EXPERIENCE
Winifred's heart did not break. Or, if it broke, it was quickly
healed, for there dwelt in the house One whose office it is to bind up
the broken-hearted. It was not that she did not grieve, or that no
void cried out again and again to be filled. But she learned a paradox
as the days went on: of an inexplicable peace beneath the sharpest
pain, and of a buoyant joy that would not be held down by sorrow.
Hubert looked on, making mental notes as to what had happened, but
asking no questions.
Our trio of young people who had entered a life of worship found their
hearts impelling them toward fields of service also. Winifred sought
in many quiet ways to make known to others Him whom she had come to
know with such delight, and a casual visit from Adèle one day threw
light upon the occupation of the others.
"By the way, Winifred," Miss Forrester said, apropos of some topic
discussed, "your brother gave a splendid talk at the Cleary Street
Mission last night. Oh, you ought to have heard him! It was fine!"
Winifred opened her eyes widely. "Hubert at the Mission last night?
He never told me."
"I suspect he doesn't let his left hand know what his right hand is
doing," suggested Adèle. "But he certainly was there. And when Mr.
McBride asked him to speak he promptly did so. It was splendid! Not
simply what he said, you know, but the fact that he said it--a business
man talking in a matter-of-fact, business way to other men of something
he evidently thought the most important matter in the world. Of course
most of the people were of a far different class from his, but you
would never guess it from his words. He didn't patronize them a bit.
I liked that so much. And you should have seen how those men fastened
their eyes on him and listened to what he said."
"How lovely!" cried Winifred. "I wish I had been there. But pray tell
me, Adèle, how happens it that you were there?"
"Oh, I am a regular attendant in Cleary Street," said Adèle laughing.
"At least I go regularly on certain nights in the week and play the
organ--a wretched, squeaky, little thing--and raise my voice on Sankey
hymns also."
"You do!" cried Winifred with a mixture of amusement, dismay and
admiration in her voice. "Well, I declare!"
"I don't see why you should be so shocked," said Adèle, enjoying her
friend's astonishment. "Pray, why shouldn't I go? Do you doubt my
qualifications? I am not the musician you are, dear, but my skill is
quite up to those tunes, I assure you."
"I hope you don't wear that red hat of yours and your usual stunning
costumes, Adèle?"
"It occurred to me after I had gone a few times," said Adèle quietly,
"that it might be well to modify my gear. I think you would approve of
my revised toilet. It is very simple."
"Adèle, I know you can't help looking well, whatever you wear," said
Winifred, who suddenly observed a somewhat altered "gear" in evidence.
"If you should put on a Salvation Army bonnet it would look stylish.
It couldn't help itself. But please tell me more about the Mission.
How happened you to go at all?"
"I heard Mr. McBride speak at a meeting. He told of the work of the
Mission, and of the need of helpers--especially of somebody to help in
the music. It occurred to me that that was the kind of assistance I
might give, and that it would be very nice to contribute in some small
way, at least, to the work of the Mission. And," she continued very
gravely, "I volunteered and was gladly accepted."
"That is very noble, I think," said Winifred. "But what did your
friends think?"
"I did not ask them," Adèle answered coolly. "I have fallen from
caste, anyhow, and it doesn't matter much. You know since I have seen
the Lord"--it was Adèle's way of putting it--"I have tried to--to
witness to Him in some way or other to my old friends; and the result
has been a pretty liberal letting alone from them. His name does not
seem a very welcome one--outside of a church!" Then she went on with a
gleam of indignant sorrow in her bright eyes: "That is what breaks
one's heart! That these very people may kneel beside you in church and
recite His holy name as glibly as possible; but outside--it is
unwelcome! Winifred, can it be a Christian life at all into any avenue
of which Christ is an intrusion? Oh, if they loved Him--if they had
ever seen Him at all!--they would be so glad of any mention of Him!"
After a moment a gleam of amused memory succeeded Adèle's pained
outburst. She went on:
"The other night I think I reached the climax of my fall into disfavor.
You know these summer evenings at the Mission we take the organ and
hymn books and go out before the door and have a street meeting. Well,
on this occasion our open-air meeting was in full swing and our usual
score of auditors were lined up in the gutters and everywhere to hear.
Mr. McBride had announced 'The best Friend to have is Jesus,' and was
himself swinging his arms and singing lustily, while I played and
pumped the panting little instrument and sang as loudly as I could,
too. Suddenly there turned down the street a handsome automobile (I
don't know why, for they never go down that street) and in it the
Misses Steele and Miss Proudfeather from Baltimore. To crown it all,
with them was seated my precious Cousin Dick! Our poor little crowd
huddled aside to let them pass. They all saw me and Dick took off his
hat with great ceremony; but the ladies evidently thought they would
spare me the mortification of a recognition under the circumstances. I
couldn't help laughing within myself, though it was a bit embarrassing.
