Books: In His Steps

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"Yes," replied Henry Maxwell. He stayed a little longer. Before he
went away, he and the superintendent had a prayer together, and they
parted with that silent hand grasp that seemed to them like a new
token of their Christian discipleship and fellowship.

The pastor of the First Church went home stirred deeply by the
events of the week. Gradually the truth was growing upon him that
the pledge to do as Jesus would was working out a revolution in his
parish and throughout the city. Every day added to the serious
results of obedience to that pledge. Maxwell did not pretend to see
the end. He was, in fact, only now at the very beginning of events
that were destined to change the history of hundreds of families not
only in Raymond but throughout the entire country. As he thought of
Edward Norman and Rachel and Mr. Powers, and of the results that had
already come from their actions, he could not help a feeling of
intense interest in the probable effect if all the persons in the
First Church who had made the pledge, faithfully kept it. Would they
all keep it, or would some of them turn back when the cross became
too heavy?

He was asking this question the next morning as he sat in his study
when the President of the Endeavor Society of his church called to
see him.

"I suppose I ought not to trouble you with my case," said young
Morris coming at once to his errand, "but I thought, Mr. Maxwell,
that you might advise me a little."

"I'm glad you came. Go on, Fred." He had known the young man ever
since his first year in the pastorate, and loved and honored him for
his consistent, faithful service in the church.

"Well, the fact is, I am out of a job. You know I've been doing
reporter work on the morning SENTINEL since I graduated last year.
Well, last Saturday Mr. Burr asked me to go down the road Sunday
morning and get the details of that train robbery at the Junction,
and write the thing up for the extra edition that came out Monday
morning, just to get the start of the NEWS. I refused to go, and
Burr gave me my dismissal. He was in a bad temper, or I think
perhaps he would not have done it. He has always treated me well
before. Now, do you think Jesus would have done as I did? I ask
because the other fellows say I was a fool not to do the work. I
want to feel that a Christian acts from motives that may seem
strange to others sometimes, but not foolish. What do you think?"

"I think you kept your promise, Fred. I cannot believe Jesus would
do newspaper reporting on Sunday as you were asked to do it."

"Thank you, Mr. Maxwell. I felt a little troubled over it, but the
longer I think it over the better I feel."

Morris rose to go, and his pastor rose and laid a loving hand on the
young man's shoulder. "What are you going to do, Fred?"

"I don't know yet. I have thought some of going to Chicago or some
large city ."

"Why don't you try the NEWS?"

"They are all supplied. I have not thought of applying there."

Maxwell thought a moment. "Come down to the NEWS office with me, and
let us see Norman about it."

So a few minutes later Edward Norman received into his room the
minister and young Morris, and Maxwell briefly told the cause of the
errand.

"I can give you a place on the NEWS," said Norman with his keen look
softened by a smile that made it winsome. "I want reporters who
won't work Sundays. And what is more, I am making plans for a
special kind of reporting which I believe you can develop because
you are in sympathy with what Jesus would do."

He assigned Morris a definite task, and Maxwell started back to his
study, feeling that kind of satisfaction (and it is a very deep
kind) which a man feels when he has been even partly instrumental in
finding an unemployed person a remunerative position.

He had intended to go right to his study, but on his way home he
passed by one of Milton Wright's stores. He thought he would simply
step in and shake hands with his parishioner and bid him God-speed
in what he had heard he was doing to put Christ into his business.
But when he went into the office, Wright insisted on detaining him
to talk over some of his new plans. Maxwell asked himself if this
was the Milton Wright he used to know, eminently practical,
business-like, according to the regular code of the business world,
and viewing every thing first and foremost from the standpoint of,
"Will it pay?"

"There is no use to disguise the fact, Mr. Maxwell, that I have been
compelled to revolutionize the entire method of my business since I
made that promise. I have been doing a great many things during the
last twenty years in this store that I know Jesus would not do. But
that is a small item compared with the number of things I begin to
believe Jesus would do. My sins of commission have not been as many
as those of omission in business relations."

"What was the first change you made?" He felt as if his sermon could
wait for him in his study. As the interview with Milton Wright
continued, he was not so sure but that he had found material for a
sermon without going back to his study.

