BV 4915 .B443 1911 
 Begbie, Harold, 1871-1929. 
 Souls in action 
 
SOULS IN ACTION 
 
SOULS IN ACTION 
 
 The Crucible of the New Life 
 
 EXPANDING THE NARRATIVE OF 
 
 TWICE-BORN MEN 
 
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 By y 
 
 HAROLD BEGBIE 
 
 Author of "Twice-Born Men:' "The Vi£il" &c. 
 
 * MAY 30 19] 
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 HODDER & STOUGHTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
Copyright, 1911 
 By George H. Doban Company 
 
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 
 TO 
 
 MRS. HUGH PRICE HUGHES 
 
 AND 
 
 SISTER MILDRED 
 
 OF THE WEST LONDON MISSION 
 
Surely there are in every man's Life certain rubs, 
 doublings, and wrenches, which pass a while under the 
 effects of chance, but at the last well examined, prove the 
 meer hand of God. — Religio Medici. 
 
 Evidences of Christianity! I am weary of the word. 
 Make a man feel the want of it; rouse him, if you can, 
 to the self-knowledge of his need of it; and you may 
 safely trust it to its own Evidence. — Aids to Reflection. 
 
 It was to this Change of Nature, of Life and Spirit, to 
 this certain, immediate Deliverance from the Power of 
 Sin . . . that Men were then called to, as true Chris- 
 tianity. And the Preachers of it bore Witness, not to 
 a Thing that they had heard, but to a Power of Salvation, 
 a Renewal of Nature, a Birth of Heaven, a Sanctification 
 of the Spirit, which they themselves had received. — The 
 Way to Divine Life. 
 
 If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend 
 upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He 
 cannot stop at the beast. The most savage men are not 
 beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse. — Coleridge's 
 Table Talk. 
 
 It is the plague of manie, that they are not plagued: 
 even this is their punishment, the want of punish- 
 ment; ... an insensible Heart is the Devil's Anvil, he 
 fashioneth all sins on it, and the blowes are not felt. — 
 The Gallant's Burden. 
 
 They have drawn on forces which exist, and on a soul 
 which answers. — Human Personality. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface 9 
 
 Introduction n 
 
 Seekers and Savers 36 
 
 The Flowing Tide 67 
 
 Two Roads 89 
 
 The Vision of a Lost Soul .... 95 
 
 Betrayed I2 8 
 
 Out of the Depths 148 
 
 The Carriage Lady 176 
 
 A Girl and Her Lover 200 
 
 Tale of a Treaty Port . . . . .223 
 
 The Cleanest Thing in the House . . 247 
 
 Sister Agatha's Way 269 
 
 (1) The Bookseller 
 
 (2) Transfigured 
 
 (3) The Little Lion 
 
 Notes 3 02 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IN two chief respects the narratives com- 
 posing this book differ from those in Twice- 
 Born Men. They are instances of conver- 
 sion, but not of sudden, violent, and passionate 
 conversion. Even so profound a thinker and 
 so far-seeing an observer as Frederic Myers 
 appears to have regarded conversion only in this 
 manner, whereas the most interesting, the most 
 striking, and the most conclusive cases of the 
 miracle are those in which a gradual and quite 
 tranquil change of heart leads to the new birth. 
 Professor Granger, in The Soal of a Christian, 
 tells of a revivalist preacher who condemned a 
 Scotch congregation for not responding to his 
 appeal for sudden change : " A woman rebuked 
 him by saying that her mother had been praying 
 in the hills for five years before she was con- 
 verted: how was she to be converted in five 
 minutes?" There could be no narrower view 
 of conversion than that which shuts out of count 
 and regards only as cases of natural development, 
 those fundamental changes in the soul which are 
 gradually produced; so long as there is a culmi- 
 nating point, a place at which the spirit com- 
 
 9 
 
10 PREFACE 
 
 pletely turns about and becomes definitely con- 
 scious of a new life, however quietly, privately, 
 and dispassionately, these are true cases of the 
 miracle. 
 
 The second respect in which this book differs 
 from Twice-Born Men is in the character of the 
 people whose stories it attempts to tell. In 
 Twice-Born Men the testators were all men, and 
 cTf the humblest classes in the community, some 
 of them the very lees and dregs of society. In 
 the present book most of the stories concern 
 women, and in all cases the strata of society 
 is above the depths. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 // faut que la vie soit bonne aUn qu'elle soit feconde. 
 
 ONE of the aphorisms in Coleridge's r Aids 
 to Reflection is entitled, " The Charac- 
 teristic Difference between the Discipline 
 of the Ancient Philosophers and the Dispensa- 
 tion of the Gospel." To insist upon this Differ- 
 ence is to venture a rescue of Christianity, both 
 from the shadows of philosophy and from the 
 sensuous insecurity of aesthetics, which seems 
 at this time more than ever a work of high 
 urgency — a work to which all men may set 
 their hands who believe that life without some 
 form of definite religion is like to be a chaos, 
 and without the true religion must certainly fall 
 short of its reach. 
 
 This book attempts such a work, and one could 
 not better express its purpose, or sound the note 
 of its forerunning essay, than by setting forth 
 in full, on the very threshold of its pages, the 
 noble and compelling aphorism of Coleridge in 
 which that characteristic of Christianity which 
 
 11 
 
12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 differentiates it from all philosophies and all 
 other religions is most powerfully defined. 
 
 The Aphorism is as follows: 
 
 "By undeceiving, enlarging, and informing 
 the Intellect, Philosophy sought to purify, and 
 to elevate the Moral Character. Of course, those 
 alone could receive the latter and incomparably 
 greater benefit who by natural capacity and 
 favourable contingencies of fortune were fit 
 recipients of the former. How small the number, 
 we scarcely need the evidence of history to 
 assure us. Across the Night of Paganism, 
 Philosophy flitted on, like itself, the lantern-fly 
 of the tropics, a light to and an ornament, but 
 alas! no more than an ornament, of the sur- 
 rounding darkness. 
 
 " Christianity reversed the order. By means 
 accessible to all, by inducements operative on all, 
 and by convictions, the grounds and materials 
 of which all men might find in themselves, her 
 first step was to cleanse the Heart. But the 
 benefit did not stop here. In preventing the 
 rank vapours that steam up from the corrupt 
 Heart, Christianity restores the Intellect like- 
 wise to its natural clearness. By relieving the 
 mind from the distractions and importunities of 
 the unruly passions, she improves the quality 
 of the Understanding: while, at the same time, 
 she presents for its contemplation Objects so 
 great and so bright as cannot but enlarge the 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 organ by which they are contemplated. The 
 fears, the hopes, the remembrances, the anticipa- 
 tions, the inward and outward experience, the 
 belief and the Faith, of a Christian, form of 
 themselves a philosophy and a sum of knowl- 
 edge, which a life spent in the grove of Aca- 
 demus, or the 'painted porch/ could not have 
 attained or collected. The result is contained 
 in the fact of a wide and still widening Christen- 
 dom. 
 
 "Yet I dare not say, that the effects have 
 been proportionate to the divine wisdom of the 
 Scheme. Too soon did the Doctors of the 
 Church forget that the Heart, the Moral Nature, 
 was the beginning and the end; and that Truth, 
 Knowledge, and Insight were comprehended in 
 its expansion. This was the first and true apos- 
 tasy — when in Council and Synod the Divine 
 Humanities of the Gospel gave way to specula- 
 tive Systems, and Religion became a Science of 
 Shadows under the name of Theology, or at 
 best a bare Skeleton of Truth, without life or 
 interest, alike inaccessible and unintelligible to 
 the majority of Christians. For these, there- 
 fore, there remained only rites and ceremonies 
 and spectacles, shows and semblances. Thus 
 among the learned the substance of things hoped 
 for (Heb. xi. i) passed off into Notions; and 
 for the unlearned the surfaces of things became 
 substance. The Christian world was for cen- 
 
14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 turies divided into the Many, that did not think 
 at all, and the Few who did nothing but think — 
 both alike unreflecting, the one from defect of 
 the Act, the other from the absence of an Object/' 
 
 II 
 
 The purpose of this book is to show by the 
 testimony of Christened souls that where the 
 Christian religion makes it her first step to cleanse 
 the heart, results follow which are evidence of 
 her divine origin. And the object of this in- 
 troduction is to insist that Christianity must be 
 unwaveringly and authoritatively declared by its 
 representatives to be a miracle-working religion, 
 a religion able to cleanse the heart and convert 
 the soul of even the most degraded human be- 
 ing, or its inevitable tendency will be towards 
 the unprofitable region of speculation. There 
 its light, which has for so long lightened the 
 world, will surely flicker miserably away, for 
 some generations at least, into the shadows and 
 dispensable mysticism o f an inadequate theology. 
 
 The supreme danger of the Christian religion 
 comes not from outside, but from within. No 
 attack of a merely unimaginative materialism 
 could so undermine and totter this heavenly 
 edifice as the inclination of those inside to sponge 
 away from its interior walls the ancient testi- 
 mony of a divine origin. Christianity is either 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 the first essential of life or it is a poor philosophy. 
 It is either a Revelation or a Theory. It is either 
 the Spirit of God or the dream of men. It is 
 either superhuman, or a mere guess. 
 
 To make Christianity, as is the tendency in 
 these present times, something so common and 
 compromising that a man may get through the 
 experience of human life almost as well without 
 it as with it, to make it a bracket in religion 
 with Hinduism, and a conjugation in philosophy 
 with Platonism, not to insist upon it as some- 
 thing sole, single, and sublime, not to declare 
 that it makes a unique demand and confers an 
 exclusive benefit — this is most surely to darken 
 the light of the world and to turn men shelter- 
 less again into the night of paganism. It is 
 to destroy Christianity. Christianity, irresistible 
 as a religion, is vulnerable at every point as a 
 philosophy. Either it must be brought home 
 to men as the express revelation of God, the 
 chief necessity of existence, and a power un- 
 paralleled and supernatural, or it sinks fatally 
 to the level of speculation, and becomes to the 
 man of science a folly and to the bulk of 
 humanity a matter of indifference. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Christianity differs, with the altitude of heaven 
 and the radius of infinity, from all other religions 
 
16 INTRODUCTION 
 
 under the sun, first and foremost in the nature 
 of its foundational affirmation. It declares itself 
 to be a revelation from God and (mark well) a 
 blessing to humanity. All other religions are 
 human explications. Buddha, Confucius, Lao, 
 Zoroaster and Mohammed, all these men stand in 
 the same category as Socrates, Swedenborg, and 
 Kant. They do not profess to be more than 
 men. Their religions are human interpretations 
 and explanations; they begin with the honest 
 affirmation that they do but attempt to explain 
 the moral and social problems of human life or 
 to amplify the religion they found already in 
 existence. 
 
 To the sick and dying soul of the human 
 race Buddhism comes as a Job's comforter; 
 Christianity as a healing physician. Buddhism 
 diagnoses the disease and gives it a name; 
 Christianity cures it. Buddhism explains why 
 the patient should bear his sufferings and remain 
 patient under his afflictions; Christianity com- 
 mands him to take up his bed and walk. 
 Buddhism explains everything, and leaves every- 
 thing as it was before the explanation. Chris- 
 tianity sets out to explain nothing, and trans- 
 figures the whole fabric of existence. 
 
 All other religions are efforts, more or less 
 beautiful, more or less intellectual, to find a way 
 out from the world. Christianity is inwards to 
 the world from the universe which includes the 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 world. It is not the speculation or inspiration 
 of man, but a light from heaven, a hand from 
 eternity, the voice of God. No religion save 
 Christianity makes any such claim; no other 
 religion has so daring an ascription. From the 
 earth in which they have their roots, these 
 shadow-faiths of groping men look up and strive 
 to find their way amongst the stars; they ballast 
 the soul with pessimism and wing it with argu- 
 ments, and, thus prepared, send it a circuit of 
 the empyrean; they guess their way across eter- 
 nity and with a clue of Ariadne would circum- 
 navigate infinity; their God is an intuition, their 
 faith a fancy, and their law of life a conjecture. 
 Christianity's foundational affirmation is a 
 supernatural origin. It is not a human presump- 
 tion, but a divine revelation. It is a gift from 
 God to man, and not a guess by man at God. 
 The human brain is not concerned at all in the 
 origin of this religion; it did not spring from 
 the dreams of poets, the visions of prophets, 
 the reasoning of philosophers. It came to 
 humanity from outside humanity's history and 
 experience. Christ declared Himself to be sanc- 
 tified by the Father and sent into the world. 
 " This commandment have I received of My 
 Father " is an utterance unique in human records, 
 and it is the ground-motive of all that luminous 
 discourse which is the good-news and revelation 
 of Christianity. St. Paul described himself to 
 
18 INTRODUCTION 
 
 men as " an apostle, not of men, neither by man, 
 but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who 
 raised Him from the dead." St. Paul believed 
 this, and those who heard him knew that he 
 believed it; — " not of men, neither by man." 
 A man may doubt or altogether reject the truth 
 of Christianity, but he cannot deny either from 
 its documents or from the course of history, that 
 it claimed to be a divine and supernatural revela- 
 tion. The cross of Calvary, set up in the centre 
 of time, and dividing the ages of the world in 
 twain, witnesses, if to nothing else, at least to 
 this. " Christ did not die for a metaphor." 
 
 At the beginning, then, there is this immense 
 gulf separating Christianity from all other re- 
 ligions. The origin of the one claims to be 
 divine; the origins of the others do not profess 
 to be anything but human. Other religions ex- 
 plain; Christianity reveals. 
 
 IV 
 
 If men are disposed to forget or to slur the 
 foundational affirmation of Christianity, much 
 more do they obscure the central and unequivocal 
 assurance of Christ that His revelation is a com- 
 plete satisfaction of the soul, and the only secret 
 of enduring joy. 
 
 That this is indeed the case may be seen 
 vividly and amazingly in the disposition even of 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 able and devout Christians to establish a com- 
 parison between, and to seek a likeness in, Chris- 
 tianity and Buddhism. For these two religions 
 " stand at diameter and sword's point." They 
 are each the antipodes of the other. There is 
 no antagonism to be discovered in nature or hit 
 upon in the imagination, save only that one 
 eternal antagonism between good and evil, more 
 complete, contrary, and counter than the an- 
 tithesis of these two religions. 
 
 Christianity is janua vitae; Buddhism, janua 
 mortis. Christianity is an ardent enthusiasm for 
 existence; Buddhism a painful yearning for 
 annihilation. Christianity is a hunger and thirst 
 after joy; Buddhism a chloral quest for in- 
 sensibility. The Christian is bidden to turn away 
 from sin that he may inherit the everlasting joy 
 of eternity; the Buddhist is told to eradicate 
 all desire of any kind whatsoever lest he be 
 born again. Buddha sought to discover an escape 
 from existence; Christ opened the door of life. 
 Buddha forbade desire; Christ intensified as- 
 piration. Buddha promised anaesthesia; Christ 
 promised everlasting felicity. 
 
 By what blunder of the intellect can men have 
 come to believe that a likeness exists in these 
 two hostile attitudes of the soul towards its 
 destiny? The reason is perhaps the fruitfullest 
 cause of damage to the revelation of Christ. It 
 is because, first Judaism, and then sacerdotalism 
 
20 INTRODUCTION 
 
 and extreme Calvinism have succeeded in pre- 
 senting Christ to Europe in precisely the same 
 light as that in which Buddha stands, of his 
 own choosing, to Asia, — namely, as the means 
 of an escape from hereafter woe and not as the 
 giver and bestower of joy, present and ever- 
 lasting. " These words have I spoken unto you," 
 said the Christ, " that My joy might remain in 
 you, and that your joy might be full." The 
 supreme glory of His revelation, that the 
 Creator of the universe is the Father of men, 
 cannot make for dejection and abasement, it 
 must make for hope, confidence, and elation. 
 " Come unto Me all ye that are weary and 
 heavy-laden. ... I am the Light of the World. 
 . . . Your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no 
 man taketh from you. . . . He that cometh 
 unto Me shall never hunger; and he that be- 
 lieveth in Me shall never thirst. . . . Rejoice 
 and be exceeding glad. . . . Your sorrow shall 
 be turned into joy. . . .1 am come that they 
 might have life, and that they might have it 
 more abundantly. . . . He that believeth on 
 Me hath everlasting life. . . . Come, ye blessed 
 of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for 
 you from the foundation of the world." 
 
 Christianity is a sublime and supernatural 
 optimism; there is no deeper and more ex- 
 haustive pessimism than the religion of Buddha. 
 " Misery," says the ancient formula of the 
 
INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 Eastern religion, " always accompanies existence. 
 All modes of existence result from desire. There 
 is no escape from existence except by destruction 
 of desire." Compare these propositions with the 
 words, " I am corns that they might have life, 
 and that they might have it more abundantly." 
 It must be noted, if only in passing, that 
 Christ frequently insists upon immortality as a 
 gift from God, not as something inherent in 
 man's soul. Of those who believe in Him, He 
 says : "I give unto them eternal life; and they 
 shall never perish." " Fear Him that hath power 
 to destroy both soul and body." " Except ye 
 believe that I am He, ye shall die in your sins." 
 " Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep 
 My word he shall never see death." " Ye will 
 not come to Me that ye may have life." Few 
 people know that the immortality of the soul is 
 a dogma of the Roman Church in the sixteenth 
 century. " According to the first Christian idea, 
 which was the true one," says Renan, " only 
 those would rise again who >had helped to estab- 
 lish the reign of God on the earth; the punish- 
 ment of the wicked and frivolous would be ex- 
 tinction." " I know of no subject," says a French 
 pastor, who believes that the Romish doctrine of 
 eternal torment lias almost destroyed Christianity 
 in France, " on which the Bible is more explicit 
 than on the destiny of the impenitent. It declares 
 as plainly as possible that those who persist in 
 
22 INTRODUCTION 
 
 turning from God are on the way to eternal 
 destruction." The Encyclopaedia Biblica says of 
 the heavenly Kingdom : " The righteous rise to 
 share in it; but only the righteous: the resur- 
 rection is only to life . . . the resurrection is 
 conceived as springing from God . . . the 
 wicked have no part. . . . Only those, there- 
 fore, attain to the resurrection who * are ac- 
 counted worthy ' to attain to that world, and 
 the resurrection from the dead " (Eschatology, 
 col. 1375). Only in the mouth of Satan does 
 the Bible suggest a universal immortality — " Ye 
 shall not surely die"; and never once does it 
 employ the word " life " in describing the state 
 of the iniquitous. Eternal joy is for those who 
 desire it. 1 
 
 Whether we believe in Universalism, Tradi- 
 tionalism, or a Conditional Immortality, certain 
 and incontestable is the proposition that Christ 
 made His revelation as a blessing, and claimed 
 for Himself the position of a benefactor. " For 
 life to be fruitful, life must be felt as a blessing." 
 And yet it is this saving, blessing, joy-breathing, 
 
 1 An interesting pamphlet on I'immortalite facultative is 
 Bible Immortality, by H. G. Emeric de St. Dalmas, pub- 
 lished by the Colston Press at Malvern; price sixpence. 
 Professor Gerald Leighton in The Greatest Life (Duck- 
 worth) argues from a biological standpoint that " a soul 
 is not born but made. It is no more born than mind is 
 born. Both are acquired, even if we suppose they are 
 independent." 
 
INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 and life-giving Christ Who has come to stand in 
 men's minds chiefly and almost solely as a sor- 
 rowful saviour from eternal torment, an intensely 
 tragic and pathetic mediator between a doomed 
 humanity and the wrath of a violent God. 
 Humanity has rejected this idea. The American 
 who closed a discussion on eternal punishment 
 with the amusing judgment, " Well, all I can 
 say is that our people would never stand it ! ' 
 spoke unknowingly for the healthy conscience 
 and the clear reason of all the world. Bagehot's 
 phrase about Satan's victory over mankind — " It 
 is as if an army should invest a cottage " — is more 
 than picturesque; it is final. The origin of evil, 
 so far as human intelligence can comprehend it, 
 is sufficiently explained by evolution. It is a 
 phase in progressive creation. Mankind will not 
 ascribe either folly or injustice to God. It is a 
 mark of our potential divinity that we cannot 
 worship a Monster or fawn to a Tyrant. 
 
 Both sacerdotalism and extreme Calvinism are 
 responsible for this false God. They have dread- 
 fully degraded the idea of " Our Father which 
 art in heaven," and sadly obscured the mission of 
 the Christ whom He sanctified and sent into the 
 world. How different, how attractive, how com- 
 pelling, how infinitely more lofty and divine is 
 the Father of Christ's parables and the Christ 
 of the New Testament. He came to bring life 
 and immortality to light. He came to give joy. 
 
24 INTRODUCTION 
 
 He came to bestow an immortality of unimagined 
 wonder and delight. In proclaiming the Father- 
 hood of God He opened the gates of eternal 
 bliss. With the words Love and Life upon 
 His lips, He stands in the midst of the world 
 offering an immortality of joy. When He turns 
 to the sinner it is to promise an everlasting 
 happiness for repentance. When He turns to 
 the wicked it is to warn them of the unutterable 
 loss of eternal life. There is nothing more and 
 nothing less to be made out of the Christian 
 documents. Christ came to manifest the Father- 
 hood of God and to declare His Will. The 
 Fatherhood of God makes for security and for 
 elation. To do His Will is to inherit everlasting 
 happiness. 
 
 Christianity differs from all other religions 
 in its superhuman origin and in its definite 
 promise of life. Any form of religious zeal 
 which does not make this essential differentiation 
 the base of its labour and the spirit of its energy, 
 must tend to bring Christianity into a fatal com- 
 petition with the mere philosophies and theoso- 
 phies of human pessimism, and thus destroy its 
 power to cleanse the heart and thus limit its 
 willingness to bestow immortal life. " For life 
 to be fruitful, life must be felt as a blessing.' 
 1 See Note A at end of book. 
 
 » i 
 
INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 V 
 
 There is another respect in which Christanity 
 is wholly different from other religions. It is 
 a Faith which seeks disciples, a missionary and 
 converting Faith, a Faith which despairs of no 
 man, and is able to save the most abandoned 
 and wretched victims of sin. You will look in 
 vain among all the other religions of the world 
 for missions to foreign nations and missions to 
 the sinful and sorrowful. No other religion 
 attempts to rescue the malefactor and the sen- 
 sualist. 
 
 It is the attitude of Christianity to the sinner, 
 a tender, solicitous and compassionate attitude, 
 which more than anything else in its relation 
 to mankind has struck the imagination of the 
 world. The invective of Christ was for the tra- 
 ditionalism and formalism of His day; His ten- 
 derness and His love were for the weary and 
 heavy-laden. " Ye will not come to Me that 
 ye may have life." The attitude of Christianity 
 to the sinner is the incomparable Fifteenth Chap- 
 ter of St. Luke. Everything is said in the words, 
 " But when he was yet a great way off his 
 father saw him"; and the conclusion of the 
 whole matter is in the words, " It was meet that 
 we should make merry, and be glad; for this thy 
 brother was dead, and is alive again; and was 
 lost, and is found." 
 
26 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Such a spirit exists in no religion conceived 
 in the brain of man. Only in Christianity does 
 the love of God beat down upon the sinful; only 
 in Christianity does a Saviour stand at the door 
 of the hardening heart; only in Christianity is it 
 written, " The Son of Man is come to seek and 
 to save that which was lost." 
 
 Christianity, then, differs from all other re- 
 ligions, in its superhuman origin, in its definite 
 promise of life, and in its attitude to sinners. 1 
 
 VI 
 
 Now, it is of no more avail merely to asseverate 
 the divine origin of Christianity than it is to 
 postulate a good and beneficent First Cause. 
 Unless proofs of an incontestable and persuasive 
 kind can be brought to the heart and under- 
 standing of men, proofs which make it impossible 
 to deny the claim of Christ that He was sent 
 into the world by a heavenly Father, mankind 
 will persist in regarding Christianity only as one 
 of many religions, only as one of many ancient 
 superstitions, only as a philosophy which may 
 or may not be a good guess at the truth of things, 
 but which is certainly dispensable and non- 
 essential. 
 
 Is it possible for Christianity to give these 
 proofs? 
 
 1 See Note B at end of book. 
 
INTRODUCTION St% 
 
 The body of this book is an answer to that 
 question. The proofs of Christianity lie in the 
 cleansed hearts and higher selves of that vast 
 multitude which Christ has sought and saved. 
 There can be no other proof, and no higher and 
 more miraculous proof. Christianity does what 
 it is declared by Christ able to do, and what no 
 other religion and no arm of science can achieve. 
 It is a power by which men can be born again. 
 It is a power which transforms the sensualist, 
 the criminal, the victim of alcoholic poisoning, 
 the trivial, the mean, the self-righteous, the melan- 
 choly, the base, and the ignoble into souls worthy 
 of eternal life. Wherever Christianity seeks the 
 lost, it finds and it saves. Homes of wretched- 
 ness and misery become at its entrance micro- 
 cosms of God. The chances and changes of this 
 mortal life, the violence of the world's hostility, 
 the whisperings and leadings of temptation, even 
 the havoc and desolation of death, are borne by 
 Christianity with fortitude and without despair. 
 The earth ceases to be either insignificant or 
 meaningless, life becomes definitely grand and 
 beautiful, " the sacred passion of the second life ' 
 ennobles and exalts the soul, character and under- 
 standing enlarge themselves to the bounds of 
 an infinite universe, and the spirit of man feels 
 itself conscious of a capacity for everlasting 
 growth in bliss, and conscious of a divine sonship 
 with God. 
 
28 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The happiness, the peace, the purity, the won- 
 der, and the hunger and thirst after immortality, 
 of the cleansed heart — these are the proofs of 
 Christianity. 
 
 VII 
 
 " Yet I dare not say that the effects have 
 been proportionate to the divine wisdom of the 
 Scheme." The sweetest of English prose-writers 
 uttered before Coleridge's day the lament, " That 
 name and compilation of Little Flock, doth not 
 comfort, but deject my Devotion." How can it 
 be that a religion so rich in happiness and so 
 overflowing with joy, has made but a slow prog- 
 ress through a world so weary and heavy-laden? 
 Must it not be the fault of those whose mission 
 it has been to set before men this priceless gift 
 of heaven? The gift itself cannot be accused; 
 the world, because it is so unhappy, cannot alto- 
 gether be arraigned; there is only that company 
 left for judgment to whom was given the com- 
 mand, " Let your light so shine before men that 
 they may see your good works and glorify your 
 Father which is in heaven." 
 
 " Clericalism," said Gambetta, " is the enemy." 
 It is the enemy in a much wider and infinitely 
 more disastrous sense than the mere patriot 
 understood. It is the enemy of Christianity. 
 The narrowest Calvinists have disgusted men with 
 
INTRODUCTION 29 
 
 God; the most foolish of sacerdotalists have made 
 religion laughable. Extreme Calvinism was too 
 inhuman to succeed; sacerdotalism preys upon 
 the weakness of human nature, and endures. 
 
 Unconsciously and with all mistaken zeal the 
 enthusiasts for sacerdotalism have obscured the 
 Light of the World and obstructed the Way, the 
 Truth, and the Life. While they should have 
 been seeking and saving the lost, they have been 
 altering the fashions in church millinery and 
 composing a new etiquette for the altar. While 
 they should have been turning the hearts of 
 the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, they 
 have been searching the musty service-books of 
 medisevalism for " a new cringe." They are more 
 concerned to get their Orders recognised by an 
 Ecclesiasticism everywhere dying in Europe, even 
 in Spain, than in bringing home to the soul of 
 the world that a man must be born again before 
 he can enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. It 
 is not the Light of the World they make to shine 
 before men, but a forbidden candle on a forsaken 
 altar. 
 
 Sacerdotalism is Vensorcellement de la baga- 
 telle. It is a mental disease, an obsession, an 
 idee fixe, which is as disfiguring to character 
 and as fatal to grandeur of soul as the aestheti- 
 cism of Oscar Wilde or the crotchet of Horace 
 Walpole. " The conformation of his mind was 
 such that whatever was little seemed to him 
 
30 INTRODUCTION 
 
 great, and whatever was great seemed to him 
 little." The seriousness of this matter does not 
 lie in the sacerdotalist's mistake of accounting 
 little things great, but in his insistent, pertina- 
 cious, and corner-creeping 1 assertion that great 
 things are little. " What must God be," asked 
 George Grove, " if He is pleased by things which 
 simply displease his educated creatures ! " It is 
 by this mistake, all down the ages, this belittling 
 of God and disfiguring of Christ, that masses of 
 men have come to entertain petty notions of ex- 
 istence, have ceased to think of Christ even with 
 admiration, and have grown at last indifferent to 
 immortality. 
 
 " This was the first and true apostasy — when 
 in Council and Synod the Divine Humanities of 
 the Gospel gave way to speculative Systems, and 
 Religion became a Science of Shadows . . . 
 without life or interest, alike inaccessible and 
 unintelligible to the majority of Christians. For 
 these, therefore, there remained only rites and 
 ceremonies and spectacles, shows and sem- 
 blances." 
 
 " I cannot but think," writes an earnest and 
 devout Churchman, " that if there be one thing 
 of which the world to-day stands in more im- 
 perative need than of any other, it is the revolt 
 
 10 Agents of conversion to the Romish Church, corner- 
 creepers as they were called, penetrated everywhere." — M. 
 Arnold. Mixed Essays. 
 
INTRODUCTION 31 
 
 of ' the Church ' — i.e., of ' the blessed company 
 of all believing people ' — and especially of the 
 thinking and seeing lay-element, against every 
 form of mere Clericalism. I do not, of course, 
 mean any narrow or petty revolt, or anything 
 that has in it the least strain of that very 
 * grooviness ' which has for so many centuries 
 dominated the clerical mind, but just that great 
 life-giving, energising Spirit of God, asserting 
 Himself over and above human dogma." The 
 call of St. Paul to the Churches in Galatia, where 
 the Christian idea was in danger of a reversion 
 to sacerdotalism, is the call of our own day 
 threatened by a like calamity — " Stand fast there- 
 fore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made 
 us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke 
 of bondage." 
 
 One is as anxious for the sacerdotalist to 
 realise that a new era of Christianity is at hand, 
 as one is solicitous to convert irreligious man- 
 kind to the true character and mission of Christ. 
 " The prophet and the priest," says Mr. Andrew 
 Macphail, " are inevitable enemies, and yet with- 
 out the priest the prophet ends as a voice crying 
 in the wilderness " — not always perhaps, but cer- 
 tainly one must desire to have the engine of the 
 Church on the side of the true Christ, not only 
 to prevent it from the frightful work of mis- 
 representing the glory and the power of God, but 
 to gain the active co-operation of its saints. — I 
 
32 INTRODUCTION 
 
 have written hoping to destroy in some men's 
 minds V ensorcellenient de la bagatelle, to awaken 
 them to the attractiveness of a nobler Chris- 
 tianity, and to give them, if it be possible, from 
 a few brief but touching and miraculous narra- 
 tives, an enthusiasm for the true mission and the 
 real vocation of a Christian. 
 
 As there can be no comparison of Buddhism 
 with Christianity, so can there be no comparison 
 between establishing a dogma, however true, 
 or holding a set of opinions, however rational, 
 and saving the souls of men. By saving men 
 individually the Church saves Society, and by 
 saving Society she brings millennium. It is in 
 the power of Christianity — and in the power of 
 no other religion or agency under heaven — to 
 redeem humanity, to dignify human life, and 
 to bring the whole world into the joy and appre- 
 hension of the God in knowledge of Whom 
 standeth our eternal life. Is it not a sublime and 
 glorious destiny to which the human race is called 
 by the Light of the World?— and is it not mani- 
 fest that humanity will only respond to that call 
 when those who profess and call themselves 
 Christians so reflect the Light of the World in 
 their happiness, their serenity, and their holiness, 
 that they appear as a city set on an hill, different 
 from all other men, separate from all schools 
 and sects, and so attractive and compelling 
 that the world outside the radius of their 
 
INTRODUCTION 33 
 
 joy is felt to be a darkness, an isolation, and 
 a death? 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 What is to be the attitude of the Church to- 
 wards the modern spirit of unrest everywhere 
 manifesting itself in civilisation? It is not 
 democracy alone which is restless; every section 
 and class of the social organism is conscious of 
 dissatisfaction and aware of a dragging of 
 anchors and a movement from ancient moorings; 
 the unrest is not material, it is spiritual, — its 
 origin is in the soul of man. What is it that 
 the Church has to say to a generation which has 
 outgrown the moods and passions of the past, 
 which is sceptical of history, distrustful of author- 
 ity, and contemptuous of superstition, — a genera- 
 tion which is not in the least interested in sec- 
 tarian conflict, which is no longer beguiled by 
 the ingenuities of the casuist, and which has 
 ceased to believe either in a sudden heaven or a 
 sudden hell? 
 
 It is surely unwise to deny to the Christian 
 revelation the properties of growth, development, 
 and evolution, to go back to the past for finality, 
 and to make of Tradition the one steadfast and 
 unchanging Fact of a universe constantly in flux. 
 There is a Spirit which guides men into Truth, 
 and it is certain that religion must move and 
 enlarge its concepts with that central progress 
 of humanity towards a less partial understanding 
 
34 INTRODUCTION 
 
 of cosmic reality. What is it, then, that an 
 evolving Church has to say to a generation full of 
 unrest because it desires to believe and does not 
 know what to believe? Has she one voice, or 
 many voices? Does she truly feel herself ade- 
 quate to the world's unrest? 
 
 Let her first of all be rid of insolence in 
 Authority and dissidence in Dissent. And then 
 let her tear up the old documents of sectarian 
 puerilities, and recognise the Christlessness of bit- 
 terness and animosity. The Church has some- 
 thing to say, but much more to do. Her words 
 must always be human; her actions can be divine. 
 She has overtalked herself; it is time she made 
 herself the leaven of humanity. Nothing is of 
 so much moment as character; not what we can 
 express in words as to that which we believe 
 is of value, but rather, how surely and attractively 
 we reflect in the tone of our character and the 
 manner of our living the unselfishness, the beauty, 
 and the calm of Christ. Let us know for very 
 certain that the measure of our Christianity is 
 the measure of our power in this world to attract 
 the unhappy, heal the sick, and raise the dead. 
 We are philosophers when we confute; we are 
 Christians when we persuade and attract. 
 
 The Church must save sinners, and, rejoicing 
 in the gift of life, must make herself felt as a 
 blessing to humanity. She can only hope truly 
 to represent the Christ when she has possessed 
 
INTRODUCTION 35 
 
 herself of the primitive enthusiasm for a revela- 
 tion, and has grasped the meaning of the divine 
 words: " I am come that they might have Life, 
 and that they might have it more abundantly." 
 The Church must be felt as a blessing; she must 
 attract; she must save before she can be 
 triumphant. 
 
 Let her, then, bid farewell to a morbid abase- 
 ment and a repelling pessimism: to the shadows 
 of philosophy and the semblance of sestheticism; 
 to all that is dark and forbidding; to all that is 
 unreal and transitory; to all that is artificial 
 and sentimental; to all that is trivial and un- 
 worthy; and let her manifest to the world shining 
 joy, unclouded serenity, everlasting aspiration, 
 the attraction of beauty and the power to save. 
 
 " For life to be fruitful, life must be felt as 
 a blessing." 
 
 Not for these sad issues 
 Was Man created; but to obey the law 
 Of life, and hope, and action. And 'tis known 
 That when we stand upon our native soil, 
 Unelbowed by such objects as oppress 
 Our active powers, those powers themselves become 
 Strong to subvert our noxious qualities. 
 They sweep distemper from the busy day, 
 And make the chalice of the big round year 
 Run o'er with gladness : whence the Being moves 
 In beauty through the world; and all who see 
 Bless him, rejoicing in his neighbourhood. 
 
SEEKERS AND SAVERS 
 
 "Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by action." 
 
 A COMMUNITY of men and women, pledged 
 to make the ideas of Chist prevail in 
 Central London, pledged to exalt the char- 
 acter of Christ in the midst of London's stream- 
 ing roar, and pledged to minister, in the name 
 of Christ, to the sorrowful and suffering at the 
 heart of the metropolis, meets every Sunday in 
 the Lyceum Theatre, where once the genius of 
 a great actor attracted all mankind. 
 
 This community, which had its first inspiration 
 in the wonderful work of the Salvation Army, 
 and which came into existence through the burn- 
 ing enthusiasm of Hugh Price Hughes, calls 
 itself the West London Mission. Its central 
 impulse is the conviction that Christianity is a 
 missionary religion. It believes that formalism 
 is dangerous to the spirit of that religion. It 
 holds that the multitude has still to be sought, 
 wooed, and compelled; that the conscience of 
 humanity has still to be awakened and the heart 
 of humanity still to be converted; that Central 
 London stands in as great need of missionaries, 
 disciples, and apostles as the farthermost dark- 
 
 36 
 
SEEKERS AND SAVERS 37 
 
 ness of a savage heathendom. Above and be- 
 yond everything else, it is a mission. Not one 
 of the devoted men and women who form this 
 community but feels deep in the heart the call 
 of the disciple and the commission of the apostle. 
 They are all seekers and savers. This was the 
 great aspiration of that man, both great and 
 good — Hugh Price Hughes — to have an army in 
 the centre of London never on a peace footing, 
 never abandoned to mere festivities, and never 
 enervated and fatigued by monotonous drills and 
 wearisome exercises, but an army ever at war 
 against all that is vile, base, and degrading, an 
 army ever exhilarated by the zest of conflict and 
 forcible with the hardihood of active service, an 
 army whose battle-song should be no morbid 
 whine after individual mercy, but the glorious 
 song of William Blake: — 
 
 I will not cease from mental fight, 
 Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, 
 
 Till we have built Jerusalem 
 
 In England's green and pleasant land. 
 
