"Thou shalt deliver me from the strivings of the people: and thou shalt make me the head of the heathen."
And the reply:
"A people whom I have not known shall serve me."
The working-man next to Alison had no prayer-book. She thrust her own into his hand, and they read from it together....
When they came to the second hymn the woman in front of her had wonderfully shed her vulgarity. Her voice--a really good one--poured itself out:
"See a long race thy s.p.a.cious courts adorn, See future sons, and daughters yet unborn, In crowding ranks on every side arise, Demanding life, impatient for the skies."
Once Alison would have been critical of the words She was beyond that, now. What did it matter, if the essential Thing were present?
The sermon was a surprise. And those who had come for excitement, for the sensation of hearing a denunciation of a cla.s.s they envied and therefore hated, and nevertheless strove to imitate, were themselves rebuked. Were not their standards the same? And if the standard were false, it followed inevitably that the life was false also.
Hodder fairly startled these out of their preconceived notions of Christianity. Let them shake out of their minds everything they had thought it to mean, churchgoing, acceptance of creed and dogma, contributive charity, withdrawal from the world, rites and ceremonies: it was none of these.
The motive in the world to-day was the acquisition of property; the motive of Christianity was absolutely and uncompromisingly opposed to this. Shock their practical sense as it might, Christianity looked forward with steadfast faith to a time when the incentive to ama.s.s property would be done away with, since it was a source of evil and a curse to mankind. If they would be Christians, let them face that. Let them enter into life, into the struggles going on around them to-day against greed, corruption, slavery, poverty, vice and crime. Let them protest, let them fight, even as Jesus Christ had fought and protested.
For as sure as they sat there the day would come when they would be called to account, would be asked the question--what had they done to make the United States of America a better place to live in?
There were in the Apostolic writings and tradition misinterpretations of life which had done much harm. Early Christianity had kept its eyes fixed on another world, and had ignored this: had overlooked the fact that every man and woman was put here to do a particular work. In the first epistle of Peter the advice was given, "submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord"s sake." But Christ had preached democracy, responsibility, had foreseen a millennium, the fulfilment of his Kingdom, when all men, inspired by the Spirit, would make and keep in spirit the ordinances of G.o.d.
Before they could do G.o.d"s work and man"s work they must first be awakened, filled with desire. Desire was power. And he prayed that some of them, on this day, would receive that desire, that power which nothing could resist. The desire which would lead each and every one to the gates of the Inner World which was limitless and eternal, filled with dazzling light....
Let them have faith then. Not credulity in a vague G.o.d they could not imagine, but faith in the Spirit of the Universe, humanity, in Jesus Christ who had been the complete human revelation of that Spirit, who had suffered and died that man might not live in ignorance of it. To doubt humanity,--such was the Great Refusal, the sin against the Holy Ghost, the repudiation of the only true G.o.d!
After a pause, he spoke simply of his hope for St. John"s. If he remained here his ambition was that it would be the free temple of humanity, of Jesus Christ, supported not by a few, but by all,--each in accordance with his means. Of those who could afford nothing, nothing would be required. Perhaps this did not sound practical, nor would it be so if the transforming inspiration failed. He could only trust and try, hold up to them the vision of the Church as a community of willing workers for the Kingdom...
III
After the service was over the people lingered in the church, standing in the pews and aisles, as though loath to leave. The woman with the perfume and the elaborate hat was heard to utter a succinct remark.
"Say, Charlie, I guess he"s all right. I never had it put like that."
The thick-necked man"s reply was inaudible.
Eleanor Goodrich was silent and a little pale as she pressed close to Alison. Her imagination had been stretched, as it were, and she was still held in awe by the vastness of what she had heard and seen. Vaster even than ever,--so it appeared now,--demanding greater sacrifices than she had dreamed of. She looked back upon the old as at receding sh.o.r.es.
