PART 23 of 24 Parts
When Henry Maxwell began to speak to the people crowded into the Settlement Hall that night, it is doubtful if he had ever faced such an audience in his life. It is quite certain that the city of Raymond did not contain such a variety of humanity. Not even the Rectangle at its worst could furnish so many men and women who had fallen entirely out of the reach of the church and of all religious influence.
What would he talk about? He had already decided that point. He told, in the simplest language he could command, some of the results of obedience to the pledge as it had been taken in Raymond. Every man and woman in that audience knew something about Jesus Christ. They all had some idea of His character, and however much they had grown bitter toward the forms of Christian ecclesiasticism or the social system, they preserved some standard of right and truth; and what little some of them still retained was taken from the person of the Peasant of Galilee.
So they were interested in what Maxwell said about "What would Jesus do?" He began to apply the question to the social problem in general after finishing the story of Raymond. The audience was respectfully attentive. No, it was more than that. It was genuinely interested. As Mr. Maxwell went on, faces all over the hall leaned forward in an expectant manner seldom seen in staid church congregations. What would Jesus do?
Suppose that were the motto, Maxwell challenged them, not only of the churches but of the businessmen, the politicians, the newspapers, the working men, the society people. How long would it take, under such a standard of conduct, to revolutionize the world? What was the trouble with the world? It was suffering from selfishness. No one ever lived who had succeeded in overcoming selfishness like Jesus. If men followed Him, regardless of results, the world would at once begin to enjoy a new life.
Henry Maxwell never knew how much it meant to hold the respectful attention of that hall full of tormented and sinful humanity. The bishop and Dr. Bruce, sitting there looking on and seeing many faces that represented scorn of creeds, hatred of the social order, desperate narrowness and selfishness, marveled that even so soon under the influence of the Spirit the softening process had begun to lessen the bitterness of neglected and indifferent hearts.
And still, in spite of the outward show of respect to the speaker, no one, not even the bishop, had any true conception of the feelings pent-up in that room that night. Among the men who had heard of the meeting and responded to the invitation were twenty or thirty men out of work who had strolled past the Settlement that afternoon, read the notice of the meeting and come in out of curiosity and to escape the chill east wind.
It was a bitter night and the saloons were full. But in that whole district of over 30,000, the only door open to the people, with the exception of the saloons, was the clean, welcoming door of the Settlement. Where would a man without a home, work or friends naturally go, unless to the saloon?
It had been the custom at the Settlement for a free discussion to follow an open meeting of this kind. So when Mr. Maxwell finished and sat down, the bishop rose and announced that any man in the hall was at liberty to ask questions. There was always the understanding that whoever took part was to observe the simple rules that governed parliamentary bodies and obey the three-minute rule which, by common consent, would be enforced on account of the number present.
Instantly a number of voices from men who had attended previous meeting of this kind exclaimed, "Consent! Consent!"
The bishop sat down, and immediately a man near the middle of the hall arose and began to speak.
"I want to say that what Mr. Maxwell has said tonight comes pretty close to me. I knew Jack Manning, the fellow he told about, who died at his house. I worked next to him in a printer’s shop in Philadelphia for two years. Jack was a good fellow. He loaned me five dollars once when I was in a hole and I never got a chance to pay him back. He moved to
"When the linotype machines came in, I was one of the men to go out just as he did. I have been out most of the time since. They say inventions are a good thing. I don’t always see it myself. But I suppose I’m prejudiced. A man naturally is, when he loses a steady job because a machine takes his place.
"About this Christianity he tells about, it’s all right. But I never expect to see any such sacrifice on the part of the church people. So far as my observation goes, they’re just as selfish and greedy for money and worldly success as anybody. I except the bishop and Dr. Bruce and a few others. But I never found much difference between men of the world, as they’re called, and church members when it came to business and moneymaking. One class is just as bad as another there."
Cries of That’s so, You’re right! and Of course! Interrupted the speaker, and the minute he sat down two men jumped up and began to talk at once.
The bishop, calling them to order, indicated which was entitled to the floor. The man who remained standing began eagerly.
"This is the first time I was ever in here, and maybe it’ll be the last. Fact is, I’m about at the end of my string. I’ve tramped this city for work until I’m sick. I have plenty of company. Say, I’d like to ask a question of the minister. May I?"
"By all means," replied Mr. Maxwell.
