"If any man serve me, let him follow me."
IT was nearly midnight before the services at the Rectangle closed.
Gray stayed up long into Sunday morning, praying and talking with a
little group of converts who in the great experiences of their new
life, clung to the evangelist with a personal helplessness that made
it as impossible for him to leave them as if they had been depending
upon him to save them from physical death. Among these converts was
Rollin Page.
Virginia and her uncle had gone home about eleven o'clock, and
Rachel and Jasper Chase had gone with them as far as the avenue
where Virginia lived. Dr. West had walked on a little way with them
to his own home, and Rachel and Jasper had then gone on together to
her mother's.
That was a little after eleven. It was now striking midnight, and
Jasper Chase sat in his room staring at the papers on his desk and
going over the last half hour with painful persistence.
He had told Rachel Winslow of his love for her, and she had not
given him her love in return. It would be difficult to know what was
most powerful in the impulse that had moved him to speak to her
tonight. He had yielded to his feelings without any special thought
of results to himself, because he had felt so certain that Rachel
would respond to his love. He tried to recall the impression she
made on him when he first spoke to her.
Never had her beauty and her strength influenced him as tonight.
While she was singing he saw and heard no one else. The tent swarmed
with a confused crowd of faces and he knew he was sitting there
hemmed in by a mob of people, but they had no meaning to him. He
felt powerless to avoid speaking to her. He knew he should speak
when they were alone.
Now that he had spoken, he felt that he had misjudged either Rachel
or the opportunity. He knew, or thought he knew, that she had begun
to care something for him. It was no secret between them that the
heroine of Jasper's first novel had been his own ideal of Rachel,
and the hero in the story was himself and they had loved each other
in the book, and Rachel had not objected. No one else knew. The
names and characters had been drawn with a subtle skill that
revealed to Rachel, when she received a copy of the book from
Jasper, the fact of his love for her, and she had not been offended.
That was nearly a year ago.
Tonight he recalled the scene between them with every inflection and
movement unerased from his memory. He even recalled the fact that he
began to speak just at that point on the avenue where, a few days
before, he had met Rachel walking with Rollin Page. He had wondered
at the time what Rollin was saying.
"Rachel," Jasper had said, and it was the first time he had ever
spoken her first name, "I never knew till tonight how much I loved
you. Why should I try to conceal any longer what you have seen me
look? You know I love you as my life. I can no longer hide it from
you if I would."
The first intimation he had of a repulse was the trembling of
Rachel's arm in his. She had allowed him to speak and had neither
turned her face toward him nor away from him. She had looked
straight on and her voice was sad but firm and quiet when she spoke.
"Why do you speak to me now? I cannot bear it--after what we have
seen tonight."
"Why--what--" he had stammered and then was silent.
Rachel withdrew her arm from his but still walked near him. Then he
had cried out with the anguish of one who begins to see a great loss
facing him where he expected a great joy.
"Rachel! Do you not love me? Is not my love for you as sacred as
anything in all of life itself?"
She had walked silent for a few steps after that. They passed a
street lamp. Her face was pale and beautiful. He had made a movement
to clutch her arm and she had moved a little farther from him.
"No," she had replied. "There was a time I--cannot answer for that
you--should not have spoken to me--now."
He had seen in these words his answer. He was extremely sensitive.
Nothing short of a joyous response to his own love would ever have
satisfied him. He could not think of pleading with her.
"Some time--when I am more worthy?" he had asked in a low voice, but
she did not seem to hear, and they had parted at her home, and he
recalled vividly the fact that no good-night had been said.
Now as he went over the brief but significant scene he lashed
himself for his foolish precipitancy. He had not reckoned on
Rachel's tense, passionate absorption of all her feeling in the
scenes at the tent which were so new in her mind. But he did not
know her well enough even yet to understand the meaning of her
refusal. When the clock in the First Church struck one he was still
sitting at his desk staring at the last page of manuscript of his
unfinished novel.
