Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!O Duty! if that name thou loveWho art a light to guide, a rodTo check the erring, and reprove;Thou who art victory and lawWhen empty terrors overawe;From vain temptations dost set free,And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity!Wordsworth'sOde to Duty.
Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!O Duty! if that name thou loveWho art a light to guide, a rodTo check the erring, and reprove;Thou who art victory and lawWhen empty terrors overawe;From vain temptations dost set free,And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity!
Wordsworth'sOde to Duty.
I havealways been glad that I was able to attend that first great service of the Canadian preachers; and so, I think, has every one else who was there. Other services of theirs may have been more notable in certain respects—indeed, I know they were; but this one was the beginning, the first wave in a great tide. And I am glad that I was there to see that first grand wave rise upon the rock of British apathy.
I have said something of the audience, but a book might well be devoted to its description, and, again, a sentence may serve. It was a representative English gathering, in that it embraced a member of the Royal Family, a little group of old men and women from an asylum for the indigent, and members of every grade of society that comes between. Also, itwas a very large gathering—even for the Albert Hall.
It should be remembered that not many weeks prior to this Sunday afternoon, the people of London, maddened by hunger, fear, and bewildered panic, had stormed Westminster to enforce their demand for surrender, and had seen Von Füchter with his bloodstained legions take possession of the capital of the British Empire. Fifty Londoners had been cut down, almost in as many seconds, within two miles of the Mansion House. In one terrible week London had passed through an age of terror and humiliation, the end of which had been purchased in panic and disorder by means of a greater humiliation than any. Now England had to pay the bill. Some, in the pursuit of business and pleasure, were already forgetting; but the majority among the great concourse of Londoners who sat waiting in the Albert Hall that afternoon, clothed in their Sunday best, were still shrewdly conscious of the terrible severity of the blow which had fallen upon England.
Having found Constance her half-seat with Lady Tate, I stood beside one of the gangways below the platform, which lead to the dressing-rooms and other offices. Beside me was a table for Press representatives. There, with their pencils, I noted Campbell, of theDaily Gazette, and other men I knew, including Carew, for theStandard, who had an assistant with him. He told me that somewhere in the hall his paper had a special descriptive writer as well.
Looking up and down that vast building, from dome to amphitheatre, I experienced, as it were vicariously,something of the nervousness of stage fright. Londoners were not simple prairie folk, I thought. How should my friend George Stairs hold that multitude? Two plain men from Western Canada, accustomed to minister to farmers and miners, what could they say to engage and hold these serried thousands of Londoners, the most blasé people in England? I had never heard either of the preachers speak in public, but—I looked out over that assemblage, and I was horribly afraid for my friends. A Church of England clergyman and a Nonconformist minister from Canada, and I told myself they had never had so much as an elocution lesson between them!
And then the Bishop of London appeared on the crowded platform, followed by George Stairs and Arthur Reynolds; and a dead silence descended upon the hall. In the forefront of the platform was a plain table with a chair at either end of it, and a larger one in the middle. Here the Bishop and the two preachers placed themselves. Then the Bishop rose with right hand uplifted, and said solemnly:
"May God bless to us all the Message which His two servants have brought us from oversea; for Christ's sake, Amen."
George Stairs remained kneeling at his end of the table. But as the Bishop resumed his seat Arthur Reynolds stepped forward, and, pitching his voice well, said:
"My friends, let us sing the British Anthem."
And at that the great organ spoke, and the choir of sailors, soldiers, and nurses led the singing of the National Anthem. The first bar was sung by thechoir alone, but by the time the third bar was reached thousands among the standing congregation were singing with them, and the volume of sound was most impressive. I think that a good many people besides myself found this solemn singing of the Anthem, from its first line to its last, something of a revelation. It made "God Save the King" a real prayer instead of a musical intimation that hats might be felt for and carriages ordered. It struck a note which the Canadian preachers desired to strike. They began with a National Hymn which was a prayer for King and Country. The people were at first startled, and then pleased, and then stirred by a departure from all customs known to them. And that this should be so was, I apprehend, the deliberate intention of the Canadian preachers.
Still George Stairs knelt at his end of the bare table.
As the last note of the organ accompaniment died away, Arthur Reynolds stepped to the front.
"Will you all pray, please?" he said. He closed his eyes and extended one hand.
