"Now, when Jesus heard these things, He said unto him, Yet lackest
thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the
poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow Me."
WHEN Henry Maxwell began to speak to the souls crowded into the
Settlement Hall that night it is doubtful if he ever faced such an
audience in his life. It is quite certain that the city of Raymond
did not contain such a variety of humanity. Not even the Rectangle
at its worst could furnish so many men and women who had fallen
entirely out of the reach of the church and of all religious and
even Christian influences.
What did he talk about? He had already decided that point. He told
in the simplest language he could command some of the results of
obedience to the pledge as it had been taken in Raymond. Every man
and woman in that audience knew something about Jesus Christ. They
all had some idea of His character, and however much they had grown
bitter toward the forms of Christian ecclesiasticism or the social
system, they preserved some standard of right and truth, and what
little some of them still retained was taken from the person of the
Peasant of Galilee.
So they were interested in what Maxwell said. "What would Jesus do?"
He began to apply the question to the social problem in general,
after finishing the story of Raymond. The audience was respectfully
attentive. It was more than that. It was genuinely interested. As
Mr. Maxwell went on, faces all over the hall leaned forward in a way
seldom seen in church audiences or anywhere except among workingmen
or the people of the street when once they are thoroughly aroused.
"What would Jesus do?" Suppose that were the motto not only of the
churches but of the business men, the politicians, the newspapers,
the workingmen, the society people--how long would it take under
such a standard of conduct to revolutionize the world? What was the
trouble with the world? It was suffering from selfishness. No one
ever lived who had succeeded in overcoming selfishness like Jesus.
If men followed Him regardless of results the world would at once
begin to enjoy a new life.
Maxwell never knew how much it meant to hold the respectful
attention of that hall full of diseased and sinful humanity. The
Bishop and Dr. Bruce, sitting there, looking on, seeing many faces
that represented scorn of creeds, hatred of the social order,
desperate narrowness and selfishness, marveled that even so soon
under the influence of the Settlement life, the softening process
had begun already to lessen the bitterness of hearts, many of which
had grown bitter from neglect and indifference.
And still, in spite of the outward show of respect to the speaker,
no one, not even the Bishop, had any true conception of the feeling
pent up in that room that night. Among those who had heard of the
meeting and had responded to the invitation were twenty or thirty
men out of work who had strolled past the Settlement that afternoon,
read the notice of the meeting, and had come in out of curiosity and
to escape the chill east wind. It was a bitter night and the saloons
were full. But in that whole district of over thirty thousand souls,
with the exception of the saloons, there was not a door open except
the clean, pure Christian door of the Settlement. Where would a man
without a home or without work or without friends naturally go
unless to the saloon?
It had been the custom at the Settlement for a free discussion to
follow any open meeting of this kind, and when Mr. Maxwell finished
and sat down, the Bishop, who presided that night, rose and made the
announcement that any man in the hall was at liberty to ask
questions, to speak out his feelings or declare his convictions,
always with the understanding that whoever took part was to observe
the simple rules that governed parliamentary bodies and obey the
three-minute rule which, by common consent, would be enforced on
account of the numbers present.
Instantly a number of voices from men who had been at previous
meetings of this kind exclaimed, "Consent! consent!"
The Bishop sat down, and immediately a man near the middle of the
hall rose and began to speak.
"I want to say that what Mr. Maxwell has said tonight comes pretty
close to me. I knew Jack Manning, the fellow he told about who died
at his house. I worked on the next case to his in a printer's shop
in Philadelphia for two years. Jack was a good fellow. He loaned me
five dollars once when I was in a hole and I never got a chance to
pay him back. He moved to New York, owing to a change in the
management of the office that threw him out, and I never saw him
again. When the linotype machines came in I was one of the men to go
out, just as he did. I have been out most of the time since. They
say inventions are a good thing. I don't always see it myself; but I
suppose I'm prejudiced. A man naturally is when he loses a steady
job because a machine takes his place. About this Christianity he
tells about, it's all right. But I never expect to see any such
sacrifices on the part of the church people. So far as my
observation goes they're just as selfish and as greedy for money and
worldly success as anybody. I except the Bishop and Dr. Bruce and a
few others. But I never found much difference between men of the
world, as they are called, and church members when it came to
business and money making. One class is just as bad as another
there."