Rachel went up to her room and faced her evening's experience with
conflicting emotions. Had she ever loved Jasper Chase? Yes. No. One
moment she felt that her life's happiness was at stake over the
result of her action. Another, she had a strange feeling of relief
that she had spoken as she had. There was one great, overmastering
feeling in her. The response of the wretched creatures in the tent
to her singing, the swift, powerful, awesome presence of the Holy
Spirit had affected her as never in all her life before. The moment
Jasper had spoken her name and she realized that he was telling her
of his love she had felt a sudden revulsion for him, as if he should
have respected the supernatural events they had just witnessed. She
felt as if it was not the time to be absorbed in anything less than
the divine glory of those conversions. The thought that all the time
she was singing, with the one passion of her soul to touch the
conscience of that tent full of sin, Jasper Chase had been unmoved
by it except to love her for herself, gave her a shock as of
irreverence on her part as well as on his. She could not tell why
she felt as she did, only she knew that if he had not told her
tonight she would still have felt the same toward him as she always
had. What was that feeling? What had he been to her? Had she made a
mistake? She went to her book case and took out the novel which
Jasper had given her. Her face deepened in color as she turned to
certain passages which she had read often and which she knew Jasper
had written for her. She read them again. Somehow they failed to
touch her strongly. She closed the book and let it lie on the table.
She gradually felt that her thought was busy with the sights she had
witnessed in the tent. Those faces, men and women, touched for the
first time with the Spirit's glory--what a wonderful thing life was
after all! The complete regeneration revealed in the sight of
drunken, vile, debauched humanity kneeling down to give itself to a
life of purity and Christlikeness--oh, it was surely a witness to
the superhuman in the world! And the face of Rollin Page by the side
of that miserable wreck out of the gutter! She could recall as if
she now saw it, Virginia crying with her arms about her brother just
before she left the tent, and Mr. Gray kneeling close by, and the
girl Virginia had taken into her heart while she whispered something
to her before she went out. All these pictures drawn by the Holy
Spirit in the human tragedies brought to a climax there in the most
abandoned spot in all Raymond, stood out in Rachel's memory now, a
memory so recent that her room seemed for the time being to contain
all the actors and their movements.
"No! No!" she said aloud. "He had no right to speak after all that!
He should have respected the place where our thoughts should have
been. I am sure I do not love him--not enough to give him my life!"
And after she had thus spoken, the evening's experience at the tent
came crowding in again, thrusting out all other things. It is
perhaps the most striking evidence of the tremendous spiritual
factor which had now entered the Rectangle that Rachel felt, even
when the great love of a strong man had come very near to her, that
the spiritual manifestation moved her with an agitation far greater
than anything Jasper had felt for her personally or she for him.
The people of Raymond awoke Sunday morning to a growing knowledge of
events which were beginning to revolutionize many of the regular,
customary habits of the town. Alexander Powers' action in the matter
of the railroad frauds had created a sensation not only in Raymond
but throughout the country. Edward Norman's daily changes of policy
in the conduct of his paper had startled the community and caused
more comment than any recent political event. Rachel Winslow's
singing at the Rectangle meetings had made a stir in society and
excited the wonder of all her friends.
Virginia's conduct, her presence every night with Rachel, her
absence from the usual circle of her wealthy, fashionable
acquaintances, had furnished a great deal of material for gossip and
question. In addition to these events which centered about these
persons who were so well known, there had been all through the city
in very many homes and in business and social circles strange
happenings. Nearly one hundred persons in Henry Maxwell's church had
made the pledge to do everything after asking: "What would Jesus
do?" and the result had been, in many cases, unheard-of actions. The
city was stirred as it had never been before. As a climax to the
week's events had come the spiritual manifestation at the Rectangle,
and the announcement which came to most people before church time of
the actual conversion at the tent of nearly fifty of the worst
characters in that neighborhood, together with the con version of
Rollin Page, the well-known society and club man.