I cannot tell you what simple magic the man used. I know those were his words. But the compelling appeal in them was most remarkable. There was something childlike about his simple request. I do not think any one could have scoffed at the man. After a minute's silence, he prayed aloud, and this is what he said:
"Father in Heaven, give us strength to understand our duty and to do it. Thou knowest that two of the least among Thy servants have crossed the seato give a Message to their kinsmen in England. Our kinsmen are a great and proud people, and we, as Thou knowest, are but very simple men. But our Message is from Thee, and with Thee all things are possible. Father, have pity upon our weakness to-day. Open to us the hearts of even the proudest and the greatest of our kinsmen. Do not let them scorn us. And, O Father of all men, gentle and simple, breathe Thou upon us that we may have a strength not of ourselves; a power worthy of the Message we bring, which shall make its truth to shine so that none may mistake it. For Christ's sake. Amen."
Arthur Reynolds resumed his seat, and a great Australian singer, aprima donnaof world-wide repute, stepped forward very simply and sang as a solo the hymn beginning:
Church of the Living God,Pillar and ground of truth,Keep the old paths the fathers trodIn thy illumined youth.
Church of the Living God,Pillar and ground of truth,Keep the old paths the fathers trodIn thy illumined youth.
The prayer had softened all hearts by its simplicity, its humility. The exquisitely rendered hymn attuned all minds to thoughts of ancient, simple piety, and the traditions which guided and inspired our race in the past. When it was ended, and not till then, George Stairs rose from his knees, and stepped forward to where a little temporary extension jutted out beyond the rest of the platform. He stood there with both hands by his side, and a Bible held in one of them. His head inclined a little forward. It was an attitude suggestive rather ofsubmission to that great assembly, or to some Power above it, than of exhortation. Watching him as he stood there, I realized what a fine figure of a man George was, how well and surely Canadian life had developed him. His head was massive, his hair thick and very fair; his form lithe, tall, full of muscular elasticity.
He stood so, silent, for a full minute, till I began to catch my breath from nervousness. Then he opened the Bible, and:
"May I just read you a few verses from the Bible?" he said.
There was the same directness, the same simple, almost childlike appeal that had touched the people in Reynolds's prayer. He read some verses from the First Book of Samuel. I remember:
"'And did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to offer upon mine altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me? And did I give unto the house of thy father all the offerings made by fire of the children of Israel? Wherefore kick ye at my sacrifice and at mine offering, which I have commanded in my habitation; and honouredst thy sons above me to make yourselves fat with the chiefest of all the offerings of Israel, my people? Wherefore the Lord God of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house and the house of thy father should walk before me for ever; but now the Lord saith, be it far from me; for them that honour me I will honour, and them that despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Behold the day is come, that I will cut off thine arm, and the arm of thy father's house, andthere shall not be an old man in my house. And thou shalt see an enemy in my habitation, in all the wealth which God shall give Israel.... And I will raise me up a faithful priest, that shall do according to that which is in mine heart and in my mind....'"
There was a pause, and then the preacher read a passage from Judges, ending with the famous war-cry: "The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon." He looked up then, and, without reference to the Bible in his hand, repeated several verses:
"'And by thy sword thou shalt live, and shalt serve thy brother: and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck.'
"'He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.'
"'For he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.'
"'And take the helmet of salvation, and the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.'
"'Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace but a sword.' Not the peace of indolence and dishonour; not the fatted peace of mercenary well-being; but a Sword; the Sword of the Lord, the Sword of Duty, which creates, establishes, and safeguards the only true peace—the peace of honourable peoples."
I remember his slow turning of leaves in his Bible, and I remember:
"'Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments, for this isthe whole duty of man—' the whole duty—— Yes, 'but isn't Duty rather an early Victorian sort of business, and a bit out of date, anyhow?' That was what a young countryman of mine—from Dorset, he came—said to me in Calgary, last year. I told him that, according to my reading of history, it had come down a little farther than early Victorian days. I remember I mentioned Rorke's Drift; and he rather liked that. But, of course, I knew what he meant."
It was in this very simple strain, without a gesture, without a trace of dramatic appeal, that George Stairs began to address that great gathering. Much has been said and written of the quality of revelation which was instinct in that first address; of its compelling force, its inspired strength, the convincing directness of it all. And I should be the last to deny to my old friend's address any of the praises lavished upon it by high and low. But what I would say of it is that, even now, sufficient emphasis and import are never attached to the most compelling quality of all in George Stairs's words: their absolutely unaffected simplicity. I think a ten-year-old child could have followed his every word with perfect understanding.
