ponder.

Saccarin, seated on the chest of cedar, from which the heat of the fire was drawing a new fragrance, and feeling beneath him the concentrated essence of the meaning of things, was already meditating that lesson. He had fully risen to the occasion. ‘Next Sunday,’ he said to himself, ‘ I will preach a sermon that will shake the city.’

Suddenly he was aware of a tall figure standing by his side.

‘ That’s a grand box ye ’re sitting on,’ said the voice of McTavish. ‘Maybe ye’ll tak’ no offense if I sit beside ye.’

And McTavish took his place beside the clergyman; and they two sat thus on the chest.

Saccarin said nothing and there was a long silence. The Highlander was the first to speak.

‘I’m thinking there’s great wealth in the box,’ said he.

‘There is,’ answered Saccarin.

‘Ye did well to save it. Bank-notes, without a doot, and good securities — bonds and deeds and the like.’

‘No. Wealth of a higher kind. Mr. McTavish, this chest contains seventeen hundred original discoveries of the meaning of things.’

‘Ech, mon, I’m sorry. It’s no worth the saving. Dr. Saccarin, your box is full o’ trash; and yon lassies that set fire to guid property are the products of your ain bad doctrine. Man, ye’ll do well to cast it among the burnings.’

‘Never! ’

‘Maybe there’s an answer inside the box to the question I’ve been putting to ye. I’d be glad to see it if there is. I ’m thinking we’d better open the box.’ And then McTavish, as though speaking to himself, repeated the odious words, ‘Why Button and not Hook?’

I know not what strange influences were at work. But certain it is that the moment these words were pronounced Saccarin heard something go snap inside his skull and the glare of light outside him seemed to transfer itself to his sord and become an inward illumination. He sprang from his seat and grasped the Highlander’s bony hand.

‘Mr. McTavish,’ he cried, ‘I’m going to New York.’

‘It’s a grand salary ye’ll be getting in New York, Dr. Saccarin; and I’m thinking ye’ll no want your box any more,’ said McTavish. ‘Man, ye’ll be well advised to burn yon trash before ye go to New York. It’s a mass of unco’ bad doctrine wre’re sitting on.’

‘We’ll burn it, McTavish; we’ll burn it! Help me to carry the chest to the edge of the bank,’ was Saccarin’s reply.

At the foot of the bank and reaching level with its top was a great pile of boards which had been thrown out during the construction of the house. A piece of burning timber had fallen near and smoke was already rising from the heap.

‘It’s gey heavy,’ said McTavish, as the two men, at opposite ends, took hold of the rings of the chest, ‘ but maybe we two can raise it on to the altar of wood.’

‘Wait a moment,’ said Saccarin as he dropped his end, ‘my check-book is inside. I keep it with the manuscripts of my sermons.’

‘It’s worth better company,’ said McTavish. ‘We’ll no burn the checkbook.’

Saccarin searched in his pocket, found a key, opened the chest, rescued the check-book and closed t he lid.

‘Now to the flames!’ he cried. ‘ McTavish, it’s a sacrifice to the Lord of Hosts.’

‘The smoke will be like the smoke of Sodom and Gomorrah,’ said the slow, deep voice of the Gael.

The two men, staggering with the burden, deposited the chest of cedar on the top of the smouldering pile.

Then they sat on the ground and watched. In a few minutes a tongue of flame was seen to rise from the wood and lick the chest. Saccarin drew forth his handkerchief and wiped a tear from his cheek.

‘Dr. Saccarin, I’m expecting ye to play the man,’ said McTavish. ‘Ye’re a poor preacher compared w ith Sahara, and there’s little marrow in your gospel. But ye’re no a woman, nor a babe, that ye should shed tears o’ wea kness over yon burnings in the valley o’ Jehosaphat. See! The fire’s got a muckle hold on your box.’

It was even so. The concentrated essence of the meaning of things was evaporating in a fervent heat, and the pith of wisdom from the universal university was dissolving into flame and smoke.

Said McTavish, ‘Dr. Saccarin, I’m thinking there’s light enough in yonder flaming fire for a man to see his way to the doing of a good deed.’

Saccarin drew a fountain pen from his waistcoat pocket, and presently McTavish saw that the check-book was on the Doctor’s knee and that he was writing.

‘Take that,’ said Saccarin. ‘Take it to Dr. Sahara. Tell him it is a gift if he will consult my wishes, and a loan if he prefers to stand on his pride.’

McTavish took the slip of paper. By the light of the burning chest he saw that it was a check in Sahara’s favor for three hundred pounds.

‘Dr. Saccarin,’ he said, ‘ye’re a godly man after your ain lights. But ye ’re no sound on the fundamentals.’