Dick was hilarious over it. He evidently sees nothing improper in it,
but a very good joke. He says he expects to hear me preaching there
yet. I told him it might be to his benefit if he did."
Both laughed. "But just think, Adèle," said Winifred, "how infinitely
better to be in that little street crowd _with the Lord_, than driving
about in the finest motor car without Him!"
"Yes!" cried Adèle, "I wouldn't trade places for worlds!"
"I should think not," said Winifred, with scorn of the idea.
Adèle was finding out, like her friend, that the way of the cross
brings separation, and she had her own peculiar tests as to faithful
witnessing. Her merry-hearted cousin drew her out in words more
frequently than any other, and plied her with questions concerning this
new type of religion.
"It's no new sort of religion at all," she insisted. "It's just the
old sort you read of in the New Testament--and the prayer-book! Only I
am afraid I never really had it before--or it had not really got me.
If people would only be sincere, Dick, you would find it is the same
sort."
"I do not think the ordinary sort is much good," said Dick, with the
air of a connoisseur in religions.
It was to be lamented that the present incumbent at St. John's had not
met with the young man's very hearty favor. The freshly introduced
intoning struck him humorously. He imitated it in ordinary remarks
about the house.
"Where's--my--hat?" he inquired in a whining chant, after the manner of
the unfortunate rector's plaintively intoned "Let us pray."
Adèle, always alive to the ridiculous, laughed; but still she wished he
would not be irreverent.
"The way we go through the service," said Dick, "is so as to relieve it
of as much sense as possible. No wonder some of us turn out
hypocrites. But you don't, Adèle. However, I'll reserve my estimate
of your case till we see how you hold out at your new gait."
So Dick watched the "new gait," and Adèle prayed that it might be a
walk worthy of the Lord.
Meantime Hubert was pursuing his study of divinity in a normal
way--with an open Bible and the Spirit of the Author to interpret. He
sought also the fellowship of His people and deep was his perplexity as
he found into how many countless sects the "one body" had been divided.
Very contrary to the Bible it seemed, but very helplessly he stood
before the fact that seemed as hopeless of remedy as of denial. What
ought he, one unit among the whole, to do about it? Kindly people
sought to draw him into their various fellowships, and he peered into
their folds and sought to find the place where his Lord was most
honored and His presence most manifest. He found old churches, great
and cold, whose service moved with slumbrous calm, and his ardent soul
was chilled. He found others where activity bristled and cheerfulness
prevailed, but where the world held court as obvious as in the market
square; and from these he turned away with a still sharper grief. He
found other congregations built in strife and schism, but with some
fragrance still of the name of Jesus Christ, and rejoiced that He was
preached.
"'They feared the Lord and served their own gods,'" he said to himself,
as almost everywhere he saw the strange mingling of worship of the true
God with the too patent service of the gods of pleasure and of wealth.
He found little companies, gathered in protest from shameless
worldliness or infidel denial of the Lord, and with them he had
sympathy, but still looked hungrily for a fuller expression of the
truth than they offered. He found himself in companies where correct,
punctilious statements of the truth abounded, and where the most
careful zeal sought to restore an apostolic order of worship. But he
found that the statements grew dry and juiceless in their formal
exactness, and that prescribed form could not insure the animating
Spirit without which it was as useless as the phylacteries of the
Pharisees. He concluded that truth was deeper and fresher than any
definitions of it, as the fountain excels the cistern; and that life
was sovereign over form, though in form it embody itself.
He found perfection nowhere. After a disappointing meeting, the climax
of a series of experiences in which arguments from various schools of
doctrine had jostled against each other, and the varying phases of
practice, emotional, anti-emotional, informal and ritualistic, with the
intervening shades of difference, had presented themselves, he stood in
the veranda at home with Winifred and described to her the procession
of rival claims which a divided church presents to a Christian man's
adherence, and ended with the question:
"Where shall we find the truth, Winifred?"
"In Christ," she answered simply.
"You are right, wise little sister," he said admiringly. "And there we
will look for it."
He turned from his quest for perfection in any detachment of the church
and sought the place where God would have him, not alone for the green
pasture to be found but for the testimony to be given. Deeper lessons
were learned as time advanced--lessons of "grace" as well as "truth."
Keen discrimination was tempered by love toward that Body which, though
distorted and maimed, was still beloved by her Lord, and though
besieged by error was still "the pillar and ground of the truth."