Nowadays we take a fair measure of simplicity for granted. Anything less would condemn a man as a fool or a mountebank. But be it remembered that the key-note and most striking feature of all recent progress has been the advance toward simplicity in all things. At the period of George Stairs's first exposition of the new evangel in the Albert Hall, we were not greatly given to simplicity. It was scarcelynoticeable at that time even among tillers of the earth. Not to put too fine a point upon it, we were a tinselled lot of mimes, greatly given to apishness, and shunning naked truth as though it were the plague. Past masters in compromise and self-delusion, we had stripped ourselves of simplicity in every detail of life, and, from the cradle to the grave, seemed willingly to be hedged about with every kind of complexity. We so maltreated our physical palates that they responded only to flavours which would have alarmed a plain-living man; and, metaphorically, the same thing held good in every concern of our lives, until simplicity became non-existent among us, and was forgotten. There were men and women in that Sunday afternoon gathering at the Albert Hall whose very pleasures were a complicated and laborious art, whose pastimes were a strain upon the nervous system, whose leisure was quite an arduous business.
This it was which gave such striking freshness, such compelling strength, to the simple, forthright directness, the unaffected earnestness and modesty of the Message brought us by the Canadian preachers. The most bumptious and self-satisfied Cockney who ever heard the ringing of Bow Bells, would have found resentment impossible after George Stairs's little account of his leaving Dorset as a boy of twelve, and picking up such education as he had, while learning how to milk cows, bed down horses, split fire-wood, and perform "chores" generally, on a Canadian farm. Even during his theological course, vacations had found him in the harvest field.
"You may guess my diffidence, then," he said, "inlifting up my voice before such a gathering as this, here in the storied heart of the Empire, the city I have reverenced my life long as the centre of the world's intelligence. But there is not a man or woman here to-day who would chide a lad who came home from school with tidings of something he had learned there. That is my case, precisely. I have been to one of our outside schools, from my home here in this beloved island. Home and school alike, they are all part of our family heritage—yours and mine. I only bring you your own word from another part of our own place. That is my sole claim to stand before you to-day. Yet, when I think of it, it satisfies me; it safeguards me from the effect of misunderstanding or offence, so long as my hearers are of my kin—British."
His description of Canada and the life he had lived there occupied us for no more than ten minutes, at the outside. It has appeared in so many books that I will not attempt to quote that little masterpiece of illumination. But by no means every reproduction of this passage adds the simple little statement which divided it from its successor.
"That has been my life. No brilliant qualities are demanded of a man in such a life. The one thing demanded is that he shall do his duty. You remember that passage in Ecclesiastes—'The conclusion of the whole matter'?"
And then came the story of Edward Hare. That moved the people deeply.
"My first curacy was in Southern Manitoba. When I was walking from the church to the farmhousewhere I lodged, after morning service, one perfect day in June, I passed a man called Edward Hare, sitting at the edge of a little bluff, on a rising piece of ground. I had felt drawn toward this man. He was a Londoner, and, in his first two years, had had a tough fight. But he had won through, and now had just succeeded in adding a hundred and sixty acres to his little farm, which was one of the most prosperous in the district.
"'I didn't see you at church this morning, Hare,' I said, after we had chatted a minute or two.
"'No,' said he; 'I wasn't at church. I've been here by this bluff since breakfast, and—Parson!' he said, with sudden emphasis, 'I shall give up the farm. I'm going back Home.'
"Well, of course, I was surprised, and pressed him for reasons. 'Well,' he said, 'I don't know as I can make much of a show of reasons; but I'm going. Did you notice anything special about the weather, or—or that, this morning, Parson?' I told him I had only noticed that it was a very sweet, clear, happy sort of a morning. 'That's just it, Parson,' he said; 'sweet and clear and clean it is; and I don't believe there's any sweeter, cleaner thing than this morning on my farm—no, not in heaven, Parson,' he said. 'And that's why I'm going back Home to London; to Battersea; that's where I lived before I came here.'
"I waited for him to tell me more, and presently he said: 'You know, Parson, I was never what you might call a drunkard, not even at Home, where drinking's the regular thing. But I used to get through a tidy lot of liquor, one way and another,and most generally two or three pints too many of a Saturday night. Then, of a Sunday morning, the job was waiting for the pubs to open. Nobody in our street ever did much else of a Sunday. I suppose you don't happen to have ever been down the Falcon Road of a Sunday morning, Parson? No? Well, you see, the street's a kind of market all Saturday night, up till long after midnight—costers' barrows with flare-lights, gin-shops full to the door, and all the fun of the fair—all the fun of the fair. Mothers and fathers, lads and sweethearts, babies in prams, and toddlers in blue plush and white wool; you see them all crowding the bars up till midnight, and they see—well, they see Battersea through a kind of a bright gaze. Then comes Sunday, and a dry throat, and waiting for the pubs to open. The streets are all a litter of dirty newspaper and cabbage-stumps, and worse; and the air's kind of sick and stale.'
