Jerome's play.I differ vitally from his story because it is not a detective story.There is in it none of this great Christian idea of tearing their evil out of men;it lacks the realism of the saints.
Redemption should bring truth as well as peace;and truth is a fine thing,though the materialists did go mad about it.Things must be faced,even in order to be forgiven;the great objection to "letting sleeping dogs lie"is that they lie in more senses than one.But in Mr.Jerome's Passing of the Third Floor Back the redeemer is not a divine detective,pitiless in his resolve to know and pardon.Rather he is a sort of divine dupe,who does not pardon at all,because he does not see anything that is going on.It may,or may not,be true to say,"Tout comprendre est tout pardonner."But it is much more evidently true to say,"Rien comprendre est rien Pardonner,"and the "Third Floor Back"does not seem to comprehend anything.He might,after all,be a quite selfish sentimentalist,who found it comforting to think well of his neighbours.
There is nothing very heroic in loving after you have been deceived.The heroic business is to love after you have been undeceived.
When I saw this play it was natural to compare it with another play which I had not seen,but which I have read in its printed version.I mean Mr.
Rann Kennedy's Servant in the House,the success of which sprawls over so many of the American newspapers.This also is concerned with a dim,yet evidently divine,figure changing the destinies of a whole group of persons.It is a better play structurally than the other;in fact,it is a very fine play indeed;but there is nothing aesthetic or fastidious about it.It is as much or more than the other sensational,democratic,and (I use the word in a sound and good sense)Salvationist.
But the difference lies precisely in this--that the Christ of Mr.
Kennedy's play insists on really knowing all the souls that he loves;he declines to conquer by a kind of supernatural stupidity.He pardons evil,but he will not ignore it.In other words,be is a Christian,and not a Christian Scientist.The distinction doubtless is partly explained by the problems severally selected.Mr.Jerome practically supposes Christ to be trying to save disreputable people;and that,of course,is naturally a simple business.Mr.Kennedy supposes Him to be trying to save the reputable people,which is a much larger affair.The chief characters in The Servant in the House are a popular and strenuous vicar,universally respected,and his fashionable and forcible wife.It would have been no good to tell these people they had some good in them--for that was what they were telling themselves all day long.They had to be reminded that they had some bad in them--instinctive idolatries and silent treasons which they always tried to forget.It is in connection with these crimes of wealth and culture that we face the real problem of positive evil.The whole of Mr.Blatchford's controversy about sin was vitiated throughout by one's consciousness that whenever he wrote the word "sinner"he thought of a man in rags.But here,again,we can find truth merely by referring to vulgar literature--its unfailing fountain.
Whoever read a detective story about poor people?The poor have crimes;but the poor have no secrets.And it is because the proud have secrets that they need to be detected before they are forgiven.
