TOLD IN A CAB.
A quarter of an hour before the time Zillah had given him, Tom Hammond
was waiting near the “Mission Hall for Jews,” where the meeting was to be
held. He was anxious that she should not know of his proximity, so kept
out of sight,—there were many possibilities of this among the various
stalls in the gutter-way.
Presently he saw her coming, and the light of a glad admiration leaped
into his eyes. “What a superb face and figure she has!” he mused. “What a
perfect queen of a woman she is!”
From behind a whelk-stall he watched her cross over to the door of the
Hall. Here she paused a moment, and glanced around.
“I believe she half expected to see me somewhere near!” he murmured to
himself.
She entered the Hall. By the time her head was bowed in prayer, he had
entered, and had taken a seat on the last form, the fourth behind hers.
When she first raised her head from her silent prayer, she looked around
and backward. In her heart she was hoping he would be there. If he had
not been bending in prayer, she must have seen him. After that she turned
no more, the service soon occupied all her thoughts.
He too became utterly absorbed by the service, of which the address
was the chief feature. It was largely expository, and from the first
utterance of the speaker, it riveted Tom Hammond’s attention.
The speaker, himself a converted Jew, took as his text Deut. xxi. 22, 23.
“If a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and is sentenced to
death, and thou hang him on a tree, his corpse shall not remain all night
upon the tree, but, burying, thou shalt bury him on that day (because he
who is hanged is accursed of God).”
“Now, brethren,” the speaker went on, “as far as I have been able to
discover, in all the Hebrew records I have been able to consult, and in
all the histories of our race, I have not found a single reference to a
Hebrew official hanging of a criminal on a tree. To what, then, does this
verse refer, and why is it placed on Jehovah’s statute-book?”
For a few moments he appealed to his Jewish hearers on points peculiarly
Hebraic. Then presently he said,
“Now let us see if the New Testament will shed any light upon this.”
Turning rapidly the leaves of his Bible, he went on: “There is a book in
the Christian Scriptures known as the Epistle to the Galatians which,
in the tenth verse of the third chapter, repeats our own word from
Deuteronomy:
“‘Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written
in the Book of the Law to do them,’ and in the thirteenth verse says,
‘Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse
for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.’
“We all, brethren, as the sons of Abraham, believe that our father
David’s Psalm beginning, ‘My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?’ was
never written out of his own experience, but was prophetic of some other
Person. Now, let me quote you some of the words of that Psalm.”
In clear, succinct language, the speaker, quoting verse after verse of
the Psalm, showed how literally the descriptions fitted into a death
by crucifixion. Referring to the Gospel narratives of the death on the
cross, he showed how they also fitted in with the description of Christ’s
death, and how Christ actually took upon His dying lips the cry of the
Psalm, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
Then with wondrous clearness he referred to parts of Isaiah liii., and,
continuing his theme, showed that it was evident that only one particular
type of death could have atoned for the sin of the human race, a death
that would render the dying one accursed of the Almighty. The only death
that would fully carry out that condition was crucifixion.
“Our race waited for the Messiah,” he cried, “and He came. Our prophet
Micah said, ‘Yet thou, O Bethlehem-Ephratah, little as thou art amidst
the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall proceed from Me, One who is
to be ruler in Israel!”
“The Christ was born at the only time in the world’s history when
He could have been executed on a tree—crucified. At a time when the
Roman—crucifixion was a Roman punishment—swayed our beloved land of
Jewry. So that Paul, the great Jew, chosen of God to be apostle to the
Gentiles, wrote after the crucifixion of Jesus, the Nazarene, ‘According
to the time, Christ died.’”
For some minutes the speaker appealed to his Jewish hearers with a
wonderful power. Then finally addressing not only the Jews, but any
Gentiles who might be present, he cried:
“We must know the meaning of sin, brethren, before we can understand
the mystery of a crucified Christ. A beheaded, a stoned Christ, could
not have atoned for a guilty world, but only a God-cursed death, a
tree-cursed death could have done this.
“And Christ was cursed for us—He who knew no curse of His own. Ah!
beloved, the guilt of the human race is the key to the cross.