"At that Hare stopped talking, and looked out over the prairie on that June morning. Presently he went on again: 'Well, Parson, when I came out here this morning—I haven't tasted beer for over three years—I sat down and looked around; and, somehow, I thought I'd never seen anything so fine in all my life; so sweet and clean; the air so bright, like dew; and green—well, look at it, far as your eye can carry! And all this round, away to the bluff there, and the creek this way; it's mine, every foot of it. Well, after a bit, I was looking over there to the church, and what d'ye think I saw, all through the pretty sunlight? I saw the Falcon Road, a pubI know there, and a streak of sunshine running over the wire blinds into the bar, all frowsy and shut in, with the liquor stains over everything. And outside, I saw the pasty-faced crowd waiting to get in, and all the Sunday litter in the road. Parson, I got the smell of it, the sick, stale smell of it, right here—in Paradise; I got the frowsy smell of it, and heard the waily children squabbling, and—I can't tell you any more of what I saw. If you'd ever seen it, you'd know.'
"And there he stopped again, until I moved. Then he said: 'Parson, if you saw a fellow starving on a bit of land over there that wouldn't feed a prairie-chick, and you knew of a free homestead across the creek, where he could raise five and twenty bushels to the acre and live like a man, would you leave him to rot on his bare patch? Not you. That's why I'm going Home—to Battersea.'
"If Hare had been a married man I might have advised him otherwise. But he was married only to the farm he had wrought so well, and it did not seem to me part of my business to come between a man and his duty—as he saw it. That man came Home, and took the cheapest lodging he could get in Battersea. He had sold his farm well. Now he took to street preaching, and what he preached was, not religion, but the prairie. 'Lord sake, young folk!' he used to say to the lads and girls when they turned toward the public-houses. 'Hold on! Wait a minute! I want to tell you something!' And he would tell them what four years' clean work had given him in Canada.
"He got into touch with various emigration agencies. The money he had lasted him, living as he did, for five years. In that time he was the means of sending nine hundred and twenty men and five hundred and forty women and girls to a free and independent life in Canada. Just before his money was exhausted, England's affliction, England's chastisement, came upon her like God's anger in a thunderbolt. Hare had meant to return to Canada to make another start, and earn money enough to return to his work here. Instead of that, my friends, instead of what he called Paradise in Manitoba, God took him straight into Heaven. He left his body beside the North London entrenchments, where, so one of his comrades told me, he fought like ten men for England, knowing well that, if captured, he would be shot out of hand as a civilian bearing arms. One may say of Edward Hare, I think, that he saw his duty very clearly—and did it.
"But what of us? What of you, and I, my friends? How do we stand regarding Duty?"
I never heard such questions in my life. He had been speaking smoothly, evenly, calmly, and without gesticulation. With the questions, his body was bent as though for a leap; his hands flung forward. These questions left him like bullets. It was as though that great hall had been in blackest darkness, and with a sudden movement the speaker had switched on ten thousand electric lights. I saw men rise to ahalf-erect posture. I heard women catch their breath. The air of the place seemed all aquiver.
"My friends, will you please pray with me?"
He leaned forward, an appeal in every line of his figure, addressed confidentially to each soul present. Then his right hand rose:
"Please God, help me to give my Message! Please God, open London's heart to hear my Message! Please God, give me strength to tell it—now! For Christ's sake. Amen!"
One heard a low, emphatic, and far-carrying "Amen!" from the lips of London's Bishop; and I think that, too, meant something to the great congregation of Londoners assembled there.
Immediately then, it was, while the electric thrill of his questions and the simple prayer still held all his audience at high tension, that George Stairs plunged into the famous declaration of the new evangel of Duty and Simplicity. If any man in the world has learned for himself that prayer is efficacious, that man is the Rev. George Stairs. For it is now universally admitted that such winged words as those of his first great exposition of the doctrine of Duty and simple living, the doctrine which has placed the English-speaking peoples in the forefront of Christendom, had never before thrilled an English audience.
