It may be long before the world recognizes this leadership of the
loving, and accepts their judgment, but nevertheless the world is
debtor to them for all that sweetens life, and makes society tolerable.
Such men and women move unrecognized, doing their kindly work without
praise, and not so much as asking praise from men; but theirs is a
securer triumph than earth can give, and on their brows rests a rarer
crown than earthly monarchs wear. I know many of these men and women,
and I never meet them without the sense that the seamless robe of
Christ has touched me. I meet them in unlikely places; I overtake them
on the road of life, oftenest in the places where the shadows lie most
thickly; but on each brow is the white stone which is the sign of
peace, and in each voice is that deep note of harmony that belongs
alone to those who walk through tribulations which they overcome,
griefs of which they know the meaning, sorrows which they have the
skill to heal. Their very footsteps move more evenly than other men's,
as though guided by the rhythm of a music others do not hear; their
very hands have a softness only known to hands that bind up wounds and
wipe men's tears away; and in all their movements and their aspect is a
stillness and a sweet composure, as of hearts at rest. Whence are
these, and why are they arrayed in white robes? And we know the
answer, though no angel-voice may speak to us; these are they on whose
bowed heads the starlight of Gethsemane has fallen, in whose hands are
the wounds of service, in whose breasts is the heart that breaks with
love for men.
One such man I met some months ago, fresh from the forests of
Wisconsin. Through a long spring day he told me his story, or rather
let me draw it from him episode by episode, for he was much too modest
to suppose anything that he had done remarkable. After wild and
careless years of wasted youth, Christ had found him, and from the day
of his regeneration he gave himself to the redemption of his fellow
men. He became a "lumber-jack," a preacher to the rough sons of the
Wisconsin forests. He told me how he first won their respect by
sharing their toil--he, a fragile slip of a man, and they giants in
thew and muscle: how by tact and kindness he got a hearing for his
Master; how he travelled scores of miles through the winter snows to
nurse dying men, wrecked by wild excesses; how he had sat for hours
together with the heads of drunken men, on whom the terror had fallen,
resting on his knees, performing for them offices of help which no
other would attempt; how he had heard the confessions of thieves and
murderers, who had fled from justice to the refuge of the forest; how
he had stood pale, and apprehensive of violence in an angry drunken
mob, and had quelled their rage by singing to them "Anywhere with
Jesus"; how, finally, he had fallen ill, and had hoped in his extreme
weariness for the great release, but had come back from the gates of
death with a new hope for the success of his work; and as he spoke,
that light which fell upon the face of the dying Stephen rested also on
his face; for he also saw, and made me see, the heavens opened, and
Jesus standing at the right hand of the throne of God. He was only a
lumber-jack, but to these men he was a Christ. He was poor, so poor,
that I marvelled how he lived; but he had adopted into his home the
forsaken child of a drunken lumberman, whose wife was dead. His life
was full of hardship, but never have I met a happier man. For he had
found the one secret of all noble and tranquil living, the life of
service; and as I grasped his hand at parting and remembered how often
it had rested in healing sympathy upon the evil and the weary, I
thought of the words of the blessed Master, "He laid His hands upon
her, and the fever left her, and she rose and ministered unto Him."
Another man of the same order I have talked with as these concluding
lines were written. He had begun life with brilliant prospects as a
lawyer, had been wrecked by drink, and one night while drunk had fallen
overboard into deep water, and had with difficulty been brought back to
life. From that hour his life was changed. He went to a Western city
and became a missionary to drunkards and harlots. He told me of a
youth of nineteen he had recently visited in prison. The youth was a
murderer, and the woman he had loved had committed suicide. He was
utterly impervious to reproof, did not want to live, and said that if
his mistress had gone to hell he wanted to go there too, for she was
the only human creature who had ever loved him. "God loves you," said
my friend; "yes, and I love you too. I know how you feel. You want
just to be loved. Come, my poor boy, let me love you." And at that
appeal this youth, with triple murder on his conscience, melted, and
flung his arms round the neck of his visitor, and sobbed out all the
story of his sin and shame. O exquisite moment when the heart melts at
the touch of love--could all the heaped-up gains of a life of pleasure
or ambition yield such felicity as this? For this man's face, rough
and plain as it was, glowed as he spoke with the same light that
beatified the features of my friend the lumber-jack--"the Lord God gave
them light," and the Lamb upon the throne was the light of all their
seeing.
A little while ago to this man came the offer of restoration to the
social place which he has lost. He might have gone back to his
forfeited career, with an ample income. He put the case to his wife
and to his boys; with instant unanimity they said, "Never; this work is
the best work in the world." And so the once brilliant lawyer is happy
on a pittance, happier than he ever could be on a fortune, because he
is doing Christ's work of love among his fellow men. And these
instances are typical. In every corner of the world are those who
belong to the true Society of Jesus--the Order of Love and
Service,--and the happiest lives lived on earth are lived by these men
and women. For Jesus will not suffer any man to be the loser by Him;
He overpays those who truly follow Him with a happiness that worlds
could not buy; and "even in the present time," so enriches with the
love of others those who love, that they are unconscious of any
deprivation in their lot, knowing in all things, amid poverty, insult,
violence, hardship and pain, that their gain exceeds their loss by
measureless infinitudes of joy.
We may be neither wise nor great, but we may be loving, and he who
loves is already "born of God, and knoweth God, for God is love." We
may have but a poor understanding of conflicting theologies and
philosophies, and may even find our minds hostile to accepted creeds;
but we can live lives of pitiful and serviceable love. He who does
these things is the true Christian and no other is. Against the man
who loves his fellows Heaven cannot close its doors, for He who reigns
in Heaven is the Lover of men, and the greatest Lover of them all. We
know now why He is loved as no other has been loved. We know now what
His religion truly is; it is the religion of Love. To accept this
religion requires in us but one quality, the heart of the little child
which retains the freshness and obeys the authority of the emotions;
but unless we become as little children we cannot enter this kingdom.
This is the condition of entrance, and the method is equally simple.
It is to follow Jesus in all our acts and thoughts, to allow no temper
that we do not find in Him, to build our lives upon His ideals of love
and justice, remembering always that He is more than the Truth,--He is
the Way in which men may confidently tread, and the Life which they may
share.
All things in the intellectual and social life of men move, as by a
fixed law, towards simplification. May we not hope that this same
tendency may permeate the universal Church of Christ, dissolving the
accretions of mistaken and conventional piety, combining the vital
elements into a new synthesis, at once simple and convincing,--the new
which is the oldest and the earliest,--that the Church is the organ of
the Divine Love, and that love alone is the Christian equivalent of
religion?
May we not even anticipate that the visible decay of many symbols that
once were authoritative, of many forms of creed that are now barely
tolerated rather than respected, may work towards this issue; that
gradually the test of service will supplant the test of intellectual
belief, and that a new Church will arise founded not on creed at all,
but on a real imitation of the life of Jesus? If this should happen we
need not regret the dissolution of the forms of religious life which is
so evident to-day, for though the older kingdom be shaken, we shall
arrive in God's time at the better kingdom which cannot be shaken.
When the Church does manifestly become the organ of the Divine Love,
visibly creating a type of loving and lovable men and women found
nowhere else, whose lives are as lamps borne before the feet of the
weary and the lost, then the world, now hostile or indifferent to the
Church, will love the Church even as by instinct it loves the Christ.
Such lives have been lived, and they are, even to those who have the
least instinct for religion, the most sacred memories of history, and
the most inspiring. Such lives may still be lived by all who love the
Lord Christ Jesus in sincerity.