I have, in a very busy life, never passed through such a time of
depression as in the last nine or ten months. In the Spring I
left the old Parish of 21 years’ work and 31 years’ memories--and
how I got through the next couple of months I scarcely know. Only
by Grace of God. I went to Southend for a fortnight, but it was
simply a _ghastly_ time, I was ill in body and mind. Except for
the faith which Tennyson describes in the case of Enoch Arden’s
coming home, through which a man (believing in the Incarnation,
and therefore in the Perfect Human Sympathy of God) cannot be
“all unhappy,” I don’t know what would have become of me. I left
behind me, you know how much--how many is represented by 537
communicants, nearly all of them my spiritual children, and I had
before me, not a “howling wilderness” but a silent wilderness of
the worst of the City churches. A howling wilderness would have
stirred up the soldier’s blood that is in me--but the desolation
which I felt so ill was like a winding sheet. You must come
and see me at All Hallows, and while I show you the beautiful
present, I will show you in actual fact some of the dry bones.
I need not tell you that I have had a great deal to do
Haggerstonwards. And oh! my correspondence with my old children!
I hope this does not sound to you like complaint or self-pity. I
only mean it as explanation--which would not be given in these
terms, except to one very much (I know) of my own temperament.
Indeed, there is no cause for anything but thankfulness. My
nerves were too worn out for Haggerston any longer. My successor
is one almost entirely after my own heart--my new parish is
exactly one (nearest to Haggerston in the City) I wished for.
The task of renovation, though it makes me a poor man for a year
or two, has been very good by way of distraction and for the
delight of making a garden out of such a wilderness of dry bones,
and after another six or nine months I may be able to afford a
curate, and, having no further special financial or parochial
anxieties, be able to settle to some final literary work. Indeed,
I am as I ought to be, very thankful.
So far most egotistically.
I am interested with my whole heart in what you tell me of
yourself. Do come and see me, to tell more. I will promise to
send you what I write, if you will undertake to do the same.
God bless you, dear friend.
Ever your most affectionate,
S. J. STONE.
The depression passed, and Stone recovered sufficiently to throw
himself, heart and soul, and for some years, into his now memorable
work among the “hands” employed in City warehouses, shops and
factories. Once again it was for the poor, or for the comparatively
poor that he toiled, and once again he spared himself in nothing.
His letters (I have enough almost for a book) tell of the joy and
contentment he found in the work, and of his thankfulness to God for
what had been done.
But he had made the change from the heavier work at Haggerston too
late, and even in the easier charge, which, in order that he might
husband his failing strength and outworn energies had been found
for him, he would not, or could not spare himself--with the result
that, in the autumn of 1899, he had another breakdown. Meeting him
unexpectedly one day on the Embankment, after not seeing him for
some little time, I was inexpressibly shocked at the change. He told
me that he had been feeling very ill for some weeks, and was then
on his way to meet the friend who was accompanying him to see a
specialist, and that I should, without delay, know the result of the
examination which was to be made. Not many hours had passed before I
had a letter. The malady, Stone said, was cancer, it was feared in a
malignant form, and there must be an operation, and soon.
With all the old and infinite thought and tenderness for others, he
gave me gently to understand that the case was not too hopeful--he
was terribly run down, his heart was weak: he had overstrained it
while at Oxford--and even should he survive the operation, there was
small likelihood of recovery. Here is the conclusion of his letter:
Keep a quiet mind about me, dear friend. I have not so learned
Christ that I make any real difference between life and death,
but remember me before God.
Ever yours most affectionately,
S. J. STONE.
Scarcely a day of the months which followed was free from pain. Yet
he wrote, “I live in a kind of thankful wonder that I should be so
encompassed by the goodness of God and the lovingkindness of men.” To
the end he retained all his old interests. He continued, in the brief
respites from terrible bouts of pain, to attend the church of All
Hallows, of which he was still rector, and to minister to his people,
and even to follow, with intense patriotic interest, every event in
the South African War.
The day preceding his death, Sunday, he was at All Hallows; and the
very day of his passing he wrote, “I am in such pain that I can
neither write nor dictate. At others I am just able to write ‘with
mine own hand.’ But whether at the worst or at the best in a _bodily_
state, spiritually I am not only in patience, but in joy of heart and
soul.” Soon after came a brief space of unconsciousness and--the end.
So died one who was liker Christ than any other man or woman I have
known. His love for his fellows was so passionate and so unselfish
that, could he have taken upon himself, to save them from sin,
sorrow, and suffering, a similar burden to that which his Lord
and Master bore, he would not have hesitated--he would gladly have
hastened--to make the sacrifice.
