Spiritual Sunday
My Sunday post comes to you late today as I was visiting grandchildren in Georgia for the past two days, but as a result I am able to cite a literary allusion in today’s sermon by our rector Rob Lamborn. In response to a passage from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, which I had been selected to read to the congregation, Rob talked about Max Beerbohm’s short story “The Happy Hypocrite.”
Paul’s letter (Ephesians 4:25-5:2) is chock full of good advice on how to live:
Putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
According to St. Paul, Rob said, if we change our behavior, our hearts will follow. Get thieves working honestly and sharing with the needy and they will end up good. To this end, he quoted from C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity:
The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.
The observation is borne out in “The Happy Hypocrite,” in which we see Lord George Hell’s transition to George Heaven. At the beginning of the story, he is a thoroughly dissolute Regency rake:
Lord George Hell. I will not trouble my little readers with a long recital of his great naughtiness. But it were well they should know that he was greedy, destructive, and disobedient. I am afraid there is no doubt that he often sat up at Carlton House until long after bedtime, playing at games, and that he generally ate and drank far more than was good for him. His fondness for fine clothes was such that he used to dress on week-days quite as gorgeously as good people dress on Sundays. He was thirty-five years old and a great grief to his parents.
George’s conversion begins when he attends a operetta and falls in love with the actress Jenny Mere. Leaving his mistress La Gambogi, he goes to Jenny and proposes marriage, only to be rejected:
“I can never be your wife,” she said, slowly. “I can never be the wife of any man whose face is not saintly. Your face, my Lord, mirrors, it may be, true love for me, but it is even as a mirror long tarnished by the reflexion of this world’s vanity. It is even as a tarnished mirror. Do not kneel to me, for I am poor and humble. I was not made for such impetuous wooing. Kneel, if you please, to some greater, gayer lady. As for my love, it is my own, nor can it be ever torn from me, but given, as true love must needs be given, freely. Ah, rise from your knees. That man, whose face is wonderful as are the faces of the saints, to him I will give my true love.”
George thereupon resorts to the obvious solution, buying a saintly mask from a mask store:
The disguise was done. When Lord George looked through the eyelets of his mask into the mirror that was placed in his hand, he saw a face that was saintly, itself a mirror of true love. How wonderful it was! He felt his past was a dream. He felt he was a new man indeed.
The ploy works and Jenny promises to marry him. To be worthy of her, he changes his ways:
And in his heart Lord George made a good resolve. He would put away from him all his worldly possessions. All the money that he had won at the clubs, fairly or foully, all that hideous accretion of gold guineas, he would distribute among the comrades he had impoverished. As he walked, with the sweet and trustful girl at his side, the vague record of his infamy assailed him, and a look of pain shot behind his smooth mask. He would atone. He would shun no sacrifice that might cleanse his soul. All his fortune he would put from him. Follard Chase he would give back to Sir Follard. He would sell his house in St. James’s Square. He would keep some little part of his patrimony, enough for him in the wood with Jenny, but no more.
The two get married–he pretends his name is George Heaven–and rthey etire to a small house in the woods. George’s life has never been happier:
He cherished his true penitence for the evil he had done in the past. The past! That was indeed the only unreal thing that lingered in his life. Every day its substance dwindled, grew fainter yet, as he lived his rustic honeymoon. Had he not utterly put it from him? Had he not, a few hours after his marriage, written to his lawyer, declaring solemnly that he, Lord George Hell, had forsworn the world, that he was where no man would find him, that he desired all his worldly goods to be distributed, thus and thus, among these and those of his companions? By this testament he had verily atoned for the wrong he had done, had made himself dead indeed to the world.
His jealous mistress, however, tracks him down and, to expose him to Jenny, tears off his mask:
“Doff your mask and I am gone.”
George made a step of menace towards her.
“False saint!” she shrieked, “then I will unmask you.”
Like a panther she sprang upon him and clawed at his waxen cheeks. Jenny fell back, mute with terror. Vainly did George try to free himself from his assailant, who writhed round and round him, clawing, clawing at what Jenny fancied to be his face. With a wild cry, Jenny fell upon the furious creature and tried, with all her childish strength, to release her dear one. The combatives swayed to and fro, a revulsive trinity. There was a loud pop, as though some great cork had been withdrawn, and La Gambogi recoiled. She had torn away the mask. It lay before her upon the lawn, upturned to the sky.
And then the marvel:
La Gambogi stared up into his face, and her dark flush died swiftly away. For there, staring back at her, was the man she had unmasked, but lo! his face was even as his mask had been. Line for line, feature for feature, it was the same. ‘Twas a saint’s face.
Jenny approves and they live happily ever after:
So he took her in his arms, as though she had been a little child, and kissed her with his own lips. She put her arms round his neck, and he was happier than he had ever been. They were alone in the garden now. Nor lay the mask any longer upon the lawn, for the sun had melted it.
In short, fake it til you make it. And do not waste time bothering that you started off insincere.