Books: In His Steps

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Felicia entered upon this work with the keenest pleasure. For the
first time in her life she had the delight of doing something of
value for the happiness of others. Her resolve to do everything
after asking, "What would Jesus do?" touched her deepest nature. She
began to develop and strengthen wonderfully. Even Mrs. Winslow was
obliged to acknowledge the great usefulness and beauty of Felicia's
character. The aunt looked with astonishment upon her niece, this
city-bred girl, reared in the greatest luxury, the daughter of a
millionaire, now walking around in her kitchen, her arms covered
with flour and occasionally a streak of it on her nose, for Felicia
at first had a habit of rubbing her nose forgetfully when she was
trying to remember some recipe, mixing various dishes with the
greatest interest in their results, washing up pans and kettles and
doing the ordinary work of a servant in the Winslow kitchen and at
the rooms at the Rectangle Settlement. At first Mrs. Winslow
remonstrated.

"Felicia, it is not your place to be out here doing this common
work. I cannot allow it."

"Why, Aunt? Don't you like the muffins I made this morning?" Felicia
would ask meekly, but with a hidden smile, knowing her aunt's
weakness for that kind of muffin.

"They were beautiful, Felicia. But it does not seem right for you to
be doing such work for us."

"Why not? What else can I do?"

Her aunt looked at her thoughtfully, noting her remarkable beauty of
face and expression.

"You do not always intend to do this kind of work, Felicia?"

"Maybe I shall. I have had a dream of opening an ideal cook shop in
Chicago or some large city and going around to the poor families in
some slum district like the Rectangle, teaching the mothers how to
prepare food properly. I remember hearing Dr. Bruce say once that he
believed one of the great miseries of comparative poverty consisted
in poor food. He even went so far as to say that he thought some
kinds of crime could be traced to soggy biscuit and tough beefsteak.
I'm sure I would be able to make a living for Rose and myself and at
the same time help others."

Chapter Twenty-five

THREE months had gone by since the Sunday morning when Dr. Bruce
came into his pulpit with the message of the new discipleship. They
were three months of great excitement in Nazareth Avenue Church.
Never before had Rev. Calvin Bruce realized how deep the feeling of
his members flowed. He humbly confessed that the appeal he had made
met with an unexpected response from men and women who, like
Felicia, were hungry for something in their lives that the
conventional type of church membership and fellowship had failed to
give them.

But Dr. Bruce was not yet satisfied for himself. He cannot tell what
his feeling was or what led to the movement he finally made, to the
great astonishment of all who knew him, better than by relating a
conversation between him and the Bishop at this time in the history
of the pledge in Nazareth Avenue Church. The two friends were as
before in Dr. Bruce's house, seated in his study.

"You know what I have come in this evening for?" the Bishop was
saying after the friends had been talking some time about the
results of the pledge with the Nazareth Avenue people.

Dr. Bruce looked over at the Bishop and shook his head.

"I have come to confess that I have not yet kept my promise to walk
in His steps in the way that I believe I shall be obliged to if I
satisfy my thought of what it means to walk in His steps."

Dr. Bruce had risen and was pacing his study. The Bishop remained in
the deep easy chair with his hands clasped, but his eye burned with
the blow that belonged to him before he made some great resolve.

"Edward," Dr. Bruce spoke abruptly, "I have not yet been able to
satisfy myself, either, in obeying my promise. But I have at last
decided on my course. In order to follow it I shall be obliged to
resign from Nazareth Avenue Church."

"I knew you would," replied the Bishop quietly. "And I came in this
evening to say that I shall be obliged to do the same thing with my
charge."

Dr. Bruce turned and walked up to his friend. They were both
laboring under a repressed excitement.

"Is it necessary in your case?" asked Bruce.