“Times change, customs change, but sin remains, sin is ever the same, and
only a living, personal trust in the crucified Christ can ever deliver
the unsaved sinner from the wrath of God which abideth on him.”
The address closed. Tom Hammond awoke from his intense absorption of
soul. He had long since utterly forgotten Zillah. He had seen only
himself, at first, his own sin, and that his sin had nailed Christ to the
cross. Then, better still, he saw the Christ.
Only a few nights before he had paused to watch a Salvation Army
open-air meeting. The girl-officer in charge of the corps had announced
thirty-eight as the number of the hymn they would sing, and prefaced the
reading of the first verse by saying:
“This hymn was written by an ex-drunkard—an ex-blasphemer. His name was
Newton—drunken Jack Newton, he was often called by his mates, and by
others who knew him. He was a sailor, on a ship trading to the African
coast, at the time when his soul was aroused to its danger. He was in
agony, not knowing what to do to get rest and peace.
“One night he was keeping anchor-watch. He was alone on the deck, the
night was dark and eerie. His sins troubled him. All that he had heard
of the crucified Christ—whom he had so often blasphemed—swept into his
soul, and he groaned in the misery of his sin-convicted state.
“Suddenly he paused in his deck-pacing, and looked up. To his fevered
imagination, the yard which crossed the mast high up above his head
appeared like a mighty cross, and it was remembering this, with all the
soul-experience of that night, that in after years, when he became a
preacher of the gospel, and a noted divine, Dr. John Newton wrote:
“I saw One hanging on a tree
In agonies and blood,
Who fixed His dying eyes on me,
As near the cross I stood.
‘A second look He gave, which said,
“I freely all forgive
My blood was for thy ransom paid,
I die that thou may’st live.’””
Recalling these words now, Tom Hammond’s soul received the great
Revelation. He heard no word of the closing hymn and prayer, but passed
out into the open air a new man in Christ.
The mission-leader had given an invitation to any who would like to be
helped in soul matters to remain behind. Tom Hammond noticed that Zillah
lingered.
It was half-an-hour before she came out. Tom Hammond had lived a
life-time of wonder in the thirty minutes.
Like one in a delicious dream Zillah walked on a few yards. Suddenly she
became aware of Tom Hammond’s presence at her side.
“Zillah!”
He gave her no other word of greeting. It was the first time he had ever
called the young girl by her first name. He took her hand, and drew it
through his arm. She barely noticed the tender action, for her soul was
rioting in a new-found joy, and she poured out, in a few sentences, all
the story of her supreme trust in Christ the Nazarene.
His voice was hoarse with many emotions, as he said,
“I, too, Zillah, have to-night seen Jesus Christ dying for my sin, and
have taken Him for my own personal Saviour!”
Suddenly she realized how closely he was holding her to his side, how
tight was the clasp of his hand upon hers. She looked up into his face
to express her joy at his new-found faith. Their eyes met. A new meaning
flashed in their exchanged glances.
A four-wheeled cab moved slowly along in the gutter-way, the driver
uttered a low “Keb, keb!”
Tom Hammond seized the opportune offer, and whispered,
“Let us take a cab, Zillah. I have something to say to you which I must
say to-night.”
Before scarcely she realized it, she was seated by his side in the cab.
There is a moment in every woman’s life when her heart warns her of the
coming of the great event in that life, when love is to be offered to her
by the only man who has ever loomed large enough in her consciousness to
be able to affect her existence.
This moment had suddenly unexpectedly come to Zillah Robart.
Her heart warned her that the crisis was upon her. She had done nothing
to precipitate it. It had met her, drawn her aside, and had shut her up
in the semi-darkness of this vehicle with the only man she could ever
love.
The cab rattled over the cobbles of that wide East-end thoroughfare, past
the throngs of moving pedestrians, though, to her consciousness, the
whole wide world consisted of but one man—the man at her side.
He had secured her hand, he held it in his strong, hot clasp. She held
her breath in a strange, expectant ecstasy. Then the inevitable came. She
felt its coming.
Tom Hammond was drawing her closer to himself. She was yielding to that
drawing. She caught her breath again, and as she did so a rush of strange
tears filled her eyes.
“Zillah!” his voice was hoarse and deep.