"I think the first change I had to make was in my thought of my
employees. I came down here Monday morning after that Sunday and
asked myself, 'What would Jesus do in His relation to these clerks,
bookkeepers, office-boys, draymen, salesmen? Would He try to
establish some sort of personal relation to them different from that
which I have sustained all these years?' I soon answered this by
saying, 'Yes.' Then came the question of what that relation would be
and what it would lead me to do. I did not see how I could answer it
to my satisfaction without getting all my employees together and
having a talk with them. So I sent invitations to all of them, and
we had a meeting out there in the warehouse Tuesday night. A good
many things came out of that meeting. I can't tell you all. I tried
to talk with the men as I imagined Jesus might. It was hard work,
for I have not been in the habit of it, and must have made some
mistakes. But I can hardly make you believe, Mr. Maxwell, the effect
of that meeting on some of the men. Before it closed I saw more than
a dozen of them with tears on their faces. I kept asking, 'What
would Jesus do?' and the more I asked it the farther along it pushed
me into the most intimate and loving relations with the men who have
worked for me all these years. Every day something new is coming up
and I am right now in the midst of a reconstruction of the entire
business so far as its motive for being conducted is concerned. I am
so practically ignorant of all plans for co-operation and its
application to business that I am trying to get information from
every possible source. I have lately made a special study of the
life of Titus Salt, the great mill-owner of Bradford, England, who
afterward built that model town on the banks of the Aire. There is a
good deal in his plans that will help me. But I have not yet reached
definite conclusions in regard to all the details. I am not enough
used to Jesus' methods. But see here."

Wright eagerly reached up into one of the pigeon holes of his desk
and took out a paper.

"I have sketched out what seems to me like a program such as Jesus
might go by in a business like mine. I want you to tell me what you
think of it:

"WHAT JESUS WOULD PROBABLY DO IN MILTON WRIGHT'S PLACE AS A BUSINESS
MAN"

He would engage in the, business first of all for the purpose of
glorifying God, and not for the primary purpose of making money. All
money that might be made he would never regard as his own, but as
trust funds to be used for the good of humanity. His relations with
all the persons in his employ would be the most loving and helpful.
He could not help thinking of all of them in the light of souls to
be saved. This thought would always be greater than his thought of
making money in the business. He would never do a single dishonest
or questionable thing or try in any remotest way to get the
advantage of any one else in the same business. The principle of
unselfishness and helpfulness in the business would direct all its
details. Upon this principle he would shape the entire plan of his
relations to his employees, to the people who were his customers and
to the general business world with which he was connected.

Henry Maxwell read this over slowly. It reminded him of his own
attempts the day before to put into a concrete form his thought of
Jesus' probable action. He was very thoughtful as he looked up and
met Wright's eager gaze.

"Do you believe you can continue to make your business pay on these
lines?"

"I do. Intelligent unselfishness ought to be wiser than intelligent
selfishness, don't you think? If the men who work as employees begin
to feel a personal share in the profits of the business and, more
than that, a personal love for themselves on the part of the firm,
won't the result be more care, less waste, more diligence, more
faithfulness?"

"Yes, I think so. A good many other business men don't, do they? I
mean as a general thing. How about your relations to the selfish
world that is not trying to make money on Christian principles?"

"That complicates my action, of course."

"Does your plan contemplate what is coming to be known as
co-operation?"

"Yes, as far as I have gone, it does. As I told you, I am studying
out my details carefully. I am absolutely convinced that Jesus in my
place would be absolutely unselfish. He would love all these men in
His employ. He would consider the main purpose of all the business
to be a mutual helpfulness, and would conduct it all so that God's
kingdom would be evidently the first object sought. On those general
principles, as I say, I am working. I must have time to complete the
details."

When Maxwell finally left he was profoundly impressed with the
revolution that was being wrought already in the business. As he
passed out of the store he caught something of the new spirit of the
place. There was no mistaking the fact that Milton Wright's new
relations to his employees were beginning even so soon, after less
than two weeks, to transform the entire business. This was apparent
in the conduct and faces of the clerks.