"This is my question." The man leaned forward and stretched out a long arm with dramatic effect.
"I want to know what Jesus would do in my case? I haven’t had a stroke of work for two months. I’ve got a wife and three children, and I love them as much as I would if I were worth a million dollars. I’ve been living off a little earnings I saved up during the World’s Fair jobs I got. I’m a carpenter by trade, and I’ve tried every way I know to get a job. You say we ought to take for our motto ‘What would Jesus do?’ What would He do if He were out of work like me?"
Mr. Maxwell sat staring at the great sea of faces all intent on his own, and no answer to this man’s question seemed for the time being to be possible. O God! His heart prayed. Is there any condition more awful than for a man in good health, able and eager to work but who is unable, to get nothing to do? What would Jesus do?
All this and more did Henry Maxwell ponder for a moment. Then he spoke, "Is there any man in the room who is a Christian disciple who has been in this condition and has tried to do as Jesus would do? If so, such a man can answer this question better than I."
There was a moment’s hush over the room. Then a man near the front of the hall slowly rose. He was an old man, and the hand he laid on the back of the bench in front of him trembled as he spoke.
"I think I can safely say that I have many times been in just such a condition and have always tried to be a Christian under all conditions. I don’t know as I have always asked the question ‘What would Jesus do?’ when I have been out of work, but I do know I tried to be His disciple at all times.
"Yes," the man went on with a sad smile that appeared more pathetic to the bishop and Mr. Maxwell than the younger man’s grim despair. "Yes, I have begged and I have been to the charity institutions, and I have done everything when out of a job except steal and lie in order to get food and fuel. I don’t know as Jesus would have done some of the things I have been obliged to do for a living. But I know I have never knowingly done wrong when out of work. Sometimes I think maybe He would have starved sooner than to beg, but I don’t know."
A silence followed, broken by a fierce voice from a large, black-haired, heavy-bearded man who sat three seats from the bishop. The minute he spoke, nearly every man in the hall leaned forward with anticipation.
"That’s Carlsen, the socialist leader. Now you’ll hear something," said one of the men in a loud whisper.
"This is all bosh to my mind," began Carlsen, while his great, bristling beard shook with a deep, inward anger. "The whole of our system is at fault. What we call civilization is rotten to the core. There is no use trying to hide it or cover it up. We live in an age of capitalistic greed that means death to thousands of innocent men, women and children. I thank God, if there is a God—which I very much doubt—that I for one have never dared to marry and try to have a home.
"Home! Talk about hell! Is there any worse hell than this man, with his three children, has on his hands right this minute? And he’s only one out of thousands. And yet this city, and every other big city in this country, has its thousands of professing Christians who have all the luxuries and comforts, and who go to church Sundays and sing their hymns about giving all to Jesus and bearing the cross and following Him all the way and being saved.
"I don’t say that there aren’t good men and women among them. But let the minister who has spoken to us here tonight go into any one of a dozen aristocratic churches I could name and propose to the members to take any such pledge as the one he’s mentioned here tonight, and see how quick the people would laugh at him as a fool or a crank or a fanatic.
"No, that’s not the remedy. That can’t ever amount to anything. We’ve got to have a new start in the way of government. The whole thing needs a reconstruction. I don’t look for any reform worth anything to come out of the churches. They are not with the people. They are with the aristocrats, the men of money. The trusts and monopolies have their greatest men in the churches. The ministers as a class are their slaves. What we need is a system that will start from the common basis of socialism founded on the rights of the common people—"
Carlsen had evidently forgotten all about the three-minute rule, and was launching himself into a regular oration that meant, in his usual surroundings before his usual audience, an hour at least, when the man just behind him pulled him down unceremoniously and arose.
Carlsen was angry at first and threatened a little disturbance, but the bishop reminded him of the rule, so he subsided, with several mutterings in his beard, while the next speaker began with a strong eulogy on the value of the single tax as a genuine remedy for all social ills. He was followed by a man who made a bitter attack on churches and ministers and declared that the two great obstacles to all true reform were the courts and the ecclesiastical machines.
When he sat down, a man who bore every mark of being a street laborer sprang to his feet and poured a perfect torrent of abuse against the corporations, especially the railroads. The minute his time was up, a big brawny fellow, who said he was a metal worker by trade, claimed the floor and declared that the remedy for the social wrongs was trade unionism. This, he said, would bring on the millennium for labor more surely than anything else. The next man endeavored to give some reasons why so many persons were out of work and condemned inventions as works of the devil. He was loudly applauded by the rest of the company.