 It is to a community such as the West London 
 Mission that the inquirer must go if he would 
 really understand the place and power of Chris- 
 tianity in the destinies of the human race. The 
 formalist cannot help him; nay, in ninety-nine 
 cases out of a hundred the formalist does not 
 at all represent the religion of Christ, but does 
 
38 SEEKERS AND SAVERS 
 
 most lamentably and disastrously misrepresent 
 that incommunicable feeling and aspiring worship 
 of the soul. " His religion has been made for 
 him by others, communicated to him by tradition, 
 determined to fixed forms by imitation, and 
 retained by habit. . . . Churches when once 
 established live at second-hand upon tradition." 
 A Buddhist or a Mohammedan could get no true 
 notion of the Christian religion by spending his 
 whole life in the cathedrals and churches of 
 Europe. Nor, if he gave himself up to a study 
 of mass-books, catechisms, prayer-books, hym- 
 nologies, controversial theologies and missals of 
 mysticism, would he ever arrive at the heart and 
 soul of this religion. For the heart and soul of 
 Christianity is Action. 
 
 " Conviction," says Teufelsdrockh, " were it 
 never so excellent, is worthless till it convert 
 itself into Conduct. Nay, properly, Conviction 
 is not possible till then; inasmuch as all Specu- 
 lation is by nature endless, formless, a vortex 
 amid vortices : * only by a felt indubitable cer- 
 tainty of Experience does it find any centre to 
 revolve round, and so fashion itself into a system. 
 Most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that 
 
 1 " Controversies are never determined ; for though they 
 be amply proposed, they are scarce at all handled, they do 
 so swell with unnecessary Digressions ; and the Paren- 
 thesis on the party, is often as large as the main discourse 
 upon the subject." — Religio Medici. 
 
SEEKERS AND SAVERS 39 
 
 * Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except 
 by Action/ On which ground, too, let him who 
 gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, 
 and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen 
 into day, lay this other precept well to heart . . . 
 ' Do the Duty which lies nearest thee,' which thou 
 knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will 
 already have become clearer." 
 
 The hour of Spiritual Enfranchisement, he de- 
 clares, is even this : " When your Ideal World, 
 wherein the whole man has been dimly struggling 
 and inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes 
 revealed and thrown open; and you discover, with 
 amazement enough, . . . that your ' America 
 is here or nowhere/ " 
 
 Among the men and women composing the 
 West London Mission you find a common centre 
 of Action, a point round which revolves the 
 resistless energy and the driving enthusiasm of 
 souls visited by " a felt indubitable certainty of 
 Experience." They are souls in action. The 
 vestments of ecclesiasticism become in their hands 
 "bandages for the bleeding wounds of human- 
 ity." The ropes of the belfry-tower become in 
 their hands cords of brotherhood. The hours 
 of a formal, monotonous, mechanical, and selfish 
 devotion become in their lives the swift and 
 glorious minutes of open conflict with sin and 
 misery. They are not kneeling in churches, but 
 declaring what we call the good news of Girist 
 
40 SEEKERS AND SAVERS 
 
 in the streets of the city and in the homes of 
 men. It is their business, not to stand waiting 
 for a congregation, but to go into the highways 
 and byways compelling men to come in. Con- 
 vinced that a soul isolated from God is a dead 
 soul, convinced that without the hope, love, and 
 sweetness of Christ no life can emerge into the 
 true light of existence, and convinced that men 
 can only be won to a longing after God and a 
 realisation of the grandeur of immortality, by 
 a Christ-inspired love and a Christ-inspired de- 
 votion — they make of their religion a life of 
 service, and are seekers and savers, ministers and 
 apostles, the hounds of heaven and the hands of 
 God. 
 
 See the difference between a Theology and 
 a Mission. Theology makes religion difficult. 
 Scarcely a lifetime of profoundest study suffices 
 for a knowledge of this science. A plain man 
 in controversy with a professional theologian is 
 made to feel an abysmal ignorance. He concludes 
 that religion is something apart from common 
 life, a matter as high and abstruse as mathematics 
 or chemistry, a thing of the study, a thing of 
 long words and interminable volumes. An eccle- 
 siasticism founded upon this science of theology 
 (all theologians at variance with one another, 
 and theology changing its dialect with every 
 decade) becomes aloof from the daily life of 
 toiling men. It may be subscribed to by those 
 
SEEKERS AND SAVERS 41 
 
 who cannot think for themselves and by those 
 who feel themselves lame and lost without the 
 crutch of tradition and the leading hand of 
 authority; but it can never awaken the enthusiasm 
 of democracy, it can never create the soul of 
 religion in the homes of the nations. 
 
 On the other hand, a Mission makes religion 
 not only easy to be understood, but so visibly 
 beautiful and divine that it becomes even in the 
 eyes of the simple and the ignorant a thing greatly 
 to be desired, a blessing to be received at whatever 
 cost. A Mission deals with life. It goes among 
 men and women and speaks of those things which 
 touch the actual existence of men and women. 
 It deals with the heart of humanity, with its 
 cares and sorrows, its temptations and weak- 
 nesses, its dejections and wretchedness, its hopes 
 and fears, its pain and anguish, its dulness and 
 monotony, its poverty and destitution, its toil, 
 disappointments, solitude, and inward silence. It 
 is at home with mankind. It is close to the bosom 
 of mortality. It knows how hard is the way of 
 life for the multitude, how impossible for any to 
 escape tragedy, how easy for the best to fall, how 
 very difficult, but how very possible, for the worst 
 to climb. Its consolation is uttered with no mis- 
 giving, and its hope shines in its eyes with the 
 conviction of " a felt indubitable certainty of 
 Experience." It knows. It is sure. For all 
 weakness, there is strength; for all grief, there is 
 
42 SEEKERS AND SAVERS 
 
 comfort; for all monotony, there is joy; for all 
 anguish, there is peace; for all mourning and 
 lamentation, there is hope. Christ is the Secret. 
 In Him the most fallen has both a Saviour and 
 a Lover. To Him the most hopeless and de- 
 spairing may raise eyes certain of blessing. With 
 Him the weakest may walk in security and 
 strength. 
 
 Simplicity — an absolute and a most commend- 
 ing simplicity — is the keynote of this ministration. 
 We have a Father in Heaven. Christ came into 
 the world to manifest the love of this Father 
 and to attract all men to the highest life by the 
 beauty of His character, the sweet reasonableness 
 of His wisdom, and by the revelation of His 
 resurrection from the dead. Religion is based 
 upon love of God, faith in Christ, and hope of 
 immortality. Its expression is service to hu- 
 manity. 
 
 Here there is no room for the disputations and 
 intricacies of theology, leading nowhither. The 
 appeal is made direct to the heart. Its language 
 is composed from the alphabet of experience. Its 
 logic is the knowledge of common men. 
 
 And, note well, the chief commendation of this 
 active Christianity is its ministration. Those who 
 seek and save commend religion in the very fact 
 that they do seek and save. Instead of weighing 
 theological arguments, the common man and the 
 common woman feel themselves touched by the 
 
SEEKERS AND SAVERS 43 
 
 kindness of those who seek them, and drawn out 
 of themselves by the magnetised sympathy and 
 sweetness of those who save them. Religion be- 
 comes attractive. It ceases to be a speculation. 
 Before their very eyes men and women see 
 Christianity incarnate and beautiful in human 
 form. It is a reality. It is actual. The thing is 
 there, in the flesh, breathing and living, regarding 
 them with eyes of divine kindness, entreating 
 them with words of purest love, holding out to 
 them hands of the strongest and most unselfish 
 helpfulness. They do not have to decide with 
 their reasons whether this or that form of words 
 is right; but with their hearts, open to all the 
 divinest influences acting upon human nature, 
 they have to say whether this kind, helpful, and 
 ministering thing called Christian Religion is 
 beautiful, and good, and true. 
 
 To have in the centre of London, at the very 
 heart of the British people, an army for God 
 that never rests from its conflict with evil and 
 never ceases to pursue the unhappy with the 
 love of Christ, was the ambition and the ideal 
 of Hugh Price Hughes. He brought such an 
 army into existence by the same force of person- 
 ality which in General Booth brought the Salva- 
 tion Army into existence; he commanded this 
 army throughout his life with brilliant skill and 
 unsleeping enthusiasm; and now that he has 
 passed through the darkness which holds Eternity 
 
44 SEEKERS AND SAVERS 
 
 from our human gaze, the army is still fighting 
 and still pursuing, still proving that Christianity 
 in action is a living thing, still touching life at 
 the centre of the metropolis with the grace of the 
 Spirit and the beauty of love. 
 
 In the pages which follow I endeavour to 
 reveal in the region of narrative something of 
 the magic work accomplished by this Mission. 
 The stories compose a human document of im- 
 mense significance to religion, to politics, and to 
 medical science. No man of free judgment and 
 honest thought can read these histories without 
 acknowledging the sovran force of religion in 
 the life of an individual. They prove what I 
 ventured to assert in Twice-Born Men, that re- 
 ligion is the only known agent whereby a man 
 radically bad can become radically good. They 
 demonstrate that where Christianity sets itself 
 to change the heart, results follow which are 
 impossible to science. In a word, they introduce 
 us to the miracle. 
 
 But it is important for the reader to bear in 
 mind during his persual of these narratives that 
 the work of the West London Mission is by no 
 means fully exhibited in my chronicles of con- 
 version. There is a vast field of activity covered 
 by this community into which I have not pene- 
 trated for the purpose of my book. It will serve 
 to show the energy of Christianity in action if 
 I give in this place some brief account of that 
 
SEEKERS AND SAVERS 45 
 
 activity, some faintest adumbration of the labours 
 which are carried on by this Mission in its crusade 
 against the dangers, temptations, and iniquities 
 of Central London; and it will prevent the reader 
 from concluding that the energies of the Mission 
 are directed into only one channel and that my 
 narratives of conversion represent the total char- 
 acter of its victories. 
 
 The heart of this community are the Sunday 
 services in the Lyceum Theatre. Not only does 
 the blood of activity beat from this heart and 
 pulsate throughout all the districts of middle 
 London where the Mission is at work, but the 
 congregations of three and four thousand people 
 typify the nature and the spirit of the whole 
 community. It is a community built upon the 
 sense of brotherhood, freed from the formalism 
 of a caste religion, and inspired by a greater 
 yearning for realism than by a dull obedience 
 to traditionalism. The services are an expression 
 of enthusiasm. There is an excellent orchestra 
 and a trained choir of male voices. The note 
 of the worship is one of triumph. You cannot 
 imagine how great is the difference between the 
 old, dull, miserable monotony of formalism, and 
 the brightness and joy and contagious hopeful- 
 ness of these services in a theatre, these crowded 
 services of hope, confidence, and victory. 
 
 Look at the congregation, and you will see how 
 wide is the appeal made by this crusading Mission. 
 
46 SEEKERS AND SAVERS 
 
 People of every class and degree fill the theatre 
 from floor to ceiling. It is as if a net had been 
 dipped down into the centre of London and 
 had tumbled streets-full of its cosmopolitan pop- 
 ulation into this Sunday theatre. You can see 
 rich and poor, soldiers and sailors, policemen 
 and postmen, merchants and lawyers, shopmen 
 and clerks, typists and milliners, workmen and 
 labourers. It is a microcosm, like the secular 
 theatre; a gathering together of all classes into 
 one including place — society dividing itself into 
 boxes, stalls, circles, gallery, and pit; all the 
 world a stage, and all the stage a theatre. 
 
 The man who conducts these strange services 
 and draws these immense congregations is an 
 interesting type of the new preacher of Chris- 
 tianity. When I first visited the Lyceum services, 
 some year or two ago, I judged him to be hard, 
 precise, lawyer-like — a man who arranged his 
 arguments too mechanically, uttered them too 
 harshly and loudly, used gestures too angrily, 
 and gave one the impression of a solicitor justify- 
 ing an absentee God in the police-court of an 
 unimaginative middle-class. It was a surprise to 
 me when I made his acquaintance to find that he 
 was a young man, a man of quietest voice and 
 gentlest manner, a thoughtful reader, a spiritual 
 thinker, and the very last man in the world to 
 beat a drum or thump a tub. I misjudged him, 
 I think, because distance gave me a quite false 
 
SEEKERS AND SAVERS 47 
 
 idea of his appearance, and because the vigour 
 and energy of his preaching on that occasion 
 made a cloud of dust about the true nature of 
 his spirit. 
 
 Mr. Ernest Rattenbury, this preacher of the 
 Lyceum, is a man conscious of world-movements, 
 alive to the progress of ideas, enthusiastic for 
 social reform, impatient of injustice and abuse, 
 and firm fixed in the faith that the centre of 
 human life is the Incarnation and that without 
 conversion to Christ the soul of humanity must 
 go astray and grope in the everlasting darkness 
 of chaos and anarchy. To hear what he has to 
 say thousands of people flock every Sunday to 
 the Lyceum; and to do what he asks them hun- 
 dreds of people go from the Lyceum into the 
 streets of London with renewed confidence and 
 invigorated strength. He takes the old texts, 
 uses sometimes the ancient phraseology, and sel- 
 dom, so far as my experience goes, attempts a 
 restatement of the Christian thesis; but his utter- 
 ances are marked by original thought, the spirit is 
 fresh and interesting, and he makes religion a 
 real thing, touching the lives of men and women, 
 moulding the destiny of the nation, and uniting 
 London with Heaven. 
 
 He stands for thinker and inspirer of the 
 Mission, its Voice in the centre of London, its 
 cry to the people of the great city. !And in some 
 way, and that a most important way, he is also 
 
48 SEEKERS AND SAVERS 
 
 a part of the Mission's activity. He not only 
 inspires the workers of the Mission in their 
 superb and selfless labour in the streets, he not 
 only witnesses to the presence of the Mission 
 in Central London, but in his preaching he also 
 seeks and saves. There are men and women 
 every week in those vast congregations at the 
 Lyceum who are unknown to the workers, and 
 who perhaps never join the Mission at all. Some 
 of them write to the preacher, some of them call 
 and see him. They represent almost every class 
 and condition in London. They are seekers and 
 inquirers. 
 
 The strangeness of a religious service in a 
 theatre has perhaps been their only impulse to 
 the Lyceum. The utterance of the preacher has 
 revived their purest memories or held a dreadful 
 mirror to their consciences. They write to him 
 either to ask for advice or to thank him for a 
 new life. Some of them come and see him and 
 tell him stories which have caused him to say 
 that the London sinner is the most interesting 
 of all sinners. In this way does the preacher 
 seek and save. His sermons are not only an 
 inspiration to the workers and members of the 
 Mission, they are nets for the souls of men. 
 
 A very large body of the congregation is drawn 
 from the warehouses and shops and offices of 
 London. The reader will find some account of 
 these people in the narratives which follow; but 
 
SEEKERS AND SAVERS 49 
 
 it is important to insist in this place upon the 
 beneficent work of the West London Mission as 
 it affects the lives of this very important and 
 exposed section of London society. Indeed, al- 
 though the rescue work of the Mission appeals 
 more dramatically and poignantly to one's sym- 
 pathy, I doubt if any part of its activity is more 
 useful to the community and more serviceable 
 to the cause of religion than this quiet, unpic- 
 turesque, and almost commonplace devotion to 
 the shopman and clerk. 
 
 Many infidel critics of Twice-Born Men en- 
 deavoured to make light of the stories it nar- 
 rated in a general scorn and contempt for the 
 Salvation Army. One of the journals of in- 
 fidelity has recently attacked me as — if I re- 
 member rightly — a fatuous person who writes 
 about what he does not understand and who 
 would make Salvationists of all mankind. The 
 truth is, however fatuous I may be, that I would 
 make Salvationists of those who can best express 
 themselves only in that way, Methodists of those 
 who can reach their highest only by becoming 
 Methodists, and Infidels of no creature under 
 God's sun, neither the ox nor the ass, neither 
 the pig nor the peacock, neither the gnat nor 
 the microbe — because in infidelity there is the 
 abyss and not the height, darkness and not light, 
 nothingness and not the all-in-all. The object 
 of religion is to find expression for the noblest 
 
50 SEEKERS AND SAVERS 
 
 aspirations and the highest powers of a man, 
 and whatsoever the form by which this enfran- 
 chisement of the soul is attained, it matters not 
 whether it is aesthetically the best or socially 
 the most aristocratic. To make a man a good 
 man is the heart of history and the soul of 
 evolution; and as in man there is an infinite 
 diversity of temperament, so we must look for an 
 infinite expression of the religious solicitude for 
 human salvation. But what I desire to say chiefly 
 to the infidel critic of Twice-Born Men touches 
 upon this subject of the West London Mission's 
 work among the shopmen and clerks of London. 
 Is it a good thing, or is it a bad thing, that 
 an influence making for honesty, purity, and 
 culture should be at work among young men 
 and young women, the circumstances of whose 
 employment expose them constantly and relent- 
 lessly to the temptations of dishonesty, impurity, 
 and the most vulgar forms of hedonism? Is it 
 better that these young people, coming into the 
 glare and excitement of London from the monot- 
 ony of a provincial town, should be cared for 
 morally and spiritually, or that they should be 
 left to take their chance in a rabble of the ugliest 
 materialism that ever degraded the human race? 
 If my critic reply that they must take their 
 chance, I have nothing more to say to him; I 
 must leave him to an individualism which is 
 reproached with inconsistency by every police- 
 
SEEKERS AND SAVERS 51 
 
 man and school inspector he encounters in the 
 streets of his city. And if he reply that they 
 should certainly be cared for and safeguarded, 
 I ask him whether he can name any agency in 
 civilisation which can better guard and befriend 
 innocence than the agency of religion. And if 
 he parry the question with millennial references 
 to the influence of culture, ethics, and free libra- 
 ries, I ask him this — But when a man has fallen 
 from innocence, when the pilgrim has become the 
 prodigal, and the fighter the defeated, what 
 power, what agency, what aid of civilisation 
 and ethics can raise him up, restore his man- 
 hood, and impel him towards righteousness? 
 And the woman who falls! — will culture give 
 her palingenesis, will ethics lift her up, is 
 there anything in civilisation that can give her 
 the sense of being cleansed, saved, and sanc- 
 tified ? 
 
 But infidelity is in truth a form of madness; 
 it is an obsession which argument cannot oust 
 nor ridicule destroy; one wastes time in com- 
 mending religion to a man whose mind is made 
 up that organisation is cause and not conse- 
 quence of life, that the beauty and majesty of 
 the universe are accidents, and that a fall of 
 meteoric dust to our cooling globe produced the 
 scent of the rose, the song of the lark, the leaves 
 of the birch, the speed of the horse, the strength 
 of the lion, and the soul of Shakespeare. 
 
52 SEEKERS AND SAVERS 
 
 I have only referred to the infidel, that the 
 more imaginative reader may see strikingly the 
 point which I desire to make concerning the work 
 of this Mission among the population of business 
 houses. Consider how exposed to temptation of 
 a most pressing and insistent kind are these young 
 men and young girls who come up from the 
 provinces to make their living in London. They 
 see everywhere frivolity, gaiety, carelessness, and 
 vice in its finest clothes. They are tempted to 
 think that they themselves are narrow, straight- 
 laced, puritanical, and provincial. They are 
 tempted to feel in themselves a galling sense of 
 inferiority. They find themselves surrounded by 
 those who began as they did and who have be- 
 come one of the crowd. They listen to con- 
 versations which amaze them; they behold sights 
 which fill them with astonishment. They are 
 subjected to rallying ridicule and the stinging 
 chaff of a worldliness which appears manful. 
 They cannot walk in the streets without the 
 sensation of a most tempting iniquity. 
 
 In one of Mr. Rattenbury's sermons he ad- 
 dressed himself to the young man tempted by 
 London to forget the purity of his home memories 
 and to slough the principles which guided his 
 life before he came to the metropolis. His text 
 was, " Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me "; and 
 he spoke of David's agonising realisation that 
 it was better to bear the undying bitterness of 
 
SEEKERS AND SAVERS 5S 
 
 remorse for a dreadful and unpardonable sin than 
 to become hardened, indifferent, and soulless — 
 " Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me." This 
 was his appeal : — 
 
 "I want to ask you, Do you struggle as you once did? 
 Are you lowering your ideals? Do you acquiesce with 
 the evil you once fought against? Young man, when you 
 came to London a year or two ago, you used to blush 
 when you heard certain things — you laugh now. That is 
 death. It means the sensitiveness of the soul has become 
 dulled, and the things that once shocked you, amuse you. 
 Young man, when you came here you protested against 
 the things that seemed to you to be unjust and immoral 
 and mean amongst the people with whom you worked; 
 you made up your mind you would not soil your con- 
 science, you would rather lose your situation. Are your 
 ideals lower? It is just as you lower those ideals that 
 the soul shrinks and mortification sets in. Young man, 
 you had high and lofty ideals of service; you said you 
 would not live for yourself, you would not tolerate a 
 merely selfish life. Are you living for others to-day? 
 Has the flag been lowered? Has the ideal been lowered? " 
 
 Is it a good thing or is it a bad thing, is it a 
 highly useful and most essential thing or a matter 
 of mere indifference, that there should be in the 
 centre of London this influence for right conduct 
 and pure thinking on one of the largest sections 
 of the community? Is it a good thing that a 
 clerk should be honest, sober, clean-living, and 
 morally helpful to society? Is it a good thing 
 that a shop-girl should be virtuous, pure, and 
 ambitious of a sanctified maternity? Or does it 
 
54 SEEKERS AND SAVERS 
 
 not matter at all what they are? — would it be 
 just as well with London if the influence of 
 religion were entirely removed and the whole 
 community were given over to dissipation, self- 
 assertion, and a reckless animalism? 
 
 Most important, I think, is this particular 
 sphere of the West London Mission's activity; 
 and if it existed alone for this purpose, it would 
 deserve the earnest support of all serious and 
 reflecting people. But, after all, this is but one 
 expression of the Mission's energy. It sends a 
 Sister to walk the midnight streets of Piccadilly 
 and Regent Street — the kindest, purest, sweetest, 
 and yet the most practical and unsentimental of 
 women — who has saved hundreds of wretched 
 girls from the most abysmal depths of degrada- 
 tion. It sends preachers to state the truth of 
 Christianity against the infidel lecturers in Hyde 
 Park. It has a Sisterhood which concerns itself 
 with vigilance work and temperance work. It 
 has a hospital for the dying poor, a creche for the 
 children of toiling mothers, a home for rescued 
 women. It has a guild for helping cripples, a 
 labour bureau for the unemployed, and a society 
 for promoting thrift. It has clubs and institutes 
 and classes for men and boys, women and girls. 
 It has a body of trained nurses who tend the sick 
 in their own homes, solicitors who give advice 
 to poor people, missioners, both men and women, 
 who hold religious services in the open streets, 
 
SEEKERS AND SAVERS 55 
 
 and Sisters who visit the work-houses, the lodg- 
 ing-houses, and the cellars and garrets of appal- 
 ling slums. In a word, nothing that love can 
 do and religion inspire for the sorrowful and 
 sinful, the hard of heart, and the destitute poor 
 is left undone by this little community of Chris- 
 tian souls. 
 
 There is room enough in London, Heaven 
 knows, for Churches, Chapels, Salvation Armies, 
 and Missions ; there can never be too many people 
 inspired by enthusiasm for the Character and 
 Idea of Christ working on the side of sweetness 
 and light, righteousness and grandeur in the 
 frightful mass and hideous congestion of the 
 great city. Men whom the Bishop of London 
 cannot reach are saved by General Booth; men 
 whom General Booth cannot reach are saved by 
 the Bishop of London; and the Bishop of London, 
 General Booth, Ernest Rattenbury, and all other 
 genuine, true-ringing, and fierce-working seekers 
 and savers belong to one Master, whom it is the 
 business of humanity to serve rather than define, 
 to love rather than to quarrel over. The just 
 man will not separate the various agencies for 
 good in London, and differentiate between them 
 as to their methods and forms; he will give his 
 sympathy and his support to every awake and 
 enthusiastic society which is making for right- 
 eousness at the heart of the British Empire. 
 
 All these societies, but the West London Mis- 
 
56 SEEKERS AND SAVERS 
 
 sion in particular, are confronted by one most 
 insidious and deadly form of opposition. 
 
 The great obstacle in their path is the mountain- 
 ous luxury and ostentation of central London, 
 which at every point obstructs their progress and 
 hinders their conquest. 
 
 On this subject it is necessary to say a few 
 words, with which one may appropriately close 
 this brief description of mission work in the 
 metropolis of civilisation. 
 
 In The Soul of a Christian, Professor Granger 
 says some disparaging things about the excite- 
 ment and contagious hysteria of revival meetings. 
 The methods of the revivalist, he declares, " are 
 cleverly calculated to throw the soul off its balance 
 and to seize it in its moment of humiliating 
 weakness. There is an unholy art of forcing 
 the pace of the soul as it draws near to God; 
 for which purpose it is necessary to produce that 
 unnatural excitement in which the soul is at the 
 mercy of the passing impulse. . . . This exag- 
 gerated excitability which is characteristic of 
 neurasthenia, is therefore closely associated with 
 that loss of complete control which is found to 
 be an essential element in all hypnotic phenomena. 
 . . . These strange accompaniments of religious 
 fervour seem partly original, springing from 
 over-excitement and hysteria; partly imitative, 
 the report of such things tending in some minds 
 to suggest imitation. . . . This latter form of 
 
SEEKERS AND SAVERS 57 
 
 excitement (when human beings are assembled 
 in a crowd) may be traced under the heads of 
 contagion of feeling and hypnotic suggestion. 
 . . . The presence of a large number of human 
 beings together in one place produces certain 
 physical effects, among which is a certain tend- 
 ency to receive suggestions." 
 
 Now it is easy enough for a critic of religious 
 fervour and missionary zeal to suggest that the 
 methods of the revivalist are " cleverly calcu- 
 lated," and that a contagion of feeling is re- 
 sponsible for excitement, and that excitement 
 produces the hysteria of spiritual upheaval. The 
 same critic, however, if he attended a street- 
 corner service in Drury Lane, held opposite a 
 tavern and in the midst of the depression of 
 a disgustful destitution, would certainly find it 
 difficult to create an atmosphere of any excite- 
 ment or enthusiasm. But what he says is no 
 doubt generally true of certain revival meetings, 
 and might as truly be applied to political meet- 
 ings, or any other gathering of men where the 
 feelings are deeply stirred. There is, unques- 
 tionably, a contagion of feeling and hypnotic 
 suggestion. But it is not confined to particular 
 assemblages of men. 
 
 It is a matter of the first magnitude to recog- 
 nise that the tone of social life, the standard 
 of public opinion, the quality of manners, the 
 set and tide of national existence, even the amuse- 
 
58 SEEKERS AND SAVERS 
 
 ments, diversions, and fashions of society, spread 
 a contagion of feeling and induce an hypnotic 
 suggestion. There is a contagion of Regent 
 Street and an hypnotic suggestion of Hyde Park. 
 One is conscious of a contagion in London which 
 is quite different from the contagion of a country 
 garden; the soul cannot feel itself in the same 
 attitude towards God in the one place as in the 
 other : there is a different atmosphere, a different 
 contagion, a different suggestion. Therefore 
 when the man of the world says that spiritual 
 upheaval is produced by the emotional at- 
 mosphere of a religious meeting, the religious 
 may retort upon him that his own spiritual dead- 
 ness is produced by the contagion of feeling and 
 hypnotic suggestion of the godless, unimagina- 
 tive, and vulgar hedonism which surrounds him. 
 But it is not to retaliate upon the critic of re- 
 ligious fervour that I insist upon this contagion 
 of feeling and hypnotic suggestion everywhere 
 acting upon the souls of men; it is to emphasise 
 the solemn responsibility of the individual to the 
 community, to show the necessity for a reforma- 
 tion of social life, and to point out how difficult 
 and hard is the work of the Christian missionary 
 in London, surrounded as he is on every side by 
 the luxury and ostentation of a voluptuous 
 plutocracy. 
 
 No man can truly say that the contagion of 
 society is a religious contagion, or that the hyp- 
 
SEEKERS AND SAVERS 59 
 
 notic suggestion of London streets is a religious 
 suggestion. A visitor to England from India 
 or China, whose purpose was to study the fol- 
 lowers of the Son of God at the centre of their 
 national life, would surely feel himself, in the 
 streets of London, to be the victim of an im- 
 mense hallucination. It would be impossible for 
 him to believe that London in any way expressed 
 the mind of Christ; it would not be impossible 
 for him to think that it represented the ideas 
 of a nation devoted to Baal or Astarte. He would 
 see on every side of him an ostentation of wealth 
 bewildering in its profusion and staggering in 
 its effrontery. He would find it impossible to 
 distinguish the lady of fashion from the public 
 women of the streets. He would see in the 
 shop-windows the manifold productions of a 
 commerce created by vanity, voluptuousness, and 
 sensuality. The hoardings would shock his mod- 
 esty by their prurience, or disgust his intellect by 
 their vulgarity. He would feel himself to be 
 the witness of a carousal. It would seem to him 
 that every unit in the multitude was dressed to 
 attract attention, was bent upon self-indulgence, 
 had no purpose in life save dissipation, acknowl- 
 edged no responsibility towards his fellow-men, 
 lived without a thought of God — his, or any- 
 body's. He would look for self-sacrifice, and he 
 would see self-assertion; for modesty, and he 
 would see immodesty; for humility, and he would 
 
60 SEEKERS AND SAVERS 
 
 see arrogance; for gentleness, and he would see 
 audacity; for meekness, and he would see vanity; 
 for reticence, and he would see effrontery; for 
 service, and he would see idleness. Instead of 
 the Christian he would see the Sybarite; instead 
 of the disciples, the swine of Epicurus; instead 
 of sisters of mercy, the daughters of Messalina. 
 It is impossible to exaggerate the effect of Lon- 
 don's central streets upon the mind of such a 
 man. 
 
 It is in such an environment, exposed to its 
 contagion and suggestion, that the people live 
 whom the West London Mission seeks to save. 
 On every side of them is the parade and display 
 of wealth. They see with their eyes and feel 
 with their souls the allurements and enticements 
 of luxurious existence. Any such ideal as Chris- 
 tianity must seem to them a phantasy — so real, 
 visible, tangible, and prosperous is the presence 
 of Mammon. There is nowhere a reproach for 
 the vain, a rebuke for the vulgar, a condemna- 
 tion for the selfish. The pageant of worldliness 
 passes continually before their eyes in unbroken 
 triumph. Life is there. To be rich is the supreme 
 blessing. Every one is seeking a single goal — a 
 material enjoyment of existence, an assertion of 
 
 self. 
 
 Now, this hypnotic suggestion of the streets, 
 this " contagion of the world's slow stain ' is 
 infinitely more potent for evil than the sugges- 
 
SEEKERS AND SAVERS 61 
 
 tion and contagion of a religious meeting for 
 hysteria. It is normal. It is perpetual. It is a 
 form of suggestion so subtle and disguised, it 
 appears so natural and commonplace, that no 
 psychologist takes the trouble to diagnose it, and 
 no religious teacher feels himself moved to de- 
 nounce it. Indeed, it passes not only unchal- 
 lenged, but undetected. It is not recognised as 
 hypnotic suggestion. And yet there is in the 
 world no contagion more undoubtedly the work 
 of suggestion, and no hypnotic suggestion which 
 makes more disastrously for vulgarity of mind, 
 corruption of taste, compromising morality, and 
 deadness of soul, than this normal, usual, and 
 ubiquitous influence of the public streets. 
 
 This miasma of London is made by the 
 thoughts of the units composing its multitude. 
 The moral atmosphere of a place is produced 
 by the soliloquies of the soul. It is not the diverse 
 purposes, but the diverse thoughts of men which 
 make the difference in the atmosphere of church 
 and tavern. A flourishing tavern in the pros- 
 perous quarter of the town has a quite different 
 atmosphere from the beershop of miserable 
 wretches in the slums; a fashionable church pos- 
 sesses an atmosphere wholly different from that 
 of a little country church where worship is sin- 
 cere and religion is truly felt to be " the poetry 
 of the heart." Enter any of these buildings, 
 churches, or taverns, when they are empty, and 
 
W SEEKERS AND SAVERS 
 
 the atmosphere of each is identical. Are we not 
 conscious of a different air in the same church 
 at Communion, at morning prayer, at even-song, 
 at a funeral? 
 
 Every individual is in some way responsible 
 for the hypnotic suggestion of the streets. A 
 woman may be perfectly virtuous, and yet by the 
 vanity of her mind, expressing itself in her gar- 
 ments, may intensify the hypnotic suggestion of 
 sensuality. One cannot oppose the contagion of 
 feeling in London, unless the soul is definitely 
 pure. Unless one is definitely pure it is quite 
 possible to convey the idea of impurity. 1 There- 
 fore it is a solemn duty for those who desire 
 to be on the side of beauty, nobility, righteous- 
 ness, and spirituality to see that in no chamber 
 of their thoughts, in no fashion of their garments, 
 in no department of their manners do they con- 
 tribute any power to the general atmosphere of 
 materialism. There is great need for a clean 
 division between good and evil. It is not an 
 exaggeration to say that unselfishness makes no 
 effect on the London streets. Decency does, 
 respectability does, and in a certain degree 
 courtesy does; but the great note of Christianity 
 — selflessness — makes no sound in the symphony 
 
 i <« 
 
 The power of evil may be exercised by simple in- 
 dolence and negligence, while the good can only be accom- 
 plished by some amount of exertion and sacrifice."— 
 Connop Thirlwall. 
 
SEEKERS AND SAVERS 63 
 
 of the public streets. Is it a great thing to 
 expect that every man and woman in London 
 whose life has been touched and exalted by the 
 Character of Christ should by the simplicity of 
 their dress, the beauty of their manners, and 
 the nobility of their pursuits, convey an impres- 
 sion to the streets which is at once a reproach 
 to vanity and an invitation to holiness? 
 
 Certain it is that the present wholesale material- 
 ism of society makes an atmosphere of central 
 London in which it is hard, very hard indeed, 
 for the apostles of Christ to do their work. If 
 more people with means and leisure could be 
 seen helping the sad and saving the lost; if 
 instead of one Sister on the midnight streets 
 there were hundreds of good women pleading 
 with the fallen; if at every turn and corner one 
 found the doors of houses and institutions thrown 
 open for the work of Christ; if — not now and 
 then, but continually — there was a universal hos- 
 pitality practised by the rich towards the poor, 
 a universal effort on the part of rich men to 
 help poor men, and rich women to help poor 
 women; if, in brief, wherever one went in central 
 London one saw, as one sees a city set on a hill, 
 the life-work of a vast multitude consecrated to 
 the service of Christ — how infinitely easier it 
 would be to combat materialism, to destroy vul- 
 garity, and to attract the sad and sorrowful to 
 religion. 
 
64 SEEKERS AND SAVERS 
 
 Is it not high time that the Church awoke to 
 the tremendous power of hypnotic suggestion, 
 and made definite war upon the extreme luxury, 
 license, and gaudery of society which are now 
 spreading through the streets of the town a 
 contagion terribly destructive to the noblest vir- 
 tues of the human soul? There is a character 
 in one of Anatole France's novels whose nature 
 is defined as " double-faced by courtesy." It does 
 not do for the visible embodiment of Christ to 
 be double-faced even from motives of charity. 
 I believe that the complacency of the Church 
 towards the materialism of the upper classes and 
 the vulgarity of the middle-classes, is more fatal 
 to the progress of Christianity, more fatal to a 
 true understanding of religion by the soul of the 
 nation, than all the devices and bewitchments of 
 evil. To confuse good and evil, to smudge the 
 lines of selfishness and unselfishness, to attempt 
 to serve God and Mammon, — this is not merely 
 to vulgarise religion, it is to tamper with the 
 Soul of Christ. 1 
 
 " One of the reasons," says Professor Granger, 
 " why popular religion in England seems to be 
 coming to the limits of its power, is that it has 
 contented itself so largely with the commonplace 
 motives which, after all, find sufficient exercise 
 in the ordinary duties of life. Unless God is 
 presented under the attributes of the divine 
 1 See Note C at end of book. 
 
SEEKERS AND SAVERS 65 
 
 majesty, in such a way as to summon forth a 
 heroic effort of the soul to come to its own in 
 Him, religion is degraded to a level below the 
 ordinary standard of honour, and does not appeal 
 to the high spirit which is the natural temper of 
 a free citizen in a free state. When religion is 
 represented as the most refined way of providing 
 for the ultimate future, and a not unprofitable 
 investment for the present, it is classed on its 
 own showing with the business pursuits, which 
 even those who are engaged in them treat, not 
 as ends in themselves, but as means. Yet, unless 
 the divine ideal is presented as an object of desire 
 in and for itself, because of its intrinsic beauty 
 and authority, it is no longer completely effective. 
 The God of Calvin may have been an ideal which 
 was effective in producing a moral renovation, 
 but it is permitted to doubt whether such an ideal 
 ever inspired that disinterested passion of love, 
 which is the highest form of the soul's com- 
 munion with God. ' He moves the world/ says 
 Aristotle, ' as the object of its desire.' " 
 
 One cannot look for the new understanding 
 of religion to seize and possess the imagination 
 of the world until the Church has everywhere 
 ceased to be equivocal and double-faced, until 
 the demarcation between selfishness and unselfish- 
 ness is positive and unswerving, until trifling with 
 Christianity is as sternly denounced as trifling 
 with immorality, until the children of God be- 
 
66 SEEKERS AND SAVERS 
 
 come clean separate from the children of Mam- 
 mon, and until the commandment receives the un- 
 compromising insistence of the whole Church 
 throughout the world — that love for God can 
 only be expressed by service to humanity. 
 
