Books: In His Steps

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18

All this the Bishop asked as he plunged deeper into the sin and
sorrow of that bitter winter. He was bearing his cross with joy. But
he burned and fought within over the shifting of personal love by
the many upon the hearts of the few. And still, silently,
powerfully, resistlessly, the Holy Spirit was moving through the
churches, even the aristocratic, wealthy, ease-loving members who
shunned the terrors of the social problem as they would shun a
contagious disease.

Chapter Twenty-nine

THE breakfast hour at the settlement was the one hour in the day
when the whole family found a little breathing space to fellowship
together. It was an hour of relaxation. There was a great deal of
good-natured repartee and much real wit and enjoyable fun at this
hour. The Bishop told his best stories. Dr. Bruce was at his best in
anecdote. This company of disciples was healthily humorous in spite
of the atmosphere of sorrow that constantly surrounded them. In
fact, the Bishop often said the faculty of humor was as God-given as
any other and in his own case it was the only safety valve he had
for the tremendous pressure put upon him.

This particular morning he was reading extracts from a morning paper
for the benefit of the others. Suddenly he paused and his face
instantly grew stern and sad. The rest looked up and a hush fell
over the table.

"Shot and killed while taking a lump of coal from a car! His family
was freezing and he had had no work for six months. Six children and
a wife all packed into a cabin with three rooms, on the West Side.
One child wrapped in rags in a closet!"

These were headlines that he read slowly. He then went on and read
the detailed account of the shooting and the visit of the reporter
to the tenement where the family lived. He finished, and there was
silence around the table. The humor of the hour was swept out of
existence by this bit of human tragedy. The great city roared about
the Settlement. The awful current of human life was flowing in a
great stream past the Settlement House, and those who had work were
hurrying to it in a vast throng. But thousands were going down in
the midst of that current, clutching at last hopes, dying literally
in a land of plenty because the boon of physical toil was denied
them.

There were various comments on the part of the residents. One of the
new-comers, a young man preparing for the ministry, said: "Why don't
the man apply to one of the charity organizations for help? Or to
the city? It certainly is not true that even at its worst this city
full of Christian people would knowingly allow any one to go without
food or fuel."

"No, I don't believe it would," replied Dr. Bruce. "But we don't
know the history of this man's case. He may have asked for help so
often before that, finally, in a moment of desperation he determined
to help himself. I have known such cases this winter."

"That is not the terrible fact in this case," said the Bishop. "The
awful thing about it is the fact that the man had not had any work
for six months."

"Why don't such people go out into the country?" asked the divinity
student.

Some one at the table who had made a special study of the
opportunities for work in the country answered the question.
According to the investigator the places that were possible for work
in the country were exceedingly few for steady employment, and in
almost every case they were offered only to men without families.
Suppose a man's wife or children were ill. How would he move or get
into the country? How could he pay even the meager sum necessary to
move his few goods? There were a thousand reasons probably why this
particular man did not go elsewhere.

"Meanwhile there are the wife and children," said Mrs. Bruce. "How
awful! Where is the place, did you say?"

"Why, it is only three blocks from here. This is the 'Penrose
district.' I believe Penrose himself owns half of the houses in that
block. They are among the worst houses in this part of the city. And
Penrose is a church member."

"Yes, he belongs to the Nazareth Avenue Church," replied Dr. Bruce
in a low voice.

The Bishop rose from the table the very figure of divine wrath. He
had opened his lips to say what seldom came from him in the way of
denunciation, when the bell rang and one of the residents went to
the door.

"Tell Dr. Bruce and the Bishop I want to see them. Penrose is the
name--Clarence Penrose. Dr. Bruce knows me."

The family at the breakfast table heard every word. The Bishop
exchanged a significant look with Dr. Bruce and the two men
instantly left the table and went out into the hall.

"Come in here, Penrose," said Dr. Bruce, and they ushered the
visitor into the reception room, closed the door and were alone.

Clarence Penrose was one of the most elegant looking men in Chicago.
He came from an aristocratic family of great wealth and social
distinction. He was exceedingly wealthy and had large property
holdings in different parts of the city. He had been a member of Dr.
Bruce's church many years. He faced the two ministers with a look of
agitation on his face that showed plainly the mark of some unusual
experience. He was very pale and his lips trembled as he spoke. When
had Clarence Penrose ever before yielded to such a strange emotion?

