Books: In His Steps

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"'Why,' he said, 'suppose that the church membership generally in
this country made this pledge and lived up to it! What a revolution
it would cause in Christendom! But why not? Is it any more than the
disciple ought to do? Has he followed Jesus, unless he is willing to
do this? Is the test of discipleship any less today than it was in
Jesus' time?'

"I do not know all that preceded or followed his thought of what
ought to be done outside of Raymond, but the idea crystallized today
in a plan to secure the fellowship of all the Christians in America.
The churches, through their pastors, will be asked to form disciple
gatherings like the one in the First Church. Volunteers will be
called for in the great body of church members in the United States,
who will promise to do as Jesus would do. Maxwell spoke particularly
of the result of such general action on the saloon question. He is
terribly in earnest over this. He told me that there was no question
in his mind that the saloon would be beaten in Raymond at the
election now near at hand. If so, they could go on with some courage
to do the redemptive work begun by the evangelist and now taken up
by the disciples in his own church. If the saloon triumphs again
there will be a terrible and, as he thinks, unnecessary waste of
Christian sacrifice. But, however we differ on that point, he
convinced his church that the time had come for a fellowship with
other Christians. Surely, if the First Church could work such
changes in society and its surroundings, the church in general if
combining such a fellowship, not of creed but of conduct, ought to
stir the entire nation to a higher life and a new conception of
Christian following.

"This is a grand idea, Caxton, but right here is where I find my
self hesitating. I do not deny that the Christian disciple ought to
follow Christ's steps as closely as these here in Raymond have tried
to do. But I cannot avoid asking what the result would be if I ask
my church in Chicago to do it. I am writing this after feeling the
solemn, profound touch of the Spirit's presence, and I confess to
you, old friend, that I cannot call up in my church a dozen
prominent business or professional men who would make this trial at
the risk of all they hold dear. Can you do any better in your
church? What are we to say? That the churches would not respond to
the call: 'Come and suffer?' Is our standard of Christian
discipleship a wrong one? Or are we possibly deceiving ourselves,
and would we be agreeably disappointed if we once asked our people
to take such a pledge faithfully? The actual results of the pledge
as obeyed here in Raymond are enough to make any pastor tremble, and
at the same time long with yearning that they might occur in his own
parish. Certainly never have I seen a church so signally blessed by
the Spirit as this one. But--am I myself ready to take this pledge?
I ask the question honestly, and I dread to face an honest answer. I
know well enough that I should have to change very much in my life
if I undertook to follow His steps so closely. I have called myself
a Christian for many years. For the past ten years I have enjoyed a
life that has had comparatively little suffering in it. I am,
honestly I say it, living at a long distance from municipal problems
and the life of the poor, the degraded and the abandoned. What would
the obedience to this pledge demand of me? I hesitate to answer. My
church is wealthy, full of well-to-do, satisfied people. The
standard of their discipleship is, I am aware, not of a nature to
respond to the call of suffering or personal loss. I say: 'I am
aware.' I may be mistaken. I may have erred in not stirring their
deeper life. Caxton, my friend, I have spoken my inmost thought to
you. Shall I go back to my people next Sunday and stand up before
them in my large city church and say: 'Let us follow Jesus closer;
let us walk in His steps where it will cost us something more than
it is costing us now; let us pledge not to do anything without first
asking: 'What would Jesus do?' If I should go before them with that
message, it would be a strange and startling one to them. But why?
Are we not ready to follow Him all the way? What is it to be a
follower of Jesus? What does it mean to imitate Him? What does it
mean to walk in His steps?"

The Rev. Calvin Bruce, D. D., of the Nazareth Avenue Church,
Chicago, let his pen fall on the table. He had come to the parting
of the ways, and his question, he felt sure, was the question of
many and many a man in the ministry and in the church. He went to
his window and opened it. He was oppressed with the weight of his
convictions and he felt almost suffocated with the air in the room.
He wanted to see the stars and feel the breath of the world.

The night was very still. The clock in the First Church was just
striking midnight. As it finished a clear, strong voice down in the
direction of the Rectangle came floating up to him as if borne on
radiant pinions.

It was a voice of one of Gray's old converts, a night watchman at
the packing houses, who sometimes solaced his lonesome hours by a
verse or two of some familiar hymn:

"Must Jesus bear the cross alone
And all the world go free?
No, there's a cross for every one,
And there's a cross for me."