His own words were a perfect example of the invincible virtue of simplicity; his presence there was a glowing evidence of the force of Duty. It is quite certain that the knowledge shown in his flashing summary of nineteenth-century English history was not knowledge based upon experience. But neitherthe poets, nor the most learned historians, nor the most erudite of naval experts, has ever given a picture so instantly convincing as the famous passage of his oration which showed us, first, the British Fleet on the morning of Trafalgar; then, Nelson going into action; then, the great sailor's dying apotheosis of Duty; and, finally, England's reception of her dead hero's body. The delivery of this much-quoted passage was a matter of moments only, but from where I stood I saw streaming eyes in women's faces, and that stiff, unwinking stare on men's faces which indicates tense effort to restrain emotion.
And so, with a fine directness and simplicity of progress, he carried us down through the century to its stormy close, with vivid words of tribute for the sturdy pioneers of Victorian reform who fought for and built the freest democracy in the world, and gave us the triumphant enlightenment which illumined Victoria's first Jubilee.
"'But isn't Duty a rather early Victorian sort of business, and out of date, anyhow?' said my young countryman in Calgary. To the first half of his question there can be no answer but 'Yes.' To deny it were to slander our fathers most cruelly. But what of the question's second half? Our fathers have no concern with the answering of that. Is Duty 'out of date,' my friends? If so, let us burn our churches. If so, let the bishops resign their bishoprics. If so, let us lower for ever the flag which our fathers made sacred from pole to pole. If so, let Britain admit—as well first as last—that she has retired for ever from her proud place among the nations, and is nomore to be accounted a Power in Christendom; for that is no place for a people with whom Duty is out of date.
"'And did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to offer upon mine altar?... But now the Lord saith, Be it far from me, for them that honour me I will honour, and them that despise me shall be lightly esteemed.Behold the days come that I will cut off thine arm!'"
It was almost unbearable. No one had guessed the man had such a voice. He had recited that passage quietly. Then came the rolling thunder of the: "Behold the days come that I will cut off thine arm!" A woman in the centre of the hall cried aloud, upon a high note. The roar of German artillery in North London never stirred Londoners as this particular sentence of God's Word stirred them in the Albert Hall.
And then, in a voice keyed down again to calm and tender wisdom, the words of the Scriptural poet stole out over the heads of the perturbed people, stilling their minds once more into the right receptive vein: "'Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.'"
Like balm, the stately words fell upon the people, as a light to lighten their darkness, as an end and a solution to a situation found intolerable. But, though calm resolve was in George Stairs's gift that day, he suffered no complaisance; and, by this time, he held that great assembly in the hollow of his hand. It was then he dealt with the character of our own century,as distinguished from that of the Victorian era. It was then his words taught me, personally, more than all he had said besides.
I will not quote from a passage which has been incorporated in hundreds of school-books. It is generally admitted that the end and purpose underlying the civil and national code of our age has never since been more admirably stated than on the day of its first enunciation in the Albert Hall by George Stairs. His words were glowing when he showed us how the key-note of our fathers' age had been the claiming and establishing of rights and privileges. His words stung like whip-thongs when he depicted our greedy, self-satisfied enjoyment of those rights and privileges, with never a thought, either of the various obligations pertaining to them, or of our plain duty in the conservation for our children of all that had been won for us. Finally, his words were living fire of incentive, red wine of stimulation, when he urged upon us the twentieth-century watchword of Duty, and the loyal discharge of obligations.
"Theirs, an age crowned by well-won triumph, was the century of claimant demand; ours is the century of grateful obedience. Theirs was the age of claims; ours the age of Duty. Theirs the century of rights; ours the century of Duty. Theirs the period of brave, insistent constructive effort; ours the period of Duty—Duty—Duty!
"In fighting to obtain all that they won for us, our fathers pledged themselves—and us—to be fit recipients, true freemen. For a moment, misled by the glare of wealth and pleasure, we have played thecaitiff's part; grasped freemen's privileges, without thanks, and with repudiation of the balancing duties and obligations without which no rights can survive. And—'Behold, the days come that I will cut off thine arm!'
"The God of our fathers trusted them, in our behalf; and we played traitor. So God smote England, through the arrogant war-lords of another people. That blow, self-administered, is Heaven's last warning to England. In truth, the blow was ours, yours and mine; we ourselves it was who played the traitor and struck a cruel blow at Britain's heart. Unworthy sons of valiant sires, we snatched our wages and shirked our work; seized the reward and refused the duty. God in His mercy gave us many warnings; but we hid our faces and pursued our selfish ends. 'Behold, the days come——'
"But God stayed His hand. England lies bloody but unbroken. There can be no more warnings. The time for warnings has gone by. There can be no more paltering. Now is the day of final choice. Will ye be men—or helots and outcasts? Will you choose Duty, and the favour of God's appointed way for us, of progress and of leadership; or will you choose—pleasure, swift decay, annihilation? Upon your heads be it! Our fathers nobly did their part. Upon your choice hangs the future of our race, the fate of your children, the destiny of God's chosen people, who have paltered with strange gods, blasphemed the true faith, and stepped aside from the white path—the Only Way: Duty!"