"This affair of the shooting! You understand? You have read it? The
family lived in one of my houses. It is a terrible event. But that
is not the primary cause of my visit." He stammered and looked
anxiously into the faces of the two men. The Bishop still looked
stern. He could not help feeling that this elegant man of leisure
could have done a great deal to alleviate the horrors in his
tenements, possibly have prevented this tragedy if he had sacrificed
some of his personal ease and luxury to better the conditions of the
people in his district.

Penrose turned toward Dr. Bruce. "Doctor!" he exclaimed, and there
was almost a child's terror in his voice. "I came to say that I have
had an experience so unusual that nothing but the supernatural can
explain it. You remember I was one of those who took the pledge to
do as Jesus would do. I thought at the time, poor fool that I was,
that I had all along been doing the Christian thing. I gave
liberally out of my abundance to the church and charity. I never
gave myself to cost me any suffering. I have been living in a
perfect hell of contradictions ever since I took that pledge. My
little girl, Diana you remember, also took the pledge with me. She
has been asking me a great many questions lately about the poor
people and where they live. I was obliged to answer her. One of her
questions last night touched my sore! 'Do you own any houses where
these poor people live? Are they nice and warm like ours?' You know
how a child will ask questions like these. I went to bed tormented
with what I now know to be the divine arrows of conscience. I could
not sleep. I seemed to see the judgment day. I was placed before the
Judge. I was asked to give an account of my deeds done in the body.
'How many sinful souls had I visited in prison? What had I done with
my stewardship? How about those tenements where people froze in
winter and stifled in summer? Did I give any thought to them except
to receive the rentals from them? Where did my suffering come in?
Would Jesus have done as I had done and was doing? Had I broken my
pledge? How had I used the money and the culture and the social
influence I possessed? Had I used it to bless humanity, to relieve
the suffering, to bring joy to the distressed and hope to the
desponding? I had received much. How much had I given?'

"All this came to me in a waking vision as distinctly as I see you
two men and myself now. I was unable to see the end of the vision. I
had a confused picture in my mind of the suffering Christ pointing a
condemning finger at me, and the rest was shut out by mist and
darkness. I have not slept for twenty-four hours. The first thing I
saw this morning was the account of the shooting at the coal yards.
I read the account with a feeling of horror I have not been able to
shake off. I am a guilty creature before God."

Penrose paused suddenly. The two men looked at him solemnly. What
power of the Holy Spirit moved the soul of this hitherto
self-satisfied, elegant, cultured man who belonged to the social
life that was accustomed to go its way placidly, unmindful of the
great sorrows of a great city and practically ignorant of what it
means to suffer for Jesus' sake? Into that room came a breath such
as before swept over Henry Maxwell's church and through Nazareth
avenue. The Bishop laid his hand on the shoulder of Penrose and
said: "My brother, God has been very near to you. Let us thank Him."

"Yes! yes!" sobbed Penrose. He sat down on a chair and covered his
face. The Bishop prayed. Then Penrose quietly said: "Will you go
with me to that house?"

For answer the two men put on their overcoats and went with him to
the home of the dead man's family.

That was the beginning of a new and strange life for Clarence
Penrose. From the moment he stepped into that wretched hovel of a
home and faced for the first time in his life a despair and
suffering such as he had read of but did not know by personal
contact, he dated a new life. It would be another long story to tell
how, in obedience to his pledge he began to do with his tenement
property as he knew Jesus would do. What would Jesus do with
tenement property if He owned it in Chicago or any other great city
of the world? Any man who can imagine any true answers to this
question can easily tell what Clarence Penrose began to do.

Now before that winter reached its bitter climax many things
occurred in the city which concerned the lives of all the characters
in this history of the disciples who promised to walk in His steps.

It chanced by one of those coincidences that seem to occur
preternaturally that one afternoon just as Felicia came out of the
Settlement with a basket of food which she was going to leave as a
sample with a baker in the Penrose district, Stephen Clyde opened
the door of the carpenter shop in the basement and came out in time
to meet her as she reached the sidewalk.

"Let me carry your basket, please," he said.

"Why do you say 'please'?" asked Felicia, handing over the basket
while they walked along.

"I would like to say something else," replied Stephen, glancing at
her shyly and yet with a boldness that frightened him, for he had
been loving Felicia more every day since he first saw her and
especially since she stepped into the shop that day with the Bishop,
and for weeks now they had been thrown in each other's company.