The Rev. Calvin Bruce turned away from the window and, after a
little hesitation, he kneeled. "What would Jesus do?" That was the
burden of his prayer. Never had he yielded himself so completely to
the Spirit's searching revealing of Jesus. He was on his knees a
long time. He retired and slept fitfully with many awakenings. He
rose before it was clear dawn, and threw open his window again. As
the light in the east grew stronger he repeated to himself: "What
would Jesus do? Shall I follow His steps?"

The sun rose and flooded the city with its power. When shall the
dawn of a new discipleship usher in the conquering triumph of a
closer walk with Jesus? When shall Christendom tread more closely
the path he made?

"It is the way the Master trod; Shall not the servant tread it
still?"

Chapter Twenty-one

"Master, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest."

THE Saturday afternoon matinee at the Auditorium in Chicago was just
over and the usual crowd was struggling to get to its carriage
before any one else. The Auditorium attendant was shouting out the
numbers of different carriages and the carriage doors were slamming
as the horses were driven rapidly up to the curb, held there
impatiently by the drivers who had shivered long in the raw east
wind, and then let go to plunge for a few minutes into the river of
vehicles that tossed under the elevated railway and finally went
whirling off up the avenue.

"Now then, 624," shouted the Auditorium attendant; "624!" he
repeated, and there dashed up to the curb a splendid span of black
horses attached to a carriage having the monogram, "C. R. S." in
gilt letters on the panel of the door.

Two girls stepped out of the crowd towards the carriage. The older
one had entered and taken her seat and the attendant was still
holding the door open for the younger, who stood hesitating on the
curb.

"Come, Felicia! What are you waiting for! I shall freeze to death!"
called the voice from the carriage.

The girl outside of the carriage hastily unpinned a bunch of English
violets from her dress and handed them to a small boy who was
standing shivering on the edge of the sidewalk almost under the
horses' feet. He took them, with a look of astonishment and a "Thank
ye, lady!" and instantly buried a very grimy face in the bunch of
perfume. The girl stepped into the carriage, the door shut with the
incisive bang peculiar to well-made carriages of this sort, and in a
few moments the coachman was speeding the horses rapidly up one of
the boulevards.

"You are always doing some queer thing or other, Felicia," said the
older girl as the carriage whirled on past the great residences
already brilliantly lighted.

"Am I? What have I done that is queer now, Rose?" asked the other,
looking up suddenly and turning her head towards her sister.

"Oh, giving those violets to that boy! He looked as if he needed a
good hot supper more than a bunch of violets. It's a wonder you
didn't invite him home with us. I shouldn't have been surprised if
you had. You are always doing such queer things."

"Would it be queer to invite a boy like that to come to the house
and get a hot supper?" Felicia asked the question softly and almost
as if she were alone.

"'Queer' isn't just the word, of course," replied Rose
indifferently. "It would be what Madam Blanc calls 'outre.'
Decidedly. Therefore you will please not invite him or others like
him to hot suppers because I suggested it. Oh, dear! I'm awfully
tired."

She yawned, and Felicia silently looked out of the window in the
door.

"The concert was stupid and the violinist was simply a bore. I don't
see how you could sit so still through it all," Rose exclaimed a
little impatiently.

"I liked the music," answered Felicia quietly.

"You like anything. I never saw a girl with so little critical
taste."

Felicia colored slightly, but would not answer. Rose yawned again,
and then hummed a fragment of a popular song. Then she exclaimed
abruptly: "I'm sick of 'most everything. I hope the 'Shadows of
London' will be exciting tonight."

"The 'Shadows of Chicago,'" murmured Felicia. "The 'Shadows of
Chicago!' The 'Shadows of London,' the play, the great drama with
its wonderful scenery, the sensation of New York for two months. You
know we have a box with the Delanos tonight."

Felicia turned her face towards her sister. Her great brown eyes
were very expressive and not altogether free from a sparkle of
luminous heat.

"And yet we never weep over the real thing on the actual stage of
life. What are the 'Shadows of London' on the stage to the shadows
of London or Chicago as they really exist? Why don't we get excited
over the facts as they are?"

"Because the actual people are dirty and disagreeable and it's too
much bother, I suppose," replied Rose carelessly. "Felicia, you can
never reform the world. What's the use? We're not to blame for the
poverty and misery. There have always been rich and poor; and there
always will be. We ought to be thankful we're rich."