"Yes. Let me state my reasons. Probably they are the same as yours.
In fact, I am sure they are." The Bishop paused a moment, then went
on with increasing feeling:

"Calvin, you know how many years I have been doing the work of my
position, and you know something of the responsibility and care of
it. I do not mean to say that my life has been free from
burden-bearing or sorrow. But I have certainly led what the poor and
desperate of this sinful city would call a very comfortable, yes, a
very luxurious life. I have had a beautiful house to live in, the
most expensive food, clothing and physical pleasures. I have been
able to go abroad at least a dozen times, and have enjoyed for years
the beautiful companionship of art and letters and music and all the
rest, of the very best. I have never known what it meant to be
without money or its equivalent. And I have been unable to silence
the question of late: 'What have I suffered for the sake of Christ?'
Paul was told what great things he must suffer for the sake of his
Lord. Maxwell's position at Raymond is well taken when he insists
that to walk in the steps of Christ means to suffer. Where has my
suffering come in? The petty trials and annoyances of my clerical
life are not worth mentioning as sorrows or sufferings. Compared
with Paul or any of the Christian martyrs or early disciples I have
lived a luxurious, sinful life, full of ease and pleasure. I cannot
endure this any longer. I have that within me which of late rises in
overwhelming condemnation of such a following of Jesus. I have not
been walking in His steps. Under the present system of church and
social life I see no escape from this condemnation except to give
the most of my life personally to the actual physical and soul needs
of the wretched people in the worst part of this city."

The Bishop had risen now and walked over to the window. The street
in front of the house was as light as day, and he looked out at the
crowds passing, then turned and with a passionate utterance that
showed how deep the volcanic fire in him burned, he exclaimed:

"Calvin, this is a terrible city in which we live! Its misery, its
sin, its selfishness, appall my heart. And I have struggled for
years with the sickening dread of the time when I should be forced
to leave the pleasant luxury of my official position to put my life
into contact with the modern paganism of this century. The awful
condition of the girls in some great business places, the brutal
selfishness of the insolent society fashion and wealth that ignores
all the sorrow of the city, the fearful curse of the drink and
gambling hell, the wail of the unemployed, the hatred of the church
by countless men who see in it only great piles of costly stone and
upholstered furniture and the minister as a luxurious idler, all the
vast tumult of this vast torrent of humanity with its false and its
true ideas, its exaggeration of evils in the church and its
bitterness and shame that are the result of many complex causes, all
this as a total fact in its contrast with the easy, comfortable life
I have lived, fills me more and more with a sense of mingled terror
and self accusation. I have heard the words of Jesus many times
lately: 'Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least My
brethren, ye did it not unto Me.' And when have I personally visited
the prisoner or the desperate or the sinful in any way that has
actually caused me suffering? Rather, I have followed the
conventional soft habits of my position and have lived in the
society of the rich, refined, aristocratic members of my
congregations. Where has the suffering come in? What have I suffered
for Jesus' sake? Do you know, Calvin," he turned abruptly toward his
friend, "I have been tempted of late to lash myself with a scourge.
If I had lived in Martin Luther's time I should have bared my back
to a self-inflicted torture."

Dr. Bruce was very pale. Never had he seen the Bishop or heard him
when under the influence of such a passion. There was a sudden
silence in the room. The Bishop sat down again and bowed his head.

Dr. Bruce spoke at last: "Edward, I do not need to say that you have
expressed my feelings also. I have been in a similar position for
years. My life has been one of comparative luxury. I do not, of
course, mean to say that I have not had trials and discouragements
and burdens in my church ministry. But I cannot say that I have
suffered any for Jesus. That verse in Peter constantly haunts me:
'Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that ye should
follow His steps.' I have lived in luxury. I do not know what it
means to want. I also have had my leisure for travel and beautiful
companionship. I have been surrounded by the soft, easy comforts of
civilization. The sin and misery of this great city have beaten like
waves against the stone walls of my church and of this house in
which I live, and I have hardly heeded them, the walls have been so
thick. I have reached a point where I cannot endure this any longer.
I am not condemning the Church. I love her. I am not forsaking the
Church. I believe in her mission and have no desire to destroy.
Least of all, in the step I am about to take do I desire to be
charged with abandoning the Christian fellowship. But I feel that I
must resign my place as pastor of Nazareth Church in order to
satisfy myself that I am walking as I ought to walk in His steps. In
this action I judge no other minister and pass no criticism on
others' discipleship. But I feel as you do. Into a close contact
with the sin and shame and degradation of this great city I must
come personally. And I know that to do that I must sever my
immediate connection with Nazareth Avenue Church. I do not see any
other way for myself to suffer for His sake as I feel that I ought
to suffer."