"If he keeps on he will be one of the most influential preachers in
Raymond," said Maxwell to himself when he reached his study. The
question rose as to his continuance in this course when he began to
lose money by it, as was possible. He prayed that the Holy Spirit,
who had shown Himself with growing power in the company of First
Church disciples, might abide long with them all. And with that
prayer on his lips and in his heart he began the preparation of a
sermon in which he was going to present to his people on Sunday the
subject of the saloon in Raymond, as he now believed Jesus would do.
He had never preached against the saloon in this way before. He knew
that the things he should say would lead to serious results.
Nevertheless, he went on with his work, and every sentence he wrote
or shaped was preceded with the question, "Would Jesus say that?"
Once in the course of his study, he went down on his knees. No one
except himself could know what that meant to him. When had he done
that in his preparation of sermons, before the change that had come
into his thought of discipleship? As he viewed his ministry now, he
did not dare preach without praying long for wisdom. He no longer
thought of his dramatic delivery and its effect on his audience. The
great question with him now was, "What would Jesus do?"

Saturday night at the Rectangle witnessed some of the most
remarkable scenes that Mr. Gray and his wife had ever known. The
meetings had intensified with each night of Rachel's singing. A
stranger passing through the Rectangle in the day-time might have
heard a good deal about the meetings in one way and another. It
cannot be said that up to that Saturday night there was any
appreciable lack of oaths and impurity and heavy drinking. The
Rectangle would not have acknowledged that it was growing any better
or that even the singing had softened its outward manner. It had too
much local pride in being "tough." But in spite of itself there was
a yielding to a power it had never measured and did not know we
enough to resist beforehand.

Gray had recovered his voice so that by Saturday he was able to
speak. The fact that he was obliged to use his voice carefully made
it necessary for the people to be very quiet if they wanted to hear.
Gradually they had come to understand that this man was talking
these many weeks and giving his time and strength to give them a
knowledge of a Savior, all out of a perfectly unselfish love for
them. Tonight the great crowd was as quiet as Henry Maxwell's
decorous audience ever was. The fringe around the tent was deeper
and the saloons were practically empty. The Holy Spirit had come at
last, and Gray knew that one of the great prayers of his life was
going to be answered.

And Rachel her singing was the best, most wonderful, that Virginia
or Jasper Chase had ever known. They came together again tonight,
this time with Dr. West, who had spent all his spare time that week
in the Rectangle with some charity cases. Virginia was at the organ,
Jasper sat on a front seat looking up at Rachel, and the Rectangle
swayed as one man towards the platform as she sang:

"Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come."

Gray hardly said a word. He stretched out his hand with a gesture of
invitation. And down the two aisles of the tent, broken, sinful
creatures, men and women, stumbled towards the platform. One woman
out of the street was near the organ. Virginia caught the look of
her face, and for the first time in the life of the rich girl the
thought of what Jesus was to the sinful woman came with a suddenness
and power that was like nothing but a new birth. Virginia left the
organ, went to her, looked into her face and caught her hands in her
own. The other girl trembled, then fell on her knees sobbing, with
her head down upon the back of the rude bench in front of her, still
clinging to Virginia. And Virginia, after a moment's hesitation,
kneeled down by her and the two heads were bowed close together.

But when the people had crowded in a double row all about the
platform, most of them kneeling and crying, a man in evening dress,
different from the others, pushed through the seats and came and
kneeled down by the side of the drunken man who had disturbed the
meeting when Maxwell spoke. He kneeled within a few feet of Rachel
Winslow, who was still singing softly. And as she turned for a
moment and looked in his direction, she was amazed to see the face
of Rollin Page! For a moment her voice faltered. Then she went on:

"Just as I am, thou wilt receive,
Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve,
Because Thy promise I believe,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come."

Chapter Ten

"If any man serve me, let him follow me."

IT was nearly midnight before the services at the Rectangle closed.
Gray stayed up long into Sunday morning, praying and talking with a
little group of converts who in the great experiences of their new
life, clung to the evangelist with a personal helplessness that made
it as impossible for him to leave them as if they had been depending
upon him to save them from physical death. Among these converts was
Rollin Page.

Virginia and her uncle had gone home about eleven o'clock, and
Rachel and Jasper Chase had gone with them as far as the avenue
where Virginia lived. Dr. West had walked on a little way with them
to his own home, and Rachel and Jasper had then gone on together to
her mother's.