He turned, raising one hand, and the notes of thegreat organ rose and swelled mightily, filling the hall with the strains of the British National Anthem. Every soul in the building stood erect, and following the choir's lead, that great gathering sang the British hymn as it was never sung before. As the last note throbbed into silence in the hall's dome, George Stairs, who had knelt through the singing of the anthem, advanced, with hand uplifted.
"God helping us, as, if we choose aright, He surely will help us, do we choose Duty, or pleasure? Choose, my kinsmen! Is it Duty, or is it pleasure?"
It was a severe test to put to such an assembly, to a congregation of all classes of London society. There was a moment of silence in which I saw George Stairs's face, white and writhen, through a mist which seemed to cloud my vision. And then the answer came, like a long, rolling clap of thunder:
"Duty!"
And I saw George Stairs fall upon his knees in prayer, as the Bishop dismissed the people with a benediction, delivered somewhat brokenly, in a hoarse voice.
There are who ask not if thine eyeBe on them; who in love and truthWhere no misgiving is, relyUpon the genial sense of youth:Glad hearts! without reproach or blot,Who do thy work, and know it not:O! if through confidence misplacedThey fail, thy saving arms, dread Power! around them cast.Ode to Duty.
There are who ask not if thine eyeBe on them; who in love and truthWhere no misgiving is, relyUpon the genial sense of youth:Glad hearts! without reproach or blot,Who do thy work, and know it not:O! if through confidence misplacedThey fail, thy saving arms, dread Power! around them cast.
Ode to Duty.
Itwas with something of a shock that I learned, while endeavouring to make my way through a dense crowd to the Canadian preacher's dressing-room, that my friend, George Stairs, was lying unconscious in a fainting fit. But my anxiety was not long-lived. Several doctors had volunteered their services, and from one of them I learned that the fainting fit was no more than the momentary result of an exceptional strain of excitement.
Within half an hour, Stairs and Reynolds were both resting comfortably in a private sitting-room at a neighbouring hotel, and there I visited them, with Constance Grey and Mrs. Van Homrey, and John Crondall. Stairs assured us that his fainting was of no consequence, and that he felt perfectly fit and well again.
"You see it was something of an ordeal for me, a nobody from nowhere, to face such an assembly."
"Well," said John Crondall, "I suppose that at this moment there is not a man in London who is much more a somebody, and less a nobody from nowhere."
"You think we succeeded, then?"
"My dear fellow! I think your address of this afternoon was the most important event England has known this century. Mark my words, that great thunder of 'Duty!' that you drew from them—from a London audience, mind—is to have more far-reaching results for the British Empire than the acquisition of a continent."
"No, no, my dear Crondall, you surely overrate the thing," said Stairs, warm colour spreading over his pale face.
"Well, you can take my deliberate assurance that in my opinion you achieved more for your country this afternoon than it has been my good fortune to achieve in the whole of a rather busy life."
Stairs protested, blushing like a girl. But we know now that, so far at all events as his remarks were prophetic, John Crondall was absolutely right; though whether or not the new evangel could have achieved what it did without the invasion is another matter.
Myself, I believe nothing could have been more triumphantly successful, more pregnant with great possibilities for good, than the event of that afternoon. Yet I was assured that fully two thousand five hundred more people crowded into the hall forthe evening service than had been there to hear Stairs's address. And I had thought the huge place crowded in the afternoon. As before, the service began and ended with the National Anthem; but in the evening the great assembly was thrilled to its heart by the Australianprima donna'ssplendid singing of Wordsworth'sOde to Dutyin the setting specially composed for this occasion by Doctor Elgar.
I saw very many faces that I had seen at the first service, but I believe that there was a far greater proportion of poorer folk present than there had been in the afternoon. The President of the Congregational Union presided, and the address was delivered by Arthur Reynolds.