"Suppose Christ had gone on that principle," replied Felicia, with
unusual persistence. "Do you remember Dr. Bruce's sermon on that
verse a few Sundays ago: 'For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ, that though he was rich yet for our sakes he became poor,
that ye through his poverty might become rich'?"

"I remember it well enough," said Rose with some petulance, "and
didn't Dr. Bruce go on to say that there is no blame attached to
people who have wealth if they are kind and give to the needs of the
poor? And I am sure that he himself is pretty comfortably settled.
He never gives up his luxuries just because some people go hungry.
What good would it do if he did? I tell you, Felicia, there will
always be poor and rich in spite of all we can do. Ever since Rachel
Winslow has written about those queer doings in Raymond you have
upset the whole family. People can't live at that concert pitch all
the time. You see if Rachel doesn't give it up soon. It's a great
pity she doesn't come to Chicago and sing in the Auditorium
concerts. She has received an offer. I'm going to write and urge her
to come. I'm just dying to hear her sing."

Felicia looked out of the window and was silent. The carriage rolled
on past two blocks of magnificent private residences and turned into
a wide driveway under a covered passage, and the sisters hurried
into the house. It was an elegant mansion of gray stone furnished
like a palace, every corner of it warm with the luxury of paintings,
sculpture, art and modern refinement.

The owner of it all, Mr. Charles R. Sterling, stood before an open
grate fire smoking a cigar. He had made his money in grain
speculation and railroad ventures, and was reputed to be worth
something over two millions. His wife was a sister of Mrs. Winslow
of Raymond. She had been an invalid for several years. The two
girls, Rose and Felicia, were the only children. Rose was twenty-one
years old, fair, vivacious, educated in a fashionable college, just
entering society and already somewhat cynical and indifferent. A
very hard young lady to please, her father said, sometimes
playfully, sometimes sternly. Felicia was nineteen, with a tropical
beauty somewhat like her cousin, Rachel Winslow, with warm, generous
impulses just waking into Christian feeling, capable of all sorts of
expression, a puzzle to her father, a source of irritation to her
mother and with a great unsurveyed territory of thought and action
in herself, of which she was more than dimly conscious. There was
that in Felicia that would easily endure any condition in life if
only the liberty to act fully on her conscientious convictions were
granted her.

"Here's a letter for you, Felicia," said Mr. Sterling, handing it to
her.

Felicia sat down and instantly opened the letter, saying as she did
so: "It's from Rachel."

"Well, what's the latest news from Raymond?" asked Mr. Sterling,
taking his cigar out of his mouth and looking at Felicia with
half-shut eyes, as if he were studying her.

"Rachel says Dr. Bruce has been staying in Raymond for two Sundays
and has seemed very much interested in Mr. Maxwell's pledge in the
First Church."

"What does Rachel say about herself?" asked Rose, who was lying on a
couch almost buried under elegant cushions.

"She is still singing at the Rectangle. Since the tent meetings
closed she sings in an old hall until the new buildings which her
friend, Virginia Page, is putting up are completed.

"I must write Rachel to come to Chicago and visit us. She ought not
to throw away her voice in that railroad town upon all those people
who don't appreciate her."

Mr. Sterling lighted a new cigar and Rose exclaimed: "Rachel is so
queer. She might set Chicago wild with her voice if she sang in the
Auditorium. And there she goes on throwing it away on people who
don't know what they are hearing."

"Rachel won't come here unless she can do it and keep her pledge at
the same time," said Felicia, after a pause.

"What pledge?" Mr. Sterling asked the question and then added
hastily: "Oh, I know, yes! A very peculiar thing that. Alexander
Powers used to be a friend of mine. We learned telegraphy in the
same office. Made a great sensation when he resigned and handed over
that evidence to the Interstate Commerce Commission. And he's back
at his telegraph again. There have been queer doings in Raymond
during the past year. I wonder what Dr. Bruce thinks of it on the
whole. I must have a talk with him about it."

"He is at home and will preach tomorrow," said Felicia. "Perhaps he
will tell us something about it."

There was silence for a minute. Then Felicia said abruptly, as if
she had gone on with a spoken thought to some invisible hearer: "And
what if he should propose the same pledge to the Nazareth Avenue
Church?"

"Who? What are you talking about?" asked her father a little
sharply.