It is no wonder that under the pressure of all this the First Church
of Raymond came to the morning service in a condition that made it
quickly sensitive to any large truth. Perhaps nothing had astonished
the people more than the great change that had come over the
minister, since he had proposed to them the imitation of Jesus in
conduct. The dramatic delivery of his sermons no longer impressed
them. The self-satisfied, contented, easy attitude of the fine
figure and refined face in the pulpit had been displaced by a manner
that could not be compared with the old style of his delivery. The
sermon had become a message. It was no longer delivered. It was
brought to them with a love, an earnestness, a passion, a desire, a
humility that poured its enthusiasm about the truth and made the
speaker no more prominent than he had to be as the living voice of
God. His prayers were unlike any the people had heard before. They
were often broken, even once or twice they had been actually
ungrammatical in a phrase or two. When had Henry Maxwell so far
forgotten himself in a prayer as to make a mistake of that sort? He
knew that he had often taken as much pride in the diction and
delivery of his prayers as of his sermons. Was it possible he now so
abhorred the elegant refinement of a formal public petition that he
purposely chose to rebuke himself for his previous precise manner of
prayer? It is more likely that he had no thought of all that. His
great longing to voice the needs and wants of his people made him
unmindful of an occasional mistake. It is certain that he had never
prayed so effectively as he did now.
There are times when a sermon has a value and power due to
conditions in the audience rather than to anything new or startling
or eloquent in the words said or arguments presented. Such
conditions faced Henry Maxwell this morning as he preached against
the saloon, according to his purpose determined on the week before.
He had no new statements to make about the evil influence of the
saloon in Raymond. What new facts were there? He had no startling
illustrations of the power of the saloon in business or politics.
What could he say that had not been said by temperance orators a
great many times? The effect of his message this morning owed its
power to the unusual fact of his preaching about the saloon at all,
together with the events that had stirred the people. He had never
in the course of his ten years' pastorate mentioned the saloon as
something to be regarded in the light of an enemy, not only to the
poor and tempted, but to the business life of the place and the
church itself. He spoke now with a freedom that seemed to measure
his complete sense of conviction that Jesus would speak so. At the
close he pleaded with the people to remember the new life that had
begun at the Rectangle. The regular election of city officers was
near at hand. The question of license would be an issue in the
election. What of the poor creatures surrounded by the hell of drink
while just beginning to feel the joy of deliverance from sin? Who
could tell what depended on their environment? Was there one word to
be said by the Christian disciple, business man, citizen, in favor
of continuing the license to crime and shame-producing institutions?
Was not the most Christian thing they could do to act as citizens in
the matter, fight the saloon at the polls, elect good men to the
city offices, and clean the municipality? How much had prayers
helped to make Raymond better while votes and actions had really
been on the side of the enemies of Jesus? Would not Jesus do this?
What disciple could imagine Him refusing to suffer or to take up His
cross in this matter? How much had the members of the First Church
ever suffered in an attempt to imitate Jesus? Was Christian
discipleship a thing of conscience simply, of custom, of tradition?
Where did the suffering come in? Was it necessary in order to follow
Jesus' steps to go up Calvary as well as the Mount of
Transfiguration?
His appeal was stronger at this point than he knew. It is not too
much to say that the spiritual tension of the people reached its
highest point right there. The imitation of Jesus which had begun
with the volunteers in the church was working like leaven in the
organization, and Henry Maxwell would even thus early in his life
have been amazed if he could have measured the extent of desire on
the part of his people to take up the cross. While he was speaking
this morning, before he closed with a loving appeal to the
discipleship of two thousand years' knowledge of the Master, many a
man and woman in the church was saying as Rachel had said so
passionately to her mother: "I want to do something that will cost
me something in the way of sacrifice." "I am hungry to suffer
something." Truly, Mazzini was right when he said that no appeal is
quite so powerful in the end as the call: "Come and suffer."
The service was over, the great audience had gone, and Maxwell again
faced the company gathered in the lecture room as on the two
previous Sundays. He had asked all to remain who had made the pledge
of discipleship, and any others who wished to be included. The after
service seemed now to be a necessity. As he went in and faced the
people there his heart trembled. There were at least one hundred
present. The Holy Spirit was never before so manifest. He missed
Jasper Chase. But all the others were present. He asked Milton
Wright to pray. The very air was charged with divine possibilities.
What could resist such a baptism of power? How had they lived all
these years without it?
They counseled together and there were many prayers. Henry Maxwell
dated from that meeting some of the serious events that afterward
became a part of the history of the First Church and of Raymond. When
finally they went home, all of them were impressed with the glory of
the Spirit's power.