Alison, with absorbed fascination, watched the people; encountered, here and there, recognitions from men and women with whom she had once danced and dined in what now seemed a previous existence. Why had they come?
and how had they received the message? She ran into a little man, a dealer in artists" supplies who once had sold her paints and brushes, who stared and bowed uncertainly. She surprised him by taking his hand.
"Did you like it?" she asked, impulsively.
"It"s what I"ve been thinking for years, Miss Parr," he responded, "thinking and feeling. But I never knew it was Christianity. And I never thought--" he stopped and looked at her, alarmed.
"Oh," she said, "I believe in it, too--or try to."
She left him, mentally gasping.... Without, on the sidewalk, Eleanor Goodrich was engaged in conversation with a stockily built man, inclined to stoutness; he had a brown face and a clipped, bristly mustache.
Alison paused involuntarily, and saw him start and hesitate as his clear, direct gaze met her own.
Bedloe Hubbell was one of those who had once sought to marry her. She recalled him as an amiable and aimless boy; and after she had gone East she had received with incredulity and then with amus.e.m.e.nt the news of his venture into altruistic politics. It was his efficiency she had doubted, not his sincerity. Later tidings, contemptuous and eventually irritable utterances of her own father, together with accounts in the New York newspapers of his campaign, had convinced her in spite of herself that Bedloe Hubbell had actually shaken the seats of power. And somehow, as she now took him in, he looked it.
His transformation was one of the signs, one of the mysteries of the times. The ridicule and abuse of the press, the opposition and enmity of his childhood friends, had developed the man of force she now beheld, and who came forward to greet her.
"Alison!" he exclaimed. He had changed in one sense, and not in another.
Her colour deepened as the sound of his voice brought back the lapsed memories of the old intimacy. For she had been kind to him, kinder than to any other; and the news of his marriage--to a woman from the Pacific coast--had actually induced in her certain longings and regrets. When the cards had reached her, New York and the excitement of the life into which she had been weakly, if somewhat unwittingly, drawn had already begun to pall.
"I"m so glad to see you," she told him. "I"ve heard--so many things. And I"m very much in sympathy with what you"re doing."
They crossed the street, and walked away from the church together. She had surprised him, and made him uncomfortable.
"You"ve been away so long," he managed to say, "perhaps you do not realize--"
"Oh, yes, I do," she interrupted. "I am on the other side, on your side.
I thought of writing you, when you nearly won last autumn."
"You see it, too?" he exclaimed.
"Yes, I"ve changed, too. Not so much as you," she added, shyly. "I always had a certain sympathy, you know, with the Robin Hoods."
He laughed at her designation, both pleased and taken aback by her praise... But he wondered if she knew the extent of his criticism of her father.
"That rector is a wonderful man," he broke out, irrelevantly. "I can"t get over" him--I can"t quite grasp the fact that he exists, that he has dared to do what he has done."
This brought her colour back, but she faced him bravely. "You think he is wonderful, then?"
"Don"t you?" he demanded.
She a.s.sented. "But I am curious to know why you do. Somehow, I never thought of--you--"
"As religious," he supplied. "And you? If I remember rightly--"
"Yes," she interrupted, "I revolted, too. But Mr. Hodder puts it so--it makes one wonder."
"He has not only made me wonder," declared Bedloe Hubbell, emphatically, "I never knew what religion was until I heard this man last Sunday."
"Last Sunday!"
"Until then, I hadn"t been inside of a church for fifteen years,--except to get married. My wife takes the children, occasionally, to a Presbyterian church near us."
"And why, did you go then?" she asked.
"I am a little ashamed of my motive," he confessed. "There were rumours--I don"t pretend to know how they got about--" he hesitated, once more aware of delicate ground. "Wallis Plimpton said something to a man who told me. I believe I went out of sheer curiosity to hear what Hodder would have to say. And then, I had been reading, wondering whether there were anything in Christianity, after all."
"Yes?" she said, careless now as to what cause he might attribute her eagerness. "And he gave you something?"