Part 26 (1/2)
”There are men here to-night who have won fortune, rank, and celebrity from the wholesale poisoning of the poor. The food which the slaves of the modern Babylon eat, the drink they drink, is full of foulness, that you may fare sumptuously every day, that your wives may be covered with jewels. There are men here to-night who keep hundreds and thousands of their fellow-Christians in hideous and dreadful dens without hope, and for ever. In order that you may live in palaces, surrounded by all the beauties and splendors that the choicest art, the most skilled handicraft can give, hundreds of human beings who lurk in the holes for which they pay you must spend their lives, where no ordinary man or woman can remain for more than a moment or two, so terrible are these nauseous places.
”Whole miles of ground in the modern London are thickly packed with fellow-Christians who are hourly giving up their lives in one long torture that you may eat, drink and be merry. At midday you may go into the East End of London and pa.s.s a factory. Men come out of it dripping with perspiration, and that perspiration is green. The hair of these men sprouts green from the roots giving them the appearance of some strange vegetable. These men are changed and dyed like this that your wives may spend the life-earnings of any one of them in the costly shops of the perruquiers in Bond Street.
”In order that you may draw twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty per cent.
from your investments, instead of an honest return from the wealth with which G.o.d has entrusted you, there are men who eat like animals. In the little eating-houses around the works, there are human beings who leave their knives and forks unused and drop their heads and bury their noses and mouths into what is set before them. All the bones, nerves, and muscles below their wrists are useless. These are the slaves of lead, who are trans.m.u.ting lead with the sacrifice of their own lives, that it may change to gold to purchase your banquets. You are the people who directly or indirectly live in a luxury such as the world has never seen before, out of the wages of disease and death. Copper colic, hatter's shakers, diver's paralysis, shoemaker's chest, miller's itch, hammerman's palsy, potter's rot, shoddy fever, are the prices which others pay for your yachts and pictures, your horses and motor-cars, your music, your libraries, your clubs, your travel, and your health.
”And what of the other and more intimate side of your lives? Do you live with the most ordinary standard of family and personal purity before you? Do you spend a large portion of your lives in gambling, in the endeavor to gain money without working for it from people less skilful or fortunate than yourself? Do you reverence goodness and holiness when you find them or are told of them, or do you mock and sneer? Do you destroy your bodily health by over-indulgence in food, in wine, and in unnatural drugs, which destroy the mind and the moral sense? Do you ever and systematically seek the good and welfare of others, or do you live utterly and solely for yourself, even as the beasts that perish?”
The preacher stopped in one long pause; then his voice sank a full tone--
”Yes, all these things you do, and more, and G.o.d is not with you.”
Nearly every head in the church was bent low as the flaming, scorching words of denunciation swept over them.
Wealthy, celebrated, high in the world's good favor as they were, none of these people had ever heard the terrible, naked truth about their lives before. Nor was it alone the denunciatory pa.s.sion of the words and the bitter realization of the shameful truth which moved and influenced them so deeply. The personality of the Teacher, some quality in his voice which they had never yet heard in the voice of living man, the all-inspiring likeness to the most sacred figure the world has ever known, the intense vibrating quality of more than human power and conviction--all these united to light the fires of remorse in every heart, and to touch the soul with the cold fingers of fear.
Accustomed as most of them were to this or that piquant thrill or sensation--for were not their lives pa.s.sed in the endless quest of stimulating excitement?--there was yet something in this occasion utterly alien to it, and different from anything they had ever known before.
Of what this quality consisted, of what it was composed, many of them there would have given conflicting and contradictory answers. All would have agreed in its presence.
Only a few, a very few, knew and recognized the truth, either with gladness and holy awe or with shrinking and guilty dread, the Power which enveloped them with the sense of the presence of the Holy Ghost.
There was a change in the accusing voice--
”But it is not yet too late. G.o.d's mercy is infinite, and through the merits of His Son you may save yourselves while there is time. Kneel now and pray silently as you have never prayed before, for I tell you that G.o.d is here among you. An opportunity will be given to each one of you to make reparation for the evil you have done, for the messengers of the Lord have come to London, and wondrous things will come to pa.s.s! And now pray, pray, pray! In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
With no further word the Teacher turned and quietly descended the pulpit steps.
Every head was bowed; hardly a single person heard or saw him move away into the vestry, and a great silence fell upon the church.
As if in a dream, the tall figure in its white linen ephod pa.s.sed through the outer vestry into the large and comfortable room used by the priests. No one was there, and Joseph sank upon his knees in prayer. He had been sending up his pa.s.sionate supplications for the souls of those without but a few seconds, when he felt a touch--a timid, hesitating touch--upon his shoulder.
He looked up, and saw a little elderly man, wearing the long velvet-trimmed gown which signalized a verger in St. Elwyn's, standing by his side. The old man's face was moving and working with strong emotion, and a strange blaze of eagerness shone in his eyes.
”Master,” he said, ”I heard it all, every word you said to them; and it is true--every word is bitter true. Master, there is one who has need of you, and in G.o.d's name I pray you to go with me.”
”In G.o.d's name I will come with you, brother,” Joseph answered gravely.
”Ay,” the old man answered, ”I felt my prayer would be answered, Master.” He took Joseph's surplice from him, divested himself of his own gown, and opened the vestry door. ”You found this way when you came, Master,” he said. ”The public do not know of it, for it goes through the big livery-stables. The district is so crowded. No one will see us when we leave the church, though there are still thousands of people waiting for you to pa.s.s in front. But my poor home is not far away.”
As they walked, the old man told his story to Joseph. His son, a young fellow of eighteen or nineteen, had been employed as bas.e.m.e.nt porter in the Countess of Morston's Regent Street shop for the selling of artistic, hand-wrought metal work.
Like many another fas.h.i.+onable woman in London, Lady Morston was making a large sum of money out of her commercial venture. But the repousse work which she sold was made by half-starved and sweated work-people in the East End of town, and all the employees in the shop itself were miserably underpaid. From early morning, sometimes till late at night, the old fellow's son had been at work carrying about the heavy crates of metal. His wages had been cut down to the lowest possible limit, and when he had asked for a rise he had been told that a hundred other young fellows would be glad to step into his shoes at any moment.
One day the inevitable collapse had come. He had found himself unable to continue the arduous labor, and had left the position. Almost immediately after his departure he had been attacked with a long and painful nervous complaint. Unable, owing to the fact of his resignation, to claim any compensation from the countess as a legal right, he had humbly pet.i.tioned for a little pecuniary help to tide him over his illness. This had been coldly refused, and the young man was now bedridden and a permanent enc.u.mbrance to the old man, who himself was unable to do anything but the lightest work.
Mr. Persse, on being applied to for a.s.sistance, had consulted the Countess of Morston, who was one of his paris.h.i.+oners, in order, as he said, to find out if it were ”a genuine case.” With an absolute disregard for truth, and in order to s.h.i.+eld herself, the woman had told the clergyman that her late a.s.sistant was a dishonest scoundrel who merited no consideration whatever.