"What else?" asked Felicia, innocently falling into the trap.

"Why--" said Stephen, turning his fair, noble face full toward her
and eyeing her with the look of one who would have the best of all
things in the universe, "I would like to say: 'Let me carry your
basket, dear Felicia'."

Felicia never looked so beautiful in her life. She walked on a
little way without even turning her face toward him. It was no
secret with her own heart that she had given it to Stephen some time
ago. Finally she turned and said shyly, while her face grew rosy and
her eyes tender: "Why don't you say it, then?"

"May I?" cried Stephen, and he was so careless for a minute of the
way he held the basket, that Felicia exclaimed:

"Yes! But oh, don't drop my goodies!"

"Why, I wouldn't drop anything so precious for all the world, dear
Felicia," said Stephen, who now walked on air for several blocks,
and what was said during that walk is private correspondence that we
have no right to read. Only it is a matter of history that day that
the basket never reached its destination, and that over in the other
direction, late in the afternoon, the Bishop, walking along quietly
from the Penrose district, in rather a secluded spot near the
outlying part of the Settlement district, heard a familiar voice
say:

"But tell me, Felicia, when did you begin to love me?"

"I fell in love with a little pine shaving just above your ear that
day when I saw you in the shop!" said the other voice with a laugh
so clear, so pure, so sweet that it did one good to hear it.

"Where are you going with that basket?" he tried to say sternly.

"We are taking it to--where are we taking it, Felicia?"

"Dear Bishop, we are taking it home to begin--"

"To begin housekeeping with," finished Stephen, coming to the
rescue.

"Are you?" said the Bishop. "I hope you will invite me to share. I
know what Felicia's cooking is."

"Bishop, dear Bishop!" said Felicia, and she did not pretend to hide
her happiness; "indeed, you shall be the most honored guest. Are you
glad?"

"Yes, I am," he replied, interpreting Felicia's words as she wished.
Then he paused a moment and said gently: "God bless you both!" and
went his way with a tear in his eye and a prayer in his heart, and
left them to their joy.

Yes. Shall not the same divine power of love that belongs to earth
be lived and sung by the disciples of the Man of Sorrows and the
Burden-bearer of sins? Yea, verily! And this man and woman shall
walk hand in hand through this great desert of human woe in this
city, strengthening each other, growing more loving with the
experience of the world's sorrows, walking in His steps even closer
yet because of their love for each other, bringing added blessing to
thousands of wretched creatures because they are to have a home of
their own to share with the homeless. "For this cause," said our
Lord Jesus Christ, "shall a man leave his father and mother and
cleave unto his wife." And Felicia and Stephen, following the
Master, love him with a deeper, truer service and devotion because
of the earthly affection which Heaven itself sanctions with its
solemn blessing.

But it was a little after the love story of the Settlement became a
part of its glory that Henry Maxwell of Raymond came to Chicago with
Rachel Winslow and Virginia Page and Rollin and Alexander Powers and
President Marsh, and the occasion was a remarkable gathering at the
hall of the Settlement arranged by the Bishop and Dr. Bruce, who had
finally persuaded Mr. Maxwell and his fellow disciples in Raymond to
come on to be present at this meeting.

There were invited into the Settlement Hall, meeting for that night
men out of work, wretched creatures who had lost faith in God and
man, anarchists and infidels, free-thinkers and no-thinkers. The
representation of all the city's worst, most hopeless, most
dangerous, depraved elements faced Henry Maxwell and the other
disciples when the meeting began. And still the Holy Spirit moved
over the great, selfish, pleasure-loving, sin-stained city, and it
lay in God's hand, not knowing all that awaited it. Every man and
woman at the meeting that night had seen the Settlement motto over
the door blazing through the transparency set up by the divinity
student: "What would Jesus do?"

And Henry Maxwell, as for the first time he stepped under the
doorway, was touched with a deeper emotion than he had felt in a
long time as he thought of the first time that question had come to
him in the piteous appeal of the shabby young man who had appeared
in the First Church of Raymond at the morning service.

Chapter Thirty

"Now, when Jesus heard these things, He said unto him, Yet lackest
thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the
poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow Me."

WHEN Henry Maxwell began to speak to the souls crowded into the
Settlement Hall that night it is doubtful if he 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 and
even Christian influences.