The mistakes he made were many, though I remember none that was not
made from high motive, generous impulse, misplaced zeal, or childlike
singleness of purpose, which to the last led him to credit others
with truth, loyalty, honour, and sincerity, like to his own. In the
beautiful hymn which he so loved, and with which he so often ended
evensong, we read:
And none, O Lord, have perfect rest,
For none are wholly free from sin,
but if sin there was in Stone, as in all that is human, I can truly
say that, in our twenty-five years’ intimate friendship, I saw in him
no sign of anything approaching sin, other than--if sins they be--a
noble anger and a lofty pride. To have loved, and to have been loved
and trusted by him, was no less a high privilege than it was a high
responsibility, for if any of us, who at some time of our lives,
shared Stone’s interests and ideals, and were brought under the
compelling power and inspiration of his personality, should hereafter
come to forget what manner of man he was--should play false with,
or altogether fall away, from those ideals, or be content to strive
after any less noble standard of conduct and character than he set
and attained--then heavy indeed must be our reckoning, in the day
when for these, to whom much has been given, much will be required.
For Stone had something of the talismanic personality of his Master.
Just as, without one spoken word--without more than a look--from
the Christ the unclean were convicted of sin by the talisman of His
purity, so all that was noblest, divinest and knightliest in man,
all that was white-souled, selfless, tender, true, lofty, and lovely
in womanhood, recognised something of itself in Stone, and in his
presence all were at their highest and their best.
Nor was this due merely to what has been called a “magnetic
personality.” That there are men and women who for good or for evil
(it is just as likely to be for the latter as for the former) possess
some magnetic or mesmeric power over others, I am, and from personal
knowledge, aware. But Stone’s influence was neither mesmeric nor
magnetic. It was by the unconscious spiritual alchemy of a soul so
rare (I repeat and purposely near the end of this article what I
said in the beginning) as to make possible the courage of a Cœur de
Lion, the honour of a King Arthur or Sir Galahad--as to make possible
even in a sense the sinlessness of Christ. To have known, if only
once in a lifetime--and in spite of bitter disillusionments, of
repeated betrayals on the part of some others--such a man as S. J.
Stone, is in itself enough to keep sweet one’s faith in humanity, in
immortality, and in God.
Some time before Stone’s death I had been much thrown into the
company of a gifted and brilliant thinker and man of Science, who had
very little belief--I will not say in the existence of a God, but at
least in the existence of a God who takes thought for the welfare
of mortals, and no belief whatever in existence after death. In our
walks and conversations he had adduced many arguments in support of
annihilation, which it was difficult to answer; and I remember that,
when on the morning that Stone died, I stooped to press my lips to
the forehead of the friend I loved and revered as I have loved and
revered none other since nor shall again, it seemed for a moment
as if the man of whom I have spoken as disbelieving in personal
immortality, were, in spirit, at my elbow and whispering in my ear.
“Look well upon your friend’s face!” the Voice seemed to say, “and
you shall see written there: ‘Nobly done, bravely done, greatly done,
if you will,’ but you shall also see written there, ‘_Done and ended!
done and ended--and for evermore!_’” I remember, too, that it seemed
as if some evil power, outside myself, were trying, by means of what
hypnotists call “suggestion,” to compel me to see, upon the dead
face, what that evil power wished me to see there.
For one moment, after the whispering of the words “Done and ended!
done and ended--and for evermore,” I thought I saw something in the
dead face that seemed dumbly to acquiesce in, and to endorse the
tempter’s words, until another and very different voice (I have
wondered sometimes whether it were not my friend’s) whispered to me,
“If the friend whom you loved be indeed annihilated and has ceased to
be--then the Eternal and Omnipotent God whom he, a man and a mortal,
ever remembered _has forgotten him, for annihilation means no more
and no less than utterly to be forgotten of God_. If that be so, if
God can forget, if He can forget those who never forgot Him, then
is that God less loving, less faithful, and less remembering than
the mortal whom He has made. Can you, dare you, think this awful and
unthinkable thing of the Living and Loving God in whom your friend so
wholly trusted?”
And, looking upon the face of my friend, I saw written there, not
only the august dignity, the lone and awful majesty of death, but
also the rapture, the peace, the serenity, the triumph of one who
staggers spent and bleeding but victorious from the battle, to hear
himself acclaimed God’s soldier and Christ’s knight, and to kneel in
wondering awe, in worshipping ecstasy, at the feet of his Saviour and
his God.
And remembering what I saw written on the dead face of my friend,
remembering the life he led and the God in whom he trusted, I have no
fear that my own faith will fail me again in life or in death.
_And we also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this
life in thy faith and fear; beseeching thee to give us grace so to
follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of thy
heavenly kingdom. Grant this, O Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake, our
only Mediator and Advocate._ Amen.