As with Stairs, so with Reynolds, Duty was the gist and heart of the Message delivered—Duty, plain living, simplicity; these they both urged to be the root of the whole matter. Both men gave substantially the same Message, there can be no doubt of that; but there were differences, and upon the whole I am inclined to think that Reynolds's address was more perfectly adapted to his hearers than Stairs's would have been if his had been given that evening. Reynolds's diction in public speaking was not quite his conversational speech, because nothing like slang, nothing altogether colloquial crept into it, but its simplicity was notable; it was the diction of a frank, earnest child. There were none of the stereotyped phrases of piety; yet I never heard a more truly pious and deeply religious discourse.
The social and political aspects of Duty were more cursorily treated by Reynolds than its moral andreligious aspect. There was nothing heterodox in the view put forward by this preacher from oversea. A man may find salvation in this world and the next through love and faith, he said in effect; but the love and faith must be of the right sort. The redemption of the world was the world's greatest miracle; but it did not offer mankind salvation in return for a given measure of psalm-singing, sentimentalizing, and prayerful prostrations. Christianity was something which had to be lived, not merely contemplated. Love and faith were all-sufficient, but they must be the true love and faith, of which Duty was the legitimate offspring. The man who thought that any form of piety which permitted the neglect of Duty, would win him either true peace in this life or salvation in the next, was as pitifully misled as the man who indulged himself in a vicious life with a view to repentance when he should be too near his demise to care for indulgence.
"But, even if one could put aside all thought of God and the life compared with which this life is but an instant of time; even then there would be nothing left really worth serious consideration besides Duty. Dear friends, you who listen so kindly to the man who comes to you from across the sea, I ask you to look about you in the streets and among the people you know, and to tell me if the majority are really happy. In this connection I dare not speak of the land of my birth, because, though it is yours as truly as it is mine, and we are all blood-brothers, yet I might be thought guilty of a vain partiality. But I do say that I cannot think the majority of the people ofEngland are really happy. I do not believe the majority of Londoners are happy. I am sure that the majority of those who spend an immense amount of money here in the West End of London, are not one whit happier than the average man who works hard for a few pounds a week.
"If I am certain of anything in this world, I am certain that the pursuit of pleasure never yet brought real happiness to any intelligent human being, and never will. True, I have met some happy people in London, even now, when England lies wounded from a cruel blow—a blow which I believe may prove the greatest blessing England ever knew. But those happy people are not running after pleasure or concentrating their intelligence upon their own gratification. No, no; those happy people are strenuously, soberly striving to do the whole of their duty as Christians and British citizens. They are happy because of that.
"Oh, my dear friends, do please believe me, that, even apart from God's will and the all-sacrificing love of His Son,there is absolutely no real happiness in this world outside the clean, sweet way of Duty. If you profess you love a woman, but shirk your duty by her, of what worth is such love? Is God of less importance to you? Is Eternity of less importance? Are King and Country, and the future of our race and the millions who depend on us for light and guidance and protection, of less importance? As God hears me,nothingis ofanyimportance, beside the one thing vital to salvation, to happiness, to honour, to life, here and hereafter. That one thing is Duty."
The evening congregation was more demonstrative than that of the afternoon, and though I do not think the impression produced by Reynolds's address was deeper or stronger than that made by Stairs—it could hardly have been that—its effects were more noticeable. The great crowd that streamed out of the hall after the Benediction had been pronounced, testified in a hundred ways to the truth of John Crondall's assertion that the Canadian preachers had stirred the very depths of London's heart as no other missioners had ever stirred them.
By George Stairs's invitation, Mrs. Van Homrey, Constance, Crondall, myself, Sir Herbert Tate, and Forbes Thompson, joined the preachers that evening, quite informally, at their very modest supper board. It must have been a little startling to abon vivantlike Sir Herbert to find that the men who had stormed London, supped upon bread and cheese and celery and cold rice pudding, and, without a hint of apology, offered their guests the same Spartan entertainment. But it was quite a brilliant function so far as mental activity and high spirits were concerned. We were discussing the possibilities of the Canadian preachers' pilgrimage, and Crondall said:
"I know that some of you think I take too sanguine a view, but, mark my words, these meetings to-day are the beginning of the greatest religious, moral, and national revival that the British people have ever seen. I am certain of it. Your blushes are quite beside the point, Stairs; they are wholly irrelevant; so is your modesty. Why, my dear fellow, you couldn't help it if you tried. You two men are themouthpiece of the hour. The hour having come, you could not stay its Message if you tried, nor check the tide of its effect. I know my London. In a matter of this kind—a moral movement—London is the hardest place in the kingdom to move, because its bigness and variety make it so many-sided. Having achieved what you have achieved to-day in London, I say nothing can check your progress. My counsel is for no more than a week in London; two days more in the west, three in the east, and one in the south; and then a bee-line due north through England, with a few days in all big centres."