That was a little after eleven. It was now striking midnight, and
Jasper Chase sat in his room staring at the papers on his desk and
going over the last half hour with painful persistence.

He had told Rachel Winslow of his love for her, and she had not
given him her love in return. It would be difficult to know what was
most powerful in the impulse that had moved him to speak to her
tonight. He had yielded to his feelings without any special thought
of results to himself, because he had felt so certain that Rachel
would respond to his love. He tried to recall the impression she
made on him when he first spoke to her.

Never had her beauty and her strength influenced him as tonight.
While she was singing he saw and heard no one else. The tent swarmed
with a confused crowd of faces and he knew he was sitting there
hemmed in by a mob of people, but they had no meaning to him. He
felt powerless to avoid speaking to her. He knew he should speak
when they were alone.

Now that he had spoken, he felt that he had misjudged either Rachel
or the opportunity. He knew, or thought he knew, that she had begun
to care something for him. It was no secret between them that the
heroine of Jasper's first novel had been his own ideal of Rachel,
and the hero in the story was himself and they had loved each other
in the book, and Rachel had not objected. No one else knew. The
names and characters had been drawn with a subtle skill that
revealed to Rachel, when she received a copy of the book from
Jasper, the fact of his love for her, and she had not been offended.
That was nearly a year ago.

Tonight he recalled the scene between them with every inflection and
movement unerased from his memory. He even recalled the fact that he
began to speak just at that point on the avenue where, a few days
before, he had met Rachel walking with Rollin Page. He had wondered
at the time what Rollin was saying.

"Rachel," Jasper had said, and it was the first time he had ever
spoken her first name, "I never knew till tonight how much I loved
you. Why should I try to conceal any longer what you have seen me
look? You know I love you as my life. I can no longer hide it from
you if I would."

The first intimation he had of a repulse was the trembling of
Rachel's arm in his. She had allowed him to speak and had neither
turned her face toward him nor away from him. She had looked
straight on and her voice was sad but firm and quiet when she spoke.

"Why do you speak to me now? I cannot bear it--after what we have
seen tonight."

"Why--what--" he had stammered and then was silent.

Rachel withdrew her arm from his but still walked near him. Then he
had cried out with the anguish of one who begins to see a great loss
facing him where he expected a great joy.

"Rachel! Do you not love me? Is not my love for you as sacred as
anything in all of life itself?"

She had walked silent for a few steps after that. They passed a
street lamp. Her face was pale and beautiful. He had made a movement
to clutch her arm and she had moved a little farther from him.

"No," she had replied. "There was a time I--cannot answer for that
you--should not have spoken to me--now."

He had seen in these words his answer. He was extremely sensitive.
Nothing short of a joyous response to his own love would ever have
satisfied him. He could not think of pleading with her.

"Some time--when I am more worthy?" he had asked in a low voice, but
she did not seem to hear, and they had parted at her home, and he
recalled vividly the fact that no good-night had been said.

Now as he went over the brief but significant scene he lashed
himself for his foolish precipitancy. He had not reckoned on
Rachel's tense, passionate absorption of all her feeling in the
scenes at the tent which were so new in her mind. But he did not
know her well enough even yet to understand the meaning of her
refusal. When the clock in the First Church struck one he was still
sitting at his desk staring at the last page of manuscript of his
unfinished novel.