"About Dr. Bruce. I say, what if he should propose to our church
what Mr. Maxwell proposed to his, and ask for volunteers who would
pledge themselves to do everything after asking the question, 'What
would Jesus do?'"

"There's no danger of it," said Rose, rising suddenly from the couch
as the tea-bell rang.

"It's a very impracticable movement, to my mind," said Mr. Sterling
shortly.

"I understand from Rachel's letter that the Raymond church is going
to make an attempt to extend the idea of the pledge to other
churches. If it succeeds it will certainly make great changes in the
churches and in people's lives," said Felicia.

"Oh, well, let's have some tea first!" said Rose, walking into the
dining-room. Her father and Felicia followed, and the meal proceeded
in silence. Mrs. Sterling had her meals served in her room. Mr.
Sterling was preoccupied. He ate very little and excused himself
early, and although it was Saturday night, he remarked as he went
out that he should be down town on some special business.

"Don't you think father looks very much disturbed lately?" asked
Felicia a little while after he had gone out.

"Oh, I don't know! I hadn't noticed anything unusual," replied Rose.
After a silence she said: "Are you going to the play tonight,
Felicia? Mrs. Delano will be here at half past seven. I think you
ought to go. She will feel hurt if you refuse."

"I'll go. I don't care about it. I can see shadows enough without
going to the play."

"That's a doleful remark for a girl nineteen years old to make,"
replied Rose. "But then you're queer in your ideas anyhow, Felicia.
If you are going up to see mother, tell her I'll run in after the
play if she is still awake."

Chapter Twenty-two

FELICIA started off to the play not very happy, but she was familiar
with that feeling, only sometimes she was more unhappy than at
others. Her feeling expressed itself tonight by a withdrawal into
herself. When the company was seated in the box and the curtain had
gone up Felicia was back of the others and remained for the evening
by herself. Mrs. Delano, as chaperon for half a dozen young ladies,
understood Felicia well enough to know that she was "queer," as Rose
so often said, and she made no attempt to draw her out of her
corner. And so the girl really experienced that night by herself one
of the feelings that added to the momentum that was increasing the
coming on of her great crisis.

The play was an English melodrama, full of startling situations,
realistic scenery and unexpected climaxes. There was one scene in
the third act that impressed even Rose Sterling.

It was midnight on Blackfriars Bridge. The Thames flowed dark and
forbidden below. St. Paul's rose through the dim light imposing, its
dome seeming to float above the buildings surrounding it. The figure
of a child came upon the bridge and stood there for a moment peering
about as if looking for some one. Several persons were crossing the
bridge, but in one of the recesses about midway of the river a woman
stood, leaning out over the parapet, with a strained agony of face
and figure that told plainly of her intention. Just as she was
stealthily mounting the parapet to throw herself into the river, the
child caught sight of her, ran forward with a shrill cry more animal
than human, and seizing the woman's dress dragged back upon it with
all her little strength. Then there came suddenly upon the scene two
other characters who had already figured in the play, a tall,
handsome, athletic gentleman dressed in the fashion, attended by a
slim-figured lad who was as refined in dress and appearance as the
little girl clinging to her mother, who was mournfully hideous in
her rags and repulsive poverty. These two, the gentleman and the
lad, prevented the attempted suicide, and after a tableau on the
bridge where the audience learned that the man and woman were
brother and sister, the scene was transferred to the interior of one
of the slum tenements in the East Side of London. Here the scene
painter and carpenter had done their utmost to produce an exact copy
of a famous court and alley well known to the poor creatures who
make up a part of the outcast London humanity. The rags, the
crowding, the vileness, the broken furniture, the horrible animal
existence forced upon creatures made in God's image were so
skilfully shown in this scene that more than one elegant woman in
the theatre, seated like Rose Sterling in a sumptuous box surrounded
with silk hangings and velvet covered railing, caught herself
shrinking back a little as if contamination were possible from the
nearness of this piece of scenery. It was almost too realistic, and
yet it had a horrible fascination for Felicia as she sat there
alone, buried back in a cushioned seat and absorbed in thoughts that
went far beyond the dialogue on the stage.

