MAJOR H—— ON “THE COMING!”
Tom Hammond was riding westwards in the Tube. It was the morning after
the events narrated in the last chapter. He had just bought from a
book-stall a volume of extracts from essays on art in all its branches.
He sat back in the comfortable seat of the car dipping into the book.
Suddenly an extract arrested his attention.
It was evidently a description of the Crucifixion, but—most
tantalizing—the head of this page was torn, he could find out nothing
about the authorship. But the extract interested him:—
“Darkness—sooty, portentous darkness—shrouds the whole scene; only
above the accursed wood, as if through a horrid rift in the murky
ceiling, a rainy deluge—‘sleety-flaw, discoloured water’—streams down
amain, spreading a grisly, spectral light, even more horrible than that
palpable night. Already the Earth pants thick and fast! The darkened
Cross trembles! The winds are dropt—the air is stagnant—a muttering
rumble growls underneath their feet, and some of the miserable crowd
begin to fly down the hill. The horses sniff the coming terror, and
become unmanageable through fear. The moment rapidly approaches, when,
nearly torn asunder by His own weight, fainting with loss of blood,
which now runs in narrower rivulets from His slit veins, His temples and
breast drowned in sweat, and His black tongue parched with the fiery
death-fever, Jesus cried, ‘I thirst.’ The deadly vinegar is elevated to
Him.
“His head sinks, and the sacred corpse ‘swings senseless on the cross.’ A
sheet of vermilion flame shoots sheer through the air and vanishes; the
rocks of Carmel and Lebanon cleave asunder; the sea rolls on high from
the sands its black, weltering waves. Earth yawns, and the graves give up
their dwellers. The dead and the living are mingled together in unnatural
conjunction, and hurry through the Holy City.
“New prodigies await them there. The veil of the Temple—the unpierceable
veil—is rent asunder from top to bottom, and that dreaded recess,
containing the Hebrew mysteries—the fatal ark, with the tables and
seven-branched candelabrum—is disclosed by the light of unearthly flames
to the God-deserted multitude.”
“Strange!” he mused, as his eyes stared into space, his mind occupied
with the thought of the extract. “Strange how everything of late seems to
be compelling my attention to the Christ—Christ past, Christ future.”
At that instant he heard someone mention the name of his paper. He
glanced in the direction of the voices. Two gentlemen were talking
together. It was evident that his own identity was utterly unknown to
them.
“You’re right, you’re right,” the second man was saying. “A very clever
fellow, evidently, that editor of the _Courier_.”
“You have noticed, of course,” the first man went on, “those striking
paragraphs, of late, about the Jews. Though, to a keen student of the
subject, they show a very superficial knowledge; still, it is refreshing
to find a modern newspaper editor writing like that at all.”
“Yes,” the other said, “but it is strange how few people, even Christian
people, ever realize how intimately the future of the Jewish race is
bound up with that other shamefully neglected truth—the coming of the
Lord for His Church. I wish the editor of the _Courier_, and every other
newspaper editor, could be induced to go this afternoon and hear Major
H—— speak on these things at the —— Room.”
“British Museum!” called the conductor of the car. The two talkers
got out. Tom Hammond also alighted. As he mounted in the lift to the
street, he decided that he would hear this major on the subject that was
occupying his own perplexed thought so much.
Three o’clock that afternoon found him one of a congregation of three
to four hundred persons in the —— Room. He was amazed at the quality of
the audience. He recognized quite a dozen well-known London clergymen
and ministers, with a score of other equally well-known laymen—literary
men, merchants, etc. All were of a superior class. There was a large
sprinkling of ladies, who, in many cases, were evidently sisters.
Unaccustomed to such meetings, Tom Hammond did not know how enormous is
the number of Christian women who are to be found at special religious
gatherings, conventions, etc.
There was a subdued hum of whispering voices in the place. The hum
suddenly ceased. Tom Hammond glanced quickly towards the platform.
Half-a-dozen gentlemen and one or two ladies were taking their seats
there. They bowed their heads in silent prayer.