What did 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. "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. It was more than that. It was genuinely interested. As
Mr. Maxwell went on, faces all over the hall leaned forward in a way
seldom seen in church audiences or anywhere except among workingmen
or the people of the street when once they are thoroughly aroused.
"What would Jesus do?" Suppose that were the motto not only of the
churches but of the business men, the politicians, the newspapers,
the workingmen, 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.

Maxwell never knew how much it meant to hold the respectful
attention of that hall full of diseased and sinful humanity. The
Bishop and Dr. Bruce, sitting there, looking on, 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 Settlement life, the softening process
had begun already to lessen the bitterness of hearts, many of which
had grown bitter from neglect and indifference.

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 feeling
pent up in that room that night. Among those who had heard of the
meeting and had 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 had 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 thirty thousand souls,
with the exception of the saloons, there was not a door open except
the clean, pure Christian door of the Settlement. Where would a man
without a home or without work or without friends naturally go
unless to the saloon?

It had been the custom at the Settlement for a free discussion to
follow any open meeting of this kind, and when Mr. Maxwell finished
and sat down, the Bishop, who presided that night, rose and made the
announcement that any man in the hall was at liberty to ask
questions, to speak out his feelings or declare his convictions,
always with 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 numbers present.

Instantly a number of voices from men who had been at previous
meetings of this kind exclaimed, "Consent! consent!"

The Bishop sat down, and immediately a man near the middle of the
hall rose 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 on the next case to his 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 New York, owing to a change in the
management of the office that threw him out, and I never saw him
again. 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
sacrifices on the part of the church people. So far as my
observation goes they're just as selfish and as 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 are called, and church members when it came to
business and money making. One class is just as bad as another
there."

Cries of "That's so!" "You're right!" "Of course!" interrupted the
speaker, and the minute he sat down two men who were on the floor
for several seconds before the first speaker was through began to
talk at once.

The Bishop called them to order and 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 may be it'll be the
last. Fact is, I am about at the end of my string. I've tramped this
city for work till I'm sick. I'm in plenty of company. Say! I'd like
to ask a question of the minister, if it's fair. May I?"

"That's for Mr. Maxwell to say," said the Bishop.

"By all means," replied Mr. Maxwell quickly. "Of course, I will not
promise to answer it to the gentleman's satisfaction."

"This is my question." The man leaned forward and stretched out a
long arm with a certain dramatic force that grew naturally enough
out of his condition as a human being. "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 if I
was 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 was out of work like me? I can't be somebody else and ask the
question. I want to work. I'd give anything to grow tired of working
ten hours a day the way I used to. Am I to blame because I can't
manufacture a job for myself? I've got to live, and my wife and my
children have got to live. But how? What would Jesus do? You say
that's the question we ought to ask."

Mr. Maxwell sat there staring at the great sea of faces all intent
on his, and no answer to this man's question seemed for the time
being to be possible. "O God!" his heart prayed; "this is a question
that brings up the entire social problem in all its perplexing
entanglement of human wrongs and its present condition contrary to
every desire of God for a human being's welfare. Is there any
condition more awful than for a man in good health, able and eager
to work, with no means of honest livelihood unless he does work,
actually unable to get anything to do, and driven to one of three
things: begging or charity at the hands of friends or strangers,
suicide or starvation? 'What would Jesus do?'" It was a fair
question for the man to ask. It was the only question he could ask,
supposing him to be a disciple of Jesus. But what a question for any
man to be obliged to answer under such conditions?

All this and more did Henry Maxwell ponder. All the others were
thinking in the same way. The Bishop sat there with a look so stern
and sad that it was not hard to tell how the question moved him. Dr.
Bruce had his head bowed. The human problem had never seemed to him
so tragical as since he had taken the pledge and left his church to
enter the Settlement. What would Jesus do? It was a terrible
question. And still the man stood there, tall and gaunt and almost
terrible, with his arm stretched out in an appeal which grew every
second in meaning. At length Mr. Maxwell 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 can."

There was a moment's hush over the room and 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 I have always tried to be a Christian under all
conditions. I don't know as I have always asked this question, 'What
would Jesus do?' when I have been out of work, but I do know I have
tried to be His disciple at all times. Yes," the man went on, with a
sad smile that was more pathetic to the Bishop and Mr. Maxwell than
the younger man's grim despair; "yes, I have begged, and I have been
to 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 beg. I don't know."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18