Again that sudden silence fell over those two men. It was no
ordinary action they were deciding. They had both reached the same
conclusion by the same reasoning, and they were too thoughtful, too
well accustomed to the measuring of conduct, to underestimate the
seriousness of their position.

"What is your plan?" The Bishop at last spoke gently, looking with
the smile that always beautified his face. The Bishop's face grew in
glory now every day.

"My plan," replied Dr. Bruce slowly, "is, in brief, the putting of
myself into the centre of the greatest human need I can find in this
city and living there. My wife is fully in accord with me. We have
already decided to find a residence in that part of the city where
we can make our personal lives count for the most."

"Let me suggest a place." The Bishop was on fire now. His fine face
actually glowed with the enthusiasm of the movement in which he and
his friend were inevitably embarked. He went on and unfolded a plan
of such far-reaching power and possibility that Dr. Bruce, capable
and experienced as he was, felt amazed at the vision of a greater
soul than his own.

They sat up late, and were as eager and even glad as if they were
planning for a trip together to some rare land of unexplored travel.
Indeed, the Bishop said many times afterward that the moment his
decision was reached to live the life of personal sacrifice he had
chosen he suddenly felt an uplifting as if a great burden were taken
from him. He was exultant. So was Dr. Bruce from the same cause.

Their plan as it finally grew into a workable fact was in reality
nothing more than the renting of a large building formerly used as a
warehouse for a brewery, reconstructing it and living in it
themselves in the very heart of a territory where the saloon ruled
with power, where the tenement was its filthiest, where vice and
ignorance and shame and poverty were congested into hideous forms.
It was not a new idea. It was an idea started by Jesus Christ when
He left His Father's House and forsook the riches that were His in
order to get nearer humanity and, by becoming a part of its sin,
helping to draw humanity apart from its sin. The University
Settlement idea is not modern. It is as old as Bethlehem and
Nazareth. And in this particular case it was the nearest approach to
anything that would satisfy the hunger of these two men to suffer
for Christ.

There had sprung up in them at the same time a longing that amounted
to a passion, to get nearer the great physical poverty and spiritual
destitution of the mighty city that throbbed around them. How could
they do this except as they became a part of it as nearly as one man
can become a part of another's misery? Where was the suffering to
come in unless there was an actual self-denial of some sort? And
what was to make that self-denial apparent to themselves or any one
else, unless it took this concrete, actual, personal form of trying
to share the deepest suffering and sin of the city?

So they reasoned for themselves, not judging others. They were
simply keeping their own pledge to do as Jesus would do, as they
honestly judged He would do. That was what they had promised. How
could they quarrel with the result if they were irresistibly
compelled to do what they were planning to do?

Chapter Twenty-six

MEANWHILE, Nazareth Avenue Church was experiencing something never
known before in all its history. The simple appeal on the part of
its pastor to his members to do as Jesus would do had created a
sensation that still continued. The result of that appeal was very
much the same as in Henry Maxwell's church in Raymond, only this
church was far more aristocratic, wealthy and conventional.
Nevertheless when, one Sunday morning in early summer, Dr. Bruce
came into his pulpit and announced his resignation, the sensation
deepened all over the city, although he had advised with his board
of trustees, and the movement he intended was not a matter of
surprise to them. But when it become publicly known that the Bishop
had also announced his resignation and retirement from the position
he had held so long, in order to go and live himself in the centre
of the worst part of Chicago, the public astonishment reached its
height.

"But why?" the Bishop replied to one valued friend who had almost
with tears tried to dissuade him from his purpose. "Why should what
Dr. Bruce and I propose to do seem so remarkable a thing, as if it
were unheard of that a Doctor of Divinity and a Bishop should want
to save lost souls in this particular manner? If we were to resign
our charge for the purpose of going to Bombay or Hong Kong or any
place in Africa, the churches and the people would exclaim at the
heroism of missions. Why should it seem so great a thing if we have
been led to give our lives to help rescue the heathen and the lost
of our own city in the way we are going to try it? Is it then such a
tremendous event that two Christian ministers should be not only
willing but eager to live close to the misery of the world in order
to know it and realize it? Is it such a rare thing that love of
humanity should find this particular form of expression in the
rescue of souls?"