Cries of "That's so!" "You're right!" "Of course!" interrupted the
speaker, and the minute he sat down two men who were on the floor
for several seconds before the first speaker was through began to
talk at once.
The Bishop called them to order and indicated which was entitled to
the floor. The man who remained standing began eagerly:
"This is the first time I was ever in here, and may be it'll be the
last. Fact is, I am about at the end of my string. I've tramped this
city for work till I'm sick. I'm in plenty of company. Say! I'd like
to ask a question of the minister, if it's fair. May I?"
"That's for Mr. Maxwell to say," said the Bishop.
"By all means," replied Mr. Maxwell quickly. "Of course, I will not
promise to answer it to the gentleman's satisfaction."
"This is my question." The man leaned forward and stretched out a
long arm with a certain dramatic force that grew naturally enough
out of his condition as a human being. "I want to know what Jesus
would do in my case. I haven't had a stroke of work for two months.
I've got a wife and three children, and I love them as much as if I
was worth a million dollars. I've been living off a little earnings
I saved up during the World's Fair jobs I got. I'm a carpenter by
trade, and I've tried every way I know to get a job. You say we
ought to take for our motto, 'What would Jesus do?' What would He do
if He was out of work like me? I can't be somebody else and ask the
question. I want to work. I'd give anything to grow tired of working
ten hours a day the way I used to. Am I to blame because I can't
manufacture a job for myself? I've got to live, and my wife and my
children have got to live. But how? What would Jesus do? You say
that's the question we ought to ask."
Mr. Maxwell sat there staring at the great sea of faces all intent
on his, and no answer to this man's question seemed for the time
being to be possible. "O God!" his heart prayed; "this is a question
that brings up the entire social problem in all its perplexing
entanglement of human wrongs and its present condition contrary to
every desire of God for a human being's welfare. Is there any
condition more awful than for a man in good health, able and eager
to work, with no means of honest livelihood unless he does work,
actually unable to get anything to do, and driven to one of three
things: begging or charity at the hands of friends or strangers,
suicide or starvation? 'What would Jesus do?'" It was a fair
question for the man to ask. It was the only question he could ask,
supposing him to be a disciple of Jesus. But what a question for any
man to be obliged to answer under such conditions?
All this and more did Henry Maxwell ponder. All the others were
thinking in the same way. The Bishop sat there with a look so stern
and sad that it was not hard to tell how the question moved him. Dr.
Bruce had his head bowed. The human problem had never seemed to him
so tragical as since he had taken the pledge and left his church to
enter the Settlement. What would Jesus do? It was a terrible
question. And still the man stood there, tall and gaunt and almost
terrible, with his arm stretched out in an appeal which grew every
second in meaning. At length Mr. Maxwell spoke.
"Is there any man in the room, who is a Christian disciple, who has
been in this condition and has tried to do as Jesus would do? If so,
such a man can answer this question better than I can."
There was a moment's hush over the room and then a man near the
front of the hall slowly rose. He was an old man, and the hand he
laid on the back of the bench in front of him trembled as he spoke.
"I think I can safely say that I have many times been in just such a
condition, and I have always tried to be a Christian under all
conditions. I don't know as I have always asked this question, 'What
would Jesus do?' when I have been out of work, but I do know I have
tried to be His disciple at all times. Yes," the man went on, with a
sad smile that was more pathetic to the Bishop and Mr. Maxwell than
the younger man's grim despair; "yes, I have begged, and I have been
to charity institutions, and I have done everything when out of a
job except steal and lie in order to get food and fuel. I don't know
as Jesus would have done some of the things I have been obliged to
do for a living, but I know I have never knowingly done wrong when
out of work. Sometimes I think maybe He would have starved sooner
than beg. I don't know."
