CRISTOFERO.
A September morning on the deck of a steamer bound into New York,
two days from her port.
A fair wind; waves gleaming as they tossed landward, with the white
crests and the grand swell that told of some mid-Atlantic storm,
which had given them their impulse days since, and would send them
breaking upon the American capes and beaches, in splendid tumult of
foam, and roar, and plunge; "white horses," wearing rainbows in
their manes.
The blue heaven full of sunshine; the air full of sea-tingle; a
morning to feel the throb and spring of the vessel under one's feet,
as an answer to the throb and spring of one's own life and
eagerness; the leap of strength in the veins, and the homeward haste
in the heart.
Two gentlemen, who had talked much together in the nine days of
their ship-companionship, stood together at the taffrail.
One was the Reverend Hilary Vireo, minister of Mavis Place Chapel,
Boston,--coming back to his work in glorious renewal from his eight
weeks' holiday in Europe. The other was Christopher Kirkbright,
younger partner of the house of Ferguson, Ramsay, and Kirkbright,
tea and silk merchants, Hong Kong. Christopher Kirkbright had gone
out to China from Glasgow, at the age of twenty-one, pledged to a
ten years' stay. For five years past, he had had a share in the
business for himself; for the two last, he had represented also the
interest of Grahame Kirkbright, his uncle, third partner; had
inherited, besides, half of his estate; the other half had come to
our friend at home, his sister, Miss Euphrasia.
"I had no right to stay out there any longer, making my tools;
multiplying them, without definite purpose. It was time to put them
to their use; and I have come home to find it. A man may take till
thirty-one to get ready, mayn't he, Mr. Vireo?"
"The man who took up the work of the world's salvation, began to be
about thirty years of age when he came forth to public ministry,"
returned Mr. Vireo.
"I never thought of that before. I wonder I never did. It has come
home to me, in many other parts of that Life, how full it is of
scarcely recognized analogy to prevailing human experience. That
'driving into the Wilderness!' What an inevitable interval it is
between the realizing of a special power and the finding out of its
special purpose! I am in the Wilderness,--or was,--Vireo; but I knew
my way lay through it. I have been pausing--thinking--striving to
know. The temptations may not have been wanting, altogether, either.
There are so many things one can do easily; considering one's self,
largely, in the plan. My whole life has waited, in some chief
respects, till the end of these ten pledged years. What was I to do
with it? Where was I to look for, and find most speedily, all that a
man begins to feel the desire to establish for himself at thirty
years old? Home, society, sphere; I can tell you it is a strange
feeling to take one's fortune in one's hand and come forth from such
a business exile, and choose where one will make the first
link,--decide the first condition, which may draw after all the
rest. Happily, I had my sister to come home to; and I had the
remembrance of the little story my mother told me--about my name. I
think she looked forward for the boy who could know so little then
of the destiny partly laid out for him already."
"About your name?" reminded Mr. Vireo. He always liked to hear the
whole of a thing; especially a thing that touched and influenced
spiritually.
"Yes. The story of Saint Cristofero. The strong man, Offero, who
would serve the strongest; who served a great king, till he learned
that the king feared Satan; who then sought Satan and served him,
till he found that Satan feared the Cross; who sought for Jesus,
then, that he might serve Him, and found a hermit who bade him fast
and pray. But he would not fast, since from his food came his
strength to serve with; nor pray, because it seemed to him idle; but
he went forth to help those who were in danger of being swept away,
as they struggled to cross the deep, wide River. He bore them
through upon his shoulders,--the weak, the little, the weary. At
last, he bore a little child who entreated him, and the child grew
heavy, and heavier, till, when they reached the other side, Offero
said,--'I feel as if I had borne the world upon my shoulders!' And
he was answered,--'Thou may'st say that; for thou hast borne Him who
made the world.' And then he knew that it was the Lord; and he was
called no more 'Offero,' but 'Cristofero.' My mother told me that
when I was a little child; and the story has grown in me. The Christ
has yet to be borne on men's shoulders."
Hilary Vireo stood and listened with gleaming eyes. Of course, he
knew the old saint-legend; of course, Christopher Kirkbright
supposed it; but these were men who understood without the saying,
that the verities are forever old and forever new. A mother's wise
and tender tale,--a child's life growing into a man's, and
sanctifying itself with a purpose,--these were the informing that
filled afresh every sentence of the story, and made its repetition a
most fair and sweet origination.
"And so,"--
"And so, I must earn my name," said Christopher Kirkbright, simply.
"Lift them up, and take them across," said Hilary Vireo, as if
thinking it over to himself. The old story had quickened him. A
grand perception came to him for his friend, who had begged him to
think for and advise him. "Lift them up and take them across!" he
repeated, looking into Mr. Kirkbright's face, and speaking the words
to him with warm energy. "They are waiting--so many of them! They
are sinking down--so many! They want to be lifted through. They
want--and they want terribly--a place of safety on the other side.
Go down into the river of temptation, and hardship, and sin, and
help them up out of it, Christopher. Take them up out of their cruel
conditions; make a place for some of them to begin over again in;
for some of them to rest in, once in a while, and take courage. Why
shouldn't there be cities of refuge, now, Kirkbright? Men are
mapping out towns for their own gain, all over the land, wherever a
water power or a railroad gives the chance for one to grow; why not
build a Hope for the hopeless? Nowhere on earth could that be done
as it could in our own land!"