And however the Bishop may have satisfied himself that there ought
to be nothing so remarkable about it at all, the public continued to
talk and the churches to record their astonishment that two such
men, so prominent in the ministry, should leave their comfortable
homes, voluntarily resign their pleasant social positions and enter
upon a life of hardship, of self-denial and actual suffering.
Christian America! Is it a reproach on the form of our discipleship
that the exhibition of actual suffering for Jesus on the part of
those who walk in His steps always provokes astonishment as at the
sight of something very unusual?

Nazareth Avenue Church parted from its pastor with regret for the
most part, although the regret was modified with a feeling of relief
on the part of those who had refused to take the pledge. Dr. Bruce
carried with him the respect of men who, entangled in business in
such a way that obedience to the pledge would have ruined them,
still held in their deeper, better natures a genuine admiration for
courage and consistency. They had known Dr. Bruce many years as a
kindly, conservative, safe man, but the thought of him in the light
of sacrifice of this sort was not familiar to them. As fast as they
understood it, they gave their pastor the credit of being absolutely
true to his recent convictions as to what following Jesus meant.
Nazareth Avenue Church never lost the impulse of that movement
started by Dr. Bruce. Those who went with him in making the promise
breathed into the church the very breath of divine life, and are
continuing that life-giving work at this present time.

* * * * * *

It was fall again, and the city faced another hard winter. The
Bishop one afternoon came out of the Settlement and walked around
the block, intending to go on a visit to one of his new friends in
the district. He had walked about four blocks when he was attracted
by a shop that looked different from the others. The neighborhood
was still quite new to him, and every day he discovered some strange
spot or stumbled upon some unexpected humanity.

The place that attracted his notice was a small house close by a
Chinese laundry. There were two windows in the front, very clean,
and that was remarkable to begin with. Then, inside the window, was
a tempting display of cookery, with prices attached to the various
articles that made him wonder somewhat, for he was familiar by this
time with many facts in the life of the people once unknown to him.
As he stood looking at the windows, the door between them opened and
Felicia Sterling came out.

"Felicia!" exclaimed the Bishop. "When did you move into my parish
without my knowledge?"

"How did you find me so soon?" inquired Felicia.

"Why, don't you know? These are the only clean windows in the
block."

"I believe they are," replied Felicia with a laugh that did the
Bishop good to hear.

"But why have you dared to come to Chicago without telling me, and
how have you entered my diocese without my knowledge?" asked the
Bishop. And Felicia looked so like that beautiful, clean, educated,
refined world he once knew, that he might be pardoned for seeing in
her something of the old Paradise. Although, to speak truth for him,
he had no desire to go back to it.

"Well, dear Bishop," said Felicia, who had always called him so, "I
knew how overwhelmed you were with your work. I did not want to
burden you with my plans. And besides, I am going to offer you my
services. Indeed, I was just on my way to see you and ask your
advice. I am settled here for the present with Mrs. Bascom, a
saleswoman who rents our three rooms, and with one of Rachel's music
pupils who is being helped to a course in violin by Virginia Page.
She is from the people," continued Felicia, using the words "from
the people" so gravely and unconsciously that her hearer smiled,
"and I am keeping house for her and at the same time beginning an
experiment in pure food for the masses. I am an expert and I have a
plan I want you to admire and develop. Will you, dear Bishop?"

"Indeed I will," he replied. The sight of Felicia and her remarkable
vitality, enthusiasm and evident purpose almost bewildered him.

"Martha can help at the Settlement with her violin and I will help
with my messes. You see, I thought I would get settled first and
work out something, and then come with some real thing to offer. I'm
able to earn my own living now."

"You are?" the Bishop said a little incredulously. "How? Making
those things?"

"Those things!" said Felicia with a show of indignation. "I would
have you know, sir, that 'those things' are the best-cooked, purest
food products in this whole city."

"I don't doubt it," he replied hastily, while his eyes twinkled,
"Still, 'the proof of the pudding'--you know the rest."

"Come in and try some!" she exclaimed. "You poor Bishop! You look as
if you hadn't had a good meal for a month."

She insisted on his entering the little front room where Martha, a
wide-awake girl with short, curly hair, and an unmistakable air of
music about her, was busy with practice.