 " In acknowledgment of what Christ hath done 
 and suffered, take up this resolution : that it shall 
 be better for every one with whom thou hast to 
 do, because Christ hath died for thee and him." 
 
 "The beggar's rags fluttering in air 
 Do to rags the heavens tear; 
 
 . . . . • 
 
 The harlot's cry from street to street 
 Shall weave old England's winding sheet; 
 The winner's shout, the loser's curse, 
 Shall dance before dead England's hearse. 
 
 * m • • * 
 
 Every night and every morn 
 Some to misery are born; 
 Every morn and every night 
 Some are born to sweet delight. 
 
 * • • • * 
 
 I will not cease from mental fight, 
 Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, 
 
 Till we have built Jerusalem 
 In England's green and pleasant land." 
 
THE FLOWING TIDE 
 
 HE stood with the others, watching her die 
 — his mother, to whom he was most 
 deeply devoted. The end was coming 
 without pain. She let her gaze wander lovingly 
 and lingeringly from one to the other of her seven 
 children, and held in a tender embrace the hand 
 of her kneeling husband, beginning to shed the 
 first tears of his widowerhood. She was calm 
 and peaceful. There was distress neither for her 
 body nor for her spirit. She was fading out 
 of life with a gracious compassion and a sweet 
 anxiety for those whom she was leaving upon 
 the earth. 
 
 Her eyes closed, and, in a low voice muffled 
 by the falling shadow of death, she began to 
 pray. Earnestly and with an infinite solicitude 
 she besought the Father of humanity to have 
 her children for ever in His care, to guard them, 
 to shield them, to protect them, to keep them in 
 purity and goodness, so that at the end they might 
 all meet in heaven, united after the battle of life 
 in that happy kingdom of His love where there 
 are no more sorrows, no more partings, no more 
 tears. 
 
 67 
 
68 THE FLOWING TIDE 
 
 He was a youth who had never before seen 
 this awful and appalling thing called death. His 
 soul was shaken by it. All the agony of his heart 
 for the loss of a most tender and befriending 
 mother, all the anguish of pathos which her whis- 
 pered prayer created in his soul, all the tragic 
 and desolating sense of impending disaster which 
 hung like a darkness in his brain, yielded and 
 gave way before the one black, overshadowing 
 sensation of Death in the room, implacable Death 
 close to him, invisible, but felt in every vein of 
 his body. How terrible to die ! How ghastly to 
 sink out of existence! How awful to feel the 
 darkness falling and the heart beating to its end ! 
 This thing called Death made life unutterably 
 tragic, inexpressibly dreadful. How lonely it 
 was ! How isolated from the reach of love ! Into 
 the darkness, into the silence, into the mystery — 
 alone ! 
 
 Many times since that day of tears he has 
 recalled the memory of his mother's dying prayer, 
 and ever to the end of his life the remembrance 
 of that hour will be like a strong angel in his 
 soul. In some ways that hour and that prayer 
 stand in his destiny for the first motion of the 
 outstretching and saving hand of God. 
 
 Life looked at him with other eyes after his 
 mother's death. He was emerging from boy- 
 hood. He was conscious of a new dawn in his 
 soul. The restraints and safeguards which had 
 
THE FLOWING TIDE 69 
 
 surrounded him on every side from his earliest 
 childhood began to chafe him, began to appear 
 as sensible barriers and obstructions to some- 
 thing in his will which increasingly he felt he 
 must express or go mad with aggravation. 
 
 He did not actually lose his faith — perhaps 
 that faith had never been clearly visualised and 
 profoundly felt — but he began to experience an 
 impatience of religious exercises and to feel him- 
 self irritated beyond the line of endurance by 
 the drill and mechanic monotony of an obliga- 
 tory worship. From childhood he had been 
 schooled in the severities of a faith which multi- 
 plied the enormities of humanity, decalogued 
 almost every harmless amusement and diversion 
 of the human race, and presented the resting- 
 places of heaven rather as rewards for denials 
 and suppressions than as victories for aspiration 
 and achievement. 
 
 To the young man, longing for expression, and 
 hungering after a larger life than he had yet 
 known, the motherless home grew more and more 
 too narrow, too suffocating, and too mean. He 
 began to show his spirit. Let the others sit by 
 the winter fire reading the Bible, singing hymns, 
 and saying Amen to their father's prayers, but 
 he would speak what he felt. Let them go reg- 
 ularly to chapel and school, to class-meetings and 
 temperance gatherings, but he would let them 
 know what he thought. In boyhood it had been 
 
70 THE FLOWING TIDE 
 
 his desire, and the hope of all the others, that 
 one day he would enter the ministry and preach 
 the good news of Christianity; but — when he was 
 a child he had thought as a child. Now, with the 
 blood of manhood singing in his veins and all 
 the pulses of his being beating high for action, 
 he longed only to leave this little Bible-reading 
 home and feel the winds of the world in his eyes. 
 
 He told his father that he was too tired to 
 go twice on Sunday to the school; and after the 
 prayer-meeting which followed the evening serv- 
 ice in the chapel, and which he found intermina- 
 bly wearisome, he would criticise the minister 
 and find open fault with the sermon. To these 
 portents of danger the father was blind; he re- 
 garded the boy only as a little headstrong, and 
 opposed his rebellion merely with the weight of 
 parental authority. Whether the boy liked it or 
 not, he was to go to these services with the others 
 — apparently he stood more in need of them than 
 his sisters and brothers. 
 
 But the day of deliverance was at hand. He 
 was to become his own master, to feel no longer 
 the irritation of goading checks and the stifling 
 oppression of home discipline. A situation had 
 been found for him in a country town, a town 
 larger than that in which his childhood and boy- 
 hood had passed so uneventfully and so monot- 
 onously. " How radiant I was," he says, " when 
 I knew that I was going to be able to have my 
 
THE FLOWING TIDE 71 
 
 fling a little! " By this he does not mean that 
 he was jumping forward to temptation, that he 
 was springing with all the zest in his nature 
 towards the opportunities for sin. He had a 
 horror of evil. He regarded dissipation and vice 
 with an extreme disapproval. For anything 
 really wicked, and really base, and really vile, he 
 felt nothing but repugnance. No; he was strain- 
 ing at the leash, because it was a leash. His 
 desire was not so much to escape as not to be 
 held. He wanted to be free. He wanted to 
 have his will no longer thwarted and his life no 
 longer ordered and mapped by another. He 
 wanted to feel himself truly himself, himself 
 utterly and completely, not another. 
 
 The parting from home somewhat sobered this 
 ecstasy. " My father," he says, " came with me 
 to the railway-station. I did not feel in the least 
 sorry that I was leaving home as we walked 
 together up the platform. But just as the time 
 came for the train to move my father took me 
 by the shoulder, and, with one arm round my 
 neck, gave me that kiss which I shall never 
 forget. ' Goodbye, my lad,' he said, looking at 
 me; 'be sure you read your Bible and say your 
 prayers.' As the train moved away I had the 
 sensation of leaving something which I should 
 never find again. I sat down in a corner of the 
 carriage and began to think. That night, I re- 
 member well, I did say my prayers and I did 
 
n THE FLOWING TIDE 
 
 read my Bible; and when the light was out, and 
 I lay waiting for sleep, I had a vision of home 
 and all the past of my life which was so real and 
 wonderful that I can recall it now. I must admit 
 that the first night away from home I sobbed 
 myself to sleep." 
 
 He found it was good to be free. The shop 
 in which he served was a small one, the duties 
 were easily learned, he was able to go out into 
 the streets and feel himself his own master. He 
 went to a chapel, he attended various meetings, 
 occasionally he said his prayers, and sometimes, 
 but very rarely, he remembered his father's words 
 and read his Bible. All about him was the stir 
 and movement of a town larger than he had 
 yet known. He felt the inspiration of this active 
 and manifold life. He began to think seriously 
 of making his way to fortune. It was better than 
 going to chapel, to read the newspapers; cer- 
 tainly, far better to fall asleep dreaming of suc- 
 cess than to lie sobbing with thoughts of home. 
 
 After but a few months in this inspiring 
 atmosphere he moved to a still larger town, and 
 found himself one among many in a considerable 
 house of business. Hitherto he had kept the 
 faith. Hitherto the promise to his father and 
 the dying benediction of his mother had been at 
 least occasionally present and sacred in his soul. 
 He had never wholly abandoned going to re- 
 ligious services, saying his prayers, and reading 
 
THE FLOWING TIDE 73 
 
 his Bible. There had always been present in his 
 mind the feeling of a struggle and an effort, the 
 sense of a Christian endeavouring to fulfil the 
 duties of his calling. He was typical of all youths 
 who go straight from the influence of a too 
 mechanic Christianity into the freedom and temp- 
 tation of a quite new environment. The very 
 severity of his training prevented him from 
 altogether forgetting the idea of religion, while 
 more and more the feeling of freedom encouraged 
 him to regard with an almost amused amazement 
 the apparent intolerance and narrowness of the 
 cage from which he had escaped. 
 
 In his new situation he came face to face with 
 sin. There was none of the reticences of a small 
 town in the crowded streets of this industrial 
 centre. There was no feeling of public opinion 
 in its atmosphere. Self-assertion and a daring 
 recklessness characterised the aspects of the fash- 
 ionable streets. Everybody appeared boldly vain 
 and unashamedly selfish. It was a flowing tide 
 of careless self-seeking, a carnival of Vanity 
 Fair. To mix in the crowd was to lose all sense 
 of the ancient restraints and ennobling suppres- 
 sions of humanity. He felt himself one of a 
 great multitude borne away on a tide of festival. 
 
 Six men of about his own age shared the room 
 in which he slept. They varied in temperament, 
 and their upbringings had been different; but they 
 were all at one in their attitude towards life. 
 
74 THE FLOWING TIDE 
 
 Religion for these young men was a kind of 
 girlish sentimentalism; morality was the ridicu- 
 lous invention of the middle-aged; only a fool 
 would refuse himself the opportunities of enjoy- 
 ment — to enjoy oneself one must go with the 
 tide, get as much fun out of existence as possible, 
 and take no thought of any kind for the morrow. 
 
 You can imagine the conversation in that 
 dormitory. There would be " adventures " to 
 relate, indecent stories to tell, accounts to give 
 of sprees in public-houses and music-halls. No 
 note of culture at all. No suggestion whatever 
 of books and pictures and serious plays. No 
 discussion of politics and ethics. No talk of 
 healthful sports and games. Certainly no col- 
 loquies on the soul and its destiny. Dirty sto- 
 ries, accompanied by laughter; adventures with 
 women, approved by looks of admiration; re- 
 citals of escapades, capped and recapped till every 
 man could feel himself a hero. Such was the 
 spirit of this dormitory. 
 
 To the newcomer it was dreadful. He blushed 
 at the conversation. He was horrified by the 
 wickedness of these messmates. So shocked and 
 scandalised was his soul that he took at last to 
 an open expression of his faith. He prayed at 
 his bedside, and he read his Bible night and 
 morning. But it was not for long. The tide 
 was drawing him away from ancient moorings. 
 He felt himself moving towards the others. 
 
THE FLOWING TIDE 75 
 
 More and more he found himself unable to bear 
 the laughter of their mockery and the rough scorn 
 of their ridicule. He ceased to pray, he aban- 
 doned thoughts of God. It was so much easier 
 to go with the flowing tide, and it seemed so 
 infinitely more natural to be like all the other 
 people about him. No more chapel, no more 
 private prayers, no more reading of St. John, no 
 more sense of conflict and struggle in his soul — 
 freedom and a sense of yielding to destiny! He 
 would not make himself a prig. He would not 
 set himself up to be different from other people. 
 No, the great world was in the right — let us 
 eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die. 
 He had no desire to commit sin, he was even 
 anxious always to do right — but he brought him- 
 self to a condition of mind when religion is no 
 longer a restraint or a courage in the conscience, 
 and when a man believes that he has attained 
 tolerance in a disinclination to reprehend evil in 
 others. 
 
 " When I went home for a holiday,'' he says, 
 " I was easily able to disguise my true feelings 
 and the change which had taken place in me. 
 My father used to think that I was all right, 
 and appeared to feel no anxiety about me. He 
 had no idea at all of the company I was keep- 
 ing. But later on I lost my situation, and I 
 came home to wait till I could find another. 
 During this period of waiting my father began 
 
76 THE FLOWING TIDE 
 
 to see that I was not living as moral and as 
 straight a life as he had hoped. On several 
 occasions he hinted at his knowledge of this 
 change in me; then he argued with me openly 
 about it; and finally he made an appeal to me 
 that I would make a surrender of my will and 
 give myself up entirely to the will of God. I 
 turned a stubborn ear to him. I lost my temper. 
 There was a scene which I do not like to think 
 about, and then I announced my intention to go 
 to London and manage for myself. On that last 
 night at home — never shall I forget it — my father 
 pleaded with God to follow me wherever I went, 
 never to forsake me however far I might wander, 
 and expressed the certain knowledge that I should 
 never find rest until I gave myself up to a crucified 
 Saviour.'' 
 
 He went to London and became a shop- 
 assistant in one of the big business houses of the 
 fashionable quarter. Overwhelmed by the splen- 
 dour of London, bewildered by its myriad tempta- 
 tions, astonished beyond all expression by its 
 frank and quite challenging devotion to pleasure 
 — he threw his lot in with the companions of his 
 dormitory and gave himself absolutely and en- 
 tirely to the flowing tide. 
 
 These companions, in his own words, " never 
 gave God a thought." Everything is said in that 
 phrase. Many men sin and fall and rise again; 
 many virtuous men throughout their lives are 
 
THE FLOWING TIDE 77 
 
 caught away from the best by the temptation of 
 the second-rate or the worst; in vast numbers 
 of men, whatever their conduct, the sense of a 
 conflict between their higher and lower nature 
 is the central fact of their lives — God is always 
 at least a thought in their souls. But there is an 
 immense army of men who, far from feeling the 
 idea of God to be the most beautiful and lifting 
 emotion of the human spirit, and far from feeling 
 any sense of menace or anxiety in that idea, never 
 give a thought to God. Their imaginations can- 
 not rise to the contemplation of an Infinite Being. 
 The pettiness of their surroundings, the wholly 
 effeminate nature of their employment, the dis- 
 astrous conditions of their millinery lives — these 
 things, whatever the character of their upbring- 
 ing, tend to obscure in their minds that realisation 
 of the grandeur of the universe and the tremen- 
 dous issues of life without which any permanent 
 and permeating comprehension of God is almost 
 impossible. 
 
 Let us see quite clearly the lot of these young 
 men in the shops of a great city. From morning 
 till evening they are handling all the refinements 
 and ^luxuries of women's clothing that the most 
 elaborate Fashion can devise. They spend the 
 impressionable years of their manhood in waiting 
 upon women who are seeking to make themselves 
 more beautiful and attractive. They are within 
 doors, in a close atmosphere, associated with 
 
78 THE FLOWING TIDE 
 
 young girls of their own age, with no other use 
 for their brains than to sell the things of the 
 boudoir and the bedroom. In the evening they 
 have the lighted streets for their playground. At 
 night they sleep in dormitories. The only ad- 
 venture possible to them is an unhealthy sexual- 
 ism, the only powerful distraction of their leisure 
 the excitements of the town. 
 
 It is not easy for these young men to form 
 in their minds a true and enlarging conception 
 of life. It is most difficult for them to follow 
 the path of idealism and set their gaze upon the 
 heights of religion. Whatever we may think of 
 them, this at least must influence our judgment: 
 no conditions of life could be more unnatural 
 for a man, no existence could be more artificial 
 and insidiously destructive of grandeur. 
 
 He whose story I have been tracing fell abso- 
 lutely from goodness and purity in this new 
 environment. London overwhelmed him, seized 
 him as a straw in the tide of its progress, and 
 swept him away with a million others into the 
 vast sea of its infamy and ruin. Who was he 
 to stand against the flooding water? Every one 
 about him was careless, reckless, and indifferent. 
 They were all moving in the same direction. Not 
 one of them was swimming against the tide. 
 Not one of them set an example of conflict. 
 There was no feeling of men shaping their souls 
 and making a righteous destiny. All was a sense 
 
THE FLOWING TIDE 79 
 
 of yielding and acquiescence, a sense of smiling 
 acceptance, a sense of moving with an im- 
 memorial tide in the direction of an immemorial 
 end. 
 
 For some months he lived the life of his 
 messmates. He went with them to music-halls, 
 joined with them in the carnival of the streets, 
 accompanied them into taverns, and shared in 
 all the wildness of their carousals. Things that 
 would have inexpressibly shocked him a few 
 weeks ago he now did as cheerfully as all the 
 rest; words which would have burned his lips 
 now passed from him carelessly and with a 
 laugh; thoughts which would have filled him 
 with intolerable shame now lay close to his soul 
 and gratified him. 
 
 The fall was utter and complete. From an 
 extreme of innocence he descended to an extreme 
 of flippant recklessness. He was happy, he was 
 satisfied. With no God to overshadow his 
 thoughts, with no sense of struggle in his soul 
 to interrupt his will, he was now free to go 
 thoughtlessly and rapturously with the flowing 
 tide. Had he not now fulfilled himself? Was 
 this not the true enfranchisement of the spirit? 
 To be free, to be perfectly free! To do every- 
 thing he wished to do. To get as much amuse- 
 ment and delight and excitement out of life as 
 all the rest of the world. Yes, he could laugh 
 with the best of them in the tavern, be as 
 
80 THE FLOWING TIDE 
 
 rackety as the wildest of them in the music-hall, 
 get as many adventures out of the streets as the 
 most daring of them, and in the dormitory think 
 as little about God as the most bold and dissolute. 
 
 Thus, for many months. 
 
 But that mysterious influence in a man's life 
 which we call conscience began gradually to 
 make its presence known in the solitude of his 
 soul. Every now and then he heard a voice 
 sounding in the depths of his being. It was a 
 voice of reproach. It was a voice whose sound 
 brought back a hundred memories in sighs to 
 his lips and in tears to his eyes. He remembered 
 his childhood, his boyhood; he remembered his 
 mother's death; he remembered his struggle to 
 be good and holy; he remembered the farewell 
 embrace of his father; he remembered the prayer 
 of the last night in his home. These remem- 
 brances came to him in the moments of his 
 solitude. They accompanied his soul into the 
 unconsciousness of sleep. He awoke with them. 
 They recurred to him during the busiest hours 
 of the day. He could not put them from him in 
 the midst of a boisterous amusement. 
 
 He was conscious that he was not what he 
 might have been, not what the love and prayers 
 of his mother, and the unceasing care and train- 
 ing of his father, ought to have made him. He 
 was as bad as, perhaps he was worse than, those 
 of his companions who spoke with contempt of 
 
THE FLOWING TIDE 81 
 
 their parents and who had never in their lives 
 entered a church or read a Bible. He was 
 stained with sin. His innocence was gone, 
 and with his innocence the last shreds of his 
 purity. Indifferent to God, careless of conse- 
 quences, tired of religion, and abandoned wholly 
 to the degenerate thoughts and atrophying lusts 
 of animalism, he who had once been pure, he who 
 had once been innocent, was moving — very con- 
 scious in himself of the sense of the movement — 
 away from all that he had once held good, away 
 from all that was purest and most sweet in his 
 memory, away from the manful combat and 
 the exalting aspirations of his spiritual dawn, 
 moving away from all this on the flowing tide 
 of the world — yes, moving away from the past, 
 but Whither ? 
 
 It was this thought more than any other which 
 checked him. What was to be the end of such 
 a life? On what ultimate shore would the tide 
 cast his drowning soul? He was not afraid of 
 death, apparently he stood in no fear of God's 
 judgment; but he shuddered at the contemplation 
 of the man he was making, of the destiny he was 
 preparing, of the soul he was creating. He 
 trembled to think what he was to become, here 
 on the earth, by his own shaping and at his 
 own will. 
 
 An utter wretchedness of mind took possession 
 of him. More miserable man, he thinks, never 
 
82 THE FLOWING TIDE 
 
 struggled for intensest loneliness in the midst 
 of London's crowding phantasmagoria. Every 
 moment which opened a door to solitude he 
 seized with the eagerness of a hunted animal. 
 To be alone, to think — this was the hunger and 
 thirst of his soul. He wanted to be free of the 
 surging occupations of his life, free of the com- 
 panions who surrounded him with ribaldry, free 
 of the trivial and the unessential — alone with 
 his soul. 
 
 How could he turn, having come so far? turn, 
 and swim back again, back, against the tide? 
 What hope was there for escape from these 
 fathomless waters, wide as the world itself? 
 Where could he turn and find the companionship 
 of the good, an occupation that was ennobling, 
 a future that held something to strive for, some- 
 thing greatly to desire ? All about him this broad, 
 moving tide of indifference, reckless abandon- 
 ment, and unrighteous selfishness, a vast tide of 
 drowning and perishing humanity — how could 
 he escape from it? How could he look to be 
 different from the rest? 
 
 On a certain Sunday afternoon he made away 
 from his friends and walked through the streets 
 of London, wrestling with his soul. His de- 
 jection was very great. He could not rid himself 
 of a depressing despair, the despair of fatalism. 
 All would be as it was. Nothing could be 
 changed. Till the end of life he would go with 
 
THE FLOWING TIDE 83 
 
 the tide, carried even farther from the shore 
 already out of sight, borne onward into greater 
 darkness and deeper waters of affliction. Nothing 
 could alter it. 
 
 He entered Hyde Park through the Marble 
 Arch, and wandered through the crowds of 
 people standing in a loose density before the plat- 
 forms of rival orators. He heard an atheist's 
 contemptuous challenge, a Socialist's denuncia- 
 tion, and a clergyman's appeal. He stopped and 
 listened. Then he drew nearer. It reminded 
 him of his home. 
 
 The appeal of this missioner was made to 
 young men who had come from the provinces 
 pure and upright and who had become in London 
 base, careless, and degenerate. No words could 
 have struck cleaner home to his heart. He drew 
 still nearer, listened with all his soul, and felt 
 the tears coming into his eyes. He bowed his 
 head, ashamed of those tears, but conscious of 
 the relief they brought him, and listened like 
 a guilty man to the words of the preacher. 
 After this sermon a lady sang a solo, a voice 
 so beautiful and caressing that it instantly drew 
 crowds away from the other platforms. In the 
 thick of these people the young man listened 
 and longed for a return to purity. The words 
 went home to his heart, the music haunted his 
 soul. " If anybody," he says, " had asked me 
 at that moment definitely to give myself to God, 
 
84 THE FLOWING TIDE 
 
 without a thought I should have thrown myself 
 at the feet of my Saviour." 
 
 But no one spoke to him, and when the meet- 
 ing broke up he passed solitarily away, a unit 
 in the immense and separating crowd. He found 
 himself in the streets, " the most miserable man 
 that ever trod upon God's earth."" 
 
 For a week he endured this intense misery, 
 longing to escape from his evil companions, 
 hungering to be stronger than temptation, and 
 thirsting after reconciliation with God. 
 
 Early one morning there was a sudden and 
 unusual excitement in the house of business 
 where he was employed. He saw men with 
 white faces and scared eyes talking together. 
 People were hurrying to and fro. He inquired 
 the cause of £his commotion. Some one told 
 him, " Robert Hards was found dead in his bed, 
 suffocated with gas." 
 
 Yesterday he had worked side by side with 
 this poor youth; they had talked together; young 
 Hards was strong and robust, a brave companion, 
 a good worker — the last man in the world to 
 make an end of himself. But he was dead. 
 Something in his life had been heavier than his 
 soul could endure. He had escaped from the 
 world; he had got out of life; he was dead; but 
 his soul — where was his soul ? 
 
 The tragic death of his friend and companion 
 made a profound and determining impression 
 
THE FLOWING TIDE 85 
 
 on the mind of the poor youth struggling for 
 escape from the flood of ruin. 
 
 Say that, afraid of hell, he feared to die as 
 he was, or that, conscious of heaven, he longed 
 to die other than he was — whatever the human 
 words may be by which we choose to designate 
 the movement and pressing impulse of his soul, 
 certain it is that he came face to face with the 
 last thing in human experience, looked death 
 in the eyes, saw the terrible hazard that lay 
 behind that ever-approaching and never-to-be- 
 placated spectre in man's path, and determined 
 to be a better man. He says that the death 
 of Robert Hards shook him terribly, that he was 
 haunted by it, that the suddenness of it was like 
 a stunning blow to him; but also he says that, 
 detached from himself, he thought for a long 
 time of the home from which Hards had come, 
 thought of the parents and their prayers, and 
 felt the pathos of that tragic ending with a most 
 poignant sensation of tears. The thought of 
 good, therefore, was at least present in his mind, 
 however overriding the fear of death. All the 
 purity and goodness of childhood revived in his 
 soul, as imagination pictured the home of the 
 poor suicide. He imagined the hopes that a 
 father and mother had entertained for that un- 
 happy youth, and recalled to his mind the parting 
 benediction of his own mother and the prayers of 
 the father whose love he had requited with a life 
 
86 THE FLOWING TIDE 
 
 of failure and wretchedness. Certainly if death 
 terrified him, he was also conscious of remorse, 
 shame, and aspiration. 
 
 He was in the position of a man who knows 
 the way out of danger but is afraid to take it. 
 There was nothing that priest could tell him. 
 If he had not deeply experienced religion, at 
 least he knew all that it had to say to a soul 
 in his condition. He knew that he must bow 
 himself in the dust and cry for help to a Saviour. 
 He knew that it was in vain to struggle until 
 that submission had been made. Moreover, he 
 had the feeling of a necessity for public humilia- 
 tion, public confession, public cry for mercy and 
 assistance. He was conscious of the need for 
 some strong and extraordinary action on the 
 part of his soul, some moment of upheaval never 
 to be found in the hours of solitude. He was 
 convinced of this. He was absolutely convinced 
 of it. Before he could be born again, before 
 he could feel his body purged by conversion and 
 his spirit renewed by regeneration, it was neces- 
 sary for him — however he might shrink from it — 
 to suffer an abnormal experience. 
 
 He prayed in secret to God, and in that prayer 
 he vowed to make the act of submission, if he 
 were spared to do so, on the following Sunday. 
 He kept his vow. The preacher in Hyde Park 
 had belonged to the West London Mission. 
 When Sunday came he went to the central service 
 
THE FLOWING TIDE 8? 
 
 of this Mission. At the conclusion of the service 
 the invitation was given for those who felt them- 
 selves greatly in need of a Saviour to stand up. 
 He was the first to rise. All nervousness, all 
 timidity, all hampering self-consciousness de- 
 parted from his mind, and he was conscious of 
 nothing but his soul's need and a longing for 
 the new life and the cleansing sense of regen- 
 eration. 
 
 In the room into which he was taken he met 
 the man who has since become his dearest friend 
 and chiefest blessing, a most able and excellent 
 man, free of all cant, quiet and attractive in 
 his enthusiasm, profoundly experienced in the 
 tragedies of human life. Tenderly received and 
 graciously encouraged by this missioner, the 
 young man then and there, to use his own words, 
 "gave himself to God," a phrase which means 
 a deep, utter, and most earnest submission of 
 the human will to that sense of the Divine will, 
 that sense of the highest and the best, that sense 
 of pursuing love and overshadowing protection 
 which exists in the soul of all who have ever 
 prayed. 
 
 " Since that night," he says, " my life has 
 been one long joy and gladness." 
 
 All the hesitancy left him. Temptations to 
 which he had yielded withered like flowers struck 
 by a frost. Shame to confess his faith lifted like 
 a mist from his brain. He felt the sun shining 
 
88 THE FLOWING TIDE 
 
 in his face. He was conscious of strength. He 
 was conscious of courage. He was conscious of 
 joy. Never more would he fear the ridicule of 
 men or be ashamed to confess his Master. Rather 
 with a very glory of suffusing certitude would 
 he profess the faith of his soul and live the life 
 of a Galahad, even if it had to be in a London 
 shop. 
 
 " It is with man's Soul/' says Carlyle, " as it 
 was with Nature: the beginning of Creation is 
 — Light." And of Conversion he says : " Blame 
 not the word, rejoice rather that such a word, 
 signifying such a thing, has come to light in 
 our modern Era, though hidden from the wisest 
 Ancients. The Old World knew nothing of Con- 
 version; instead of an Ecce Homo, they had 
 only some Choice of Hercules. It was a new- 
 attained progress in the Moral Development of 
 man: hereby has the Highest come home to the 
 bosoms of the most Limited; what to Plato was 
 but a hallucination, and to Socrates a chimera, 
 is now clear and certain to your Zinzendorfs, 
 your Wesleys, and the poorest of their Pietists 
 and Methodists." 
 
TWO ROADS 
 
 ONLY as a pendant to the foregoing narra- 
 tive — for there are other tales of a more 
 diverse and wonderful kind waiting to 
 be told — I set down in this place, as briefly as 
 possible, the story of another youth who came 
 to London from a good home in the provinces, 
 and but for the saving hand of religion must 
 have ended his life most miserably, and perhaps 
 very tragically, among the wreckage of that great 
 but perilous city. 
 
 He was cursed from boyhood with an un- 
 governable temper, and flung himself out of his 
 father's home in a fit of rage to make his own 
 way in life, and at whatever cost, in some em- 
 ployment, he cared not greatly what it was, where 
 he would be free of parental control. 
 
 When his brothers asked him what he was 
 going to do in London, he told them to mind 
 their own business. When his father implored 
 him to stay at home, he replied that he would 
 rather die. Sick of the simple life in that little 
 town, weary of influences which had begun to 
 gall him, this headstrong and impetuous youth 
 shook the dust of home from off his feet, and 
 
 89 
 
90 TWO ROADS 
 
 went up to London his own master and without 
 a friend in the world. 
 
 By means of an advertisement in a newspaper 
 he obtained employment in a wine-bar, and so 
 proud was he of this place that he wrote in- 
 solently home on the notepaper of the tavern, 
 telling his brothers that they did not know what 
 life was, poked down in a little miserable country 
 town. As for religion, he had put it clean out 
 of his mind, once and for all. 
 
 His last employer in that country town had 
 been his boyhood's Sunday-school teacher, and 
 hearing of his condition, this good man journeyed 
 to London, visited the wine-bar, and begged the 
 youth to give up such hazardous work and return 
 home to work in his shop. " I can't tell you," 
 says the youth, "just how I felt; something 
 tempted me to tell him to mind his own business, 
 and then again there was another voice telling 
 me to take his advice. I didn't tell him to mind 
 his own business, but by my manner I let him see 
 that I resented his interference. He went away, 
 and did not trouble me again." 
 
 Some time after this came his first Christmas 
 in London, and he took to drink. He became 
 loose in his conduct and careless in his habits, 
 but he performed his duties well, and was popu- 
 lar with his employers. After a year's work, 
 conscious of unrest in his mind, he looked out 
 for another place, and obtained a better situation 
 
TWO ROADS 91 
 
 in a more fashionable wine-bar. He was much 
 happier here, till he fell in love with a girl em- 
 ployed at the same place. This girl, who appears 
 to have been beautiful, capricious, and coquettish, 
 was in some dim way mindful of virtue. She 
 was engaged to a man at sea; her troth was 
 faithful, in her opinion, so long as she did not 
 fall into sin with anybody else; she permitted 
 herself to flirt, she sought to make herself attrac- 
 tive and bewitching, but there was always a point 
 at which flirtation stopped. Desperately enam- 
 oured of this girl, truly and profoundly in love 
 with her so far as his nature could comprehend 
 love, the young man gave himself up to his adora- 
 tion. For her he saved his money, and with her 
 he spent that money in theatres, music-halls, and 
 restaurants. 
 
 Love, working like a madness in his corrupted 
 blood, brought him at last to such a dejection 
 that he contemplated the murder of the girl he 
 could never possess. He would murder her, and 
 then commit suicide. He says it was not so 
 much the thought that he could never possess 
 her, but the terrible thought that somebody else 
 would, which seemed to drive him mad and 
 strengthen his determination to murder her. 
 Rather than see her the wife of another man he 
 would see her dead, and dead by his own hand. 
 It was unbearable that she should be taken from 
 him. 
 
92 TWO ROADS 
 
 He drank harder than ever in this great de- 
 jection, alternating between wild and heroic 
 moods, when murder seemed an apotheosis for 
 his troubled soul, and shuddering moods when 
 the baseness of his life came home to him like 
 a monition from destiny. 
 
 " It was nothing but the Hand of God," he 
 says, " which kept me from murder. I could 
 distinctly hear a Voice telling me to make a fresh 
 start in life." 
 
 Haunted by this Voice, pursued by it in every 
 thought of his brain, the conflict between the 
 violence of his passion and the quiet pleading 
 of his conscience moving every day to the hour 
 when decision must be made for good or for 
 evil, he perceived with absolute clearness of vision 
 that rescue lay for him in two things — he must 
 utterly stamp out every dying ember of his pres- 
 ent life, he must utterly give himself up to the 
 life of religion. 
 
 He began to follow the famous Regent Street 
 Band of the Salvation Army on Sunday after- 
 noons. Sometimes he would go to a service. 
 Sometimes he went to open-air meetings in Hyde 
 Park. 
 
 " I tried to cover my sins," he says, " but 
 they stared me in the face worse than ever. 
 I could see the net I was weaving about 
 myself was getting tighter every day. At 
 last, in desperation, I wrote asking my 
 
TWO ROADS 93 
 
 old Sunday-school teacher to help me out of the 
 t rouble.' ' 
 
 The result of that letter was an introduction 
 to the West London Mission. He attended the 
 services, but his trouble remained. " I began 
 to feel sorry I had ever written. My old filthy 
 temper was rising up in rebellion again. Many 
 questions crossed my mind." But finally, after a 
 great battle, he saw one of the missioners. "I 
 was doubting between two questions: whether 
 God was leading me, or whether it was only fancy 
 on my own part. I prayed for guidance. I be- 
 came fully convinced that it rested with me to 
 decide between right and wrong. One thing 
 I knew — I had the choice of two roads. I thank 
 God for giving me the strength to choose the 
 narrow road which leads to eternal life. If 
 anybody told me they didn't believe that God 
 led me, I should ask them what reason they 
 could give me for the sudden change in my 
 conscience." 
 
 Shepherded by the West London Mission, he 
 became not only a convert, but a worker, and 
 now, having felt the clamour of his manhood for 
 a life more vigorous than the metropolis can 
 afford young men, he is a collier in Wales, fight- 
 ing the soul's battle in more manful surround- 
 ings, and trusting only in prayer for the strength 
 to support his resolutions. 
 
 "lama proper collier now," he writes, " and 
 
94 TWO ROADS 
 
 have a good laugh at myself when I look in the 
 glass after I have been working. You would 
 never know me, I am sure." 
 
 But for religion, what would have been the 
 fate of this man? 
 
THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 
 
 IN the middle of the last century there was 
 living in a county town on the northern 
 side of London a family which had all those 
 good qualities to be found in provincial society, 
 when sobriety of conduct, assiduity in business, 
 and loyalty to religious traditions were accepted 
 as the first essentials of respectability, before the 
 levity, flippancy, and light-hearted tolerance of 
 the metropolis had penetrated to corrupt the 
 rigidity of an old-fashioned behaviour. 
 
 To casual observance this family presented the 
 appearance of an untroubled prosperity. The 
 father was a well-to-do solicitor who associated 
 himself with the civic life of the town and took 
 a leading part in the local religion and politics of 
 Nonconformist circles. He occupied a comfort- 
 able house on the outskirts of the town, was 
 regarded by his neighbours as a man of sub- 
 stance, and enjoyed the respect of those who 
 most differed from him in politics and religion. 
 He was a man of such large heart, such frank 
 pleasantness, such shining honesty, and such con- 
 tagious tolerance that he inspired the good-will 
 of every class and faction in the town, and was 
 
 95 
 
96 THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 
 
 regarded as a friend and consulted as a man of 
 business even by those who regretted his dissent 
 and wished his politics at the bottom of the sea. 
 
 In the humbler orbit of their social life, the 
 wife and mother of this family enjoyed an equal 
 popularity and an even warmer love. Whereas 
 the man was big, capacious, and expansive, she 
 was minute, quiet, tender, and sympathetic — a 
 little mouse of a woman whose brown eyes and 
 appealing smile did not in the least conceal the 
 vigour of a quick intelligence and the masterful- 
 ness of an inflexible will. She was famous in 
 the circle of her acquaintance as a woman of 
 p ar t s — an excellent manager, a fine needle- 
 woman, a successful gardener, and the possessor 
 of unequalled recipes for puddings and cakes. 
 Moreover she was known to her intimates as a 
 woman of the shrewdest judgment, and as a 
 relentless enemy of sentimentalism, humbug, 
 equivocation, and fiddle-faddle of every kind and 
 description. 
 
 There were three children of the marriage, 
 two girls and a boy. At the hands of their 
 father they received every indulgence. Under 
 the more constant governance of the mother they 
 were trained with a noble severity and a right- 
 eous economy. The child of whom this story 
 tells never felt for the kind and indulgent father 
 anything like the same enthusiastic admiration 
 which she entertained towards the sterner mother. 
 
THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 97 
 
 This child, writing to me now as a middle- 
 aged woman, and after one of the most terrible 
 experiences that can befall a human creature, 
 says that the home-life, as she remembers it, 
 was quiet and regular, knowing nothing either 
 of excitation or depression. Her mother had 
 grown up in the strictest principles of a stern 
 sect, and governed her own home on the same 
 lines. " We went regularly to chapel, attended 
 Sunday School from a very early age, and were 
 not allowed to engage in any doubtful amuse- 
 ments, such as card-playing, theatricals, or danc- 
 ing. We were taught * to fear God and keep 
 His commandments,' but never once were we 
 taught to understand that love of God, leading to 
 a willing and happy obedience, is the true life 
 of a Christian. As for the intellectual tone of 
 the home, it was fairly cultured, above the 
 average of that time in middle-class circles. My 
 father was a keen politician, and made me read 
 the parliamentary debates to him; my sister was 
 intelligent and well-read; my brother was clever, 
 musical, and very attractive — for many years 
 he was my highest ideal of manhood. " A sym- 
 pathetic reader will be able to form for himself 
 the picture of this family's sitting-room on a 
 winter-night — the father reading his newspaper 
 on one side of the hearthrug, the little mother 
 busy with needle and thread on the other, a 
 long-haired, " very attractive " youth standing 
 
98 THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 
 
 at the piano, one sister playing his accompani- 
 ment, the other sister glancing from her book, 
 as she turns the page, at the handsome 
 brother, texts on the wall, a wire flower-stand 
 with plants in the bow window, a clean hearth, 
 nothing out of place, and curtains drawn to 
 keep out the night and muffle the moan of the 
 wind. 
 
 Who will think that a family of such un- 
 interesting prosperity and such Hebraic notions 
 of the gift of life, could be haunted by a ghost, 
 could have a skeleton locked away in the cup- 
 board, could have a spectre standing in the midst 
 of them, between the human hearth and the 
 curtained window? Who would suppose that 
 this little circle of human commonplace, this 
 little group of dull goodness and mechanical 
 respectability, were living under the black im- 
 pending shadow of desolation and death, were 
 to be scattered like chaff before the wind, were 
 to be stricken with a sword of fire, were to be 
 plunged into the abyss of degradation? Who 
 could suppose, to see them gathered there in 
 warm security and comfortable ease, so united in 
 family affection, so secluded from the heat and 
 glare of temptation, so unlikely to feei the sweep 
 of deep emotion or the dizzying rush of passion — 
 that in the blood of every one of them, save 
 only the mother busy with her needle and thread, 
 was such a poison, such a taint, such a furious 
 
THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 99 
 
 madness as would one day rend their souls and 
 tear their bodies like the demons of old? 
 
 The spectre in the room was the ghost of the 
 man's father, and one can imagine how the ghost 
 trembled and shook with a guilty palsy of re- 
 morse when the man rose from his chair and 
 went to the decanter and glasses on the table. . . . 
 
 In those days medical knowledge had not 
 penetrated to general society; and medical knowl- 
 edge of what we now understand by the term 
 dipsomania had not advanced to any warrant- 
 able certainty even among the most thorough of 
 investigators. That the thing called dipsomania 
 was entirely different from drunkenness had not 
 entered the consciousness of mankind, nor was 
 it generally believed that a child could inherit 
 from its parents an overmastering and insatiable 
 passion for alcohol. Therefore even the watch- 
 ful and devoted mother of this family, who knew 
 that their grandfather had died a drunkard's 
 death, who knew that their father made an 
 increasing use of the decanter, who knew that 
 several of their cousins were already on the road 
 of alcoholic ruin, who could see wherever she 
 looked that the thing was in the family, spreading 
 like a hideous cancer among all the descendants 
 of the dead grandfather in his drunkard's grave, 
 never thought that her children, trained to fear 
 God and keep His commandments, taken regu- 
 larly to chapel and sent from their earliest years 
 
100 THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 
 
 to Sunday School, could fall to perdition and 
 become like maniacs through drink. 
 
 So they grew up, unsuspected and unwarned; 
 and childhood passed away, youth came, and 
 the dawn of independence found them still happy 
 and united, still living in the sunshine of pros- 
 perity, and still, in the eyes of all their neigh- 
 bours, an enviable and pattern family exemplify- 
 ing the proverbs of respectability and justifying 
 the commercial wisdom of the middle-classes. 
 
 The youngest daughter was at this time the 
 most active worker of the family in religious 
 matters. She taught in the Sunday School, vis- 
 ited what is called a tract district, and took a 
 leading part in the organisation of religious meet- 
 ings. It was just at this period that the great 
 temperance movement, of which we are only now 
 beginning to see the harvest, came into existence, 
 and greeted by the scorn, derision, and contempt 
 of mankind set itself to fight a disease far more 
 deadly than tuberculosis. A local society was 
 formed in the town where this family lived, and 
 the youngest daughter joined it — against the 
 wishes of her mother. It was pointed out to her 
 by this good mother that she had always been 
 used to wine, that for some years she had regu- 
 larly taken stout on the advice of the doctor, and 
 that suddenly to break this habit and discontinue 
 this treatment was to imperil her health. The 
 girl, however, stuck to her point, and, having 
 
THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 101 
 
 learned something of temperance reform, began 
 to perceive the possibility of inherited danger 
 in the case of herself and her family. She placed 
 herself at the head of a local Band of Hope, and 
 was one of the most devoted temperance re- 
 formers in the district. 
 
 For ten years she was a devout Christian, 
 according to her lights, and certainly a most en- 
 ergetic, painstaking, and earnest worker in the 
 religious life of her native place. Then, when 
 she was about eight-and-twenty, a change came 
 over her character. She grew cold and indiffer- 
 ent in the religious life. Private prayer was 
 neglected, if she read the Bible it was hurriedly 
 and impatiently to " get up " a lesson for Sunday 
 School, if she went to chapel it was only because 
 of appearances. During this time there were 
 occasions when the father startled and saddened 
 the family by drunkenness. 
 
 The religious crisis lasted with her for nearly 
 four years. Now and then a sermon more earnest 
 and searching than usual would stir a faint desire 
 in her heart for the peace and happiness which 
 she had known in the past; but more and more 
 dimly did the light burn in her soul, until at 
 last, deliberately and consciously, she abandoned 
 aspiration and relinquished every effort to be- 
 lieve. " I settled down," she says, " to a life of 
 conscious hypocrisy/' 
 
 I would sooner find a definition for any word 
 
102 THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 
 
 in the dictionary than for this one word, 
 " hypocrisy." Fear of hypocrisy has certainly 
 been a cause of ruin to many souls more sensitive 
 on the score of their own personal honour than 
 regardful of public opinion. To pretend to be 
 good is often the best ladder a soul can find 
 from the pit of perdition. To sin in secret is 
 one way of acknowledging to oneself that sin 
 is shameful. To be mindful of the censure of 
 neighbours is one way of confessing to oneself 
 the sovereignty of conscience. How many men 
 have been won ultimately to purity by keeping 
 themselves aloof from the company of honest 
 sinners, and by hiding their falls from the com- 
 pany of virtuous people with whom they asso- 
 ciated ? And how many men have gone headlong 
 to corruption and desolation by forsaking the 
 society of the good and abandoning the pretence 
 of virtue, out of disgust and fear for the name 
 of hypocrite? "The road to heaven," said a 
 friend of Edward FitzGerald, " is made up of 
 resolutions made, broken, and renewed." To 
 break a good resolution secretly, privately, and 
 with shame, seems to argue a finer nature and a 
 more sensitive spirit than to break it publicly and 
 recklessly. In each case, mark you, it is coward- 
 ice of public opinion which determines the course 
 of action — the one man is afraid of the censure 
 of the good, the other of the ridicule of the 
 bad. 
 
THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 103 
 
 But this woman insists with a piercing contri- 
 tion that she was a conscious and deliberate 
 hypocrite. It is her hypocrisy that causes her 
 greater distress of soul than anything else in 
 her tragic life. She cannot bear to think about 
 it even now; the memory of it bows her head 
 and brings tears to eyes which have long learned 
 to shine with the most beautiful happiness; — 
 " I settled down," she says, " to a life of con- 
 scious hypocrisy, for I had not the courage to 
 avow the change in my heart." 
 
 Outwardly she maintained her Christian stand- 
 ing — taught in the Sunday School, led the Band 
 of Hope meetings, visited her tract district, regu- 
 larly attended class meetings, and regularly was 
 present at Communion. She did not dare to tell 
 her mother that faith had disappeared from her 
 heart; she did not dare to set the neighbours 
 talking by giving up her work and absenting 
 herself from Communion. She believed nothing. 
 Nevertheless she marched in the ranks of those 
 who believed everything. 
 
 Her bodily strength began to give way, and 
 under the stress of this physical exhaustion she 
 broke her pledge : " I took at first only a tiny 
 drop, when my physical strength seemed unequal 
 to the demand upon it; after a time it grew to 
 be a regular habit, but still I kept within the 
 bounds of temperance and all seemed safe. My 
 friends at home rejoiced to see how reasonable 
 
104. THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 
 
 I had grown, for they had always objected to 
 my total abstinence/' 
 
 Things were in this perilous condition when 
 the storm broke. It began by the decay of the 
 father's power and his surrender to alcoholism. 
 The prosperity of the home became clouded and 
 overcast. The brother who had married and 
 was living in London became at this time a victim 
 of drink, and lost his employment. The sister 
 who had been married some years and was the 
 mother of children, suddenly fell under the same 
 curse. In the midst of all this sorrow came the 
 news that the man to whom the youngest daugh- 
 ter was engaged, to whom she was passionately 
 attached and earnestly devoted, had been taken 
 seriously ill and was lying at death's door. A 
 few weeks of agonising suspense, and then the 
 deepest darkness of all for her despairing 
 heart. 
 
 It was this cataclysm of tragedy that swept 
 away the soul of the woman and crushed it to 
 the earth. She had gone out as a governess 
 at the first signs of her lather's failing health, 
 and for some years had been helping to support 
 the family. Now, with the complete downfall 
 of her father, the sudden catastrophe to the 
 affections of her heart, the fall of her brother, 
 and the wreck of her sister, she felt herself so 
 stricken and hopeless that she gave herself to 
 drink. No longer to support physical exhaustion, 
 
THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 105 
 
 but deliberately to drown anguish and misery, 
 she drank deeply, regularly, and with cunning. 
 
 Her condition was to become worse. The 
 financial peril of her family impelled her into 
 crime. Her mother was in direst need of money; 
 she held in her hands a sum of money entrusted 
 to her by her employers during their absence 
 from home; instead of discharging the liabilities 
 of housekeeping week by week, she let the bills 
 accumulate and sent the money home. No sooner 
 had she taken this step than she imagined herself 
 in danger of arrest and imprisonment. She 
 started at sudden sounds, trembled at the ring of 
 a bell, feared every letter that arrived from her 
 employers. 
 
 "What fortitude the soul contains 
 That it can so endure 
 The accent of a coming foot, 
 The opening of a door ! " 
 
 It was useless now for her to struggle against 
 the temptation of drink. To drink was neces- 
 sary. Life was impossible without it. And while 
 she sat drinking in her bedroom, her brain was 
 busy with a hundred terrifying imaginations, 
 destructive of will power. She felt herself para- 
 lysed and doomed. Like a rat in a trap, like a 
 fly in a spider's web, like a lamb in a slaughter- 
 house, she waited for the sure end. It would 
 come, she thought, suddenly and unexpectedly. 
 
106 THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 
 
 The husband would return from abroad on a 
 matter of business, and ask to see the tradesmen's 
 books. The tradesmen might have hinted sus- 
 picions to the servants and they might have 
 written in secret to the mistress, and already the 
 police might have been told to arrest her. What 
 would become of her? No one would believe 
 that she had only intended to borrow the money, 
 that she had meant to pay it back, that it was 
 not upon herself she had spent it. 
 
 She set herself to raise money as quickly as 
 possible in order to pay back the embezzled sum. 
 It was a difficult task. She could borrow from 
 friends, she could sell some of her possessions, 
 but the sum was a large one and her resources 
 were limited. In the midst of this agonising 
 experience, when she must have been on the very 
 verge of distraction, the news came of her father's 
 death. 
 
 At the last moment, when detection would have 
 been unavoidable, she received an unexpected 
 sum of money which enabled her to make up 
 the criminal deficiency. Bat this piece of fortune 
 could not relieve a mind which was now plunged 
 again into fresh despair by her father's death. 
 The tragedy of the ruined home drew the blinds 
 on every window of her soul. She could see 
 nothing outside herself; and within she was con- 
 scious only of darkness and doom. 
 
 Worse things were yet to, come upon her. 
 
THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 107 
 
 Not very long after her father's death, the news 
 came that her sister had now become so hope- 
 lessly a dipsomaniac that the doctor had advised 
 her husband to seek a separation and to obtain 
 control of the children. Of the once handsome 
 and idealised brother the only news that came 
 told of a deeper descent into destitution and 
 misery. 
 
 She was now in a fresh situation as governess, 
 living in London, and keeping her mother in 
 humble apartments close to the place of her resi- 
 dence. One of her pupils was a girl of sixteen 
 with an evil mind, a prurient curiosity in men 
 which led her into behaviour out-of-doors hor- 
 ribly shocking to the poor dipsomaniac. On two 
 or three occasions she had to speak peremptorily 
 to this girl. An enmity was established between 
 them. Once, when the parents were away and 
 she was in sole authority, there came a conflict 
 between her and the pupil which ended in crisis. 
 The mother returned in a hurry. On one side 
 was the statement of the governess, on the other 
 the indignant denial of a lying daughter, sup- 
 ported by suborned servants and the clamorous 
 testimony of the other children. It was not un- 
 natural that the mother decided against the 
 governess. 
 
 She was now in that mood when it seems the 
 whole world is against us. She tried not to 
 drink, and for some weeks she was able to do 
 
108 THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 
 
 entirely without it; but in the end the craving 
 had its way with her, and she drank steadily for 
 days together. 
 
 The saddest blow of all came at this time. 
 The brother whom she had adored in the happy 
 days of childhood, and who still had an affection- 
 ate place in her heart, put an end to himself after 
 realising that the dipsomaniac is beyond the reach 
 of human salvation. 
 
 Can you imagine a situation more charged with 
 disaster and despair? Here was this woman, 
 out of work, living in semi-poverty with a penni- 
 less mother, knowing that her sister had been 
 pronounced an incurable dipsomaniac, knowing 
 that her brother had destroyed himself through 
 dipsomania, and knowing better than she knew 
 anything else on earth that she herself had the 
 same poison burning in her blood; — what could 
 come of such a situation but ruin and death? 
 
 She went one day to stay with some friends 
 living in another quarter of London, from whom 
 she hoped to hear of employment. They said 
 to her one evening, " Hugh Price Hughes is 
 preaching at our chapel to-night, would you care 
 to hear him? " More to please these friends and 
 to keep up an appearance of interest in religion, 
 she expressed her desire to go with them. 
 
 She has quite forgotten what was the text of 
 that sermon, or what was the nature of its appeal, 
 but she tells me that it had a most startling and 
 
THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 109 
 
 dismaying effect upon her soul. " It was as if," 
 she says, " he knew my whole story, knew the 
 frightful corruption and hypocrisy of my heart, 
 and was holding up a mirror before me, and 
 saying — 'Look at yourself! this is how you 
 appear in the sight of God, this is what you are! ' 
 I shall never forget the sense of guiltiness which 
 came over me. It was the first time I knew 
 myself intimately to be what I was. It made 
 me vile in my own eyes, and afraid — terribly 
 afraid." 
 
 She was greatly troubled by this sermon, but 
 for so long had she masked her secret self from 
 the gaze of the world that she was able to hide 
 the present disquiet from her friends. That night 
 she lay sleepless for many aching hours, not 
 tortured by a craving for drink, but agonised 
 by bitterest self-knowledge. Hitherto there had 
 hung between her consciousness and her soul 
 a curtain of cloud, a net of twilight, a film of 
 shadows; she had been moving like one in a 
 dream; things had looked at her through a mist 
 and she had touched life as it were with gloved 
 hands. But now in a white light she saw the 
 image of her inmost self steadily regarding her 
 from the mirror of her conduct. She was aware 
 of life with a sharp reality. She was conscious 
 of God with fear. 
 
 So violent and complete was this awakening 
 that she could not rest. It was necessary to act. 
 
110 THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 
 
 She felt herself forced towards the man who 
 had shown her the reflection of her own soul. 
 She must go to him, and say, " I am what you 
 told me I am: tell me now how I can make 
 myself what I am not: you have awakened me, 
 it must be you who can transform me." 
 
 On the following morning she made an excuse 
 to her friends and set out to discover the resi- 
 dence of Hugh Price Hughes. He was living in 
 Taviton Street, from which address he so long 
 and so splendidly organised the great crusade 
 of the West London Mission. At the door she 
 hesitated and shrank, but her need was great; 
 she summoned up courage to ring the bell. She 
 was conducted to an empty room. As she stood 
 there, waiting in unbroken silence, the horror 
 of her situation struck her like a blow. The 
 handle of that door would soon turn, a man 
 would enter, " You wish to see me?" he would 
 say, and he would look at her, and wait for her 
 to speak. Could she tell him in cold blood all 
 the darkness and vileness of her heart? 
 
 The door opened. A lady entered. 
 
 Something of relief entered the heart of the 
 distracted woman. She was reprieved. There 
 would be no need to confess. 
 
 " My husband is very busy, he sends you his 
 apologies; can I take him a message, or is there 
 anything that I can do ? " 
 
 It has been well said, " The Saviour of the 
 
THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 111 
 
 world laid a cool hand upon the brow of humanity 
 as it throbbed with multitudinous impulses, and 
 by a miracle more admirable than that of the 
 Galilean lake, calmed the spiritual tempest into 
 the peace of God." It is the same with those fine 
 and exquisite souls who have most deeply pos- 
 sessed themselves of the secret of their Master; 
 a calm issues from these happy ones like the 
 breath of the dawn, one is conscious in them 
 of an emanation like the serenity of quiet water, 
 they hush the tempest and rebuke the tumult 
 of our hearts by the tranquillity that dwells in 
 their eyes and the peace that lives upon their 
 lips. 
 
 The poor sinner felt herself drawn by an 
 irresistible attraction towards that gentle, sweet- 
 faced, kindly woman, who regarded her with a 
 wistful inquiry, whose voice sounded like a caress, 
 who still held her hand, as if she knew how great 
 and terrible the need for help. In a moment the 
 flood-gates of her soul were opened, the pent 
 waters of agony and remorse, black with sin 
 and heaving with despair, poured like a frenzied 
 cataract into the light of day, and all her shame 
 and ancient reticence were swept away like broken 
 spars and shattered stakes on this tide of un- 
 imaginable misery which sought only to lose itself 
 in the ocean of love. All that she had been, all 
 that she was, all that she had done, all that she 
 feared she must do again and again till the 
 
11* THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 
 
 end of her life — everything in her heart and 
 mind, uttered itself in the accents of a soul's 
 despair, sparing nothing, hiding nothing, excusing 
 nothing. 
 
 And while she spoke she was conscious through 
 her tears of calm eyes and lips of serenity, of 
 a soul which stood outside the tempest of her 
 mind, and which regarded her with pity and 
 affection. 
 
 What was there to say? She had confessed 
 herself a hypocrite, acknowledged herself a thief, 
 stigmatised herself a drunkard. What hope 
 would the kindest and ablest of doctors have 
 given to this woman of over thirty years of age, 
 whose grandfather and father were in drunkard's 
 graves, whose brother had destroyed himself be- 
 cause of dipsomania, whose sister was separated 
 from her husband as a dipsomaniac, and who 
 confessed herself with pitiable self-reproach and 
 self-despair as powerless to resist the driving 
 fury of her craving? 
 
 The answer made by Mrs. Price Hughes ~to 
 this sad and terrible confeosion was a very old 
 one, but one that science does not even yet recog- 
 nise as a cure either for dipsomania or for a 
 broken heart. She recommended no drugs, she 
 mentioned the reputation of no hypnotist. She 
 told the miserable and despairing woman that 
 the love of God is tender and infinite, that the 
 power of Christ is without bounds, and that the 
 
THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 113 
 
 love of God and the power of Christ descend 
 into the heart of a sinner on the stair of supplica- 
 tion. 
 
 She was not shocked by the story of the 
 penitent, never once did she show signs of dis- 
 gust or impatience; she understood all that was 
 said, and all that was left unsaid, and at the end 
 she declared the certainty of her conviction that 
 help would come, that there was help. " I beg 
 you to believe," she pleaded, " that God is not 
 only ready to help you, but is eager to save you." 
 
 They prayed together; but the poor woman 
 went away with darkness in her heart. She had 
 made a friend, she was touched by the nobility 
 and loving-kindness of this friend, and she felt 
 that if help did come it would be through her; 
 but she had no faith, she looked for no miracle, 
 and she saw no light. 
 
 Again and again she visited the house in 
 Taviton Street. On one of these visits she con- 
 fessed that she still drank. " I had not thought," 
 she writes to me, " that I was in danger from 
 the moderate amount I was then drinking; but 
 after much persuasion from Mrs. Hughes I again 
 signed the pledge, and the awful struggles I had, 
 to be true to my promise, revealed to me the 
 danger I had been in and the terrible hold love 
 of drink had upon me. At this point I am con- 
 vinced that nothing but my love for dear Mrs. 
 Hughes, and my terror of disappointing her, 
 
114 THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 
 
 kept me from yielding to the temptation which 
 again and again assailed me. There was still 
 darkness in my soul, nothing but a grim resolve 
 not to yield and still to pray. I never, never can 
 forget the agony of those long months of weary, 
 hopeless groping in the dark — battling all the 
 while with the fierce desire to drown my sorrow 
 in drink. One night, while watching by the 
 sickbed of my mother, the smell of brandy 
 ordered for her almost overcame my resolution; 
 I actually did rise to pour some out, but as I did 
 so I caught sight of Mrs. Hughes's photograph 
 standing on the table, and I could not disappoint 
 her." 
 
 Since she wrote these words I have met her, 
 and she has told me more fully than it was 
 possible to write the nature of her sufferings. 
 If you can imagine what it would be for a man 
 consumed by hunger to see surrounding him on 
 every side and within reach of his hands, the 
 very food he most desired but must not eat 
 because of a promise — you may have some notion 
 in your mind of the torment suffered by this 
 woman. She was sometimes brought to the edge 
 of madness. Never a hunted creature pursued 
 by hounds of death suffered as she did at this 
 time. 
 
 She arrived one day before Mrs. Price Hughes 
 full of despair. She had prayed, she said, but 
 no answer had come. " It was just as if," she 
 
THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 115 
 
 said to me, " I had been praying to brazen skies; 
 I felt that the whole universe was full of silence; 
 that heaven was empty. I told Mrs. Hughes 
 what I felt — how I had gone on praying, how 
 I had struggled and was still struggling to keep 
 my pledge, and how I believed that my hypocrisy 
 had sinned me out of God's mercy, and that He 
 would not listen to my prayer. I spoke rather 
 bitterly, almost angrily — for I felt myself quite 
 at the end of my strength. But more than bit- 
 terness and anger, I was conscious of a drowning 
 despair. I felt everything giving way beneath 
 me. I could feel ruin and degradation closing 
 about me. I thought it was useless to go on 
 trying. When I had finished speaking, Mrs. 
 Hughes looked at me very tenderly, but very 
 sadly, and said in her quiet, earnest way, with 
 that haunting voice of hers full of a gentle re- 
 buke : ' Well, dear, I can do no more for you. 
 It is useless for me to say any more. You know 
 all I have got to tell you.' Then she added, with 
 a sudden energy : ' I can't think why you don't 
 respond. There is your Saviour, standing quite 
 close to you, stretching out loving, pleading hands 
 to you, longing to save you — and you turn away 
 and won't believe Him. If you turn away from 
 Him, how can / help you ? ' It is not easy for 
 me to tell you what happened. Before she had 
 finished speaking I saw Christ, just as she had 
 described Him. A great tumult took place in 
 
116 THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 
 
 my mind. It was like a crashing of masonry. 
 There was no joy, and no peace, but an absolute 
 certainty. I knew that my Redeemer lived. I 
 knew that He desired to save me. I knew that 
 I had only to trust Him and He would save me. 
 I clutched Mrs. Hughes's arm, and clung to her 
 with a kind of frantic terror. She told me after- 
 wards that the clutch of my hand hurt her arm 
 for many days; I was like one possessed — not 
 outwardly, though I was trembling, but in my 
 soul, where I was conscious of God. All I could 
 do was to cling to Mrs. Hughes, and wait for 
 the tempest in my soul to go. You see, the dawn 
 had come not as it comes in England, tranquilly 
 and slowly, but as it comes in the tropics, sud- 
 denly and at once, with a complete glory. I was 
 certain. Afterwards there was joy and a great 
 peace, but then, at that wonderful moment, every- 
 thing in my soul and body centred in the single 
 idea of absolute certainty. There was a God. 
 There was a Christ. There was forgiveness for 
 sin, and strength to withstand temptation. Like 
 a flash the light had come. I saw how I was 
 wronging my Lord, and piercing His loving heart, 
 and at that moment the struggle and strife 
 ended. I laid down my burden of sorrow and 
 shame at His feet. I felt myself forgiven. I 
 almost fainted under the revulsion of feeling, and 
 what I really said or did I cannot tell." 
 
 One is aware that scepticism will feel itself 
 
THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 117 
 
 quite able to explain away this vision. It was 
 not objective; it was subjective. It was not a 
 fact; it was a phantasm. The same explanation 
 serves for the vision of St. Paul. But here the 
 most superstitious of Christians may be pardoned 
 a little judicious scepticism. Is one seriously 
 asked to believe that hallucination gave birth to 
 the Gospel to the Gentiles, and that Christendom 
 has its foundations in the purely subjective 
 phantasm of a solitary missionary? This is 
 surely history from Bedlam. Moreover, if the 
 vision be accepted as subjective; if one agrees 
 that no objective and exterior figure stood before 
 the soul either of Saul or of this poor penitent 
 of later days; if one owns that other eyes would 
 have seen nothing, that the vision was purely 
 interior and secret — one does not do away with 
 miracle, does not make the vision false. To 
 manifest oneself to the eye of sense does not 
 seem so great a thing as to manifest oneself to 
 the eye of the soul. A phenomenon to the spirit- 
 ual apprehension is no less a miracle than a 
 phenomenon to the physical organism. Let it be 
 said that it was the thought of Christ striking 
 suddenly on the consciousness of this woman 
 which led her to imagine that she actually beheld 
 the Figure of her Lord; even so, the manifesta- 
 tion may have been supernatural and divine. 
 Why should that not be the method of God? 
 The only test of a vision is its consequence. 
 
118 THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 
 
 < 
 
 We can never determine the nature of these ap- 
 pearances, or satisfactorily explain the character 
 of these experiences; but we can judge by their 
 effect upon those who assert them whether they 
 are worthy of reverence or contempt. 
 
 Science has declared emphatically that dip- 
 somania (not drunkenness) is an incurable 
 disease. Only a few weeks ago I was discussing 
 this subject with one of the best physicians of 
 the day who has made a particular study of the 
 question. He told me that no dipsomaniac can 
 be cured. He declared it as a dogma that the 
 will of the dipsomaniac is powerless against his 
 obsession; for weeks, for months even, he may 
 strive — but the end is inevitable. Without ex- 
 pressing any opinion on the nature of reli- 
 gious conversions, he said that conversion or 
 hypnotism might certainly cure drunkenness, 
 but that no power on earth could cure dipso- 
 mania. 
 
 Now, what must be the order of a vision which 
 cures a disease, a madness, pronounced by science 
 to be incurable? What must we think of a 
 phantasm, an hallucination, a nothing, which 
 produces in a human being an effect declared by 
 science to be impossible? If science is right in 
 saying that these visions are hysterical and 
 hallucinatory, surely science is also right in say- 
 ing that dipsomania is incurable. But if we come 
 upon a dipsomaniac who is not only cured, but 
 
THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 119 
 
 cured by a vision, may we not justly think that 
 the science which declares the malady to be in- 
 curable may be wrong in supposing the vision 
 to be imaginary ? 
 
 Follow the rest of this woman's story and 
 decide with an honest judgment — the hardest 
 thing to come by — whether there was divinity 
 or hysteria in her vision. 
 
 Nearly twenty years have passed away since 
 she saw that vision of the Saviour of the world. 
 They have been years of many sorrows and many 
 trials; they have been spent in the East under a 
 burning sky; they have been devoted to the hard 
 and often heartbreaking work of teaching heathen 
 people to understand the beauty of the Christian 
 Idea ; and with my hand on my heart I can avow 
 that from this once harried and broken woman 
 incomparable blessing has flowed into hundreds 
 of human hearts, that happier and brighter 
 woman I have seldom met, that purer heart and 
 nobler disposition I have seldom encountered, that 
 better Christian and truer disciple I have never 
 known. 
 
 But there is a degree of truth in what science 
 has to say about dipsomania. For fourteen years 
 after her illumination this good and noble woman 
 was assailed from time to time by an almost 
 irresistible temptation to drink. These terrible 
 assaults, which often prostrated her, would come 
 suddenly and in the most unexpected and difficult 
 
120 THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 
 
 situations. She has been torn with the passion, 
 suddenly and with a ghastly ferocity, at the 
 service of Communion; the touch of fermented 
 wine at her lips has been sufficient to revive all 
 the madness of her longing; she has had to flee 
 for her life from the highest sacrament of her 
 religion. It would seem that the vision did not 
 supplant her poisoned will with another, but en- 
 dowed that tampered and corrupted will with an 
 Idea gradually creating an increasing power of 
 resistance. 1 She has suffered under all these 
 assaults grievously and quite horribly, but never 
 once with the old despair, never once with a loss 
 of faith in God's power to help her. And now 
 for nearly six years she has been entirely im- 
 mune. She is rejoicing in this deliverance and 
 is quietly hopeful that the dark days are over and 
 past for ever; but she is watchful and prayerful, 
 knowing that even if temptation should return 
 there is a power which can save her, but that 
 only by prayer — which is aspiration winged by 
 faith — can that power co-operate with the human 
 will. 
 
 She has told me of fits of melancholy which 
 seized upon her from time to time long after her 
 vision. She would hear a voice telling her that 
 whatever she might now pretend or hope to be, 
 she had once descended to depths of shame, and 
 had been a hypocrite, dishonest, and a drunkard. 
 1 See Note D. at end of book. 
 
THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 121 
 
 lAt such periods she would always be assailed 
 by a maddening temptation " to drown remem- 
 brance in strong drink." " It seemed sometimes," 
 she wrote to me, " that I would give my very 
 soul for one draught. I have again and again 
 gone out from the room, when brandy has been 
 in use, for I dared not trust myself near it. One 
 night I threw a nearly full bottle out of the 
 bedroom window, and only thus saved myself 
 from yielding. These depths of dread and 
 despair even now make me shudder to recall 
 them, and it seems to me impossible to make 
 another human soul understand or realise them, 
 unless indeed by a similar experience. During a 
 severe attack of influenza, one of my fellow 
 missionaries, thinking only to soothe my cough, 
 brought me an egg emulsion into which some 
 spirit had been put. Without a thought I drank 
 some, and then recognised the taste. Even that 
 tiny taste roused the latent desire, and God only 
 knows what I suffered for some days after. But 
 I can truly say ' Thanks be to God, which giveth 
 us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ.' 
 Do you wonder that my love to Him is so deep 
 and strong ? " 
 
 It is upon this personal love of her soul that 
 I must insist, for here and nowhere else is the 
 machinery of the miracle and the attestation of 
 Divinity. Through a long night she cried with 
 agonised entreaty: 
 
122 THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 
 
 "Wilt Thou not make, Eternal Source and Goal! 
 In Thy long years, life's broken circle whole, 
 And change to praise the cry of a lost soul?" 
 
 And the dawn came; she saw the morning light; 
 and now, in the words of her favourite poet, she 
 thus expresses the joy and certainty and peace 
 of her faith: 
 
 " I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground 
 Ye tread with boldness shod; 
 I dare not fix with mete and bound 
 The love and power of God. 
 
 I see the wrong that round me lies, 
 
 I feel the guilt within; 
 I hear, with groan and travail-cries, 
 
 The world confess its sin. 
 
 Yet in the maddening maze of things, 
 And tossed by storm and flood, 
 
 To one fixed trust my spirit clings; 
 I know that God is good! 
 
 And Thou, O Lord! by whom are seen 
 
 Thy creatures as they be, 
 Forgive me if too close I lean 
 
 My human heart on Thee ! " 
 
 This blind faith in the power of an invisible 
 God, and this profound love for a personal Christ, 
 is unintelligible to scepticism. But from the 
 dawn of history has there not been a groping of 
 human hands into the darkness and mystery of 
 Existence, and has there not always been a long- 
 
THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 123 
 
 ing of the human heart to love something higher 
 than itself? Are we to take no account of these 
 aspirations, which have coloured the whole orb 
 of human history and given to the life evolved 
 from the cell all its poetry, all its beauty, and 
 all its sublimity? Because Darwinism cannot 
 account for Beauty and Music and Mathematics, 
 are we to regard these things as superstitious, 
 hallucinatory, and unworthy of a man's regard? 
 Is George Stephenson a reality, and Shakespeare 
 a phantasm? Are we to set our affections on 
 Pasteur and Lister and Marconi, and not on 
 Michaelangelo, Wordsworth, and St. Augustine? 
 How many will be left of the immortals if we 
 strike out the name of every man who, like the 
 great English poet, has said: 
 
 " And I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things"? 
 
 Is materialism, indeed, the way, the truth, and 
 the life? Has it overlooked nothing, examined 
 everything, and explained all ? Are we to believe 
 that the vast legions of humanity which have 
 
124 THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 
 
 passed across this globe affirming that God an- 
 swers prayer, that Christ has visited their hearts, 
 and that they are assured of a life beyond the 
 grave — are we to believe that this great and 
 glorious host was but a phantom army, follow- 
 ing a Chimsera, deluded and deluding? Surely 
 it would be well for modern scepticism to aban- 
 don this colossal arrogance out of mere modesty, 
 to become, if it is possible, " as unassuming as 
 Socrates," and to bring itself to that condition 
 of realism wherein one is able to perceive that 
 the soul of St. Paul, the heart of Shakespeare, and 
 the mind of Milton are as greatly and as truly 
 facts of existence as atoms in metals, corpuscles 
 in blood, and fossils in rocks. 
 
 For nearly two thousand years men and 
 women of high intelligence and great range of 
 feeling have professed their conviction that God 
 answers prayer and that Christ confers blessing. 
 They have persisted in these affirmations against 
 the obstruction of the world, in the face of 
 disaster, and amidst the derision of scepticism. 
 And from the lives of these men and women have 
 come the highest ideals and purest poetry of 
 human existence. 
 
 Here in our own day we have a witness to this 
 ancient faith. A woman marked out by destiny 
 for a terrible destruction, becomes through the 
 love and tenderness of a Christ-minded friend, 
 healed of an incurable affliction, transformed 
 
THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 1525 
 
 from misery and dejection to happiness and 
 ecstasy, and gives herself with an ever-increasing 
 satisfaction of soul to the work of this same 
 Christ, so improbable and unreal to the dark 
 mind of infidelity. Suppose that she, too, had 
 embraced the agnosticism of materialism — what 
 must have been her fate ? And do not the nobility 
 of her life, the luminous brightness of her soul, 
 and the fervent gratitude of her heart, convince 
 us even more than the miracle of her healing 
 that she is following no ghost and worshipping 
 no Phantasm? Is joy the child of hysteria, and 
 nothingness the cause of peace? 
 
 She has given me a book of Whittier's poems, 
 and her pen has traced lines of emphasis under 
 certain of the verses which express her aspira- 
 tion and her view of the Christian life. Con- 
 sider the purity and peace of a soul which after 
 such a tempest as she has known can settle itself 
 in these words and live them in her life : 
 
 " If there be some weaker one, 
 Give me strength to help him on; 
 If a blinder soul there be, 
 Let me guide him nearer Thee. 
 
 • • • • 
 
 Clothe with life the weak intent, 
 Let me be the thing I meant." 
 
 I would it were in my power to breathe into 
 these pages the sweet mirth and happy bright- 
 ness of this soul which was once plunged deep 
 
126 THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 
 
 into the abyss of dejection. I wish that I could 
 give to these last words something of the spell 
 and fragrance of her character, something of 
 that blithe and buoyant gladness, which shines 
 in her. eyes, sounds in her voice, and communi- 
 cates itself in all the thousand kindnesses which 
 make her busy life. For it is the happiness of 
 her soul which seems to me the most compelling 
 proof of the miracle. She is so cheerful, even 
 so merry; so gracious and pleasant; so delighted 
 by the simplest happiness of others, so devoted 
 to children, and so happy in their mirth — that 
 one is tempted to doubt, not the miracle, but the 
 madness and the melancholy which once all but 
 destroyed her. Is it not a beautiful thought that 
 this woman is especially loved by children, and 
 that her influence for good in the East is chiefly 
 among young girls who learn from her the story 
 of Christ and who adore her as a mother? Those 
 who are acquainted with children will know that 
 their affection is seldom given to the wicked and 
 never to the melancholy. 
 