A minute later a tall, fine looking man, the centre one of the platform
group, rose to his feet and advanced to the rail. He held a hymn-book in
his hand. His keen eyes swept the faces of the gathered people. Then
in a clear, ringing voice like the voice of a military officer on the
battle-field, he cried:
“Number three-twenty-four. Let every voice ring out in song.”
Tom Hammond opened the linen-covered book that had been handed to him as
he entered, and was almost startled to note the likeness of the sentiment
of the hymn to the poem of B. M., which had struck him so forcibly that
night in his office.
The major gave out the first verse:
“It may be at morn, when the day is awaking,
When sunlight thro’ darkness and shadow is breaking,
That Jesus will come in the fulness of glory,
To take out of the world ‘His own.’”
The major paused a moment to interpolate, “Let the gladness of the
thought ring out in your voices as you sing, but especially in the
chorus.”
“O Lord Jesus, how long?
How long ere we shout the glad song
Christ returneth! Hallelujah!
Hallelujah! Amen!”
The singing of that hymn was a revelation to Tom Hammond. He had heard
hearty, ringing, triumphant song at Handel festivals, etc., but among the
rank and file, so to speak, of Christians he had never heard anything
like the singing of that verse and chorus.
A hundred thoughts and conflicting emotions filled him as he realized, as
the hymn went on, that these people were really inspired by the glorious
hope of the return of the Christ. Once he shuddered as the thought
presented itself to his mind,
“How should _I_ fare if this Christ came suddenly—came now?”
Twice over the last verse was sung, the quiet rapture of the singers
being doubly accentuated as the glorious words rang out:
“Oh, joy! oh, delight! should we go without dying!
No sickness, no sadness, no dread, and no crying;
Caught up through the clouds with our Lord into glory,
When Jesus receives ‘His own.’”
With the last-sung note the voice of the Major rang out again:
“General Sir R. P.—— will lead us in prayer.”
The hush that followed was of the tensest. It lasted a full half-minute,
then the old general’s voice led in a prayer such as Tom Hammond had
never even conceived possible to human lips, and such as, certainly, he
had never heard before. It awed him, and at the same time revealed to him
that real Christianity was something which he, with all his knowledge of
men and things, had never before come in contact with.
The prayer concluded, not a moment was wasted. In his clear, ringing
tones, the major began:
“Turn with me, if you will, dear friends, to the first chapter of the
Acts of the Apostles, and the eleventh verse.”
Tom Hammond wished that he had a Bible with him. It seemed to him that
he was the only person there without one. In an instant every Bible was
opened at the passage named. There was no searching, no fumbling. This
was another revelation to him.
“They know their Bibles,” he mused, “better than I do my dictionary or
encyclopædia.”
But his attention was suddenly riveted on the major, who, pocket Bible in
hand, was saying;
“Suffer me, friends, to change one word in my reading, that the truth may
come home clearer to our hearts. ‘Ye men of London, ... This same Jesus
which is taken up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye
have seen Him go into heaven.’”
He paused for one instant, then went on: “The second coming of our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ is, I believe, the central truth of real, true
Christianity at this moment, and it should be carefully, diligently
studied by every converted soul. It should be comprehended as far as
Scripture reveals it, and so apprehended that we should live in daily,
hourly expectancy of that return. Moody, the great evangelist, to
whom the whole subject (as he tells us) was once most objectionable,
upon studying the Word of God for himself, in this connection, was so
profoundly impressed with the insistence with which the return of the
Lord was emphasized, that he was compelled to believe in it, and to
preach it, saying, ‘It is almost the most precious truth of all the
Bible. Why, one verse in thirteen throughout the New Testament is said to
allude to this wondrous subject in some form or another.’
“Many of you who are present this afternoon are not only conversant
with this glorious matter, but are living in the glad expectancy of the
return of your Lord. But there are sure to be some here to-day to whom
the whole subject is foreign, and to you—even if there be only one such—I
shall speak as plainly, frankly, simply, yearningly, as though we were
tete-a-tete.”