From the tenement scene the play shifted to the interior of a
nobleman's palace, and almost a sigh of relief went up all over the
house at the sight of the accustomed luxury of the upper classes.
The contrast was startling. It was brought about by a clever piece
of staging that allowed only a few moments to elapse between the
slum and the palace scene. The dialogue went on, the actors came and
went in their various roles, but upon Felicia the play made but one
distinct impression. In realty the scenes on the bridge and in the
slums were only incidents in the story of the play, but Felicia
found herself living those scenes over and over. She had never
philosophized about the causes of human misery, she was not old
enough she had not the temperament that philosophizes. But she felt
intensely, and this was not the first time she had felt the contrast
thrust into her feeling between the upper and the lower conditions
of human life. It had been growing upon her until it had made her
what Rose called "queer," and other people in her circle of wealthy
acquaintances called very unusual. It was simply the human problem
in its extreme of riches and poverty, its refinement and its
vileness, that was, in spite of her unconscious attempts to struggle
against the facts, burning into her life the impression that would
in the end either transform her into a woman of rare love and
self-sacrifice for the world, or a miserable enigma to herself and
all who knew her.

"Come, Felicia, aren't you going home?" said Rose. The play was
over, the curtain down, and people were going noisily out, laughing
and gossiping as if "The Shadows of London" were simply good
diversion, as they were, put on the stage so effectively.

Felicia rose and went out with the rest quietly, and with the
absorbed feeling that had actually left her in her seat oblivious of
the play's ending. She was never absent-minded, but often thought
herself into a condition that left her alone in the midst of a
crowd.

"Well, what did you think of it?" asked Rose when the sisters had
reached home and were in the drawing-room. Rose really had
considerable respect for Felicia's judgment of a play.

"I thought it was a pretty fair picture of real life."

"I mean the acting," said Rose, annoyed.

"The bridge scene was well acted, especially the woman's part. I
thought the man overdid the sentiment a little."

"Did you? I enjoyed that. And wasn't the scene between the two
cousins funny when they first learned they were related? But the
slum scene was horrible. I think they ought not to show such things
in a play. They are too painful."

"They must be painful in real life, too," replied Felicia.

"Yes, but we don't have to look at the real thing. It's bad enough
at the theatre where we pay for it."

Rose went into the dining-room and began to eat from a plate of
fruit and cakes on the sideboard.

"Are you going up to see mother?" asked Felicia after a while. She
had remained in front of the drawing-room fireplace.

"No," replied Rose from the other room. "I won't trouble her
tonight. If you go in tell her I am too tired to be agreeable."

So Felicia turned into her mother's room, as she went up the great
staircase and down the upper hall. The light was burning there, and
the servant who always waited on Mrs. Sterling was beckoning Felicia
to come in.

"Tell Clara to go out," exclaimed Mrs. Sterling as Felicia came up
to the bed.

Felicia was surprised, but she did as her mother bade her, and then
inquired how she was feeling.

"Felicia," said her mother, "can you pray?"

The question was so unlike any her mother had ever asked before that
she was startled. But she answered: "Why, yes, mother. Why do you
ask such a question?"

"Felicia, I am frightened. Your father--I have had such strange
fears about him all day. Something is wrong with him. I want you to
pray--."

"Now, here, mother?"

"Yes. Pray, Felicia."

Felicia reached out her hand and took her mother's. It was
trembling. Mrs. Sterling had never shown such tenderness for her
younger daughter, and her strange demand now was the first real sign
of any confidence in Felicia's character.

The girl kneeled, still holding her mother's trembling hand, and
prayed. It is doubtful if she had ever prayed aloud before. She must
have said in her prayer the words that her mother needed, for when
it was silent in the room the invalid was weeping softly and her
nervous tension was over.

Felicia stayed some time. When she was assured that her mother would
not need her any longer she rose to go.

"Good night, mother. You must let Clara call me if you feel badly in
the night."

"I feel better now." Then as Felicia was moving away, Mrs. Sterling
said: "Won't you kiss me, Felicia?"

Felicia went back and bent over her mother. The kiss was almost as
strange to her as the prayer had been. When Felicia went out of the
room her cheeks were wet with tears. She had not often cried since
she was a little child.

Sunday morning at the Sterling mansion was generally very quiet. The
girls usually went to church at eleven o'clock service. Mr. Sterling
was not a member but a heavy contributor, and he generally went to
church in the morning. This time he did not come down to breakfast,
and finally sent word by a servant that he did not feel well enough
to go out. So Rose and Felicia drove up to the door of the Nazareth
Avenue Church and entered the family pew alone.

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