 " I feel sometimes," she told me, " almost 
 overwhelmed by my consciousness of God's bless- 
 ing. That He should have saved me is mercy 
 enough, and that He should have given me work 
 to do for Him is blessing enough; but that He 
 should have given me the love of children, and 
 placed it in my hands to prepare these children 
 for His Kingdom — this overwhelms me. You 
 
THE VISION OF A LOST SOUL 127 
 
 can understand how deeply I love my Saviour, 
 and how it is, when I am quite alone after the 
 day's work, I often find my eyes full of tears and 
 my heart almost breaking with gratitude." 
 
 Among the marked verses in the book which 
 she has given me I find : 
 
 11 To Him, from wandering long and wild, 
 I come, an over-wearied child, 
 In cool and shade His peace to find 
 Like dew-fall settling on my mind." 
 
BETRAYED 
 
 AS pretty and pleasing a little girl as ever 
 began life without adequate knowledge of 
 the world passed one day from the shelter 
 of an English orphanage for the children of 
 soldiers into the very dangerous and difficult 
 experience of domestic service. 
 
 She gave every promise of growing into a 
 pure and happy womanhood. She was by nature 
 bright and intelligent; by training, industrious 
 and orderly. There was nothing at all in her 
 appearance, nothing at all in her mind, to suggest 
 the brazen face and the bold nature of a public 
 woman. It would have shocked even a man 
 of the world to think for a moment that this 
 so virtuous and so innocent-looking girl — this 
 girl whose candour, honesty, and respectability 
 showed not only in the neatness of her dress 
 and in the general note of her appearance, 
 but in the clear goodness of her eyes and the 
 modest manner of her speaking — could ever see 
 moral corruption, could ever descend to the 
 sink of iniquity, could ever illustrate the pain 
 of Shakespeare for " maiden virtue rudely 
 strumpeted." 
 
 128 
 
BETRAYED 129 
 
 But the orphanage, which had stood to her 
 for father, mother, and home, which had trained 
 her so carefully to be industrious and pains- 
 taking, which had given her a definite bent 
 towards respectability, and had distilled into her 
 mind at least something of the fragrance of re- 
 ligion, had forgotten to warn her against tempta- 
 tion by teaching her to know the realities of this 
 hard world and to expect the oppugnance of this 
 cruel life. She was full innocent in experience; 
 too innocent in knowledge. 
 
 It was the very purity and sweetness of her 
 nature which brought her headlong to a terrible 
 ruin. She trusted the man who made love to 
 her, trusted him so innocently and divinely that 
 she could think no evil of him, and when he 
 left her, and her baby was near its birth, so 
 ghastly and shattering was her disillusion that 
 she swung clean round from innocence and pur- 
 ity, and headed straight for pravity and a hopeless 
 despair. 
 
 Nothing is surer than this, that the rate of 
 a woman's progress towards profligacy is almost 
 invariably the swifter and the more despairing 
 according to the measure of her original inno- 
 cence. It is this knowledge of a woman's nature 
 which makes one understand the tremendous 
 earnestness of that awful warning written in 
 three of the gospels : " Whoso shall offend one 
 of these little ones which believe in Me, it were 
 
130 BETRAYED 
 
 better for him that a millstone were hanged 
 about his neck, and that he were drowned in 
 the depth of the sea." I invite any man dis- 
 posed to take a tolerant and casual view of 
 sin to follow in this narrative the consequences 
 of an act for which the world is most ready- 
 to make excuses and find forgiveness. Let any 
 man whose mind is poisoned by a foolish cos- 
 mopolitanism, or whose knowledge of science 
 leads him to think that " we make too much of 
 sin," answer the question when he has come to 
 the end of this true story, Is it a light thing 
 to seduce innocence, to betray faith, and to 
 destroy purity? 
 
 Because she had been so happy in her virtue 
 and good name, this girl — turned out of service 
 to have her baby born in a hospital — became 
 infinitely guilty and shameful in her own eyes. 
 She hated herself, felt in every fibre of her 
 being the smirch and scarlet of pollution, and 
 believed it hopeless and impossible that ever she 
 could be pure again. 
 
 The child died, and she stood alone in the 
 world; a girl with the brand of shame upon her 
 brow, without a friend of any kind, surrounded 
 by a righteousness which opened no door to her 
 and an iniquity which stretched from every side 
 welcoming hands. She was not only shame-full, 
 not only in despair of herself; she was also 
 bitter with cynicism. She had been betrayed. 
 
BETRAYED 131 
 
 She began the dreadfullest life to which a 
 woman can come — the easiest in every city of 
 the world for any forlorn and despairing girl — 
 almost as innocently as she had gone into domes- 
 tic service. She thought it would be possible 
 to walk about the open streets and encounter 
 some man who would provide for her and be 
 as a husband, but without the law. She had 
 no knowledge either of the great riot and luxury 
 at one end of this scale or of the awful misery 
 and destitution at the other. 
 
 It was her experience to ascend from some- 
 where in the middle of this scale of sin to its 
 mocking highest. She was young and pretty and 
 honest. She was different from most of the 
 others. The coarsest men were disposed to let 
 her alone; the less brutal were inclined to be 
 interested in her. One of these men more or 
 less fulfilled the original idea in her mind of 
 a husband outside the law. He took rooms for 
 her, provided her with money, set her in the 
 way of making a figure at music-halls and supper- 
 rooms and race-meetings. The excitement of 
 this fashionable existence gradually took pos- 
 session of her whole being — all but one little 
 corner of the conscience — and she began at last 
 to fret no longer at lost innocence or to weep 
 over the simple peace of her finished maiden- 
 hood. 
 
 She was waited upon by the daughter of her 
 
i32 BETRAYED 
 
 landlady, a little girl who was in every way 
 the opposite of that which she herself had once 
 been. This child was a veritable little slattern, 
 and impudent, and daring, and careless of all 
 authority and decency. The fashionable woman 
 of easy virtue occasionally beguiled a tedious 
 interval in her engagements by talking to this 
 little brat; she was kind to her, too, making 
 her presents of money, and sweets, and clothes; 
 very often she would say things intended to 
 warn the child against the misery and wretched- 
 ness of what must have seemed in her eyes an 
 entirely luxurious and idle life. She would very 
 gladly have made a friend of this little untidy 
 girl, but there was something hard and mocking 
 in the child's nature which always prevented 
 intimacy. 
 
 There is one relief to which these lonely 
 women, particularly the English, sooner or later 
 go for comfort and oblivion. Drink not only 
 helps them to keep up the frightful lie of a 
 "gay life"; it ministers to their hunger and 
 thirst after forgetfulness in the long hours of 
 their loneliness when memory is free to work 
 without distraction and conscience can make 
 itself heard. But it is this very means of appear- 
 ing vivacious and gay, which sooner than any- 
 thing else, sooner even than the terrible life 
 itself, dislodges them from a circumstance in 
 which it is most easy to be merry. 
 
BETRAYED 133 
 
 She began to drink in secret, and presently 
 she found herself neglected by former friends, 
 and forced to look about, sometimes very 
 anxiously, for the means of daily bread. One 
 night she was returning home from the emptying 
 midnight streets, when the Sister of the West 
 London Mission, whose uniform and purpose 
 were just becoming known to her, gave 
 her a flower, said a kind word to her, and 
 passed on when she saw that there was no 
 response. 
 
 From that day, for six years of bitterness and 
 misery, the once perfectly pure and wholesome 
 girl who might so easily but for the crime of 
 one man have been all that we reverence and 
 honour in our mothers, walked the hard streets 
 of London and descended almost to the last ex- 
 tremity of the harlot's life. Her days of pros- 
 perity were gone. The comfortable lodging, the 
 fine clothes, the fashionable appearance in the 
 box of a music-hall, the excitement of a race- 
 meeting, the gaiety of a crowded supper-room, 
 the pleasure of visits to seaside and foreign cities 
 — all were gone now, gone with the full purse 
 and the generous friends, and she was become — 
 still so young and pleasant to look upon — a walker 
 of the streets, a hunter for food, and a pariah 
 in fear of police. 
 
 If her betrayer could have seen her now, what 
 would he have felt in his heart? If he could 
 
134 BETRAYED 
 
 have seen the change in her face, all the inno- 
 cence sponged out, all the faith and childhood 
 driven from her eyes, all the kindness and purity 
 destroyed from her lips; if he could have seen 
 her accosting smile repeated a thousand times 
 backwards and forwards on the midnight streets; 
 if he could have heard her laughter in the tavern, 
 watched the reel of her steps homeward, seen the 
 tears of her misery wet upon the pillow, and 
 penetrated to the ruin and despair of her harden- 
 ing heart — would he have thought that he had 
 done a small thing, would he have said easily 
 that it is the metier of God to forgive, would 
 he have felt unafraid to meet the judgment of 
 God? 
 
 Again and again, bitterly and with many tears, 
 she lamented her life and wished to God that 
 she had never been born. But this remorse had 
 no movement towards the repentance of religion. 
 She never felt that there was pity for her in 
 heaven or that in her own poor wounded heart 
 there was possibility of love towards God. She 
 was simply sorry for having been such a fool, 
 simply angry with herself for having made such 
 a wild shipwreck of her life, simply wretched 
 and miserable because it was so difficult and 
 heartbreaking to make a living. Everything that 
 might have made her penitent and clamorous for 
 Heaven's love had been destroyed by her be- 
 trayer with the ruin of her innocence. 
 
BETRAYED 135 
 
 She was in this frame of mind when one night, 
 tired of walking up and down the crowded streets, 
 sick of looking up with forced invitation at the 
 face of every man she passed — in a frame of 
 mind no more despairing or disgustful than any 
 she had known for many a long month — the 
 poor, weary girl, making sure that no police- 
 men were about — went and stood for mere rest 
 of body in one of the doorways of Piccadilly, 
 her eyes looking up and down the street for 
 the chance of employment, her thoughts more 
 occupied with her tired body than with her 
 wretched soul. 
 
 As she stood there, a woman walking slowly 
 along the thinning pavement, suddenly paused, 
 and then quietly approached her. She was 
 dressed in a uniform and carried a single flower 
 in her hand. The girl in the doorway recog- 
 nised her by the light of the street lamp. It 
 was Sister Mildred of the West London Mission 
 — a name she had often heard in taverns and at 
 street corners, a personality of which she had 
 heard favourable gossip and one or two tales 
 which had made a slight impression on her 
 
 mind. 
 
 The Sister came close to her. " This is my 
 last flower," she said; " would you like it?' 
 The girl in the doorway took the simple gift, 
 and said, " It's six years since I was given a 
 flower." Then she added, " It's six years ago 
 
136 BETRAYED 
 
 since a respectable woman spoke to me." The 
 Sister looked at her. " Who gave you the 
 flower six years ago?" "The Sister who was 
 here before you?" "And you are still here?" 
 " Yes, still here." " You are not very happy ; 
 can I do anything for you?" "No; there's 
 nothing to be done." "Perhaps there is; think 
 about it, at any rate; you know where I am to 
 be found, don't you? — come and see me some 
 day; come to tea with me?" 
 
 The Sister passed on; the woman returned to 
 her lodging, looking for business, with the flower 
 in her hand. 
 
 Some months afterwards the Sister was sitting 
 in her flat when a ring came at the bell, and 
 opening the door she saw a girl standing there 
 whom she did not immediately recognise. She 
 invited her in without a question, and when they 
 were together in the sitting-room, the girl said, 
 " I don't suppose you remember me, but you once 
 gave me a flower in Piccadilly, and I told you 
 it was six years since a respectable woman had 
 spoken to me. You asked me if you could do 
 anything for me, and I said ' No.' You said 
 that perhaps you could, and invited me to come 
 and see you. I have come now. I want you 
 to help me. The flower you gave me has brought 
 me here. It wouldn't let me rest." 
 
 Then, her poor broken heart soothed by the 
 love and tenderness of the Sister, she told the 
 
BETRAYED 137 
 
 story of her new birth; and for beauty and 
 simplicity, this story is matchless in all I have 
 read or heard of conversion. 
 
 The girl had returned to her lodging, miserable 
 and tired, and after placing the flower in water, 
 had gone to bed and slept. When she woke 
 in the morning, the first thing to meet her gaze 
 was the flower of Piccadilly. She looked at 
 it, and recalled the incident of the doorway. 
 She thought of what the Sister had said to her, 
 and of what she had said to the Sister. Then 
 she thought of the flower itself. She looked 
 at it, let her eyes rest upon it, and became 
 gradually aware that she was interested only in 
 one thing about it. The flower was white. The 
 idea of this whiteness pervaded her conscious- 
 ness. She surrendered all direction and control 
 of thought to receive into her mind the single 
 idea of whiteness shining from the flower at 
 her bedside. It interested her to dwell without 
 effort upon the thought of whiteness. 
 
 Then, quite slowly and without violence of 
 any kind, there was a gentle and almost un- 
 conscious transition of thought from a mere 
 dreamy contemplation of the flower to the 
 gradual establishment of a contrast. She made 
 a contrast of the whiteness of that flower and 
 the spreading darkness of her own soul. She 
 said to herself, " I was once white, like this 
 
 flower," 
 
138 BETRAYED 
 
 A deep sadness took possession of her. She 
 was unable to prevent tears from rising to her 
 eyes. She looked at the white flower through 
 a mist of pain, and said to herself, " I wish 
 I could be pure." Then she covered her eyes 
 with her hands, turned her face to the pillow, 
 and wept. It was impossible; she never could 
 be pure again. 
 
 She told the Sister afterwards that when she 
 went out into the streets to earn her bread the 
 thought of the white flower was insistent in her 
 mind, like the voice of a guardian angel, like 
 the unsilenceable whisper of conscience. It made 
 her work a ghastly torment of the soul. She tried 
 to get rid of this obsession in the company of 
 other women gathered in a wine-bar. It re- 
 mained. She drank, she listened to stories of 
 last night's adventures, she tried to laugh, she 
 kept a forced smile upon her lips, but her 
 thoughts were held by the same persistent idea. 
 It would give her no rest. 
 
 She went out into the traffic of the streets. 
 In the midst of it all she was still pursued by 
 the thought of the white flower. It was like 
 " The Hound of Heaven," unescapable and piti- 
 less; she could not dream that the divine Voice 
 would ever say to her — 
 
 "All which thy child's mistake 
 Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home : 
 Rise, clasp My hand, and come." 
 
BETRAYED 139 
 
 It was almost as a mock of her foulness, almost 
 as a scorn of her unalterable shame, that the 
 thought of the white flower followed every step 
 she took and pursued her haunted way — 
 
 "With unperturbed pace 
 Deliberate speed, majestic instancy." 
 
 And yet all the time she was dimly conscious 
 of a hope, timorously aware of some shadowy 
 possibility of escape. The thought of the white 
 flower might mock her ruined soul; but, could 
 she not in some way shake away from her life 
 its present misery and at the same time dislodge 
 from her mind its present obsession? For days, 
 for weeks, for months, long after the flower was 
 dead, she wrestled with this obsession and 
 brooded on this hope; and at last she saw her 
 road clear to a way of escape. She abandoned 
 the streets. She took a humble room and be- 
 came a " sempstress " to a man living in the 
 Temple. This was her one way of escape, and 
 she thought that she was no longer horrible and 
 base, no longer disreputable and abandoned, but 
 a woman doing the best she could with a ruined 
 life. 
 
 She was satisfied with the change and con- 
 nected it with the flower, which had become 
 no longer a torture to her thoughts, but a fra- 
 grance to her amended life. But dwelling on 
 this flower, she saw presently in her mind, with 
 
140 BETRAYED 
 
 a gradually increasing light, connection between 
 its whiteness and the religion of the woman 
 who had given it to her. She looked away from 
 the contrast of the flower's white purity and 
 her own iniquity, and perceived that the white- 
 ness of the flower shone in her memory with 
 the human-kindness and the loving purity of 
 the giver. No longer a contrast; she matched 
 the white flower of Piccadilly with the white 
 flower of a blameless life. 
 
 Then it was, after all these months of her 
 flower-haunted existence, that she felt in her 
 heart a yearning to go and see the Sister and 
 tell her what the flower had done. Remorse 
 had vanished, a peace like the calm of forgive- 
 ness had entered her soul. She no longer fre- 
 quented taverns, she no longer walked the streets, 
 she no longer mixed with abandoned women, 
 and she no longer cared anything for the ex- 
 citement and dissipation of the harlot's life. 
 She had become religious. She said her prayers; 
 she desired the mercy of God and the love of 
 Christ. 
 
 There had never been throughout this long 
 and gentle process of spiritual change the least 
 degree of violence, the least degree of turbulence. 
 Quite simply and naturally and evenly she had 
 passed from a seemingly inevitable indifference 
 to religion; and as simply, naturally, and evenly 
 she had come to a quiet pleasure in what she 
 
BETRAYED 141 
 
 deemed the only virtuous life now possible for 
 her soul on earth. A white flower had effected 
 this immense change. It had nothing to do with 
 the exhortation of a preacher, terror of hell, or 
 fear of God. As invisibly as fragrance, the 
 whiteness of the flower had passed into her soul, 
 and gently, tenderly, and sweetly turned it to 
 God. She was a man's mistress, but she was 
 religious. 
 
 We witness a miracle quite different from the 
 cataclysmic effects of a sudden remorse. It is a 
 case of conversion in which every man who has 
 fought the battle of the soul may see at least 
 something of his own experience. "A sunset 
 touch, a fancy from a flower-bell, some one's 
 death." The smallest accident, the slightest 
 emergence, the most trivial occurrence — " And 
 that's enough for fifty hopes and fears." Per- 
 haps for every record of a violent conversion, 
 there are in the knowledge of the angels a 
 million instances of silent change and gradual 
 approach to God. One does not live very long 
 without knowing that the great drama of life 
 is enacted neither in the columns of the news- 
 papers nor at the penitent's form at revival meet- 
 ings, but in the unbroken silence and impene- 
 trable solitude of the human heart. And it is 
 none the less a miracle that the light which strikes 
 suddenly and blindingly into the soul of some, 
 should steal gradually and almost invisibly into 
 
U2 BETRAYED 
 
 the hearts of others. To be born again is not 
 always to experience a sudden and vehement 
 alteration of habit and thought; far more often 
 is it a growth in character so smooth and tranquil 
 that the converted soul can never declare to itself 
 a particular moment or a particular experience 
 in which the surrender was made and the illumi- 
 nation became conscious. 
 
 The true criterion of conversion is its effect 
 upon life and character; by that standard alone 
 can we measure the extent of the miracle. In 
 this case there can be no question of the miracle. 
 Sister Mildred, who stands for a reproach to 
 the public women of West London, but who is 
 their truest friend when they turn away from 
 sin, is nothing of a sentimentalist, nothing of 
 a mere humanitarian. She did not receive this 
 penitent Magdalen with tearful embraces and 
 words of an hysterical emotionalism. She kept 
 her calm eyes fixed upon the girl's face, listened 
 to her story, and acknowledged the influence of 
 the white flower. Then she said, " But you will 
 not stop where you are? — you will give up this 
 man and live a pure life, will you not?' The 
 poor girl was startled and hurt. Was she not 
 living a pure life? Had she not given up a life 
 of shame? She said her prayers, she wanted to 
 be good, she would rather die than go back. 
 Surely she was respectable. 
 
 Then the Sister said something which reveals 
 
BETRAYED 143 
 
 the immense difference of Christianity from any 
 other religion under the sun : " But you are 
 injuring the man's soul." 
 
 The girl was quick in reply, so sure of her 
 justification : " But I love him ! He is not like 
 other men. He is a gentleman. He is quite 
 good and kind. I would give my life for him." 
 
 " If you love him," said the Sister, her eyes 
 still fixed steadily upon the girl's face, " why 
 do you do him harm? " 
 
 And from that point she spoke of religion. 
 The mere question of morality was undiscussed, 
 was passed over and neglected as a matter of 
 no account. Not in the region of controversy, 
 where morality must always reside, did the Sister 
 permit this awakening soul to hang in the twi- 
 light of obscurity. Very gently, very tenderly, 
 but with an irresistible leading, she carried that 
 soul into the full light of unquestionable re- 
 ligion, made her think not of comparative re- 
 spectability nor of disputable standards of con- 
 duct, but of spiritual responsibility, of immor- 
 tality, of God's provided way for the salvation 
 and ultimate holiness of the human soul. The 
 penitent girl, content with her renunciation of 
 profligacy and comfortable in her devotion to a 
 man who was kind and good to her, who had 
 felt a blessing in her soul and a restfulness in 
 her heart from the influence of the white flower, 
 looked no longer on the manner of her life from 
 
144 BETRAYED 
 
 the world's shifting and transient point of view, 
 studied no more her way of living from the de- 
 sires of her own heart or the ideas of her own 
 mind, but beheld her soul from the high altitudes 
 of divine reality, and could not be complacent, 
 could not be at rest, could not be satisfied. 
 
 Morality has as many codes as there are 
 climates, as many text-books as there are temper- 
 aments, as many consciences as there are weak- 
 nesses in human nature. It has no foundation 
 in natural law and can give no rational explana- 
 tion of its objective. Its laws are written not 
 on tables of stones, but on tables of wax. It is 
 dumb when challenged for authority, and unin- 
 telligible when pressed for motive. It is a con- 
 venience, not an aspiration; a regulation, not an 
 incentive; an instruction, not an education. It 
 is content with the policeman, and sees no need 
 for a Good Shepherd. It would prevent men 
 from committing crimes, but lifts no finger to 
 make them angels. It is the oleograph in paint- 
 ing, the guide-book in letters, the model lodging- 
 house in architecture. It is without poetry, with- 
 out feeling, without emotion. The whole spirit- 
 ual nature of man is untouched by it. The evolu- 
 tion of humanity, it limits to the inventions of 
 the engineer and the discoveries of the surgeon. 
 It turns a stiff back upon the beauty and passion 
 of nature; and its attitude towards the mysteries 
 of existence is without reverence, without won- 
 
BETRAYED 145 
 
 der, and without inquiry. A nation can no more 
 safely commit its destinies to the moralist and 
 the ethicist, than a garden be left to the labours 
 of a man whose only care is for the fences and 
 the paths. Morality can only dare to do without 
 religion so long as public opinion is religious. 
 Remove the sanction of religion and conscience 
 is without authority, and without conscience all 
 is chaos. 
 
 One sees in this story the vast and unbridge- 
 able gulf which separates morality from religion. 
 The moralist, whether he approved or disap- 
 proved of the girl's relation to her keeper, could 
 not have invented any reason to shake her faith 
 in the satisfaction of her condition. He might 
 even have been challenged to decide the com- 
 parative morality of continuing in a relationship 
 unrecognised by the law, or of adding to the 
 congestion of a wage-earning labour market. 
 One may even doubt if he could have satisfac- 
 torily explained why the girl should not live on 
 the public streets, so long as she did not drink 
 to that point of excess injurious to her health or 
 demanding a policeman's interference, so long 
 as she did not steal, so long as she did not commit 
 murder, so long as she did not spread the con- 
 tagion of disease, so long as she put by for a 
 rainy day. But certainly he could have done 
 nothing at all to make her surrender a protector 
 to whom she was purely and tenderly devoted, 
 
146 BETRAYED 
 
 or said anything to make her welcome a long 
 future of hard service and mean wages in ex- 
 change for a life of pleasant idleness and selfish 
 satisfactions. 
 
 This is what religion did for the girl first led 
 by the whiteness of a flower to think about the 
 difference between good and evil. She surren- 
 dered herself into the hands of the West London 
 Mission, went into the Home where rescued 
 women are trained for service, and with a body 
 braced by healthful toil, a mind recharged with 
 its original vigour, and a heart so completely 
 changed that never again could the powers of the 
 world destroy in it the Cross of Christ, passed 
 out into the toiling ranks of humanity, a pure 
 woman and a daughter of religion. 
 
 She has stood a long test, and is now still 
 in domestic service, her character sweetening as 
 its experience of purity deepens, and her heart 
 strengthening as its knowledge of religion widens. 
 There is nothing in her story to suggest hysteria. 
 There is everything in her present condition of 
 soul to manifest the power of religion. 
 
 With one incident, showing something of the 
 vicissitudes and drama of life, we may conclude 
 this narrative of a slow and unviolent conversion. 
 She took service as cook some years ago in the 
 house of a lady living in St. John's Wood. She 
 gathered from her fellow-servant soon after en- 
 tering upon this situation that the establishment 
 
BETRAYED 147 
 
 was not respectable, although from the registry 
 office she had received nothing but assurances 
 of good. She was undecided as to what she 
 should do, and so far had seen nothing to confirm 
 the suspicions she had heard, when one day she 
 was told by her mistress to prepare a dinner for 
 several guests and instructed to assist the other 
 servant in bringing in the coffee. During the 
 dinner she heard gossip from her fellow-servant 
 concerning the grand dresses of the women and 
 the gaiety of the men, but nothing more; she 
 thought only of her duties. At the conclusion 
 of the meal she followed the parlourmaid into 
 the dining-room with the coffee. How she man- 
 aged to get round that room, she told the Sister, 
 she does not know, and cannot now imagine. 
 Her whole physical strength seemed to collapse 
 and her mind to run out of her control. For 
 there at the table were men she had known in 
 the earliest days of her fall, and in one of the 
 women she recognised the little slatternly girl 
 who had waited upon her in those days of evil 
 and luxury. And she discovered that this girl 
 was the daughter of the house. 
 
 She had become servant to her former land- 
 lady, and she waited as a pure woman on the 
 girl who had waited upon her in the days of her 
 impurity. 
 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 
 
 HER father died when she was beginning 
 to help in the home. Her idea of the 
 world was impressed upon her conscious- 
 ness by a narrow and gloomy alley, surrounded 
 whithersoever she bent her steps by roaring roads 
 and seething streets. Her idea of life came to 
 her from the dark interior of a crowded home, 
 where a good-natured and easy-going mother 
 diversified the occasional struggle to make things 
 clean and tidy by more regular efforts to keep up 
 a good heart with the aid of a neighbouring 
 publican. If she had any thought of religion 
 it was inspired by the general respect and dread 
 which her father and mother entertained towards 
 the Roman Catholic priest. If she had any con- 
 ception of joy it came from the alcoholic hilarity 
 of her parents. 
 
 Born and bred in the slums of London, accus- 
 tomed from earliest infancy to grime and squalor, 
 interested only in the games of the gutter and the 
 tricks, illnesses, and petty feuds of her brothers 
 and sisters, stupid with the torpor of a neglected 
 intellect, her affections stunted and crippled for 
 lack of employment, the whole nature of the 
 
 148 
 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 149 
 
 child suffering inarticulately and without con- 
 sciousness, this poor, miserable, and bedraggled 
 sparrow of East London was just beginning to 
 run errands, to handle a worn broom, to use a 
 ragged duster, to make a loathly bed, to peel 
 potatoes, and soothe the cryings of the latest 
 baby, when the greatest event which ever befalls 
 the very poor — the one event which stirs the 
 muddy ooze of the slums and startles the thoughts 
 of the dense millions packed together in that 
 miasma of poverty and destitution — happened 
 in her wretched home and set her life into a 
 new channel. 
 
 She was first frightened by the dead body of 
 her father lying so blue and motionless upon the 
 bed; then she was interested in the importance 
 which death conferred upon the home; then, 
 terror-stricken by the information that, because 
 of this thing called death, she was to be sent 
 away from her mother, her sisters and brothers, 
 and the vile dwelling which was her only anchor- 
 age in a world plainly antagonistic. 
 
 With scared feelings, a torn heart, and eyes 
 red with weeping, the mite entered one of those 
 numerous institutions of the Roman Catholic 
 Church where orphans and the children of hus- 
 bandless women are educated in the discipline 
 of the Latin Obedience and trained to earn their 
 living as domestic servants. The big place, 
 crowded with neat and quiet children, and over- 
 
150 OUT OF THE DEPTHS 
 
 ruled by women in the strange and somewhat 
 frightening dress of Sisters of Mercy, at first 
 bewildered her, made her conscious of an almost 
 intolerable isolation; but soon, with the adapt- 
 ability of a child's nature, so soft and pliable 
 that it can be squeezed into any mould, the little 
 thing fell into her place, perceived what was 
 expected of her, and made timorous beginnings 
 at friendship with two or three of her com- 
 panions. Her one clear memory of those days 
 is associated with no religious idea, with no 
 subject of education, with no game, with no par- 
 ticular task, with no friend; she remembers the 
 tremendous necessity of being always absolutely 
 quiet. Noise was a crime. 
 
 At the age of fifteen, with her intellect some- 
 what brightened and her ideas of cleanliness and 
 propriety entirely revolutionised, she was sent out 
 into the world to make a beginning at the main 
 business of terrestrial existence, the earning of 
 daily bread. She became a little maid-of-all- 
 work to a lady living in the suburbanised country 
 beyond the smoke of London. 
 
 This woman was one of those monsters who 
 occasionally make an appearance in the law- 
 courts. Her case deserves the careful attention 
 of psychologists. She was a strict Roman Catho- 
 lic, a moral woman, and a devoted wife. But 
 there was in her nature a stress towards cruelty, 
 and this tigerish instinct, complicated and en- 
 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 151 
 
 tangled by the fervour of her religious faith, fell 
 upon the most innocent and defenceless person 
 of her environment, the little maid to whom, by 
 all the dictates of humanity, she should have 
 stood as a mother. 
 
 The case is of peculiar interest because of the 
 religious element. The woman would at one 
 moment fall upon the child and cane her about 
 the arms and legs, and at the very next moment, 
 while her breathing was still agitated by the 
 infliction of punishment, would drag the child 
 off to her bedroom, make her kneel at the bed- 
 side, and there these two mortals — the hysterical 
 woman and the bruised child — would recite the 
 Pater Noster, the Confiteor, and the Nicene 
 Creed. Imagine the angels looking down! 
 
 The cane was bought after some weeks of a 
 more ingenious torture. To twist the child's arm 
 till it was at snapping-point, and then sharply 
 to strike the screwed elbow with a clenched 
 fist, was the earliest form of punishment; but 
 the satisfaction that it brought to the woman 
 lacked in vigour. There was a tempest in her 
 nature. Her next invention of discipline was 
 to hold and press the child's right cheek with her 
 left hand, while with the other hand she smote 
 slowly, strongly, and fiercely the left side of the 
 face and head. The child remembers how her 
 teeth used to grid under these blows. 
 
 I asked her what it was which brought this 
 
152 OUT OF THE DEPTHS 
 
 punishment down upon her — was it clumsiness, 
 untidiness, slowness, rudeness, or obstinacy ? She 
 has now no reason in the world to fence with 
 truth, and she told me quite definitely and also 
 with a most convincing good-humour and spirit 
 of forgiveness, that she believed it all came about 
 through her being so noiseless and quiet. The 
 virtue of the orphanage became the crime of 
 the suburban villa. " We were taught," she told 
 me, " to be very quiet in the convent, and I think 
 it irritated the lady. She used to spring upon 
 me when I was doing my work, and slap me, 
 beat me, twist my arm, and take me off to pray 
 with her, never saying a word as to what it was 
 all about." 
 
 The suffering of this child was perfectly well 
 known to the husband of the woman and also 
 to the cook. Neither of them ever interfered. 
 
 She began to regard religion rather callously. 
 She had never felt the least love for a divine 
 Father, she had never had her affections in the 
 least stirred by the life and death of Christ; her 
 feeling towards the invisible Powers had always 
 been one of fear — God a ghostly, spying, and 
 tyrannical demon-policeman: the next world, a 
 possibility of hell. But now, dumbly mutinous 
 against her savage mistress, and instinctively con- 
 scious of some frightful degree of unreality in 
 those panting prayers at the bedside, she began 
 to think a little for herself, began to shake off 
 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 153 
 
 the clinging authority of the convent, began to 
 leave God alone and to consider how she could 
 best look after her own life. She did not defi- 
 nitely renounce faith in what she understood 
 to be religion; but gradually and quite uncon- 
 sciously she began to be one of that innumerable 
 company who leave the consideration of the next 
 life till it makes an appearance. 
 
 At first she said nothing to anybody about 
 her canings and beatings, but at last, finding her 
 mother more and more sympathetic as poverty 
 pressed closer to her, the drudge told the story 
 of her strange mistress on the rare and delightful 
 occasions of her visits home. The mother did 
 not fly off to avenge her daughter, did not express 
 any loud and passionate indignation; she con- 
 tented herself by many wise shakings of her 
 head and by a very portentous expression of 
 countenance, occasionally remarking with a sad 
 and sorrowful sigh that some ladies are " like 
 that," and God Almighty has a deal to put up 
 with. 
 
 But the girl was neither middle-aged, nor 
 widowed, nor alcoholic. She was young, robust, 
 good-looking, and on the threshold of conscious 
 womanhood. She found domestic drudgery a 
 poor employment of youth; she began to think 
 that her body had other uses than to serve as a 
 flogging-post. 
 
 She made a suggestion, which appealed to the 
 
154 OUT OF THE DEPTHS 
 
 mother's need and also to her principal desire. 
 Why should the mother work so hard and for 
 so poor a dole, when the daughter could easily 
 support her by needlework? The mother earned 
 precarious shillings by the sloppy labour of a 
 charwoman. She had to go great distances to 
 her work. She was not physically strong. Fogs 
 and wet weather tried her sorely. Her greatest 
 ambition was to sit still and do nothing. The 
 daughter suggested that this ambition was no 
 dream of millennium. Let it be decided at once 
 that she should come home and work for one 
 of the numerous tailors in the neighbourhood. 
 
 In this way came an end to canings, arm- 
 twistings, and prayers. Liberty came in the 
 shape of long and toilsome labour, but it was 
 sweet, and, for the first time, life seemed to be 
 a possible delight. As a tailoress she earned 
 fifteen shillings a week, and for years she gave 
 her mother every week fourteen of those fifteen 
 shillings. A good daughter, tidy, moral, sweet- 
 tempered, and cheerful; but entirely without the 
 sense of religion, entirely satisfied with the nar- 
 row hopes and common desires of a poor neigh- 
 bourhood; a girl little likely to make shipwreck 
 of her life, and as little likely to draw near to 
 the mysteries of the spiritual life. 
 
 Her romance came when the mother was still 
 alive. A man of extraordinary physical energy, 
 a typical free-lance of London's labour market, 
 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 155 
 
 fell in love with the good-looking tailoress and 
 they began to bill and coo in the intervals of their 
 bread-earning. He worked in the morning as 
 a porter in Covent Garden, and at night as a 
 scene-shifter in a theatre. He was one of those 
 men who are perfectly happy while they are 
 earning " good money," who are enthusiastic and 
 untired while they are working as their own 
 masters, and who become slack and disheartened 
 if ever they have to fall into the ranks and work, 
 like the agricultural labourer, for a regular wage. 
 This man could do with little sleep, wasted no 
 money on drink, insured his life, hoarded his 
 savings, and had ever an eye open for the main 
 chance. He could never understand how any 
 man can be willingly idle, was himself never more 
 unhappy than in the intervals separating one 
 job from another, felt himself most a man when 
 he was most busy and carrying the biggest 
 weight. 
 
 These two people married ; both of them hard- 
 working and moral, typical, one would say, of 
 London's respectable, honest, thrifty, painstaking, 
 and quite unimaginative working classes; a man 
 and woman seeking money and desiring respecta- 
 bility; proud of their home and best clothes; 
 happy in their prosperous struggle for existence; 
 content with the conditions of their life; un- 
 touched in any lifting or saving way by the great 
 mysteries of life; as truly Christless as the im- 
 
156 OUT OF THE DEPTHS 
 
 moral, as truly Godless as the atheist. Both of 
 them stood at as great a distance from anything 
 approaching to religion as from anything de- 
 scending to depravity. 
 
 Three children were born to them. The 
 struggle for existence became a little harder in 
 consequence; that is to say, they were not able 
 to cut quite so fine a figure in the neighbourhood. 
 The children were not unwelcome, but they were 
 a drag on the wheel of prosperity. There were 
 days when the competing claims of necessity and 
 luxury bothered the brain and vexed the heart 
 of this hard-working housewife. She was never 
 in the least degree unkind to her children; on 
 the contrary, her tendency lay in the direction 
 of spoiling them; but she found, with increasing 
 regret, how it costs ' many shillings a week to 
 bring up three children in London with their 
 faces towards respectability. 
 
 " Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testa- 
 ment; Adversity is the blessing of the New." 
 There are few tests of character so searching and 
 so discovering as this material prosperity, after 
 which all men, save those best able to endure 
 the victory, seek so industriously. " Prosperity 
 is not without many fears." On the face of 
 things this man and woman, with their com- 
 fortable home and three thriving children, adver- 
 tised the success of thrift, industry, and all those 
 other moral virtues which without religion are 
 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 157 
 
 as dangerous to character as the intemperance of 
 vice. They might have been held up to the envi- 
 ous observation of the dissolute and base by socie- 
 ties for the promotion of thrift, self-help, and 
 civic decency. They might have been exhibited 
 in all the cities of the world as the fruits of a 
 successful civilisation which has prosperity for 
 its final goal and law-abiding respectability for 
 its god. But below the surface of things there 
 was a weakening of moral fibre and a dreadful 
 atrophy of the spiritual life. The struggle for 
 prosperity saved them from depravity, but the 
 spirit in which that struggle was made carried 
 them in a direction as clean contrary from the 
 objective of existence as depravity itself. 
 