Finally the bishop called time on the free-for-all and asked Rachel to sing.
When Rachel Winslow began to sing before this rough, noisy group, she had never prayed more deeply for results to come from her voice—the voice which she now regarded as the Master’s, to be used for Him.
Certainly her prayer was being answered as she sang.
Hark! The voice of Jesus calling:
Follow me, follow me!
Again Henry Maxwell, sitting there, was reminded of his first night at the Rectangle in the tent when Rachel sang the people into quiet. The effect was the same now. Rachel’s great natural ability entranced the men who had drifted in from the street. The song poured out through the hall as free and glad as if it were a foretaste of salvation itself.
Carlsen, with his great, black-bearded face uplifted, absorbed the music with the deep love of it peculiar to his nationality. A tear ran down his cheek and glistened in his beard, as his face softened and became almost noble in its aspect. The man out of work who wanted to know what Jesus would do in his place sat with a grimy hand on the back of the bench in front of him, with his mouth partly open, his great tragedy for the moment forgotten. The song, while it lasted, was food and work and warmth and union with his wife and babies once more.
The man who had spoken so fiercely against churches and ministers sat at first with his head erect and a look of stolid resistance, as if he stubbornly resented the introduction into the exercises of anything even remotely connected with the Church or its form of worship. But gradually he yielded to the power that was swaying the hearts of all persons in that room, and a look of sad thoughtfulness crept over his face.
The bishop thought that night, while Rachel was singing, that if the world of sinful, diseased, depraved, lost humanity could only have the gospel preached to it by consecrated sopranos and professional tenors and altos and basses, he believed it would hasten the coming of the Kingdom quicker than any other one force.
Why, he cried in his heart as he listened, had the world’s great treasure in song so often been held far from the poor, because the personal possessor of voice or fingers capable of stirring inspirational melody had so often regarded the gift as something with which to make money? Would there be no martyrs among the gifted ones of the earth? Would there be no giving of this great gift, as well as of others?
And Henry Maxwell, again as before, remembered that other audience at the Rectangle with increasing longing for a larger spread of the new discipleship. What he had seen and heard at the Settlement burned into him more deeply, the belief that the problem of the city would be solved if the Christians in it should once follow Jesus as He gave commandment. But what of this great mass of neglected humanity, the very kind of humanity the Savior came to save, with all its mistakes and narrowness, its wretchedness and loss of hope, and above all its unqualified bitterness toward the Church? That was what smote him deepest.
Was the Church so far from the Master, then, that the people no longer found Him there? Was it true that the Church had lost its power over the very kind of humanity which in the early ages of Christianity it had reached in the greatest numbers?
Was it really true that big city churches, as a rule, would refuse to walk in Jesus’ steps and sacrifice for His sake?
Henry Maxwell kept asking this last question even after Rachel had finished singing and the meeting had ended. He asked it while the little company of residents, along with the Raymond visitors, were having a devotional service, as was the custom in the Settlement. He asked it during a conference with the bishop and Dr. Bruce that lasted until one in the morning.
He asked it again as he knelt again before sleeping, and poured out his soul in a petition for spiritual baptism on the Church in America such as it had never known. He asked it the first thing in the morning and all through the day as he went over the Settlement district and saw the life of the people so far removed from the abundant life. Would church members—the Christians not only in the churches of Chicago but throughout the country—refuse to walk in His steps, if in order to do so they must actually take up a cross and follow Him?
This was the one question that continually demanded an answer.
He had planned when he came to the city to return to Raymond and be in his own pulpit on Sunday. But Friday morning he had received at the Settlement a call from the pastor of one of the largest churches in Chicago, inviting him to fill the pulpit Sunday morning and evening.
At first he hesitated, but finally accepted, seeing in it the hand of the Spirit’s guiding power. He would test his own question. He would prove the truth or falsity of the charge made against the Church at the Settlement meeting. How far would it go in its self-denial for Jesus’ sake? How close would it walk in His steps? Was the Church willing to suffer for its Master?
Maxwell spent nearly all of Saturday night in prayer. There had never been so great a wrestling in his soul, not even during his strongest experiences in Raymond. He had in fact entered upon another new experience. The definition of his own discipleship was receiving an added test at this time, and he was being led into a larger truth of his Lord.