"Go right on, Martha. This is the Bishop. You have heard me speak of
him so often. Sit down there and let me give you a taste of the
fleshpots of Egypt, for I believe you have been actually fasting."

So they had an improvised lunch, and the Bishop who, to tell the
truth, had not taken time for weeks to enjoy his meals, feasted on
the delight of his unexpected discovery and was able to express his
astonishment and gratification at the quality of the cookery.

"I thought you would at least say it is as good as the meals you
used to get at the Auditorium at the big banquets," said Felicia
slyly.

"As good as! The Auditorium banquets were simply husks compared with
this one, Felicia. But you must come to the Settlement. I want you
to see what we are doing. And I am simply astonished to find you
here earning your living this way. I begin to see what your plan is.
You can be of infinite help to us. You don't really mean that you
will live here and help these people to know the value of good
food?"

"Indeed I do," she answered gravely. "That is my gospel. Shall I not
follow it?"

"Aye, Aye! You're right. Bless God for sense like yours! When I left
the world," the Bishop smiled at the phrase, "they were talking a
good deal about the 'new woman.' If you are one of them, I am a
convert right now and here."

"Flattery! Still is there no escape from it, even in the slums of
Chicago?" Felicia laughed again. And the man's heart, heavy though
it had grown during several months of vast sin-bearing, rejoiced to
hear it! It sounded good. It was good. It belonged to God.

Felicia wanted to visit the Settlement, and went back with him. She
was amazed at the results of what considerable money an a good deal
of consecrated brains had done. As they walked through the building
they talked incessantly. She was the incarnation of vital
enthusiasm, and he wondered at the exhibition of it as it bubbled up
and sparkled over.

They went down into the basement and the Bishop pushed open a door
from behind which came the sound of a carpenter's plane. It was a
small but well equipped carpenter's shop. A young man with a paper
cap on his head and clad in blouse and overalls was whistling and
driving the plane as he whistled. He looked up as the two entered,
and took off his cap. As he did so, his little finger carried a
small curling shaving up to his hair and it caught there.

"Miss Sterling, Mr. Stephen Clyde," said the Bishop. "Clyde is one
of our helpers here two afternoons in the week."

Just then the bishop was called upstairs and he excused himself a
moment, leaving Felicia and the young carpenter together.

"We have met before," said Felicia looking at Clyde frankly.

"Yes, 'back in the world,' as the Bishop says," replied the young
man, and his fingers trembled a little as they lay on the board he
had been planing.

"Yes." Felicia hesitated. "I am very glad to see you."

"Are you?" The flush of pleasure mounted to the young carpenter's
forehead. "You have had a great deal of trouble since--since--then,"
he said, and then he was afraid he had wounded her, or called up
painful memories. But she had lived over all that.

"Yes, and you also. How is it that you're working here?"

"It is a long story, Miss Sterling. My father lost his money and I
was obliged to go to work. A very good thing for me. The Bishop says
I ought to be very grateful. I am. I am very happy now. I learned
the trade, hoping some time to be of use, I am night clerk at one of
the hotels. That Sunday morning when you took the pledge at Nazareth
Avenue Church, I took it with the others."

"Did you?" said Felicia slowly. "I am glad."

Just then the Bishop came back, and very soon he and Felicia went
away leaving the young carpenter at his work. Some one noticed that
he whistled louder than ever as he planed.

"Felicia," said the Bishop, "did you know Stephen Clyde before?"

"Yes, 'back in the world,' dear Bishop. He was one of my
acquaintances in Nazareth Avenue Church."

"Ah!" said the Bishop.

"We were very good friends," added Felicia.

"But nothing more?" the Bishop ventured to ask.

Felicia's face glowed for an instant. Then she looked her companion
in the eyes frankly and answered: "Truly and truly, nothing more."

"It would be just the way of the world for these two people to come
to like each other, though," thought the man to himself, and somehow
the thought made him grave. It was almost like the old pang over
Camilla. But it passed, leaving him afterwards, when Felicia had
gone back, with tears in his eyes and a feeling that was almost hope
that Felicia and Stephen would like each other. "After all," he
said, like the sensible, good man that he was, "is not romance a
part of humanity? Love is older than I am, and wiser."

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