 The curse of prosperity came home to roost 
 when the industrious husband died, and the 
 woman was left to face the business of life with 
 all the vigour gone out of her moral being and 
 nothing in her soul wherewith to confront the 
 devastation of death. In the days of her distress, 
 when she toiled all day to support her mother, 
 she had been at least resourceful, confident, and 
 courageous. But now, fat with prosperity, and 
 flaccid with the corruption of a merely material 
 and quite vulgar respectability, the stunning blow 
 of death struck sickly paralysis through a moral 
 being sapped of all enduring foundation; she 
 was left weeping and lamenting, grieving and 
 complaining — as feeble and as poor a thing as 
 
158 OUT OF THE DEPTHS 
 
 ever found itself against the oppugnance of 
 natural laws. 
 
 The popularity and thrift of the dead man 
 tumbled a dish of gold into the widow's lap. 
 The insurance money and a " whip-round " at 
 the theatre brought momentary fortune to the 
 bereaved family. No little group of humanity 
 ever mourned in stirrer black and deeper crape; 
 no funeral obsequies were ever carried out in 
 that neighbourhood with greater emphasis of 
 Rochefoucauld's famous gibe. Respectability 
 kept up its head in widow's weeds of the richest 
 material. The devastation of death was defied 
 by the milliner and undertaker. 
 
 But grief will have its way; and its way in 
 this case was watered by perpetual tears, was 
 marked by a continual self-indulgence and an 
 effortless resignation to the altered fortunes of 
 the house. So long as the gold lasted the way 
 was easy, and never once did the poor widow 
 need the support of alcohol. It sufficed her to 
 sit still and weep for the dead man, to miss his 
 step upon the stair, to recall his kindness, to 
 burst into tears at sight of his empty chair, to 
 utter lamentable fears for the future of her 
 fatherless children. But the day came when the 
 gold was all spent; the day came when the cup- 
 board was almost empty; the day came when 
 the landlord called for an overdue rent. When 
 the rent is overdue, it is the beginning of the end 
 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 159 
 
 for all very poor people. It marked a milestone 
 in the life of this widow. 
 
 A year had gone by since the husband died. 
 The year of mourning had been gradually grow- 
 ing a year of need. From the day of the grand 
 funeral to the day of the landlord's visit, the 
 wolf had been pressing with ever greater weight 
 at the door. Starvation and ruin did not come 
 at a bound, but when they did finally reach to 
 the dulled consciousness of the woman, they had 
 all the force and dismay of surprise. 
 
 She went through the usual sad business of 
 being " turned out," utilising all the delays of 
 the law till the last moment, weeping over her 
 vanishing furniture, abusing the landlord with a 
 fierce energy, and finally marching in a kind of 
 stage triumph to the workhouse, with the boast, 
 loud enough for all the neighbours to hear, that 
 her children should never walk the streets. 
 
 So far in the story there is nothing but respect- 
 ability and misfortune; no hint from beginning 
 to end of insobriety and shame. 
 
 At the workhouse she parted from her chil- 
 dren, and set out to earn her own living in a 
 spirit of greater rage against providence and her 
 landlord than of anxiety to make a home for 
 those whose tears were still wet upon her cheeks. 
 She was roused from her stupor, she had re- 
 covered at a spring something of her old energy, 
 but she was entirely without that quiet of the 
 
160 OUT OF THE DEPTHS 
 
 spirit which alone can give poise and direction 
 to a driven soul. She was burning with a hot 
 indignation, not with the pure flame of her 
 motherhood; she was mindful of her wrongs and 
 injustices, not of her weakness and her folly. 
 
 She went to one of the more decent lodging- 
 houses in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden, 
 paid for her bed, and joined the sisterhood of 
 sad and lonely women in the common kitchen. 
 She bore so many marks of her old respectability 
 that she attracted the favourable attention of 
 these drifting women of the gutter, who are 
 always ready for a tale, always inclined to a 
 gossip, and who like nothing better in conversa- 
 tion than an opportunity for woe-begone refer- 
 ence to " better times." They made much of her, 
 showed her kindness, indulged her with commis- 
 eration, and stimulated her with encouragement 
 of their down-at-heel philosophy of life. The 
 parting from the children at the door of the 
 Union was the subject which moved all those 
 poor women's hearts towards the new lodger — 
 the unbefriended woman who had stepped, in a 
 moment, from a home to the gutter. One of 
 them told her a way of earning money, and 
 offered to teach her the business. Sometimes it 
 paid, sometimes it didn't, but on an average it 
 worked out the expenses of the lodging-house. 
 It was the business of a flower-seller. 
 
 "All the heart," she says, "was took out of 
 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 161 
 
 me — no husband! no children! I was glad to 
 do anything; so I took up with flower-selling." 
 
 The two women rose early and hurried to 
 Covent Garden market. The teacher was no 
 longer the gossip of the common kitchen, but a 
 hard, vigorous, alert, and boisterous woman of 
 action. It takes a shrewd head and a rough 
 tongue to buy flowers cheap enough in the market 
 to be sold at a profit on the kerb. The widow 
 was perplexed and bewildered by all the noise 
 and struggle and confusion; she was also filled 
 with admiration for the knowledge and address 
 of her new friend. When the business was done, 
 the flowers all bought, tied, stacked, and ready 
 for exhibition in the gutters, the vigorous teacher 
 proposed a glass of ale, and moved off to a 
 public-house through the crowd of porters, sales- 
 men, flower-sellers, and loafers thronging the 
 littered streets. The widow could do nothing 
 but follow. 
 
 " Never till that day had I tasted beer, ,, she 
 tells me; " and it was a long time before I could 
 screw up my courage to drink. Every time I 
 raised the glass to my lips, the smell got into 
 my nose and made me feel quite sick. And yet 
 I didn't like to look a fool before all the people, 
 and I wanted to be friendly with the woman who 
 was helping me. But how I ever drank that 
 glass of ale I can't tell. It was the first I had 
 ever drunk; and I wish it had been the last. It 
 
162 OUT OF THE DEPTHS 
 
 seemed as if my whole body turned against it. 
 I couldn't swallow without that feeling of sick- 
 ness, and when I had swallowed, I had to shudder 
 as if I was cold." 
 
 There is something tragic and pathetic, I think, 
 in the figure of this poor slack victim of re- 
 spectability, standing in a crowded tavern, and 
 beginning her experience of the gutter, begin- 
 ning her plunge into the abyss, with a glass of 
 beer which nauseated her whole being, and which 
 she yet needs must drink to gratify the friend 
 of her distress. She had fallen on evil days, 
 her heart was taken out of her, and in the bitter- 
 ness and upheaval of her wrecked life she had 
 found this one sturdy friend who, without price, 
 was willing to teach the difficult way in which 
 a poor woman can earn bread. Out of the purest 
 gratitude for such friendship she screwed up her 
 courage and finally drank, as a child drinks medi- 
 cine, the glass of kindness, the glass, for her, 
 of ruin and direst woe. Banish from your mind 
 all thought of the sordid scene, the sloven people, 
 and the mere glass of ale; think of it only as 
 the drama of a soul passing through the experi- 
 ence of this planetary life, and you will see this 
 forlorn and dejected spirit, like the hero in 
 Schiller, " leaning on the bending reed of vice 
 over the gulf of perdition." 
 
 How trivial the occasion, how appalling the 
 consequences! From that day the morning glass 
 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 163 
 
 of beer after the harassing work in the market 
 became a regular breakfast; the first dislike of 
 it — as though her spirit had sought to warn her 
 through the nausea of the body — vanished alto- 
 gether; pleasure in the taste gradually grew to 
 delight in the effects; delight in the effects grew 
 more swiftly to a craving for the thing itself; 
 finally it became to her everything in life. 
 
 Her descent was headlong. The first step with 
 a woman is not easily taken, but once taken, 
 swifter than any man, with an entire abandon- 
 ment of everything that saves the soul, she pitches 
 to destruction. This poor woman was the last 
 person in the world, one would have thought, 
 ever to lose hold of respectability, even if her 
 hands held only the rags and tatters of it; but 
 she loosed her fingers of everything that is above 
 the pool and sank like a stone to the slime of its 
 despair. 
 
 She became one of the dirtiest and raggedest 
 human scarecrows that ever showed bleared eyes, 
 shining cheeks, and a loose mouth in the gutters 
 of London. She sold flowers, or shelled walnuts, 
 or ran errands on her broken boots, with no other 
 purpose in her soul than the quest of beer. 
 
 " It was a craving," she tells me. " It wouldn't 
 let me rest. Bread and meat — I couldn't look 
 at them; but beer I had to have or I should have 
 lost my reason. I often used to have food 
 offered me. I couldn't even look at it. My whole 
 
164 OUT OF THE DEPTHS 
 
 body seemed to turn against eating. It was 
 drink, always drink. I don't believe I was hungry 
 for years, never once. But except when I was 
 sleeping, I was regularly burned up with thirst." 
 
 She came to living in the lowest of doss- 
 houses. With her dress in grimy tatters, her 
 boots broken on her feet, her bonnet battered 
 out of all shape and meaning, her face a terrible 
 witness of alcoholic poisoning, her speech a blub- 
 bering, grinning, hiccoughing duet of hilarity 
 and misery, she fell in with the lowest of women, 
 the most despairing of humankind, and passed 
 into the likeness of that degeneration and maras- 
 mus which is said by science and politics to be 
 beyond the reach of reclamation. 
 
 I asked her about the women she encountered 
 in the doss-house during this dreadful time. 
 " Most of them," she said, " were women de- 
 serted by their husbands. Some were very bad, 
 but I never met one that wasn't kind. You'd 
 see a woman in the kitchen eating a packet of 
 fried fish as though she was starving, turn and 
 give a bit to some other woman who was sitting 
 by the fire with nothing in her lap. You'd hear 
 many a kind word spoken. And they weren't 
 bitter. Nearly all would lay the blame on them- 
 selves. We used to sleep eight in a room, and 
 there was one woman in the room where my 
 bed was who used to go off to sleep every night 
 crying to herself, and saying, ' Oh, my poor 
 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 165 
 
 children ! Oh, my poor children ! I'd be so good 
 to you if they'd only let me come back.' That 
 was one of the things they liked to talk about 
 more than anything else — the children they'd left 
 behind them. Many a time I thought of my 
 three. And first of all, when the drink was 
 getting a hold of me and I felt that everything 
 was beginning to slip out of my hands, I tried 
 hard to make a fight of it, for their sakes. I said 
 to myself, ' This is getting a habit; I must shove 
 my will up against it.' But it was no use. I 
 did try. I thought I could push against it. But 
 it seemed to get worse the more I tried, and so I 
 gave up trying altogether, and just let myself go." 
 
 One seems to see very deep into the abyss of 
 degradation, looking down upon that unknown 
 and homeless woman in her lodging-house bed, 
 and listening to her whimper of, " Oh, my poor 
 children! Oh, my poor children!" She used 
 to fall asleep, night after night, with that sigh 
 upon her lips. Stranger and perhaps farther- 
 reaching cries from the human heart ascend to 
 heaven out of the abyss than from the decorous 
 places of respectability and refinement. 
 
 Who was she? I inquired, and the story of 
 her life was told to me in a sentence: "Her 
 husband was living with another woman; he had 
 turned her out on account of the drink." 
 
 Do they ever talk of religion, these derelict 
 women of our common lodging-houses? Yes; 
 
166 OUT OF THE DEPTHS 
 
 but always as something attaching to the old and 
 buried days of their respectability. " We used 
 to go to church regular. . . . The clergyman 
 often came to see us. . . . My children were 
 all confirmed, all but the last; we were too poor 
 then." They speak of religion as they speak of 
 the best parlour, a fine bonnet, or money in the 
 savings bank. The morality of the Christian 
 revelation seems to have penetrated into the re- 
 motest places of civilisation; the inspiration of 
 that religion — a passionate love towards God and 
 a hunger and thirst after holiness — seems to be 
 nowhere understood. 
 
 But the miracle happens, and it happened to 
 the drunken and degraded woman of this narra- 
 tive. She was deep in the abyss. The effort to 
 set her will against the habit of alcoholism had 
 been made, and abandoned. She was conscious 
 of helplessness. Her powers of control had per- 
 ished with her respectability. The craving had 
 become master and tyrant of her life. She could 
 do nothing but sink. 
 
 A small thing saved her. She was walking 
 home to the lodging-house one night, drunk and 
 dazed, her senses obscured in the fumes of her 
 poison, her soul apparently weighed down and 
 suffocated by the crushing depression of her gen- 
 eral misery, when the sound of voices singing a 
 hymn to the accompaniment of an ancient har- 
 monium came to her from the upstairs window 
 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 167 
 
 of a dark building on the opposite side of the 
 road. She did not stop; she did not raise her 
 face. Through the gaslit murk of the gloomy 
 street the wretched, drunken harridan lurched 
 upon her way with no sign, with no knowledge, 
 that a mystery was at work upon her soul. She 
 entered the kitchen of the lodging-house, sat for 
 a little while with the Miserables, and then went 
 to her bed, saying nothing of a new thought in 
 her mind, knowing nothing of its power. She 
 only knew that she had heard invisible men and 
 women singing a hymn, the rhythm of which 
 was somehow familiar, somehow sad, somehow 
 haunting. She fell asleep thinking without direc- 
 tion and without management of this accidental 
 tune. 
 
 In the morning she woke with a feeling of 
 exceeding misery and dejection. She felt how 
 unhappy she was — how lonely, how friendless, 
 how homeless, how hopeless. Oftentimes enough 
 she had emerged from sleep with all the physical 
 wretchedness of alcoholism; but now there was 
 something added to this weakness and heaviness 
 of the body; she felt herself, very definitely, to 
 be " consciously wrong, inferior, and unhappy ' 
 — the first condition, according to Professor Wil- 
 liam James, of spiritual change. The tune of 
 the hymn seemed to float upon the muddled 
 obscurity of her despair. She was aware of it 
 in a dim and dull way. She associated it with 
 
168 OUT OF THE DEPTHS 
 
 this self-knowledge of hopelessness and misery. 
 It seemed as if it wanted to make her cry. 
 
 There was one obvious way out of this de- 
 jection, the familiar trodden way of her destroy- 
 ing habit. She went to the market, earned 
 enough money for drink, and hastened to her 
 •favourite tavern. 
 
 But that day something lived in her soul over 
 which drink had no power. She forgot her de- 
 pression, but she could not forget the realisation 
 of her terrible condition. The tune of the hymn 
 kept haunting her with the remembrance that 
 she was consciously wrong, inferior, and un- 
 happy. The more she drank the more clinging 
 and clutching became the obsession of this new 
 knowledge. It was as if some devil kept holding 
 a mirror before her, turning it to confront her 
 every way she looked. There was no escape. 
 She saw herself wherever she directed her gaze. 
 She saw the ruin and havoc, the corruption and 
 shame, the vileness and horror, of all that had 
 once been her pride and pleasure. But it was 
 unalterable. Who could take the stupor out of 
 those dazed eyes, who could strengthen those 
 loose and vinous lips, who could give back the 
 firmness and vigour of her hanging flesh? The 
 rags which clung about her, the glaze upon her 
 skin, the torpor of her brain, the nauseating 
 sickness of her soul — these things were all as 
 unchangeable and fixed as the leopard's spots — 
 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 169 
 
 they were a part of her existence, they were her 
 very self, nothing could alter them. 
 
 For some days she continued in this wretched 
 state, drinking as hard as her money would allow, 
 eating nothing, and abandoning herself to the 
 most hopeless despair. She was as near the 
 midnight darkness of the Thames as any poor 
 wretch in London. 
 
 Then there came a voice to her, " loud as a 
 bursting sea," with clamorous appeal for life 
 not death, for hope not despair, for goodness not 
 evil. It was the voice of her own dying soul. 
 It was the cry of her own perishing spirit. She 
 heard it with all the terror of a wild self-knowl- 
 edge. Now at last she saw the full horror of 
 her condition. Now at last she was aware of 
 ruin and of doom. To escape from destruction, 
 to save her own life, became suddenly a fierce 
 and insurgent passion. She turned instantly, by 
 the whole instinct of her perishing soul, to re- 
 ligion. She wanted to fling herself into the sav- 
 ing arms of a sheltering power transcending 
 everything she knew of life. 
 
 The men and women whose voices she had 
 heard singing a hymn from an upper window, 
 held twice a week an open-air service at the 
 corner of a vile street in that neighbourhood. 
 She had seen them many times without giving 
 a thought to their purpose. She had noticed 
 the bright and girl-like face of the Sister in 
 
170 OUT OF THE DEPTHS 
 
 charge of this Mission without ascribing any 
 mysterious power to her. But now, in her de- 
 spair, she thought of this little company of street 
 missionaries, thought of them without any care 
 as to what church they represented, thought of 
 them only as servants of the Christ who saves 
 sinners, thought of them as the only people she 
 knew in all London who represented the shelter 
 and salvation of that vast Power into whose 
 arms she so passionately hungered to cast the 
 burden of her weakness and despair. 
 
 Her coming to the meeting in the open air is 
 remembered to this day. The crippled woman 
 in her bath-chair, "the only carriage lady in 
 the Mission," was the first to be aware of her 
 presence. The drunken flower-seller pushed 
 through the knot of listeners, stumbled against 
 the bath-chair, and stood there, breathing hard, 
 one hand on the arm of the chair, her bloodshot 
 eyes fixed upon the preacher. She was recog- 
 nised as " one of the worst flower-sellers from 
 the lodging-houses." They thought she had come 
 to interrupt the meeting. There was ferocity in 
 her manner, because the roused spirit was intent. 
 She was blear-eyed, red-nosed, red-mouthed, the 
 hair hanging about her wild face. Some one 
 went to her, and asked gently but reprovingly, 
 why she had come. She answered, " Because I 
 want to be good." 
 
 That was all. She said nothing more. The 
 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 171 
 
 commonplace words expressed the motion of her 
 spirit. It was the London flower-seller's form 
 of saying, " I will arise, and go to my Father." 
 From the depths of the abyss she looked up- 
 ward; from the isolation of a far country she 
 turned her face towards home. She wanted to 
 be good. 
 
 At the end of the meeting an appeal was made 
 to all wretched and unhappy souls that they 
 should declare themselves, there and then, in 
 need of a Saviour. They were asked, those who 
 were unhappy and sad, those who wanted the 
 comfort and love of a divine Saviour, to hold 
 up their hands. The gathering flame of the 
 naphtha lamp shone upon two hands black with 
 the toil of walnut-picking. 
 
 The young Sister in charge of the Mission 
 went to the side of the flower-seller, touched her, 
 said kind and encouraging words, and led her 
 away. The two women, a moment ago separated 
 by a great gulf, were now close to one another, 
 sisters of the same humanity, looking upward to 
 the same overshadowing Fatherhood of the uni- 
 verse. They could speak soul to soul. They 
 could understand each other's language. They 
 could kneel side by side in prayer. 
 
 The great promise was boldly made and long- 
 ingly believed. God answers prayer. There is 
 nothing He cannot do. Earnest prayer, even 
 from the gutters and lodging-houses of London, 
 
172 OUT OF THE DEPTHS 
 
 reaches to the invisible centre of the universe and 
 moves the Hand of God. The answer comes — 
 sometimes immediately, sometimes gradually, 
 sometimes after a long and ennobling discipline; 
 but always prayer is answered. Did she believe 
 this ? Yes, with all her soul ! Did she feel that 
 God could take away from her the craving for 
 drink? Yes, she believed He could. Did she 
 truly and earnestly desire to lead a new life, at 
 all costs, whatever the hardships, however long 
 and bitter and heart-breaking the struggle ? Yes, 
 yes ! there was nothing she would not endure for 
 that gift from God — a new life! 
 
 In some cases the desire for drink ends im- 
 mediately with the first cry of the soul. With 
 men this is often so; the records of such in- 
 stantaneous healings are numerous and convinc- 
 ing; I have investigated many such instances of 
 immediate conversion years after the moment of 
 illumination. But with women the process of 
 new-birth is more often difficult and slow. A 
 man, by the very force of his nature, appears to 
 project his soul further into the Infinite at the 
 moment of repentance than does a woman, whose 
 plunge into perdition is generally more sudden 
 and despairing. It is one of the most interesting 
 and instructive discoveries in the study of re- 
 ligious experience to find how very often the 
 answer to prayer is long delayed, and comes at 
 last so gradually that the actual moment of re- 
 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 173 
 
 lease cannot be marked. In some cases it seems 
 that the very violence of instant answer which 
 is necessary to save a particular soul, would pro- 
 duce only hysteria and that state worse than the 
 first of which we have the divine warning. 
 
 With the flower-seller the answer to prayer 
 came quickly but not immediately. It was im- 
 mediate in this respect, that the burning and 
 uncontrollable appetite of her disease ceased to 
 torture her from the moment of her cry for help. 
 But a tendency towards alcohol was left; an 
 occasional desire to drink visited her mind; she 
 never felt in the least disposed to plunge again 
 into drunkenness, but was conscious from time 
 to time of the feeling that drink would make 
 her more cheerful, help her to lead the new life. 
 These occasional whisperings of temptation were 
 overcome by prayer. 
 
 The desire for a new life was fed and tended 
 by the Sister. The bright prospect of reunion 
 with her children was perpetually held out to the 
 soul struggling towards righteousness. She says 
 that this longing to possess her children grew 
 stronger with her every day, that the old aban- 
 donment to depravity utterly ceased, that she felt 
 herself consciously moving towards strength of 
 will and fixity of purpose. 
 
 She put herself into the hands of the Mission 
 to be trained as a servant. They encouraged her 
 to think that she should work to support her 
 
174 OUT OF THE DEPTHS 
 
 children. When she had made sufficient progress 
 they brought the children to see her. She knew, 
 then, that God had saved her. 
 
 For the second time in her life she went out 
 to service. The contrast in her condition is 
 striking. On the first occasion she was wholly 
 innocent, wholly moral, wholly without the re- 
 ligious sense. And on the second occasion she 
 was a woman who had lived in hell, who had 
 bedraggled and befouled her soul with the very 
 dregs of depravity, and yet was profoundly con- 
 scious of God. 
 
 She was no longer called upon to endure the 
 tyrannous cruelty of a mad mistress, but her 
 situation was one which might have sorely tried 
 the resolution of a soul less firmly established in 
 the strength and power of regeneration. She 
 was not happy, but she was able to support un- 
 happiness. A quiet peace took possession of her; 
 she enjoyed doing her work well; she could smile 
 to herself at the thought of seeing her children 
 every week; she looked forward to the service 
 of the Mission, and would sing the hymns aloud 
 in her kitchen. It was not difficult to put up 
 with a mistress who was for ever interrupting 
 useful and hard work with silly and mean fault- 
 findings. She felt herself in heaven. And then 
 came an end to this fresh experience of domestic 
 service. She found herself admired, sought, and 
 courted by one whose proposal of marriage was 
 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 175 
 
 so full of the promise of happiness that she could 
 not refuse it. She is now a married woman, 
 the excellent manager of a comfortable home, 
 the devoted mother of her children, and once 
 more the delighted servant of Respectability, but 
 with the knowledge that " one thing is necessary." 
 I can see in her face all the havoc of her 
 past life; the whole countenance is marked by 
 a weakness and a feebleness which, one thinks, 
 will never pass away; the fineness of her clothes, 
 the great cleanliness and neatness of her appear- 
 ance, cannot in the least disguise a marked heavi- 
 ness of face and body which express unmis- 
 takably the torpor and lassitude of enfeebled 
 character. But my feeling of disappointment 
 and anxiety about her when we first encountered, 
 passed away from my mind when she turned to 
 the Sister and answered some question about her 
 experience of prayer. Then the poor weak face 
 became touched with a nobility which smoothed 
 away all traces of the past, the dull eyes quite 
 shone, and a most gracious sweetness to which 
 I could never penetrate in conversation, irradi- 
 ated the instant smile with which she answered 
 so eagerly and so gratefully the Sister's question. 
 Deep in her soul, hidden from observation, and 
 inarticulate to all mankind, there lives, I believe, 
 something of that spiritual surety which makes 
 the joy of the saints. 
 
THE CARRIAGE LADY 
 
 THERE is a little community of the West 
 London Mission which meets twice a 
 week in the room of a Board School, 
 and after the singing of hymns and prayers for 
 God's assistance, goes out into the open air and 
 holds a service in one of the wretchedest streets 
 east or west, north or south, in the whole of the 
 metropolis. 
 
 There is a Sister in charge of this community; 
 she is quite young, with a girl-like face, beau- 
 tiful bright hair, and a manner of the most 
 captivating cheerfulness. The others are young 
 people of a humble class, workers for a small 
 wage, who in shops and factories toil all the 
 day, and are beset on every side by the cares 
 and temptations of such an existence. They 
 meet twice a week to sing and pray in the 
 Board School and to go out afterwards into the 
 lamplit streets to testify to the power of 
 Christianity as a giver of happiness. They are 
 missionaries of Christianity. 
 
 Among these humble people there is one older 
 than the rest, a woman of forty, crippled, de- 
 formed, and dwarf-like, who sits in a bath- 
 
 176 
 
THE CARRIAGE LADY 177 
 
 chair at the open door of the room in the Board 
 School — the chair is too wide to enter — and after- 
 wards, still in her chair — for she has no power 
 of motion — occupies a place with the little group 
 of humanity in front of the hymn- sheet at the 
 street-corner. She lives far away from the scene 
 of this Mission's activity. Two of the young 
 men go twice a week to the place where she 
 lives, carry her down the stairs, place her in 
 the carriage, draw her to the Board School, lift 
 her, chair and all, up three or four flights of 
 winding stairs to the room, and after the meet- 
 ing carry her down again, take her to the 
 service, and afterwards bear her back to her 
 distant dwelling. They never complain of this 
 labour. Mr. Price Hughes described this in- 
 teresting person many years ago as " the only 
 carriage lady in the Mission." 
 
 She is so malformed, as regards her body, 
 that even her hands, with which she earns her 
 living as a tailoress, are shrivelled and con- 
 torted in a manner which startles the sight and 
 hurts the feelings. She appears to have no 
 neck; the head stands in the centre of sur- 
 rounding shoulders. The diminutive body ends 
 abruptly, and dwindles away into an utter in- 
 capacity. Nevertheless the shape of the head 
 is noble and dignified; the face is not shrunken, 
 but broad and full; there is a sense of great 
 power in the large eyes; the mouth is firm; 
 
178 THE CARRIAGE LADY 
 
 the chin energetic, the nose finely shaped; the 
 whole expression of the dark-skinned counte- 
 nance is one of strength and resolute ability. 
 In repose, she is handsome and ruggedly refined. 
 When she smiles, which is very often, the face 
 becomes lit with all the drollery and flashing 
 quickness of wit which distinguishes the true 
 Cockney. Her conversation is a perpetual 
 banter and a constant persiflage. She speaks 
 with a bewildering rapidity, clipping her termi- 
 nations, slurring her punctuation, and getting 
 to her point with a laugh, sometimes derisive. 
 She is the good-humour, common-sense, cheer- 
 fulness, and impatience of sentimentalism which 
 preserve the very poor people of London from 
 despair and save them from revolution. When 
 she converses with you, her eyes search yours, 
 watching- for the mood on which she can best 
 strike home the wit or the maxim your conversa- 
 tion has suggested to her mind. The perfect 
 mobility of her body at such times intensifies 
 the energy of her face. All her gestures are 
 in the movements of her eyes and the lightning 
 of her expression. 
 
 I made her acquaintance one night in the 
 room of the Board School. It was an evening 
 of torrential rain. The young man at the 
 harmonium, near the window, repeatedly ex- 
 claimed, in the intervals of hymn-singing, that 
 it was " no go." The others ranged round the 
 
THE CARRIAGE LADY 179 
 
 room whispered that perhaps the rain would stop 
 in a few minutes. The Sister remarked that 
 it would be dreadful if they were stopped from 
 going out into the street. " Let's have another 
 hymn," said the carriage lady briskly; "it's 
 sure to dry up before we've finished. Number 
 thirty-six; that's a beauty." 
 
 At the beginning of our acquaintance I had 
 asked her whether I could not move the hymn- 
 sheet so that she might see it from the door- 
 way. She looked up at me, smiles in her eyes, 
 the lips down-drawn by. amusement, and snapped, 
 " Know 'em all by heart. Course I do ! " And 
 from that moment she was singing with energy 
 and no little sweetness, never stumbling for a 
 word. 
 
 The rain fell and fell. " Not a bit of good," 
 said the man at the harmonium. 
 
 "Let us pray," said the Sister, and knelt 
 down at the table. The little company turned 
 round and knelt at their chairs. The carriage 
 lady closed her eyes. Then the Sister prayed, 
 simply and naturally, and at the conclusion of 
 her petition there was a general Amen, very 
 earnest and quiet. A pause followed, and I was 
 expecting a rising from the knees, when a voice 
 quite close to me, exceedingly low and wonder- 
 fully sweet, raised itself to God. It was the 
 voice of the cripple, praying in her chair from 
 the doorway. 
 
180 THE CARRIAGE LADY 
 
 The prayer struck me as one of the most 
 beautiful I have ever heard, not for its language, 
 but for the haunting sweetness of its sincerity. 
 Perhaps the pathos of her physical condition 
 was in some measure the true author of this 
 impression; perhaps the general atmosphere of 
 that little room, with its quiet prayerfulness and 
 its kneeling occupants, while all about on every 
 side were the wretchedness of London's misery 
 and the depression of unceasing rain, deepened 
 and intensified the effect. But there is no ques- 
 tion that the simple petition of this poor crippled 
 woman in the doorway made upon one's mind 
 a more than ordinary impression, and its 
 memory is still fresh and vivid many weeks after 
 the occasion. 
 
 She prayed in this manner : " Almighty and 
 Most Merciful God, our Heavenly Father; grant 
 we beseech Thee, if it be Thy will, that the 
 rain may cease and that we may go into the 
 streets, to tell the poor people of Thy great 
 love towards them, manifested in the life and 
 death of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. 
 And if it be Thy will that we should not go, 
 teach us, O Lord, not to be sad and unhappy, 
 for Thy Holy Spirit can be there without our 
 aid, and can lead all those poor people, better 
 than we can do, to the knowledge of Thy love. 
 O God, we pray Thee, send Thy Holy Spirit into 
 the streets this night; touch the hearts of un- 
 
THE CARRIAGE LADY 181 
 
 happy people; turn them away from sin and 
 misery; make them to feel that Thou art love. 
 Teach the cruel parents to be kind to their 
 children, and lead the weak and foolish away 
 from temptation. Save them, O God, from all 
 their dangers. Make them to know Thee, the 
 only true God. And this we beg, in the Name 
 of our dear Saviour, Thy Son, our Lord and 
 Redeemer, Jesus Christ.' , 
 
 One could not listen to that prayer, uttered 
 in a tone just above a whisper, quickly, earnestly, 
 almost passionately, without being deeply moved 
 and profoundly impressed. I had heard that 
 her influence in the streets was extraordinary; 
 that blasphemy and ribaldry became silenced 
 at her rebuke, and that molestation held its hand 
 at her entreaty; I had heard how the worst 
 of people, the most desperate characters of that 
 neighbourhood, men and women alike, respected 
 this poor sufferer, and how she was so well 
 known and honoured that policemen and cabmen 
 would salute her as they passed. 
 
 But now I was more curious than interested. 
 I watched her one evening in her bath-chair 
 at the street-corner, surrounded by all that is 
 most dirty and degraded in London, and I heard 
 her singing the hymns there, with her eyes raised 
 to the black skies; and saw her praying there, 
 with the eyes closed, the head bowed, the words 
 of her supplication drowned by the innumerable 
 
182 THE CARRIAGE LADY 
 
 clamour of the street. At my side, leaning 
 against the closed shutters of a shop, were men 
 of ill-appearance, with hard faces and fierce 
 eyes, the clothes stamped with all the marks 
 of a degrading destitution. On the opposite 
 side of the street was a many-windowed public- 
 house, bright with gaslight, the doors open, the 
 various compartments filled with an identical 
 swarm of dirty but hilarious men and women; 
 at an upper window, dressed in a white blouse, 
 her arms resting on the edge of a flower-box, 
 was a barmaid listening to the hymns and watch- 
 ing the people. Next door to the tavern was 
 a butcher's shop, the meat set out in trays under 
 the spouting gas-jets, the butchers walking or 
 lounging in front, sometimes calling their wares, 
 more often regarding the Mission service with 
 faces of amused disdain. Everywhere, from side 
 to side of the houses, were grimy children, shout- 
 ing and screaming at their play, occupying the 
 whole road with chalked-out spaces, settling 
 their disputes with abuse at the top of the voice 
 and blows with all the force of fury at their 
 back. Occasionally these grimy children would 
 throng round the hymn-sheet, gape at the printed 
 words, glance at the preacher on the rostrum, 
 and then with an impatient and disgusted, " Oh, 
 come on ! " dash back to their play. Through 
 this herd of noisy children passed constantly soli- 
 tary figures, men with grim faces, women with 
 
THE CARRIAGE LADY 18S 
 
 streaming hair and blotched skins, some of 
 them walking like spectres, others stumbling and 
 swaying like the swine of Epicurus — a few of 
 them glancing with dull interest at the mission- 
 aries, some of them tossing their heads in a scorn 
 that was almost hatred, most of them passing into 
 the darkness without a sign of anything. 
 
 While the preacher was declaring in the midst 
 of this clamour, and surrounded by all this in- 
 difference and mockery, the story of Christ's 
 revelation and the power of Christianity to save 
 the worst people from sin and to make the most 
 miserable people happy, I saw a sight just at the 
 corner of the street, which made me feel for 
 the moment sick with disgust. As sunken and 
 degraded a woman as you can imagine, all rags 
 and dirt and dishevelment, drunk at the point 
 of grinning foolishness, singing and laughing 
 and staggering, a jug in her hands, her shawl 
 hanging backward from her head, her dis- 
 coloured face and glazed blue eyes luminous 
 in the gaslight, came round the corner of the 
 street, and was just in my view, when a dog 
 sprang at her, and growled and barked at her, 
 as though she was something too vile and loath- 
 some even for that dreadful place. It was the 
 contrast between dog and woman that struck 
 me. The dog was a noble collie, brown and 
 white, its coat brushed, its body well nourished. 
 It had conscious dignity, conscious intelligence, 
 
184* THE CARRIAGE LADY 
 
 beauty of form, and a superb grace of move- 
 ment. Its bark was contemptuous and indig- 
 nant. One saw in its spring towards the woman 
 the force and energy of an outraged sense of 
 grandeur, a recognition in the harridan of 
 something vile and scandalous which it resented. 
 And the woman received this disdain of the 
 dog with amusement. She stood still, stooped 
 her dreadful face almost to the dog's level, and 
 began to bark at it, laugh at it, grin at it, thrust- 
 ing the jug towards it, making little springs 
 towards it on her broken boots, glancing up at 
 the people for their applause of her courage and 
 her humour. 
 
 It was a vile spectacle, and I turned away 
 from it, sick with disgust, to encounter the eyes 
 of the cripple in the chair, which were full of 
 kindness and hope. 
 
 Curiosity about this interesting woman, a 
 feeling almost of affection for her whimsical 
 and valorous nature, led me to seek for the 
 ways and means which had brought her into 
 the wonderful field of religious action. Why, 
 I asked myself, was this noble-faced woman, 
 with her poor crippled body, praising God at 
 a street-corner; while that other woman, be- 
 fouled and befuddled, barked and grimaced at 
 a dog which disdained her depravity? What 
 influences had surrounded her in childhood? 
 through what mental changes had she passed 
 
THE CARRIAGE LADY 185 
 
 in her narrow life of toil and hardship? by what 
 means had she come to feel convinced that it 
 was her duty to serve God in the street ? 
 
 The story is brief, simple, undramatic; but 
 it brings home to one, I think, all the more 
 unchallengeably for its simplicity, a truth very 
 necessary for scepticism to reflect upon in this 
 matter of conversion — that the beginnings of new 
 birth are often trivial, the growth in religious 
 knowledge is almost unnoticed, the moment 
 of illumination never determined, and the 
 character of the after-life, a completely changed 
 and a wholly converted life, as free from 
 mental disturbance or hysteria as the process 
 itself. 
 
 She was born in a crippled condition, of poor 
 parents, in a very shabby and neglected quarter 
 of central London. Her childhood was marred 
 by her deformity, and she felt her disability 
 with all the suppressed resentment of a child's 
 impulsion towards joy. There was always a 
 struggle to get a living in her family, and of 
 this she was made aware in several ways. Life 
 appeared to her from the very first an oppres- 
 sion and a misery. She was taught to work as 
 soon as she was old enough to thread a needle, 
 and on the tailor's board this little deformed 
 child would sit from morning till night, helping 
 to earn the family's bread. She was taught 
 nothing at all about religion. In a shadowy 
 
186 THE CARRIAGE LADY 
 
 and never contemplated manner, she felt that 
 religion stood for something poetical, non- 
 sensical, and unreal; something which had no 
 connection at all with crippled bodies, tailoring, 
 and nights of sleepless pain; she never gave it a 
 thought. 
 
 She was often very ill, and towards woman- 
 hood these attacks of pain and weakness in- 
 creased. The mother had a sister living in a 
 small Norfolk village, and writing to her on 
 one occasion she mentioned the cripple's condi- 
 tion; and the answer to this letter was an in- 
 vitation for the girl and her brother to visit the 
 aunt. 
 