Rachel went up to her room and faced her evening's experience with
conflicting emotions. Had she ever loved Jasper Chase? Yes. No. One
moment she felt that her life's happiness was at stake over the
result of her action. Another, she had a strange feeling of relief
that she had spoken as she had. There was one great, overmastering
feeling in her. The response of the wretched creatures in the tent
to her singing, the swift, powerful, awesome presence of the Holy
Spirit had affected her as never in all her life before. The moment
Jasper had spoken her name and she realized that he was telling her
of his love she had felt a sudden revulsion for him, as if he should
have respected the supernatural events they had just witnessed. She
felt as if it was not the time to be absorbed in anything less than
the divine glory of those conversions. The thought that all the time
she was singing, with the one passion of her soul to touch the
conscience of that tent full of sin, Jasper Chase had been unmoved
by it except to love her for herself, gave her a shock as of
irreverence on her part as well as on his. She could not tell why
she felt as she did, only she knew that if he had not told her
tonight she would still have felt the same toward him as she always
had. What was that feeling? What had he been to her? Had she made a
mistake? She went to her book case and took out the novel which
Jasper had given her. Her face deepened in color as she turned to
certain passages which she had read often and which she knew Jasper
had written for her. She read them again. Somehow they failed to
touch her strongly. She closed the book and let it lie on the table.
She gradually felt that her thought was busy with the sights she had
witnessed in the tent. Those faces, men and women, touched for the
first time with the Spirit's glory--what a wonderful thing life was
after all! The complete regeneration revealed in the sight of
drunken, vile, debauched humanity kneeling down to give itself to a
life of purity and Christlikeness--oh, it was surely a witness to
the superhuman in the world! And the face of Rollin Page by the side
of that miserable wreck out of the gutter! She could recall as if
she now saw it, Virginia crying with her arms about her brother just
before she left the tent, and Mr. Gray kneeling close by, and the
girl Virginia had taken into her heart while she whispered something
to her before she went out. All these pictures drawn by the Holy
Spirit in the human tragedies brought to a climax there in the most
abandoned spot in all Raymond, stood out in Rachel's memory now, a
memory so recent that her room seemed for the time being to contain
all the actors and their movements.

"No! No!" she said aloud. "He had no right to speak after all that!
He should have respected the place where our thoughts should have
been. I am sure I do not love him--not enough to give him my life!"

And after she had thus spoken, the evening's experience at the tent
came crowding in again, thrusting out all other things. It is
perhaps the most striking evidence of the tremendous spiritual
factor which had now entered the Rectangle that Rachel felt, even
when the great love of a strong man had come very near to her, that
the spiritual manifestation moved her with an agitation far greater
than anything Jasper had felt for her personally or she for him.

The people of Raymond awoke Sunday morning to a growing knowledge of
events which were beginning to revolutionize many of the regular,
customary habits of the town. Alexander Powers' action in the matter
of the railroad frauds had created a sensation not only in Raymond
but throughout the country. Edward Norman's daily changes of policy
in the conduct of his paper had startled the community and caused
more comment than any recent political event. Rachel Winslow's
singing at the Rectangle meetings had made a stir in society and
excited the wonder of all her friends.

Virginia's conduct, her presence every night with Rachel, her
absence from the usual circle of her wealthy, fashionable
acquaintances, had furnished a great deal of material for gossip and
question. In addition to these events which centered about these
persons who were so well known, there had been all through the city
in very many homes and in business and social circles strange
happenings. Nearly one hundred persons in Henry Maxwell's church had
made the pledge to do everything after asking: "What would Jesus
do?" and the result had been, in many cases, unheard-of actions. The
city was stirred as it had never been before. As a climax to the
week's events had come the spiritual manifestation at the Rectangle,
and the announcement which came to most people before church time of
the actual conversion at the tent of nearly fifty of the worst
characters in that neighborhood, together with the con version of
Rollin Page, the well-known society and club man.

It is no wonder that under the pressure of all this the First Church
of Raymond came to the morning service in a condition that made it
quickly sensitive to any large truth. Perhaps nothing had astonished
the people more than the great change that had come over the
minister, since he had proposed to them the imitation of Jesus in
conduct. The dramatic delivery of his sermons no longer impressed
them. The self-satisfied, contented, easy attitude of the fine
figure and refined face in the pulpit had been displaced by a manner
that could not be compared with the old style of his delivery. The
sermon had become a message. It was no longer delivered. It was
brought to them with a love, an earnestness, a passion, a desire, a
humility that poured its enthusiasm about the truth and made the
speaker no more prominent than he had to be as the living voice of
God. His prayers were unlike any the people had heard before. They
were often broken, even once or twice they had been actually
ungrammatical in a phrase or two. When had Henry Maxwell so far
forgotten himself in a prayer as to make a mistake of that sort? He
knew that he had often taken as much pride in the diction and
delivery of his prayers as of his sermons. Was it possible he now so
abhorred the elegant refinement of a formal public petition that he
purposely chose to rebuke himself for his previous precise manner of
prayer? It is more likely that he had no thought of all that. His
great longing to voice the needs and wants of his people made him
unmindful of an occasional mistake. It is certain that he had never
prayed so effectively as he did now.

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