She realized the meaning of the hoarseness. She knew by her own feeling
that the depth and intensity of his voice was due to the emotion that
filled him. She knew she would have found herself voiceless at that
moment had she tried to speak.
“I love you, my darling!” he went on. “I have loved you from the first
instant I met you. You have felt it, known it, dear. Have you not?”
She tried to speak, her lips moved, but no sound came from them. But she
looked into his eyes, and he read his answer.
With a sweeping gesture of passionate love he gathered her into his arms
and showered kisses upon her lips, her cheeks, her forehead, her hair.
She lay like a stunned thing in his arms. Her joy was almost greater than
she could bear. Then as his hot lips sought hers again, she awoke from
her semi-trance of ecstasy, and with a little sob she flung her arms
upwards and clasped them about his neck, crying,
“Love you, my darling? Love seems too poor a word to express my feeling,
for God knows that, save my Lord Jesus, to whom to-night I have fully
yielded, you are all my life.”
Her voice was stifled with a little rush of tears. Where she lay on his
breast, he felt how all her frame quivered.
“And you will be mine, dear Zillah—and soon?” His eyes burned into hers,
asking for an answer as loudly as his lips.
She did not answer him for a moment. Her heart beat with a tumultuous
gladness, and her brain throbbed with the wonder of what she conceived to
be the honour that had come to her. Wondering incredulity mingled with
the rapturous ecstasy that filled her.
“But you are so great—so——” She paused, she could find no words to
express all that prospective wifedom to him appeared to her.
He smiled down into her eyes. Her loveliness seemed to him greater than
ever before.
“You seem like a king to me!” she gasped at last.
“You, Zillah,” he smiled, “do not seem, you are, a queen to me. Say,
darling, the one word that shall fill all my soul with delight—say that
you will be mine—and soon, very soon!”
“I will.”
There was the intensity of a mighty love in her utterance of the two
words.
He gathered her to himself in an even closer embrace, and spent his
kisses on her lips.
The flush of pride, of love, burned deeper in her face.
“Oh, why is it given to me to have such bliss?” she murmured.
The words were low-breathed; they sounded like a gasping sigh of delight
more than a voiced utterance.
For a moment, clasped tightly in his arms, she was silent, and he
uttered no word. Presently he whispered,
“Will it give you joy, I wonder, my darling, to know that I have been
a man free of all woman’s love before? I have seen many women, in many
lands, the loveliest of the earth—though none so lovely as you, my
sweetheart. It is no egotism on my part, either, to say that many women
have sought my love by their smiles and favour. But none ever won a word
of love or response from me.”
The cab was passing a great central light in the heart of a junction of
four roads. Her eyes, full of a great rapture, sought his. His were fixed
upon her face, and filled with a love so great that again she caught her
breath in wonder.
“But you, my Zillah!” He caught her close to himself again, and bending
his head, let his lips cling to hers, “But you, darling!” he continued,
“have been to me all that the heart of man could ever wish for, from the
first moment I met you. May God give us a long life together, dearest,
and make us (with our new-born faith in Him) to be the best, the holiest
help-meets, the one to the other, that this world has ever known.”
Where she lay in his arms, he felt her tremble with the intensity of her
joy. As he looked down into the deep, dreamy lustrousness of her eyes,
he saw how they were full of a far-off look, as though she was picturing
that united future of which he had spoken.
Perhaps he read that look in her eyes aright. Then, as he watched her, he
saw how the colour deepened in her face. She slowly, proudly, yet with a
glad frankness, lifted herself in his arms until, in a tender, passionate
caress, her lips rested upon his in the first spontaneous kiss she had
given him.
“If the Christ, to whom we have given ourselves to-night, should tarry,”
she whispered, “and we are spared to dwell together on earth as husband
and wife, dear Tom, may God answer all that prayer of yours abundantly.”
The cab turned a corner sharply at that moment. He looked through the
window. They were within a few hundred yards of where he had given the
driver orders to stop. Zillah would have, on alighting, only the length
of a short street to traverse before reaching home, and he would take a
hansom and drive back to the office. But the intervening moments before
they would part were very precious, and love took unlimited toll in those
swift, fleeting moments.