 Now this aunt was kind but fussy, religious 
 but without attraction. She was far more con- 
 cerned for her visitors when she discovered the 
 state of their souls than when she first caught 
 sight of their white faces and hollow cheeks; 
 she was far more distressed when she heard 
 their conversation than when she saw their un- 
 tidy habits and the marks of the boy's dirty 
 boots on a clean floor. She set herself to lighten 
 their darkness, to improve their manners, and to 
 nourish their poor bodies. In the last respect, 
 she succeeded; in the second, she had an indif- 
 ferent success ; in the first, she failed. 
 
 All that she said about religion struck the Lon- 
 doners as unreal and ridiculous. They listened 
 with their tongues in their cheeks. When they 
 
THE CARRIAGE LADY 187 
 
 were alone, they laughed at the old woman. To 
 them the great and real things, visible before their 
 eyes, and delicious in their hearts, were the wide 
 pastures, the green woods, the moving waters, 
 the splendours of the sky; they loved birds and 
 butterflies and animals ; every hedgerow for them 
 was full of adventure and enchantment; they 
 could not have enough of these things:; every 
 mention of religion was tiresome, a restriction, 
 the powder of grown-ups in the jam of youth. 
 So it came about that when their aunt told them 
 to go to chapel on Sunday, and saw them off 
 from her door, the brother said at the first bend 
 of the road, " You needn't go, if you don't want 
 to. You can say we went. She won't know." 
 And they played truant, and told a lie, and 
 thought nothing about it. 
 
 A new excitement was presently provided by 
 the arrival in that part of the village of a 
 caravan. It was owned by a captain retired 
 from the army, who with his wife went up and 
 down the country as missionaries of the Christian 
 religion, talking to the people, giving them 
 tracts, and holding open-air services. The van 
 naturally attracted the attention of the two 
 Londoners, and as naturally the deformed body 
 and suffering face of the London girl attracted 
 the sympathy of the lady missionary. She made 
 acquaintance with the poor girl, interested her 
 in the caravan, talked to her about religion, 
 
188 THE CARRIAGE LADY 
 
 gave her a tract, and asked her to come to the 
 service. 
 
 " What that lady said to me," narrates the 
 cripple, *' made no more impression on me than 
 rain on a bobby's cape. I didn't understand a 
 half of it, and the other half didn't seem to me 
 to make sense. I just let her talk, looking down 
 on her for a crank in my mind, and not worry- 
 ing my head about the matter one little bit. 
 She came and saw me several times, talked to 
 me as per usual, and every time it was just the 
 same — I thought she was trying to get at me, 
 and I knew jolly well I wasn't having any ! But, 
 do you know, after she had gone away, I began 
 to think about her! She kind of haunted me. 
 I couldn't remember a thing she had said, mind 
 you; not a single thing; but I could remember 
 her face, every smile in it, her voice, all the 
 music in it, and her manner, which was some- 
 thing so beautiful I can't describe it to you. I got 
 thinking and thinking about her, when I was 
 out in the fields and when I was lying in my bed, 
 till her lovely face was as real to me as if I had it 
 before my eyes. And I thought, How sweet 
 she was! How kind she was! What a lovely 
 lady she was altogether! It's very strange, but 
 it's true, as the Lord knows, that my heart was 
 touched for the first time by the smile in the 
 lady's eyes, by the music in her voice, by the 
 kind way she had of looking at me and talking 
 
THE CARRIAGE LADY 189 
 
 to me — and not by any single word she said! 
 And what do you think happened? I began to 
 pray. I never said a word to any one, and of 
 course I couldn't kneel down, but I used to 
 close my eyes and pray to God that I might 
 become like that lady! Yes, that was my first 
 prayer. And the more I prayed and the more 
 I wanted to be sweet and kind like her, the more 
 I felt how different I was, the more I seemed 
 to feel that I was something dreadfully inferior. 
 That was how I got to know something was 
 wrong with me. I didn't know what it was. All 
 
 I knew was this — that Mrs. was something 
 
 pure and sweet and nice, and that because I 
 couldn't feel myself like her there must be some- 
 thing wrong with me. I seemed to feel that 
 God loved her, but could never love me. That 
 made me think hard. It didn't make me afraid. 
 It just made me think — only very hard indeed. 
 I began to feel a desire, a regular hunger and 
 thirst, for God's love. I wanted to be better, so 
 that He could love me. I knew that if I could 
 
 only be like Mrs. He would bless me and 
 
 surround me with His love. But I was wicked, 
 sharp-tempered, bitter, revengeful, foul-mouthed, 
 foul-minded, as dark as a heathen. It seemed 
 impossible that I should ever get to be like Mrs. 
 
 , and almost hopeless that I should ever be 
 
 different from what I was. But I wanted to be 
 like her so much, and I was so ashamed of being 
 
190 THE CARRIAGE LADY 
 
 what I was, and the only way I could think of 
 changing myself was by prayer, that I went on 
 praying morning and evening, and all the day 
 through. 
 
 " The first knowledge I had of the wonder- 
 ful power of prayer came to me little by little; 
 it didn't come all at once, and it didn't startle 
 me when it came; it was marvellous, but it 
 was as natural as growing up. I found myself 
 quiet and peaceful in the brain. All the worry 
 seemed to die away. It had been like a grey 
 autumn day in my mind, all drizzle and misery, 
 and now it was like a morning in spring. Very 
 early morning, mind you; the birds hadn't 
 started to sing, and the sun hadn't got right up; 
 but it wasn't the night, and the skies weren't 
 black, and there was freshness in the air and dew 
 on the grass, and I seemed to feel all through 
 me that it was going to be a lovely day. 
 
 " This was my first knowledge of how God 
 answers prayer, and all my experience of prayer 
 has been similar. The answer has come gradu- 
 ally, peacefully, quite quietly, as if it didn't 
 want to make a noise and be found out. Of 
 course I've seen people converted in a moment, 
 directly they cried out for mercy; but with me 
 it has always been the long way round, and that 
 has suited me better than anything else. 
 
 " If I was to put it in a single phrase, I 
 should say my first experience of answered prayer 
 
THE CARRIAGE LADY 191 
 
 was a gradual feeling of inward peace. All my 
 anger at being a cripple went out of my mind; 
 all my wishing to be this, that, and the other 
 thing disappeared; and all my feeling of being 
 bad went with it. I was restful, peaceful, happy. 
 
 " When I really appreciated what had hap- 
 pened to my nature, of course it made me think 
 about the power of prayer; and thinking about 
 this power of prayer led me to think about 
 Him in whose Name all my prayers had been 
 made. For the first time in my life I set about 
 thinking of Christ, thinking of Him just as I 
 
 had thought of Mrs. . I let myself dream, 
 
 as it were; and my dreaming was about the 
 Saviour, Who had lived on the earth with His 
 disciples, and had taught men that God is a 
 Father, that prayer is answered, that God loves 
 sinners and wants to save them, and Who was 
 always kind and gentle and meek, and Who yet 
 had to suffer, and died so cruelly with all His ene- 
 mies mocking at Him and all His friends afraid 
 to be near Him. 
 
 " I think, but I can't be certain now, that 
 it was the thought of His sacrifice which really 
 gave me a changed heart. I thought about that 
 till I lost myself. I remember it was always 
 in my mind — how He had laid down His life, 
 how He had borne suffering and death, all for 
 the sake of other people. And when I say a 
 changed heart, I mean a heart not only restful 
 
192 THE CARRIAGE LADY 
 
 and quiet, for that can be selfish enough; but a 
 heart that cannot be at rest and cannot be quiet, 
 unless it is doing something for the Saviour 
 Who has done so much for it. I know that I be- 
 gan to long for some way of making myself His 
 servant. I wanted to serve Him humbly and sin- 
 cerely. I wanted to make other people, for His 
 sake, as happy as He had made me. I didn't 
 want to sit still and think of my own salvation. 
 I couldn't have done that. If I had tried it, I 
 should have been miserable instead of grateful. 
 No; I wanted to be useful, wanted to spread the 
 knowledge of His love, wanted to make His light 
 so shine before men that they might glorify His 
 Father which is in heaven. But what could I do ? 
 I was but a poor little cripple, bound to work 
 from early morning till late at night for my liv- 
 ing; I wasn't clever, I wasn't good to look at, 
 and I couldn't get about — even if I had had the 
 leisure to comfort unhappy people and try to 
 stop the bad from living without God. So what 
 could I do ? Well, there was one thing. I could 
 pray for God to show me how I might serve Him. 
 
 " And that prayer was answered, too. 
 
 " I was back in London, working hard, and 
 just talking quietly at home about the change 
 in my thoughts, and not knowing how I could 
 serve my Saviour, but praying for it, when one 
 evening I heard some singing in the street, and 
 looking out of window saw a few people with 
 
THE CARRIAGE LADY 193 
 
 a harmonium at the corner, and heard them 
 singing a hymn I knew. It came to me that 
 here was my chance. Those people, I thought 
 to myself, have felt what I have felt; they 
 have been wanting to serve the Master; and 
 this is how they do it — standing at a street- 
 corner and reminding people by their presence 
 that there is a God, that there is a life after 
 death, and that Christ came into the world to 
 save sinners. This is what / should like to do, 
 and this is what I can do, if only I can get 
 somebody to carry me down. And that is how 
 I came to join the West London Mission, from 
 its very start; and since I joined it I've been 
 so happy I can't tell you what it has been to 
 me. I don't suffer anything like the pain I 
 used to do, and my mind is never miserable and 
 moping. I feel as if I've got a meaning in the 
 world, and the chance of being useful in life. 
 And the people who come to us in the streets 
 help me to be quite certain that we are serving 
 Christ," 
 
 Here in this artless confession one has a story 
 of an indubitable and complete conversion, 
 which, thoughtfully considered, is as helpful and 
 remarkable as any of those instantaneous and 
 vehement instances of alteration in personality 
 which are too often regarded as the sole illus- 
 trations of a profound spiritual change. One 
 may justly challenge scepticism to explain how 
 
194 THE CARRIAGE LADY 
 
 such a revolution in character was produced by 
 " natural causes " — auto-suggestion and the rest 
 — and inquire whether it is possible for a change 
 so deep and dispassionate, so gentle and rational, 
 so tranquil and lasting — for the changed heart 
 has " grown in grace " for more than twenty 
 years — to be the effect of illusion and the fruit 
 of a phantasm. But it is wiser than any 
 challenge or inquiry addressed to scepticism, to 
 reflect upon this narrative from the position of 
 faith and to observe how nobly it illustrates a 
 supreme truth in the religion of Christianity, 
 and one which has been equally obscured by 
 the philosophising tendency of theology and the 
 repellent un-Christlike hysteria of revivalism. 
 
 The phrase " growth in grace " accurately 
 describes the normal operations of conversion. 
 It is none the less a case of conversion, where 
 a man turns about slowly and gradually, and 
 finds himself, without being able to mark the 
 moment or to define the sensation, facing in a 
 direction clean contrary to the march of his 
 whole former existence. The miracle is there, 
 though it be less apparent than in cases of 
 sudden and violent alterations in character, when 
 a man is, as it were, caught by the hair, and 
 swung round in a dazzling instant from the very 
 edge of destruction. To change habits, to alter 
 character — however it be done — is always the 
 work of some power which is not included and 
 
THE CARRIAGE LADY 195 
 
 cannot be included in the text-books of a logical 
 materialism; but so to change habits, and so 
 to alter character that the person is wholly trans- 
 formed out of the likeness of his former self 
 and becomes a new being conscious of quite 
 other emotions, and conscious of a joy which 
 only changes to deepen as the years advance, 
 this can only be the effect of a cause beyond 
 the definition of human reason and the opera- 
 tion of a power beyond the limits of human ac- 
 complishment. 
 
 And it is this great work which is everywhere 
 being done by the religion which believes in 
 miracle. Wherever Christianity makes its appeal 
 to the heart, however crude the manner of its 
 appeal and however un-Christlike its attitude to 
 everything else, there you will find witness to this 
 miraculous power. It is the appeal to the heart, 
 and an unswerving demand for a cleansed heart, 
 which not only accomplishes the miracles of 
 Christianity, but which alone is Christianity 
 itself. " Though ye believe not Me, believe the 
 works." And the point I would insist upon 
 is this — that overwhelming, quite overwhelming 
 and unanswerable would be the testimony of 
 these works, if all who preach the Christian 
 religion to the world, and all the whole force of 
 an organised and world-wide Christendom, were 
 so directed as to bring home to men's minds this 
 supreme aspect of Christianity, that it is a means 
 
196 THE CARRIAGE LADY 
 
 infallible and unconditioned whereby the heart 
 may be cleansed, the joy of life restored, and the 
 soul of a man born again. 
 
 " Too soon did the Doctors of the Church 
 forget that the Heart, the Moral Nature, was the 
 beginning and the end; and that Truth, Knowl- 
 edge, and Insight were comprehended in its 
 expansion. This was the true and first apostasy 
 — when in Council and Synod the Divine 
 Humanities of the Gospel gave way to specula- 
 tive Systems, and Religion became a Science of 
 Shadows. . . ." 
 
 It is the break-up of the speculative Systems 
 which is now causing what is termed religious 
 unrest. It is the recognition of the first 
 principles of Christianity which can alone give 
 back to the Church her enthusiasm and to 
 religion its power. It is faith in the power of 
 love and kindness, faith in the force and reality 
 of prayer, faith in the invisible and miraculous 
 operations of the Holy Spirit, faith in Christ as 
 the only Saviour and Redeemer of humanity — it 
 is only this simple and unquestionable Chris- 
 tianity which can cleanse the heart and convert 
 the soul. 
 
 How much encouragement there is in this 
 narrative for those devout people who desire to 
 serve their Master actively, and who believe in 
 the necessity of new birth, but who shrink, either 
 from a natural nervousness or a hyper-sensitive- 
 
THE CARRIAGE LADY 197 
 
 ness of refinement, from the bold and difficult 
 life of the preacher. For, the woman of this 
 story, so changed, so sweetened, so illumined, 
 traces her first misgivings of self, her first pure 
 ambition, and her first consciousness of the 
 spiritual life, to the influence of a kind face, a 
 gentle voice, an attractive manner. How many- 
 men and women who followed the Christ 
 would have confessed to a like beginning of 
 the new birth! It is possible to work for the 
 regeneration of men and to be the human means 
 of the most profound conversions, without 
 preaching in church or street, without even 
 working with a particular religious organisation, 
 provided that with all charity and all sweetness 
 one goes among the lost and the unhappy, 
 and ministering to the heart, makes it quite clear, 
 yet without emphasis, that one's life is devoted 
 to the service of a sinner-loving and a sinner- 
 saving Christ. 
 
 Consider, too, from this story, how Christianity 
 alone can bring blessing and joy, can alone 
 adequately solve the problems of human life. 
 Let it be supposed that the State had taken this 
 crippled tailoress by the hand, had decreed that 
 she should work only eight hours a day, had 
 provided her with treble the wages she had 
 hitherto earned, had placed her in a model 
 lodging-house, had turned a graveyard under her 
 window into an open space, had sent a band to 
 
198 THE CARRIAGE LADY 
 
 play there three times a week, had given her 
 the certain hope of a pension in her old age, 
 a sick fund in her hour of need, and a decent 
 burial for the end of her mortality — suppose 
 that all which it is possible for humanity, politics, 
 and political economy to do had been done for 
 this unhappy child, dare the most enthusiastic 
 apostle of materialism asseverate that the char- 
 acter of the woman would be now so entirely 
 lovable and sweet, that her heart would be now 
 so absolutely full of peace, that her future would 
 be now so unsparingly majestic, that she herself 
 would be so noble and exalting and helpful a 
 representative of human nature? 
 
 Christianity has to be insisted upon — most 
 strange and lamentable to relate — as a blessing 
 to humanity. It is not an opposition to political 
 reform; it is a force which transcends political 
 reform, and bestows a superior happiness. 
 Political reform, where it is society organising 
 itself without God, is an enemy of evolution, 
 the subtlest and deadliest of dangers to human 
 nature. It intensifies selfishness, it narrows 
 vision, it pollards the affections, and it deprives 
 growth of its most potent energy — the intuitions 
 and seekings and aspirations of a man's soul. 
 Christianity declares that in selfishness there is 
 neither satisfaction nor happiness; it makes 
 animal gratification not an end of existence but 
 an enemy of life; it teaches that a sublime 
 
THE CARRIAGE LADY 199 
 
 forgetf ulness of self, a searching compassion for 
 the sufferings of others, and service to humanity 
 of however humble, arduous, and unrewarded 
 a nature, create a character and bestow a happi- 
 ness so different from human nature that it is 
 in very truth a birth into a new life. 
 
 Is it necessary to insist upon this shining 
 superiority of Christianity? Against all the 
 shouting and warring promises of political 
 Utopias, one has but to set the Beatitudes, 
 " Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the pure. 
 Blessed are the peacemakers." How vast the 
 superiority! And against the enticements of 
 a selfish and animal materialism, one has but to 
 think, for a convincing contrast, of the life to 
 which the blessing is promised — " I was an 
 hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, 
 and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye 
 took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was 
 sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye 
 came unto me." How inexpressible the superi- 
 ority ! 
 
 One does not mean, of course, that there is 
 no call for political reform. One means that 
 because so great is that call, the more imperious 
 is the necessity for Christianising the reforma- 
 tion. And the beginning of all reformation lies 
 at the heart and with the individual. 
 
A GIRL AND HER LOVER 
 
 IN her sitting-room Sister Mildred was writ- 
 ing letters. The open window, from which 
 one sees neighbouring walls and distant 
 roofs, admitted the sleepy spirit of an autumn 
 afternoon. The noise of invisible streets, thin- 
 ning in its aerial ascent, entered the apartment 
 with a soothing dulness. Every time she finished 
 a letter and added it to the little pile in front of 
 her, Sister Mildred looked at the clock and was 
 conscious of a desire for tea. 
 
 She was nearly at the end of her correspond- 
 ence, when the loneliness of her situation and 
 the monotony of the afternoon were interrupted 
 by the ringing of a bell. She rose from the table, 
 and went to the door. 
 
 A girl stood there whose manner betrayed 
 a very genuine distress of soul. Without asking 
 why she had come, or who she was, the Sister 
 invited her in. "You are unhappy," she said; 
 " come in, and let us talk about it." 
 
 The girl, who was trembling with nervousness 
 and whose eyes were filled with a dreadful terror, 
 suffered the Sister to lead her into the sitting- 
 room. She was quite young, and, in spite of 
 
 200 
 
A GIRL AND HER LOVER 201 
 
 her agitation, wonderfully pretty in an innocent 
 and childish fashion. Nothing in her dress sug- 
 gested the boldness of the courtesan or the vul- 
 garity of the suburbs. The voice was gentle and 
 caressing. 
 
 " I have heard about you," she explained 
 hastily. " I thought you wouldn't mind if I 
 asked you to help me." 
 
 The Sister made her sit down. " There is 
 plenty of time," she said. " Tell me how I can 
 help you? " 
 
 " I want to get out of this life. I have had 
 a letter. It has made me wretched." Tears 
 swam into her eyes, and her lips trembled. " It 
 is from my mother." She produced a letter. 
 " Will you read it? " she asked, and stretched out 
 her hand. While the Sister was reading, the 
 girl laboured to suppress her sobs. 
 
 The mother's letter, which was written from 
 a country town, began by thanking the girl for 
 a present of money, and proceeded to beg for a 
 visit from this dearly loved daughter. " It is 
 two years since I have seen you," wrote the 
 mother, " and I do long for a sight of your dear 
 face. Won't they give you a holiday so that you 
 can come and see me, if it is only for a few 
 days ? ' The letter closed with a mother's prayer 
 to God for the protection of her child. 
 
 As Sister Mildred folded the sheet, the girl 
 said, with a burst of tears, " Oh, I'm so wretched! 
 
202 A GIRL AND HER LOVER 
 
 She thinks I'm in a shop. She believes that the 
 money I send her comes out of my wages. If 
 
 she knew ! Oh, she would rather see me 
 
 dead than living this life! What can I do? I 
 want to leave it; I want to be different; but I 
 can 't — I'm afraid. And when I'm miserable 
 I drink, and drink makes me worse. I feel I 
 shall go mad. It's getting more than I can bear. 
 This letter — you can understand what it is to me. 
 I love my mother." 
 
 The Sister said to her, " Try and be calm while 
 I tell you something." She fixed her eyes on the 
 stained and frightened face of the girl, and 
 said, " After such a letter you must never sin 
 again." 
 
 The girl would have interrupted, but the Sister 
 proceeded, " And you need not." 
 
 It was a case which seemed, on the face of it, 
 easy to cure. The pretty child was not hard- 
 ened; she was kind, gentle, dutiful; she had saved 
 money and sent it to her mother; she was con- 
 scious of shame; she desired to be better. There 
 was only one difficulty. The girl was visibly the 
 victim of alcohol. 
 
 Sympathy in such a case must go hand in hand 
 with sternness. The drowning soul has to be 
 reached at all costs. The enfeebled will has to be 
 roused into action. 
 
 It was pitiful for the Sister to see this young 
 girl, so broken and miserable, so kind and timid, 
 
A GIRL AND HER LOVER 203 
 
 so modest and sensitive, sitting before her with 
 all the remorse of the Magdalen, but with a poison 
 in her blood and a cloud over her intellect, which 
 made her as much a case for the doctor as a peni- 
 tent for the love of Christ. She desired to take 
 this poor child into her arms, to mother that 
 wounded heart and console that frightened spirit, 
 but the time for love had not come. 
 
 " You must not only hate your present life,'' 
 she said quietly ; " you must long for a better 
 one." 
 
 I do, but 
 
 "If you really long to live a good life, I can 
 help you to begin it, at once." 
 
 " But " 
 
 " It is quite easy. You need not return to 
 the bad life for a minute. From this moment 
 you can begin to live the better life. I can 
 take you to a place where kindness will surround 
 you on every side, where life is healthy and pure, 
 and where you can be taught to earn your own 
 living in a way that is honourable. Think! 
 You will be able to go and see your mother. 
 You will be able to meet her eyes without shame. 
 When she kisses you, you will not hate yourself. 
 Isn't that worth while ? " 
 
 " I want to be saved. Yes, I should think 
 it was worth while! But there's a man. I'm 
 not free. My body is black and blue with his 
 beatings. I'm afraid of him. He lives on my 
 
204 A GIRL AND HER LOVER 
 
 earnings. He makes me go into the streets. 
 Do you think he will let me go ! He will follow 
 me to the grave." 
 
 " You must not be afraid. No one can hurt 
 
 you. 
 
 " He will get hold of me. I'm sure he will. 
 I tried to get away from him before, but he 
 found me and made me go back. Those men 
 are terrible. You never get out of their 
 clutches. " 
 
 " If I promise to protect you, will you come 
 with me? If I promise you that no one can 
 compel you to live a bad life, will you believe 
 me?" 
 
 " I am afraid of that man." 
 
 " He can't hurt you." 
 
 "Will you come with me to the flat? If I 
 went alone he would never let me go. All my 
 things are there. I don't think I should be so 
 frightened if you came with me." 
 
 " I will come with you." 
 
 "You aren't afraid?" 
 
 " I am not afraid." 
 
 They started out and drove to the flat where 
 this girl lived as the slave of a scoundrel. It 
 was twilight. The lamps shone palely in the 
 streets, and the pavements were crowded with 
 people going home from their work. The sun 
 had gone down in superb splendour and on the 
 topmost windows of the houses there still 
 
A GIRL AND HER LOVER 205 
 
 lingered the fire of his passing. A breathless 
 day was followed by a still evening. 
 
 Only here and there in the block of flats 
 where the girl lived did a light show in the 
 window. The huge and smoke-grimed building, 
 standing aside from the main streets, wore a 
 threatening and forbidding aspect. It was like 
 a prison. It had the smirch of iniquity. 
 
 The Sister knew that the whole place was 
 given over to evil purposes. She knew that no 
 help would be given from inside. In case of 
 violence it would be necessary for her to descend 
 to the streets. She was not afraid, but she was 
 conscious of apprehension and a vague alarm. 
 However many policemen may walk the streets 
 outside, it is no easy matter for a woman to face 
 one of these panders in the seclusion of his own 
 establishment. But Sister Mildred is a saint, and 
 there is no courage like the courage of the saint. 
 
 They mounted the stairs to the third floor. 
 " You are sure you are not afraid? " whispered 
 the girl. She was white and terrified. " There 
 is nothing to fear," answered the Sister, and 
 pressed her arm. 
 
 The girl opened the door with a latch-keyr 
 The hall was in darkness. She closed the door 
 quietly, and felt for the switch of the electric 
 light. The place was quite silent. In the dim 
 light from the single lamp in the hall they made 
 their way down a corridor, and entered a room 
 
206 A GIRL AND HER LOVER 
 
 at the end of the passage. It was the girl's bed- 
 room. 
 
 She turned on the light, and said, " I don't 
 think he heard us." 
 
 " Perhaps he is out." 
 
 " No. I can feel that he is here ! " 
 
 " Let us be quick. But there is no need to be 
 afraid." 
 
 The girl began to open wardrobes and 
 drawers. The Sister watched her, standing 
 between the door and the scene of these opera- 
 tions. All the time that she was packing her 
 belongings the girl was shivering like a person 
 struck with a chill. She spoke in nervous 
 whispers, expressing nothing but her terror of the 
 man. 
 
 " Think of your mother's letter," said the Sis- 
 ter. " You ought to be happy. You are begin- 
 ning the new life." 
 
 " I shall be happy when we are outside," said 
 the girl. 
 
 The door opened. Sister Mildred turned her 
 head. A man stood there, filling the doorway. 
 He had one hand in the pocket of his coat; be- 
 tween the fingers of the other hand he held the 
 stump of a cigar. He regarded the Sister with 
 a frown which was a menace. 
 
 " I am taking Eva away," said the Sister. 
 
 " Indeed." 
 
 " She wishes to live a better life." 
 
A GIRL AND HER LOVER 207 
 
 He put the cigar to his lips, and began to 
 smoke. The girl continued to pack. He did not 
 look at her, and she kept her back to him. 
 
 "It has been very close to-day," said Sister 
 Mildred. 
 
 The man moved to a chair, and sat down. 
 " We are going to have rain," he said. 
 
 " Yes, I think we are." 
 
 A bag snapped to, and there was the sound 
 of a strap being pulled through a buckle. The 
 man's income was passing away before his 
 eyes. 
 
 "London is horrible in the autumn," he said 
 to Sister Mildred. 
 
 " It must be beautiful in the country." 
 
 " I should like to be at Brighton." 
 
 The girl half-turned, with a bag in her hand. 
 The man remained where he was; he did not look 
 at her. Sister Mildred went to the girl, took one 
 of the bags, and led her towards the door. 
 
 " We will go now," she said to the man, with- 
 out stopping in her walk. 
 
 " By all means," he answered. 
 
 In the doorway Sister Mildred turned her head, 
 and said good-bye to him. 
 
 He waited till Eva had passed through the 
 doorway. Then he raised his head, and met the 
 Sister's eyes. " Good-bye," he said, without 
 moving from his chair. 
 
 In the rescue-home they saw how greatly this 
 
208 A GIRL AND HER LOVER 
 
 girl had suffered at the hands of her bully. Her 
 body was black with his blows and red with his 
 canings. " When I came home tipsy, he would 
 flog me," she told them ; " when I came home 
 alone he accused me of having wasted my time, 
 and struck me." 
 
 One would have said that she was now in 
 heaven. On every side of her were the tender- 
 ness and solicitude of holy women; her life 
 was ordered by a cheerful and invigorating 
 routine; the atmosphere she breathed was 
 wholesome and pure; wherever she turned there 
 was kindness; instead of a bully, she had good 
 women over her; instead of the reckless en- 
 vironment of the streets she had the friendship 
 and encouragement of courtesans who had turned 
 from a like degradation and were praying their 
 way to God. When she thought of her mother 
 she could reflect, " In a few months I shall go 
 to her; the past will be like a bad dream." 
 
 But there was one thing the home could not 
 give to her. And this thing she desired, craved, 
 and burned for, more than everything else. It 
 was alcohol. More than God's forgiveness, more 
 than reunion with her mother, more than purity, 
 more than a new life, more than the hope of 
 heaven after death, she wanted this poison called 
 alcohol. And in order to satisfy this craving, 
 she escaped from the home, and went back to the 
 streets. 
 
A GIRL AND HER LOVER 209 
 
 Three weeks had passed since she entered the 
 home; three weeks of freedom from the bully's 
 fists, three weeks of acquaintance with purity, 
 three weeks of approach to God; then — driven 
 by unconquerable mania, she went back to the 
 vileness and the terror of her life of sin, for the 
 sake of drink. 
 
 Sister Mildred was told of this sad end to 
 her penitent's aspiration after a good life. She 
 looked for her on the streets, but did not see 
 her. She inquired about her, but no tidings 
 could be heard. 
 
 One night a constable stopped her in Regent 
 Street. The inspector at Vine Street desired to 
 see her. Sister Mildred went to the police- 
 station, and found the girl there — drunk and hys- 
 terical. 
 
 The police are wonderfully kind to these 
 women. They do not charge them before a 
 magistrate if there is the smallest opportunity 
 of avoiding so great a catastrophe. Severity 
 and rigour of the law are reserved for the 
 procuress or for the well-known criminals who 
 masquerade as public women. For young girls 
 at the beginning of a life of vice, the police 
 of West London have a genuine compassion. 
 
 Eva told her story. The bully had found 
 her out and had carried her off to earn money 
 for him. She was in his power again. If 
 Sister Mildred would only take her to the home 
 
210 A GIRL AND HER LOVER 
 
 once more, if she would only give her another 
 chance, never — never would she go back to the 
 streets. 
 
 It was quite clear that this girl's life would 
 be exposed to the gravest risks so long as the 
 bully was at large. Sister Mildred explained the 
 matter to the police, and a course of action was 
 decided upon then and there. The girl would be 
 handed over to the Mission; the man would be 
 arrested. 
 
 A change came over the girl when she learned 
 that the tyrant of her life had been sentenced 
 to six months' imprisonment. She appeared to 
 regain the courage natural to her years and 
 health; she lost something of the shrinking 
 timidity which had hitherto marked her manner. 
 The Sisters in the home observed with hope and 
 encouragement that the girl manifested signs of a 
 resolute will. She expressed with emphasis her 
 determination to live the new life, never again 
 to go back. There was more energy in the way 
 she set about her work, more thoroughness in her 
 accomplishment of the tasks allotted to her. 
 
 But with dipsomania there is always a great 
 risk. The drunkard whose whole body is sodden 
 with alcoholic poison, who cannot pass a day 
 without drinking to a vast excess, who is, prac- 
 tically speaking, always in a state of intoxica- 
 tion, does not offer so hard a task to the 
 physician as the man suddenly and completely 
 
A GIRL AND HER LOVER 211 
 
 swept away at long intervals by an overmaster- 
 ing passion for drink. This is the true dipso- 
 maniac, and doctors have told me that the true 
 dipsomaniac is never cured. With the drunkard, 
 the will consents to the madness; with the dip- 
 somaniac, the will opposes and is swept aside. 
 For weeks the dipsomaniac is free from tempta- 
 tion, feels no desire for drink, appears to be 
 a person exercising the force of a conscious will; 
 and then, suddenly — with a rush like the spring 
 of a tiger, the will is swept clean away, the mind 
 has no force, and the whole body is consumed 
 by a blind and ferocious passion for drink. At 
 such moments, I have been told by men of science, 
 there is no power on earth which can oppose this 
 madness. This is not true. 
 
 There is a power, how to name it I do not 
 know, which gives the dipsomaniac sufficient 
 energy to resist even these terrible moments 
 of insensate madness. It is not a power which 
 produces miracle, for there is always conflict; 
 it is something so wonderful, so unknown by 
 physicians, so unrecognised and undefined by 
 psychical science, that one may describe it as 
 superhuman; nevertheless, it appears so lack- 
 ing in mercy, so wanting in the warmth of saving 
 pity, that I dare not call it divine. It comes 
 by prayer and aspiration, but it is not the might 
 of God nor the sheltering love of Christ. Those 
 to whom it comes, go down on their knees to 
 
212 A GIRL AND HER LOVER 
 
 God, after the fierce conflict, and offer up a 
 fervent thanksgiving for the mercy vouchsafed 
 to them; but their bodies are wet with the 
 strife, their limbs are trembling, they are so 
 spent and exhausted that the prayer gasps from 
 their lips. I have met men whose long craving 
 for alcohol has vanished instantaneously at the 
 moment of conversion; they have told me that 
 in place of the craving they were conscious from 
 that time forward of a very nausea at the thought 
 of drink. But I have met others whose con- 
 version has left just this single cell of the brain 
 uncleansed; and every now and then, in the 
 midst of lives so holy, so self-sacrificing, so 
 devoted to the love of God that one may liken 
 them to the saints, there comes the agonising de- 
 sire and the only just resistible passion for the 
 spirit or the drug. It may be that the power to 
 resist comes from their higher self, that larger 
 and subliminal consciousness which functions, it 
 is hazarded, on the spiritual plane; but the blind 
 man invited to accuse Christ of sin, replied, 
 " Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not : one 
 thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now 
 I see " — and these people, not troubling to dis- 
 cover and to define their means of safety, assure 
 one that they pray and that the answer comes by 
 prayer — one thing they know, that, whereas they 
 were torn and rent by a very demon, now they 
 are calm with the peace of God. 
 
A GIRL AND HER LOVER 213 
 
 The risk in the case of this particular girl 
 was considerable. She would go from the home 
 into domestic service; it might be a part of 
 her duties to handle the decanters and wine- 
 bottles of her employers; the temptation would 
 be thrust upon her; to resist it would be almost 
 impossible. For the life of the streets not only 
 destroys the purity of the body, it moulders 
 and rots the force of the will. Sometimes it 
 is a matter of years before the will is restored; 
 sometimes it is irrecoverable. A girl may be 
 saved from the dreadful life, may become 
 perfectly virtuous and perfectly pure, and yet 
 remain to the end of her days mentally weak, 
 mentally deficient; and this is almost invariable 
 where the girl has long been a victim of alcohol. 
 The noblest chords of the physical organism 
 are destroyed, and the spirit is powerless to ex- 
 press itself. 
 
 So the good Sisters of the Mission cast about 
 in their minds as to what they could do for 
 this threatened soul. While they drew her 
 nearer and nearer into the circle of religion, 
 while they gradually led her to feel in the idea 
 of God all that her highest nature could imagine 
 or desire, while they gently and sweetly pre- 
 sented at the beatings of her heart the thought 
 of Christ as One Who had followed her in all 
 her ways, pleading and waiting, and was now 
 so happy in her penitence, so merciful in His 
 
214 A GIRL AND HER LOVER 
 
 forgiveness — and while, at the same time, they 
 encouraged her to take a pride in her work, to 
 make all her tasks a sacrament of her gratitude 
 to God, these good women were looking out into 
 the seething world outside, so full of peril for 
 this rescued soul, and seeking for her a place of 
 security. 
 
 One day Sister Mildred came to the girl and 
 talked to her about her mother, her life in the 
 country, the days of her girlhood. Was there 
 no one, in those days, for whom she had felt 
 love and who had professed love for her? The 
 lovers had been many, but light; of philan- 
 dering she had had the ordinary experience 
 of a pretty and attractive girl, in common- 
 place surroundings; of real love — no, she knew 
 nothing. 
 
 " No man, then, has really ever asked you to 
 marry him? " 
 
 Oh, yes." 
 
 But I thought you said- 
 
 ft 
 
 (( 
 
 Not in those days, not in the country." 
 When you were in a shop? " 
 "No; afterwards." 
 
 Do you mean- 
 
 er T\~ >> 
 
 " Yes ; on the streets. I met him one night, 
 and spoke to him. He was shocked when he 
 found out why I had spoken to him. He would 
 not go with me, but we walked together. He 
 asked me to give up the life. I said I couldn't. 
 
A GIRL AND HER LOVER 215 
 
 He gave me some money, and went away. 
 After that I saw him several times. He used 
 to look out for me. If he didn't see me, he 
 would ask the others where I was. They called 
 him my follower. He used to wait for me out- 
 side public-houses, and restaurants, and at 
 street-corners. He was always begging me to 
 give up the life " 
 
 "What kind of man?" 
 
 " He has been in the Navy. Now he's a hail- 
 porter in one of the clubs." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "One day he asked me to marry him. It 
 didn't surprise me, because I knew he was fond 
 of me; but I pretended to laugh at the thought 
 — a decent man marrying a girl on the streets! 
 He said that he would give me a comfortable 
 home, that he wouldn't think about the past, and 
 that he cared for me more than my life could 
 make him not care. He was in earnest. He al- 
 most made me afraid. I was pleased to think he 
 loved me, but it seemed impossible that I should 
 ever be a decent woman." 
 
 "But now?" 
 
 " What do you mean? " 
 
 " If he should ask you now ? " 
 
 " I haven't seen him for a long time." 
 
 " He must be a good man." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "It would be a great thing to deserve the 
 
216 A GIRL AND HER LOVER 
 
 love of such a man. There's an ambition for 
 you! Win his love again. Become his wife. 
 Make a home for him. Look forward to the day 
 when perhaps you will be the mother of his chil- 
 dren." 
 
 " I feel more unworthy now than I did in the 
 old days." 
 
 " He will not think so." 
 
