The Pagan and Christian Conception of God. 



149 



favour of Heaven. .\ nun, the finest flower of the 

 convent, surrenders herself willingly, knowingly to the 

 arms of her lover. The lure of tlu- Tempter over- 

 came her maidenly scruples. The riot of her senses 

 revolted against the austere morality of the cloister. 

 The teachings of her religion were forgotten on the 

 very morrow of the day on which their truth had been 

 attested by a miracle. She violated her vows and 

 sacrificed the virginity she had pledged to a heavenly 

 bridegroom to the knight who made her his paramour. 

 Never was sin more flagrant committed with more 

 open-eyed consciousness of its enormity. But instead 

 of bringing down upon her guilty head the wrath of 

 offended Heaven, the blessed Virgin herself steps 

 down from her throne in order to assume the 

 dress and to personate the fugitive. To screen the 

 guilty and fallen nun, the \'irgin vacates her throne 

 and serves as a humble sister of the convent in order 

 to conceal the guilt of the erring one. 



The play goes on. The perjured nun loses her first 

 lover to become the prey of a succession of para- 

 mours. By the time she has reached the last stage of 

 degradation in the common liipanar, ?-he has been the 

 mistress of from ten to a dozen kings, princes, and 

 knights, who have fed her on the richest fare, clad her 

 in dainty robes, and given her what to the carnal 

 mind must have been a right royal good time. In 

 ;he course of this career of unbridled debauchery she 

 fell in the family way, and became a mother. Her 

 <:bild dies. Then she repents, and returns to the 

 <.onvent. When she arrives she finds that the Virgin, 

 having fulfilled her role as locum Icneiis while the nun 

 was carrying on (uitside, remounts her throne in the 

 cathedral and waits silent and unreproachful the 

 return of the picligal. The nun, bearing her dead 

 b.iby, prostrates inrself before the obliging \'irgin. 

 In the original phi) she resumes her old garments and 

 lakes her old place without anyone suspecting what 

 rigs she ha6 bet n playing since the day of the 

 miracle. But the baby must be got rid of. A happy 

 thought struck her. Since the \irgin had been so 

 kind as to kecj) her place warm for her while she 

 rioted outside, would she not also oblige by disposing 

 of the fruit of lawless love. She ])lnced the dead 

 baby in the arms of the Mother of God, by whom it 

 was accepted wiibout demur as the infant Christ. 

 There the story ends. But the desire for a good 

 "curtain" led ibe (iroducers of "The Miracle" at 

 Olympia to spoil the tale by omitting the resumi>- 

 lio;i by the nun of her conventual dress, and the play 

 closes with a triumphant procession, in which the 

 nun is lost in the crowd, and the Virgin, still clas[)ing 

 in her arms the nun's baby, is carried amidst the 

 sound of sacred song down the stage and out of the 

 ' <hurch. 



That is one sid<- of the matter. On the other siile 

 it may be arguctl that "The Miracle" represents the 

 triumph of the pa;.; in ideal — iXdtumm (xf'dlas ftircn, 

 tiimcn usque laiiiiit. If the spectacle of the welcome 

 home oftheapostatenun represents the supreme triumph 



of the conception of the exceeding height and depth 

 of the loving-kindness of God, the assent given by 

 the Virgin to the escapade of the nurt represents 

 the triumph of the pagan ideal of the lawfulness 

 of the gratification of the senses even in the heart 

 of the Christian cloister. 'I'he nun and her lover 

 do not turn their backs upon the Virgin. On 

 the contrary, before the elopement they kneel 

 before her protesting their passion, imploring her to 

 forgive, if not to sanction, the breach of the con- 

 ventual vows. Nor is the \'irgin impassive to their 

 appeal. Motionless as her statue, when one word or 

 movement might have prevented the lapse from 

 virtue, no sooner has the lady departed with her lover 

 than she actively bestirs herself to cover up her traces 

 and conceal her frailty from the abbess and the 

 sisterhood. Thus we see in "The Miracle" a double 

 recoil — the recoil from the ruthless god of hate, who 

 pursued with unrelenting vengeance the innocent 

 Cl"J(lil)us, and the recoil from the austere doctrine 

 which demands the crucifi.xion of the natural inborn 

 se.\ instincts of the race. 



There is yef another view of the Virgin's action 

 wiiich is more in harmony with the Protestant Chris- 

 tian ideal. It is that the Virgin consented, not to a 

 lawless love, but to a marriage between the nun and 

 her lover. In so doing the Virgin recognised that 

 cloistral vows should not stand in the way of lawful 

 love, that a true love marriage is superior to celibac)', 

 and that her subsetjuent rece[)tion of the nun was the 

 natural and proper sequel of her approval of a 

 marriage which had ended unhappily. 



.\ccording to this theory the nun only consented 

 to marriage with her first lover. Her subsequent 

 adventures were forced upon her against her will. 



Unless we accept this Protestant theory this 

 mediaeval legend is as much of an outrage upon the 

 moral sense of mankind to-day as the undeserved 

 torture of the righteous Oidipus. In one the innocent 

 is punished, in the other the guilty is screened. In 

 neither is there a trace cf justice. We ask with 

 Uvlipus : — 



If one shoiiUl ilrcaiii tlial siicli a world began 

 In some slow ilevil's heart that haled man. 

 Who should deny liiiii ? 



\'ct there must have been some kernel of truth and 

 of morality, which is the truth of things in these 

 conceptions. One-sided they were no doubt and at 

 variance with our moral sense. Vet the doctrine of 

 the omnipotence of God is asserted as strongly in 

 • lulipus as is the doctrine of the boundless com- 

 passion and sympathetic nature of the goddess who 

 is the real deity in "The .Miracle." It is true that 

 the god of the Greek drama was no beneficent 

 being : — ■ 



'Tis Apollo, all is .Apollo. 



O ye tiinl love nic, 'tis he long lime halh plarincJ 



These lhin);s upon nic evilly, evilly, 



Dark thin(;s and full ot blood. 



It may, however, be argued that .Apollo was but 