The old man's voice trembled and he looked around the room timidly.
A silence followed, broken by a fierce voice from a large,
black-haired, heavily-bearded man who sat three seats from the
Bishop. The minute he spoke nearly every man in the hall leaned
forward eagerly. The man who had asked the question, "What would
Jesus do in my case?" slowly sat down and whispered to the man next
to him: "Who's that?"
"That's Carlsen, the Socialist leader. Now you'll hear something."
"This is all bosh, to my mind," began Carlsen, while his great
bristling beard shook with the deep inward anger of the man. "The
whole of our system is at fault. What we call civilization is rotten
to the core. There is no use trying to hide it or cover it up. We
live in an age of trusts and combines and capitalistic greed that
means simply death to thousands of innocent men, women and children.
I thank God, if there is a God--which I very much doubt--that I, for
one, have never dared to marry and make a home. Home! Talk of hell!
Is there any bigger one than this man and his three children has on
his hands right this minute? And he's only one out of thousands. And
yet this city, and every other big city in this country, has its
thousands of professed Christians who have all the luxuries and
comforts, and who go to church Sundays and sing their hymns about
giving all to Jesus and bearing the cross and following Him all the
way and being saved! I don't say that there aren't good men and
women among them, but let the minister who has spoken to us here
tonight go into any one of a dozen aristocratic churches I could
name and propose to the members to take any such pledge as the one
he's mentioned here tonight, and see how quick the people would
laugh at him for a fool or a crank or a fanatic. Oh, no! That's not
the remedy. That can't ever amount to anything. We've got to have a
new start in the way of government. The whole thing needs
reconstructing. I don't look for any reform worth anything to come
out of the churches. They are not with the people. They are with the
aristocrats, with the men of money. The trusts and monopolies have
their greatest men in the churches. The ministers as a class are
their slaves. What we need is a system that shall start from the
common basis of socialism, founded on the rights of the common
people--"
Carlsen had evidently forgotten all about the three-minutes rule and
was launching himself into a regular oration that meant, in his
usual surroundings before his usual audience, an hour at least, when
the man just behind him pulled him down unceremoniously and arose.
Carlsen was angry at first and threatened a little disturbance, but
the Bishop reminded him of the rule, and he subsided with several
mutterings in his beard, while the next speaker began with a very
strong eulogy on the value of the single tax as a genuine remedy for
all the social ills. He was followed by a man who made a bitter
attack on the churches and ministers, and declared that the two
great obstacles in the way of all true reform were the courts and
the ecclesiastical machines.
When he sat down a man who bore every mark of being a street laborer
sprang to his feet and poured a perfect torrent of abuse against the
corporations, especially the railroads. The minute his time was up a
big, brawny fellow, who said he was a metal worker by trade, claimed
the floor and declared that the remedy for the social wrongs was
Trades Unionism. This, he said, would bring on the millennium for
labor more surely than anything else. The next man endeavored to
give some reasons why so many persons were out of employment, and
condemned inventions as works of the devil. He was loudly applauded
by the rest.
Finally the Bishop called time on the "free for all," and asked
Rachel to sing.
Rachel Winslow had grown into a very strong, healthful, humble
Christian during that wonderful year in Raymond dating from the
Sunday when she first took the pledge to do as Jesus would do, and
her great talent for song had been fully consecrated to the service
of the Master. When she began to sing tonight at this Settlement
meeting, she had never prayed more deeply for results to come from
her voice, the voice which she now regarded as the Master's, to be
used for Him.
Certainly her prayer was being answered as she sang. She had chosen
the words,
"Hark! The voice of Jesus calling, Follow me, follow me!"
Again Henry Maxwell, sitting there, was reminded of his first night
at the Rectangle in the tent when Rachel sang the people into quiet.