"Well," said Reynolds, "whatever happens after to-night, I just want to say what George Stairs has more than once said to me, and that is, that to-day's success is three parts due to Mr. Crondall for every one part due to us."
"And to his secretary," said Stairs. "It really is no more than bare truth. Without you, Crondall, there would have been no Albert Hall for us."
"And no Bishop," added Reynolds.
"And no great personages."
"Andno columns and columns of newspaper announcements."
"In point of fact, there would have been none of the splendid organization which made to-day possible. I recognize it very clearly. If this is to prove the beginning of a really big movement, then it is a beginning in whichThe Citizensand their founder have played a very big part. You won't find that we shall forget that; and I know Reynolds is with me when I say that we shall leave no word unsaid, or actundone, which could make our pilgrimage helpful toThe Citizens'campaign. I tell you, standing before that vast assembly to-day, it was borne in upon me as I had not felt it before, that your aims and ours are inseparable. We cannot succeed without your succeeding, nor you without our succeeding. Our interpretation of Christianity, our Message, is Duty and simple living, and unless the people will accept that Message they will never achieve what you seek of them. On the other hand, if they will answer your call they will be going a long way toward accepting and acting upon our Message."
"I am mighty thankful that has come home to you, Stairs," said Crondall. "I felt it very strongly when I first asked you to come and talk things over. Your pilgrimage is going to wake up England, morally. It will be our business to see that newly waked England choose the right direction for the first outlay of its energy. The thing will go far—much farther than I have said, and far beyond England's immediate need. But, of course, we mustn't lose sight of that immediate need. If I am not greatly mistaken, one of the first achievements of this movement will be the safe steering of the British public through the General Election. With the New Year I hope to see a real Imperial Parliament sitting. By that I mean a strong Government administering England from the House of Commons, while some of its members sit in an Imperial Chamber—Westminster Hall—and help elected representatives of every one of the Colonies to govern the Empire. My belief is there will be no such thing as an Opposition in the House.Why should England continue to waste its time and energy over pulling both ways in every little job its legislators have to tackle? It sterilizes the efforts of the good men, and gives innumerable openings to the fools and cranks and obstructionists. You will find the very names of the old futile cross-purposes of party warfare will fall into the limbo which has swallowed up the pillory, the stocks, and Little Englandism. With deference to the cloth present in the person of our reverend friends here, let me quote you what to me is one of the most strikingly interesting passages in the Bible: 'The vile person shall be no more called liberal.' It will become clear to all men that the only possible party, the only people who can possibly stand for progress, movement, advance, are those who stand firm for Imperial Federation."
"And then?" said Constance, leaning forward, her face illumined by her shining eyes. Crondall drew a long breath.
"And then—then Britain will have something to say to the Kaiser."
As we rose from the table, George Stairs laid his hand on Reynolds's shoulder.
"Deep waters these, my friend," said he, "for simple parsons from the backwoods. But our part is plain, and close at hand. Our work is to make the writing on the wall flame till all can read and feel: Duty first, last, and all the time. 'The conclusion of the whole matter.'"
"Yes, yes; that's so," said Reynolds, thoughtfully. And then he added, as it were an afterthought: "But was that remark about vile people no morebeing called liberal really scriptural, I wonder—I wonder!"
"Without a doubt," said Crondall, with a broad grin. "You look up IsaiahXXXII. 5. You will find it there, written maybe three thousand years ago, fitting to-day's situation like a glove."
On the way out to South Kensington, where I accompanied the ladies, I asked Constance what she thought of my old chum, George Stairs.
"Why, Dick," she said, "he makes me feel that an English village can still produce the finest type of man that walks the earth. But, as things have been, in our time, I'm glad this particular man didn't remain in his native village—aren't you?"
"Yes," I agreed, with a half-sad note I could not keep out of my voice. "I suppose Colonial life has taught him a lot."
"Oh, he is magnificent!"
"And look at John Crondall!"
"Ah, John is a wonderful man; Empire-taught, is John."
"And I suppose the man who has never lived the outside life in the big, open places can never——"
And then I think she saw what had brought the twinge of sadness to me; for she touched my arm, her bright eyes gleamed upon me, and—
"You're a terribly impatient man, Dick," she said, with a smile. "It seems to me you've trekked a mighty long way fromThe Massoffice in—how many weeks is it?"