"A City of Refuge'" Kirkbright repeated the words gravely,
earnestly; like those of some message of an angel of the Lord, that
sounded with self-attested authority in his ears.
After a pause, in which his thought followed out the word of
suggestion into a swift dream of possible fulfillment, he said to
his companion,--
"I believe there was nothing in that old Jewish economy, Vireo, that
was not given as a 'pattern of things' that should be. That whole
Old Testament is a type and prophecy of the kingdom coming. Only it
was but the first Adam. It was given right into the very conditions
that illustrated its need. It would have meant nothing, given into a
society of angels. Yet because men were not angels, but very mortal
and sinful men, we of to-day must fling contempt upon the Myth of
the Salvation of God! It will stand, for all that,--that history of
God's intimacy with men. It was _lived_, not told as a vision, that
it _might_ stand! It was lived, to show how near, in spite of sin,
God came, and stayed. The second coming shall be without sin unto
salvation."
"I'm not sure, Kirkbright, but you ought to be a minister."
"Not to stand in a pulpit. God helping me, I mean to be a minister.
Wouldn't a preacher be satisfied to have studied a week upon a
sermon, if he knew that on Sunday, preaching it, he had sent it,
live, into one living soul? Fifty-two souls a year, to reach and
save,--would not that be enough? Well, then, every day a man might
be giving the Lord's word out somewhere, in some fashion, I think.
He needn't wait for the Sundays. Everybody has a congregation in the
course of the week. I don't doubt the week-day service is often you
preachers' best."
"I _know_ it is," Hilary Vireo replied.
"Come down into the cabin with me," said Mr. Kirkbright. "I want to
look up that old pattern. It will tell me something."
Down in the cabin they seated themselves together where they had
had many a talk before, at a corner table near Mr. Kirkbright's
state-room door. Out of the state-room he had brought his Bible.
He got hold of one word in that old ordination,--"unawares."
"'He that doeth it _unawares_," he repeated, holding the Bible with
his finger between the half-shut leaves, at that thirty-fifth
chapter of Numbers. "How that reminds of, and connects with, the
Atoning Prayer,--'Forgive them, for they know not what they do!'
'Sins, negligences, ignorances;' how they shade and change into each
other! If all the mistakes could be forgiven and set right, how much
evil, virulent and unmixed, would there be left in the world, do you
suppose?"
"Not more than there was before the mistakes began," replied Vireo.
"Like the Arabian genie, the monster would be drawn down from its
horrible expansion to a point again,--the point of a possibility;
the serpent suggestion of evil choice. When God has done his work of
forgiving, there is where it will be, I think; and the Son of the
woman shall set his heel upon its head."
"I wish I could see what lies behind this," said Mr. Kirkbright.
"'He shall abide in it unto the death of the high-priest,' and after
that, 'the slayer shall return into the land of his possession.'
That might almost seem to point to the old sacrificial idea; the
atonement by death. I cannot rest in that. I wish I could see its
whole meaning,--for meaning it must have, and a meaning of _life_."
"A temporary ministry; a limited exile; the one the measure of the
other," sail Hilary Vireo, slowly thinking it out, and taking the
book from the hand of his friend, to look over the words themselves,
as he did so.
"The glory is in the promise: 'he shall return into the land of his
possession.' His life shall be given back to him,--all that it was
meant to be. It shall be kept open for him, till the time of his
banishment is over. Meanwhile, over even this period is a holy
providing, an anointed commission of grace."
"But hear this," he continued, turning to the Epistle to the
Hebrews, "and put the suggestions alongside. All but God's final and
eternal _best_ is transitional. 'They truly were many priests,
because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death. But
this man, because He continueth ever, hath an unchangeable
priesthood. Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost,
that come to God by Him.' Did it ever occur to you to think about
that saving to the uttermost? Not a scrap of blessed possibility
forfeited, lost? All gathered up, restored, put into our hands
again, from the redeeming hands of Christ? Backward and forward,
through all that was irretrievable to us; sought, and traced, and
found, and brought back with rejoicing; the whole house swept, until
not one silver piece is missing. That is the return into the land of
our possession. _That_ is God's salvation, and his gospel! That is
what shall come to pass. Not yet; not while we are only under the
lesser ministry; but when that priesthood over the time of our
waiting ends, and we have believed unto the full appearing of the
Lord!"
The speaker's face flushed and glowed; Hilary Vireo, always glad and
strong in look and bearing, was grandly joyful when the power of the
gospel he had to preach came upon him; the gospel of a full,
perfect, and unstinted hope.
"Is that what you tell your simple people?" asked Christopher
Kirkbright, fixing deeply eager eyes upon him.
"Yes; just that. In simplest words, changed and repeated often. It
is the whole burden of my message. What other message is there, to
men's souls? 'Repent, and receive the remission of your sins!' Build
your city of refuge, Mr. Kirkbright, and show them a beginning of
the fulfillment."
Whist and euchre tables not far off were breaking up, just before
lunch, with laughter and raised voices. Ladies were coming down from
the deck. In the stir, Mr. Vireo rose and went away. Christopher
Kirkbright carried his Bible back into his state-room, and shut the
door.