The effect was the same here. What wonderful power a good voice
consecrated to the Master's service always is! Rachel's great
natural ability would have made her one of the foremost opera
singers of the age. Surely this audience had never heard such a
melody. How could it? The men who had drifted in from the street sat
entranced by a voice which "back in the world," as the Bishop said,
never could be heard by the common people because the owner of it
would charge two or three dollars for the privilege. The song poured
out through the hall as free and glad as if it were a foretaste of
salvation itself. Carlsen, with his great, black-bearded face
uplifted, absorbed the music with the deep love of it peculiar to
his nationality, and a tear ran over his cheek and glistened in his
beard as his face softened and became almost noble in its aspect.
The man out of work who had wanted to know what Jesus would do in
his place sat with one grimy hand on the back of the bench in front
of him, with his mouth partly open, his great tragedy for the moment
forgotten. The song, while it lasted, was food and work and warmth
and union with his wife and babies once more. The man who had spoken
so fiercely against the churches and ministers sat with his head
erect, at first with a look of stolid resistance, as if he
stubbornly resisted the introduction into the exercises of anything
that was even remotely connected with the church or its forms of
worship. But gradually he yielded to the power that was swaying the
hearts of all the persons in that room, and a look of sad
thoughtfulness crept over his face.
The Bishop said that night while Rachel was singing that if the
world of sinful, diseased, depraved, lost humanity could only have
the gospel preached to it by consecrated prima donnas and
professional tenors and altos and bassos, he believed it would
hasten the coming of the Kingdom quicker than any other one force.
"Why, oh why," he cried in his heart as he listened, "has the
world's great treasure of song been so often held far from the poor
because the personal possessor of voice or fingers, capable of
stirring divinest melody, has so often regarded the gift as
something with which to make money? Shall there be no martyrs among
the gifted ones of the earth? Shall there be no giving of this great
gift as well as of others?"
And Henry Maxwell, again as before, called up that other audience at
the Rectangle with increasing longing for a larger spread of the new
discipleship. What he had seen and heard at the Settlement burned
into him deeper the belief that the problem of the city would be
solved if the Christians in it should once follow Jesus as He gave
commandment. But what of this great mass of humanity, neglected and
sinful, the very kind of humanity the Savior came to save, with all
its mistakes and narrowness, its wretchedness and loss of hope,
above all its unqualified bitterness towards the church? That was
what smote him deepest. Was the church then so far from the Master
that the people no longer found Him in the church? Was it true that
the church had lost its power over the very kind of humanity which
in the early ages of Christianity it reached in the greatest
numbers? How much was true in what the Socialist leader said about
the uselessness of looking to the church for reform or redemption,
because of the selfishness and seclusion and aristocracy of its
members?
He was more and more impressed with the appalling fact that the
comparatively few men in that hall, now being held quiet for a while
by Rachel's voice, represented thousands of others just like them,
to whom a church and a minister stood for less than a saloon or a
beer garden as a source of comfort or happiness. Ought it to be so?
If the church members were all doing as Jesus would do, could it
remain true that armies of men would walk the streets for jobs and
hundreds of them curse the church and thousands of them find in the
saloon their best friend? How far were the Christians responsible
for this human problem that was personally illustrated right in this
hall tonight? Was it true that the great city churches would as a
rule refuse to walk in Jesus' steps so closely as to
suffer--actually suffer--for His sake?
Henry Maxwell kept asking this question even after Rachel had finished
singing and the meeting had come to an end after a social gathering
which was very informal. He asked it while the little company of
residents with the Raymond visitors were having a devotional service,
as the custom in the Settlement was. He asked it during a conference
with the Bishop and Dr. Bruce which lasted until one o'clock. He asked
it as he knelt again before sleeping and poured out his soul in a
petition for spiritual baptism on the church in America such as it had
never known. He asked it the first thing in the morning and all through
the day as he went over the Settlement district and saw the life of
the people so far removed from the Life abundant. "Would the church
members, would the Christians, not only in the churches of Chicago, but
throughout the country, refuse to walk in His steps if, in order to do
so, they must actually take up a cross and follow Him? This was the one
question that continually demanded answer.