 This discovery was a great consolation to the 
 Sisterhood. It promised security for the child, 
 who was so sweet and so feeble, so pretty and 
 so weak, so innocent and gentle in appearance, 
 but with so dangerous a poison in her veins. It 
 was decided that Sister Mildred should see the 
 man, tell him the story of Eva as she knew it, 
 warn him of the danger that they feared, and ask 
 him if he would take the risk. The girl told his 
 name and the club at which he served. Sister 
 Mildred wrote to him, and the next day he came 
 to see her. 
 
 He was a man who carried in his face the rec- 
 ommendation of a noble mind. He advertised 
 the benefits of Discipline. There was something 
 heroic and dignified in his manner, in the 
 carriage of his head, in the tone of his voice, 
 in the honesty of his words. It was easy to 
 tell him the whole story, not so easy to wish 
 that he should take so great a risk. 
 
 He said in straightforward words that he loved 
 this girl. " Her life never seemed to make any 
 
A GIRL AND HER LOVER 217 
 
 difference to my love for her," he explained. " I 
 don't know how I have done it, but I have loved 
 her apart from what she was doing. When I was 
 with her I forgot all about it; but when I left 
 her I remembered, and it hurt me. I couldn't 
 bear to think of her walking the street. God 
 knows how that worried me. It seemed to get 
 between me and the sun. Many a time I thought 
 I couldn't stand it any longer. It was worse 
 than a blow in the face ; it was like a knife in the 
 heart." 
 
 Sister Mildred spoke of the change in Eva's 
 disposition, her genuine awakening to religion, 
 her cleansed heart and purified mind. Then 
 she asked, "Are you still willing to marry 
 her?" 
 
 " You needn't ask me that," said the lover. 
 
 The next step was more difficult. The man 
 had to be warned of the danger. Eva would love 
 him to the end of her days, she would be a true 
 wife and a virtuous woman, but there was a risk 
 of another temptation. Nothing was hidden, 
 nothing minimised. The whole dreadful hazard 
 was made plain. One day the man might return 
 to his home to find his wife senseless and odious 
 with drink. He might forgive, might plead, 
 might make a new start, might live for months 
 in the belief that restoration had come; and then, 
 once more the terrible disillusion, the hateful 
 wreck of hope, the disgust of despair. 
 
218 A GIRL AND HER LOVER 
 
 He listened attentively. When the Sister had 
 made an end, he sat for a few moments in 
 silence, reflecting. 
 
 At last he said, " There's one thing I can see. 
 We must go clean away. London can never be 
 any good to her." 
 
 " Are you willing to take her away ? ' 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " That would mean giving up your work ? ' 
 
 " I'm not afraid. Out in Canada, out in 
 Australia — there's always room for a decent man. 
 We could make a fresh start. No one would 
 know about her. She'd see nothing to remind 
 her of the past, it would be a new world for 
 her." 
 
 " You must think it over very seriously before 
 
 you act." 
 
 " I've done that. I'll tell you what I'll do, Sis- 
 ter. It's plain sailing now; I can see ahead. 
 Look here, I'll take this girl to church and I'll 
 marry her, with you at her side. In my pocket 
 there will be my passage to Australia, and at 
 the church door I'll say good-bye to her. I'll 
 leave her in your hands, as my wife; and I'll 
 go straight off to the South. When I've got 
 work, when I've made a home, and all's comfort- 
 able and easy for her, I'll write and send the 
 money for her journey, and she shall come out 
 to me. That's how I see the matter; that's my 
 way of settling the difficulty. Will you agree? ' 
 
A GIRL AND HER LOVER 219 
 
 It was settled in this way. 
 
 The marriage was surely one of the noblest 
 ever sanctified in a London church. The man 
 had given up the certainty of daily bread; he 
 was going to a country where he had neither 
 friend nor acquaintance; he was doing this to 
 save a woman whom, a few months before, he 
 might have bought for a sovereign ; and, having 
 married her, having given her the security and 
 protection of his good name, he was leaving her 
 at the door of the church, to face the world alone, 
 to make his way single-handed, to prepare a home 
 for her. 
 
 That parting at the church door between the 
 emigrant lover and the penitent Magdalen is 
 ineffaceably impressed upon Sister Mildred's 
 memory. She describes the man, with a 
 ring in her voice, as " splendid," and her eyes 
 kindle as she speaks of the chivalrous tender- 
 ness of his farewell to the young wife, and 
 the quiet confidence with which he walked 
 away alone, on his far journey to a distant 
 country. 
 
 This devotion of the man, so unthinkable to 
 many, so easy to explain by those conscious of 
 superior sensibility, made a resistless appeal to 
 the soul of the girl. She was humbled, and yet 
 exalted. She felt herself unworthy, and yet 
 felt herself spurred to merit so great a blessing. 
 In a word, the nobility of the man brought her 
 
220 A GIRL AND HER LOVER 
 
 out of the suburbs of the commonplace and set 
 her feet in the city of the soul. She was in that 
 region where the spirit loses the sense of the 
 trivial and is conscious of grandeur. To be con- 
 scious of grandeur is to be conscious of God. She 
 breathed the sublime air, saw the brightness of 
 eternity, felt in her soul " the sacred passion of 
 the second life." No longer for her was ex- 
 istence a vulgar scramble after transitory 
 pleasure. 
 
 To be worthy of the man who loved her it was 
 necessary that she should become her highest. 
 To become her highest it was necessary for her 
 to be spiritual. To be spiritual it was necessary 
 to pray. 
 
 Into her heart, which had suffered so greatly 
 and which had sought so disastrously to gratify 
 the lusts of the flesh, there stole gradually 
 and sweetly the cleansing tide of celestial 
 love. Afraid to trust herself, conscious that 
 she herself must always be uunworthy, she 
 clung to the idea of a Saviour, bowed herself 
 at the feet of infinite compassion, surrendered 
 herself into the care of everlasting strength. 
 She made her life a prayer, lived with the 
 thought of Christ in her heart, did everything in 
 her day's work as a sacrament of the spirit. 
 And while this growth in grace developed and 
 transformed her character, the health of her body 
 responded to healthy toil, to regular habits, to 
 
A GIRL AND HER LOVER 221 
 
 simple living and to noble thoughts. The will 
 which had been so pliant, became strengthened. 
 The lassitude which had so often assailed her, 
 passed away. She was quick, energetic, bright- 
 minded, and happy-hearted. 
 
 The temptation to drink came to her, but 
 without its old force. She was able to combat 
 the thought ; and her suffering, while the passion 
 lasted, was not very great. She was restless, 
 fretted, distracted; but not torn. She came out 
 from these strange psychical storms with serenity 
 and quiet faith. 
 
 Not many weeks after his arrival in Australia 
 the husband wrote and asked her to join him. 
 He had found work, he had got a home for her, 
 he could promise her a cheerful existence and 
 the friendship of kind people. He sent an ample 
 remittance for her expenses. 
 
 She went to see the mother, whose letter 
 had first touched her heart to seek repentance, 
 and after a brief visit and affectionate fare- 
 wells, left England to join her husband. Some 
 years have passed since her departure, and the 
 only letters that the Mission receives from hus- 
 band and wife tell of increasing prosperity and 
 an ever-deepening happiness of heart and soul. 
 This girl, who once walked the London streets, 
 who was a dipsomaniac, and the beaten slave of 
 a bully, is now the virtuous wife of a good man, 
 the happy mother of healthy children, and a soul 
 
222 A GIRL AND HER LOVER 
 
 consecrated to the service of humanity. Is there 
 any other power on the earth which could have 
 done this mighty thing, except that power which 
 works by the need of the fallen soul for a pure 
 Christ? ' 
 
TALE OF A TREATY PORT 
 
 WHILE I was making myself acquainted 
 with the work of the West London 
 Mission I came across a man so much 
 out of the common and with so original a view 
 of the religious life, that I turned aside from my 
 researches to cultivate his sympathy and learn his 
 story. 
 
 His attitude towards the Mission was one of 
 relentless criticism. He worked with it because 
 it appeared to him about the best religious or- 
 ganisation of its kind, but he refused to admit 
 for a moment that it represented the idea of 
 Christ. This amazing judgment was based upon 
 his conception of charity. The injunction " Give 
 to him that asketh thee, and from him that would 
 borrow of thee turn not thou away," meant for 
 my acquaintance almost the fundamental doctrine 
 of Christianity. He held that no one who 
 refused a beggar's plea for assistance, or who 
 spent a shilling on luxury while his neighbour 
 was in need, could by any stretch of the 
 imagination be called a follower of Christ. As 
 the West London Mission makes it a principle 
 of its action not to encourage the loafer, and 
 
 223 
 
224 TALE OF A TREATY PORT 
 
 concentrates all its energy upon declaring only 
 the spiritual gospel of Christ — keeping that evan- 
 gelical side of religion entirely free from the 
 possible corruption of almsgiving — my acquaint- 
 ance was not only in constant antagonism with 
 the society, but he was continually getting into 
 difficulties with the authorities. Here is an in- 
 stance in point : — 
 
 " I was listening one night, " he told me, " to 
 an open-air service of the Mission, when a work- 
 man came up to me and asked if I would give 
 him a shilling. He appeared to be in want, 
 and it was not for me to judge him. I gave 
 him the money. On another occasion, as I 
 was walking away from the service, he followed 
 me and begged for more assistance. He told 
 a pitiful story, probably false, and said that if he 
 could get his tools out of pawn he might really 
 hope for a decent job in the following week. I 
 gave him some money, and advised him to go 
 and see one of the Sisters of the Mission at head- 
 quarters. It appears that he went there; and 
 that after he had left the building, one of the 
 Sisters, whose bag had been lying on the table 
 in the room where he had been sitting alone, 
 missed her purse. It contained something over 
 a pound or two. Whether the man stole the 
 purse or not, I don't know, I can't say; but 
 when I arrived at the house I found that every- 
 body had definitely decided upon his guilt. I 
 
TALE OF A TREATY PORT 225 
 
 pointed out that the evidence against him was 
 by no means conclusive, but, of course, without 
 effect. ' I have told the police,' said the Sister 
 whose purse was missing, ' and I hope the man 
 will be caught.' ' What ! ' I said, * you want 
 to put him in prison ? ' ' He is a thief ! ' said 
 the Sister. 'But are you not a Christian?' I 
 asked. She could not see — this is what I com- 
 plain about — that however guilty and abominable 
 the man might be, it was an act clean contrary 
 to religion, an act absolutely opposed to religion, 
 to seek to punish him. But it is the same 
 everywhere. You find a great deal of morality, 
 a great deal of routine charity and mechanical 
 religion, but the Spirit of Christ is almost totally 
 unknown." 
 
 On the subject of conversion he had his own 
 particular view. The narratives in Professor 
 James's wonderful book moved him to no 
 admiration. " The best model for a story of 
 conversion," he said, " is to be found in Matthew, 
 nine, nine — He saith unto him, Follow Me. And 
 he arose, and followed Him." 
 
 His mind, I found, was overcharged with a 
 vast and immovable depression. He saw Chris- 
 tianity very vividly and very closely as something 
 which a child might understand; and he saw 
 those who represent Christianity making it 
 something so difficult and equivocal that the 
 world abandoned all effort to understand it. He 
 
226 TALE OF A TREATY PORT 
 
 saw the idea of Christ as something which could 
 quite easily change the whole face of existence, 
 and he saw the Church entangling this pure and 
 lovely thing with the confusions and distortions 
 of a godless materialism. His ideal of a living 
 brotherhood — each man really and truly regard- 
 ing his neighbour with greater love than himself, 
 each nation really and truly living for the total 
 good of humanity, and all the world really and 
 truly seeking sweetness, love, mercy, and sim- 
 plicity, instead of ostentation, wealth, self-asser- 
 tion, and self-aggrandisement — this ideal which 
 he held to be the very elements and therefore 
 the root essentials of Christianity, nowhere could 
 he see visible on the earth. It was because he 
 felt with all the force of his soul the religion of 
 Christ to be a practical reality, the one means 
 of exalting life and rendering humanity divine; 
 and because he saw this one hope of men's 
 salvation treated for the most part as a mere 
 visionary's counsel of perfection, a theme for 
 church pulpits, but not for practice in streets 
 and homes and parliaments, that he had a stern 
 judgment for religious organisations and felt 
 himself to be solitary, powerless, and miserably 
 ineffectual. 
 
 He was a man of real culture and some dis- 
 tinction. His life had been full of events. For 
 many years he had travelled in the East as 
 special correspondent for one of the chief news- 
 
TALE OF A TREATY PORT 227 
 
 papers of London; he had a knowledge of the 
 customs and morals of nations which was as 
 intimate and well-ordered as his knowledge of 
 their foreign policies; he had a sense of humour 
 which was pleasant and refined, if not keen and 
 incisive; in spite of an almost judicial gravity 
 and a certain ponderous turgidity of mind which 
 was sometimes within touch of aggravation, he 
 gave one an impression of real power and solid 
 worth. It was not long before one discovered 
 that he had suffered very greatly, and perceived 
 that he had experienced some unique manifesta- 
 tion of the religious spirit. The man was 
 original, with a sense of mystery behind the 
 quiet, almost stagnant self-possession of his 
 manner. 
 
 " There is a modesty of the soul, as well as 
 of the body," says Professor Granger, 1 " through 
 which high-spirited persons usually shrink from 
 talking about the principles of honour upon 
 which they act. This is why the intrusion even 
 of well-meaning persons in the things of the 
 spirit is so often bitterly resented. The religious 
 life, in its private aspect, is indeed a mystery 
 and forbids speech, and when this reticence is 
 transgressed the soul seems to be wounded. 
 Dale, speaking of hypnotic experiments, says: 
 1 1 have come to the conclusion that when a 
 man submits himself to experiment, he surrenders 
 
 x The Soul of a Christian. (Methuen.) 
 
228 TALE OF A TREATY PORT 
 
 for the time the integrity of his self-command, 
 allows a break to be made in the fences which 
 protect his personality, runs grave risk of mad- 
 ness or worse. If I may put it so, there seems 
 to me to be a sacrifice of the chastity of our 
 inner personal life in these inquiries, which may 
 have results on the higher nature analogous to 
 those which follow the physical offence and still 
 more ruinous.' " 
 
 In a certain sense, with real limitations, this 
 is true. There is, indeed, a holy of holies in each 
 man's soul which must be guarded against all 
 human approach. To seek to enter there is a 
 profanation. It belongs to God. But there is 
 danger of a most pernicious egoism in the 
 reticence which locks away from the benefit of 
 other men a unique or miraculous spiritual 
 experience. One has only to think what would 
 have happened to the character and manhood of 
 St. Paul if he had regarded his conversion as a 
 thing sole and particular to himself, or of St. 
 Augustine, or of St. Teresa, to realise that this 
 natural modesty of the soul may become a 
 menace to the highest expression of the spiritual 
 life. It is necessary, sometimes, to bear the 
 wounding pain and tearing sharpness of a 
 spiritual disclosure; to forget one's self, to 
 realise one's individual insignificance, and to give 
 with both hands to the world what has been 
 given in secret and with holy mystery to one's 
 
TALE OF A TREATY PORT 229 
 
 self. But this can only be understood by the 
 saints, and only by saints can the sacrifice be made 
 without vanity and without creating disgust. 
 
 The man of whom I am writing has all the 
 shrinking and timidity of soul which characterise 
 a refined nature. It was therefore with the 
 greatest unwillingness that he contemplated a 
 disclosure of the strange event in his life which 
 led ultimately to his conversion. When he per- 
 ceived that such a narration might be of service 
 to the cause of Christianity and helpful to 
 those of his fellow-men struggling to discover 
 reality in religion, he wavered in his refusal 
 to discuss the matter, and after some further 
 persuasion finally surrendered to the idea, but 
 only upon conditions which will be faithfully 
 observed in the following pages. I can give 
 neither the name of the man, nor mention the 
 scene of his illumination, and the story must 
 suffer from a certain reserve as to details which 
 honour obliges me to respect. Nevertheless, I 
 think the reader will be interested and genuinely 
 moved by the story, and, even as it stands, I 
 venture to regard it as a real and valuable 
 contribution to the literature of religious experi- 
 ence. 
 
 It was during his sojourn in the East that 
 the miracle occurred. He had relinquished for 
 the time being his service as special corre- 
 spondent to an English newspaper, and kad set 
 
230 TALE OF A TREATY PORT 
 
 up a local journal of his own in a treaty port of 
 evil reputation. Impending war had brought 
 into this Mongolian town the offscourings of 
 the nations, and troops from nearly all the coun- 
 tries of the world. Vice of the most hideous 
 kind, which for long had struck deep its roots 
 into this filthy soil, now flourished with the most 
 open and unashamed effrontery. The troops of 
 Christendom thickened the scum of Asian de- 
 pravity. The place swarmed with iniquity. Life 
 was worse than a bacchanal rout, infinitely more 
 degraded than Rabelaisian gluttony; the air 
 was vile with a corruption of men's souls, the 
 devilries of hell smoked in the eye of heaven, 
 you could almost smell the rot of decaying 
 spirits. In this abominable and mephitic 
 atmosphere, the man of whom I tell, an 
 educated, healthy, and tolerant Englishman, lived 
 a life that was fairly decent, fairly honourable, 
 fairly pure. He had the work of his news- 
 paper, which included some kind of superin- 
 tendence of the printing-machines, to keep him 
 employed for the greater part of the day; he 
 was a volunteer and took his part in the drills; 
 and he was profoundly interested, as a student 
 of world politics, in the rush and turmoil of 
 events which every hour were shaping more 
 certainly and more hopelessly for a war the 
 end of which no man could forecast. His 
 leisure was spent in restaurants and cafes, he 
 
TALE OF A TREATY PORT 231 
 
 mingled with the cosmopolitan mob, knew very 
 well what was taking place around him, amused 
 himself as the mood inclined him, did not 
 descend to the abyss of perdition but took his 
 pleasure, like a man of the world, without the 
 smallest interruption from his conscience. 
 
 By keeping back certain important news, 
 which might have had a disastrous effect upon 
 events, he earned the gratitude and won the 
 friendship of the General commanding the 
 British troops. His paper began to be regarded 
 with respect, and his position in the town 
 gradually assumed the character of importance. 
 But social eminence was no restraint on the 
 lowest of passions in this particular treaty port, 
 and he was perfectly free to pursue whatever 
 course he chose without fear of scandal or 
 financial loss. Therefore, while his position was 
 steadily improving and his interest in his paper 
 was increasing, he lived as he had lived hitherto, 
 gave no thought to appearances, cared nothing 
 for morals, and as for religion of any kind, he 
 gave it no thought at all. 
 
 Imperceptibly there came into his mind a 
 sense of uneasiness, a feeling of unrest, 
 a gradual conviction of dissatisfaction. He 
 cannot tell when this change began to manifest 
 in his soul. It was there, potent and unex- 
 pungeable, when he came to contemplate a cer- 
 tain act which would have been unpardonable. 
 
232 TALE OF A TREATY PORT 
 
 Before that act, in face of that terrible decision, 
 the immemorial conflict of good and evil was 
 a reality in his nature. No longer indifferent 
 to conduct, he felt the tug of his higher nature 
 and heard the judgment of conscience. He had 
 become a moral being. 
 
 " I need not particularise my offences," he 
 says; "there were very few things that could 
 not be condoned or tolerated in our port, at 
 least if one took care to be popular and good- 
 tempered and on the right side of the more 
 influential persons. But now, the course I con- 
 templated was one that could not have been 
 overlooked. " 
 
 As he contemplated this act, weighing the 
 consequences and fencing with his higher nature, 
 there came to him the knowledge that whether 
 this particular course was pursued or abandoned, 
 the flesh of his character was spotted with sin 
 and the blood of his spirit flowing with the 
 contagion of iniquity. He saw and regarded 
 himself as morally diseased. Contemplation of 
 a single act had brought to his mind an illumina- 
 tion which lit up for him the darkest recesses 
 of his soul and laid bare for his gaze the cor- 
 ruption of his whole nature. He felt himself to 
 be hideous. Before the mirror of self-examina- 
 tion he stood and saw himself repugnant and vile. 
 Not at this or that act did he sicken, not for 
 this or that treacherous inclination did he feel 
 
TALE OF A TREATY PORT 233 
 
 remorse; but for the pollution and rottenness of 
 his whole soul he was filled with an almost in- 
 sufferable abhorrence. 
 
 " I went," he says, " to the armoury where 
 the rifles were kept of those who practised with 
 them, and brought away my own rifle, No. 60, 
 as permitted, for we were expected to take out 
 our rifles occasionally and practise sighting, &c, 
 without the use of ammunition. The order was 
 that no ammunition was to be taken out without 
 permission. But I took one ball cartridge, of 
 the Mark IV. or Dum-dum kind, flat-nosed and 
 warranted to act decisively. I lived in a little 
 room at the top of a high building, as my wife 
 and family were at home and I had given up 
 my house in their absence; and I placed the 
 rifle and the ball cartridge at one side of the 
 room near the window, where I could see them, 
 and took my meals at the table facing them, 
 and sat opposite them day by day about a month, 
 practising sometimes with my toe on the trigger 
 but without the cartridge, and with the muzzle 
 of the rifle in my mouth, until practice brought 
 efficiency. There was nothing nervous or excit- 
 able about this procedure, and it would be wrong 
 to suggest that suicide was in contemplation ex- 
 cept as a remotely possible issue. It certainly was 
 in mind as a possibility, but only under compul- 
 sion. " 
 
 During this time he began to take stock of 
 
234 TALE OF A TREATY PORT 
 
 himself. He became the doctor of his own soul, 
 and studied that diseased and dying entity with 
 the dispassion and curiosity of science. He felt 
 the pulse of his moral nature and kept a chart 
 of his soul's temperature. 
 
 "Of sins actually committed,' , he narrates, " I 
 kept a register, not naming them but making 
 a tick for each one on the wall with a pencil, 
 and the date, so that I could see at what date 
 these things were more numerous, and so getting 
 gradually to reduce them. The building where 
 I lived had a flat roof, and as it was now 
 summer, with high temperatures reaching to 
 ioo° and over, I used to sleep on the roof, 
 with no covering overhead, for the sake of the 
 coolness and the light breezes. The pencil- 
 marks were made on the lead sheeting of the 
 roof: when, occasionally, rain came, it washed 
 off all the marks, and a fresh lot began. No 
 one, of course, knew of these matters, as I kept 
 the door locked that led to the roof, and paid 
 special rent for the roof, at my own wish, so 
 that no one else among the other tenants of the 
 building should claim access to it. My reputa- 
 tion in the town was as good as the average, 
 above reproach as regards ordinary require- 
 ments; at the worst I believe I may have been 
 credited with a leaning towards what may be 
 called smart practice, not dishonesty, but a 
 straining after one's own advantage, in busi- 
 
TALE OF A TREATY PORT 235 
 
 ness. But of complete rottenness of heart 
 I became convinced, the more so as no one 
 else could possibly see it. If I could have 
 conveniently died it would have been a great 
 relief." 
 
 Presently he was aware of his own helpless- 
 ness, and the need of a Power not himself. He 
 says : — 
 
 " Although I did not believe in prayer, not 
 supposing that an Almighty, if any, would alter 
 the established order of the universe at the 
 request of one benighted individual, nevertheless 
 I was compelled to pray, and as it was useless 
 to pray to a Supreme Being who could not be 
 reached, or seen, or understood by a finite being, 
 therefore I knelt down, sometimes on the roof, 
 above the town and unseen by it, sometimes 
 on the open plain, a few miles out of the town. 
 I knelt down before a particular star, which 
 at this time of the year rose in the west with 
 special brilliancy. I prayed to that, well know- 
 ing that it was nothing but a star and could 
 not be a god, or a sentient being of any sort; 
 but feeling at any rate that it was something 
 outside this world. The constellation of Orion 
 also became very attractive because it indicated 
 a continuity of design and purpose extending 
 from past infinity of time to our own visible 
 time and self, and surpassing anything on earth 
 — indicating, in fact, the existence of laws or of 
 
286 TALE OF A TREATY PORT 
 
 something to which the earth and all in it must 
 give submission. So I spent the nights, sleep- 
 ing under the stars, high above the town, 
 and this gave me some peace; and in the 
 evenings I watched the glory of the setting 
 suns." 
 
 In this way the religious idea began to take 
 form and shape in his mind, but vaguely, with 
 indeterminate outline and an almost mocking 
 elusiveness. He was haunted by the idea of 
 religion, rather than conscious of religion itself. 
 Nevertheless this haunting was sufficiently in- 
 sistent to make him anxious about the possibility 
 of its reality. He considered the idea; and 
 while he was keeping the chart of his sins and 
 praying to a star, unconsciously as the eidolon 
 of that Power not ourselves which makes for 
 righteousness, he decided to make himself better 
 acquainted with the notions of the Christian 
 religion. One Sunday he attended service at 
 the Nonconformist church. He went late on 
 purpose, " so that I should not be bothered with 
 formularies and creeds and so on," and listened 
 to a sermon which made little or no effect upon 
 his soul, but which did not, at any rate, v/eary 
 or disgust his mind with argument. He had, so 
 to speak, strolled into religion, had gone to it 
 inquisitively and with curiosity, attaching little 
 importance to his action, and expecting nothing 
 at all from the experiment. In this spirit he con- 
 
TALE OF A TREATY PORT 237 
 
 tinued to attend the Sunday morning service for 
 several weeks. 
 
 One day, during this period of his spiritual 
 experience, a missionary who had a Chinese 
 college in the town, came into his office with 
 a little yellow leaflet which he wished to be 
 printed. The leaflet contained texts from the 
 Bible. Uninterested in Bible texts, the editor 
 passed the leaflet to his printer without reading 
 it, but, knowing " how particular and exacting 
 religious people are about their requirements, 
 expecting everything for nothing," he gave 
 orders that the proof should be brought to him, 
 in order to avoid misprints and consequent com- 
 plaints. 
 
 In reading this proof, one of the texts arrested 
 his attention. He cannot remember what it was, 
 but he recalls distinctly the impression it gave 
 him — the feeling of a new and sudden light on 
 the conduct and purpose of Life. In this mood 
 he continued his reading, and presently came 
 upon words which, for some reason or another, 
 caught him by the soul and held the beatings 
 of his brain. These words were like an injunc- 
 tion particular to himself: " Stand still, and see 
 the salvation of the Lord." In vain did he 
 try to shake off their impression, to persuade 
 himself that he was getting superstitious, to rid 
 himself of unnatural self -introspection, and to 
 recover his old indifference. It was impossible. 
 
238 TALE OF A TREATY PORT 
 
 The thought had fastened upon his consciousness. 
 It clung to him like an embrace. He was obliged 
 to stand still. 
 
 It seemed to him quite clear what he was to 
 do. He was to abandon anxiety, to give up his 
 chart, to discontinue self-examination, to relin- 
 quish all striving, wrestling, and effort. He was 
 to do nothing. He was to be, not active, but 
 passive. It was not for him to climb to God, but 
 for God to descend to him. If there was some- 
 thing outside the atmosphere of this planet, it 
 would be given, it could not be captured. The 
 soul receives, it does not discover. Let him stand 
 still, and await the will of God. 
 
 The mystery happened one night, or rather 
 in the early morning, in the grey dawn before 
 the sun had risen. He awoke from sleep on 
 the roof of his house, and he remembers that 
 the rope was flapping on the flagstaff in a gentle 
 breeze and that a flight of small birds was 
 passing over some tree-tops which were just 
 visible in the world below. How shall I tell 
 what he has told me? — how shall I give the 
 history of that grey dawn before the sun had 
 risen? He came out of sleep with the thought 
 of Jesus Christ. He heard the rope moving 
 on the flagstaff, saw the flight of birds pass like 
 specks across the haze of leaden skies, and was 
 aware that on the roof, somewhere on that square 
 of dew-drenched metal under the grey dawn, 
 
TALE OF A TREATY PORT 239 
 
 there stood and breathed the Son of Man. He 
 knew this as one is aware of the presence of a 
 person in a room one enters expecting it empty. 
 He raised his head from the pillow to see if 
 this Presence was visible, if he could behold 
 what he felt, if the Thought had form and 
 walked upon the roof before him. He knew 
 that he would see nothing, but he looked. He 
 was sure that the Presence was invisible, but 
 he sought it. Nothing was there. Eye could 
 see nothing, ear could hear nothing, hand could 
 touch nothing. And yet, he was not alone. 
 More real to him than roof, or sky, or trees 
 was the sense of this invisible Presence. Its 
 influence was closer to him than the air he 
 breathed; and Its blessing, as real and unmis- 
 takable as the scent of violets, was a peace of 
 soul passing all understanding. His mind was 
 at rest. 
 
 The abiding and profound peace of this visi- 
 tation assured him of its verity. There was 
 no shock, no cataclysmic upheaval, no violent 
 integration of personality. His reason was calm 
 and lucid. He experienced no transport of joy, 
 and was conscious of no uprush of ecstasy. But 
 the change in him was utter and absolute. For 
 the first time in his conscious manhood he was 
 aware of an inward peace so exquisite and per- 
 vasive that it could only be defined as a new 
 birth. " I knew that a new life had begun," he 
 
240 TALE OF A TREATY PORT 
 
 says ; and with this knowledge everything that he 
 had been in the past seemed to close itself up and 
 sink out of sight. 
 
 He did not know what he was to do with this 
 new life, but, certain of its reality, he took his 
 rifle back to the armoury and shortly after retired 
 from the volunteers, waiting for some impelling 
 force from the invisible world towards a new 
 career. And in the meantime he prayed. 
 
 His prayer on the roof, uttered with the calm 
 and quiet of the stars surrounding him, was 
 the seeking of a child's hand in the dark for 
 its father's guidance. He prayed, " O God, 
 lead me ! " and in the evening he would walk 
 away from the town, out to the solitude and 
 mystery of the plain, and kneel there, no longer 
 with his eyes set upon a star, and pray from 
 his heart for guidance and a destiny. Before 
 the dawn of his illumination he had prayed 
 vaguely to some indefinite Power dimly felt to 
 pervade and sustain the universe; but now he 
 prayed with the serenity of sure knowledge to 
 a Person — not to a Name in a prayer-book, 
 not to a Word so common on the lips of the 
 generations as to serve alike for curse and 
 blessing — but to a Person actual and real, 
 Whose presence he had felt, Whose power he 
 had known, Whose love he had received into his 
 soul. There was now no doubt, no miserable 
 unrest, no fear of silence. He was sure that 
 
TALE OF A TREATY PORT 241 
 
 his words were heard. He was sure that they 
 reached the heart of a personal Saviour. He 
 knew they would be answered. 
 
 Without anxiety he continued his daily 
 occupations. He expected no miracle, but was 
 quietly convinced that sooner or later, and quite 
 naturally, he would find himself doing work and 
 living a life in consonance with the new light 
 in his soul, the new birth in his heart. It is 
 worthy the consideration of students of the 
 Christian religion that conversion seldom leaves 
 a nature content with its own new light and 
 the development within the soul of its own new 
 birth, but leads almost invariably to a life of 
 selfless devotion and a spirit of the very purest 
 altruism. A soul saved from sin does not so 
 much feel a constraint to pursue its own 
 righteousness as an irresistible impulsion to save 
 the souls of other people. Conversion does not 
 lead to the monastery, but to the mission 
 field. 
 
 The prayer of this man was answered and 
 work was put into his hands. It came very 
 simply and made no break in the continuity of 
 his life. The pen which he had used to interest 
 and beguile became in his hand a weapon for 
 righteousness. 
 
 " It is the only work in my life," he says, 
 " that I care to think about, and it was badly 
 done, and might have been done much better; 
 
242 TALE OF A TREATY PORT 
 
 but I knew it was for me to undertake it, and 
 to lose no time. It lasted me about two years. 
 
 " The town was full of gambling-houses, 
 brothels, opium dens, and places still worse that 
 cannot be named. There was no end to the 
 degradation. And it had never once occurred 
 to me that I was in any way concerned with 
 these things." 
 
 Without shock or violence of any kind, with 
 no sensation of a sudden awakening, he perceived 
 that it was the will of God with him to strike 
 a blow against this tolerated and long-accepted 
 infamy. Accordingly he paid visits to these 
 various places, studied them with care, and then 
 began to write about them in his paper. At once 
 the town was up in arms against him. What! 
 to expose and drag into the light of day things 
 purposely curtained from respectability and 
 shuttered from the gaze of decency: to force 
 public opinion to look full in the face of some- 
 thing it would not invite into its house and 
 ignored upon the streets* to make Government 
 take public notice of something whose existence 
 it did not recognise, and whose iniquities it only 
 shared in its private capacity: what! to insist 
 that polite and civilised society should consider 
 itself in any way responsible for cosmopolitan 
 profligacy, that the lady in her rose-scented 
 rooms should be forced to breathe the foul 
 odours of an Asian sewer, that innocent and 
 
TALE OF A TREATY PORT 243 
 
 pure-minded girls should be made to see the 
 nakedness and scarlet shame behind the curtains 
 and shutters of inevitable vice — let him see the 
 reason and justice of these objections, and cease 
 at once from this new work of his, before the 
 paper was ruined and he himself banned by 
 society. 
 
 The converted soul, conscious of a destiny, 
 found itself opposed by " the complaisant spirit 
 of the man of the world, who from the depths 
 of his mediocrity and ease presumes to promul- 
 gate the law of progress, and as dictator to fix 
 its speed." Let me give the entire passage: 
 " Who does not know this temper of the man 
 of the world, that worst enemy of the world? 
 His inexhaustible patience of abuses that only 
 torment others; his apologetic word for beliefs 
 that may perhaps not be so precisely true as 
 one might wish, and institutions that are not 
 altogether so useful as some might think 
 possible; his cordiality towards progress and 
 improvement in a general way, and his coldness 
 or antipathy to each progressive proposal in par- 
 ticular; his pygmy hope that life will one day 
 become somewhat better, punily shivering by the 
 side of his gigantic conviction that it might well 
 be infinitely worse " (John Morley's Voltaire). 
 
 In this treaty port there was a cosmopolitan 
 society composed entirely of such spirits, and 
 to hint that respectability was merely a mask 
 
M4* TALE OF A TREATY PORT 
 
 covering the hideous features of infamy was to 
 put those spirits into arms against the inno- 
 vator. The hostility he encountered was not only 
 public and general, but private and personal. He 
 received visits from high officials and communica- 
 tions from powerful dignitaries. He was told 
 that representatives of foreign nations had lodged 
 protests against the conduct of his journal. He 
 was informed that his exposures were a menace 
 to international peace. He was definitely threat- 
 ened with the suppression of his newspaper. 
 
 But the man could not be turned from his 
 purpose. He had no desire for the patronage 
 of the great, for the rewards of the rich, for 
 the gratitude of the powerful. One thing was 
 clear before his eyes, and it grew clearer the 
 more thoroughly and widely he carried his in- 
 vestigations — that the souls of men and women 
 and children were perishing in a great and 
 awful multitude all about him; and he held it 
 was the will of God, in the scorn of consequence, 
 that he should compel authority and power to 
 declare whether they countenanced and protected 
 the forces which were every day producing this 
 holocaust of souls, and that he should hold up 
 to the representatives of religion the true picture 
 of the town, leaving them to decide whether they 
 should keep silence or take arms. 
 
 One need not dwell upon the martyrdom of 
 this man. He was shunned by society. Legal 
 
TALE OF A TREATY PORT 245 
 
 proceedings were instituted against him. He 
 was threatened with beggary. It is not neces- 
 sary to dwell upon these things because he did 
 not suffer from them; he was immune from the 
 petty enmities of men. Quietly and steadfastly 
 he pursued his way, happy in the knowledge that 
 the work was given him to do, conscious that 
 he was upheld by invisible power. And 
 while he could see the effect of his work in 
 the gradual diminution of evil-houses and the 
 increasing flight of criminal pariahs, he could 
 also observe, not without a smile, the advance 
 of his paper in the matter of circulation. In spite 
 of protests, and in spite of the most emphatic 
 warnings of a boycott, the sales of the paper in- 
 creased with amazing rapidity. 
 
 At the end of nearly two years he had his 
 reward. The last of the evil-places was closed, 
 the last of the devils had taken flight, and author- 
 ity and power came forward to shake his hand and 
 congratulate him upon the work he had done for 
 decency and good order ! 
 
 This man, single-handed and most bitterly op- 
 posed by local sovereignty, cleared a whole treaty 
 port of inhuman iniquity. It is a work which 
 does not so much stagger the imagination as 
 set one thinking how great a work might be done 
 for righteousness if every man with the oppor- 
 tunity and the power set himself to make war 
 upon what is base and unworthy. One wonders 
 
246 TALE OF A TREATY PORT 
 
 what might be done for London if all the churches 
 and all the newspapers combined to do away with 
 the scandal of the streets. 
 
 If one reflects how many hundreds of men, 
 women, and children might have been morally 
 corrupted and spiritually destroyed in that town, 
 had this man continued his life of easy sin and 
 tolerant good-nature, it is brought home to one 
 how great is the sin of omission, indifference, 
 and neglect. 
 
 Wherever destiny may take the man of whom 
 I have written, there he will exercise a twofold 
 influence for good: he will draw a trenchant 
 sword against iniquity, and throw the empty 
 scabbard for reproach at the feet of a complacent 
 Church. 
 
 Is it not a matter for reflection that the mind 
 of such a man is troubled and made sad, not 
 by the sins of the whole world, but by the faith- 
 lessness of the little Flock? 
 
THE CLEANEST THING IN 
 THE HOUSE 
 
 THERE are still a few streets, alleys, and 
 courts in the neighbourhood of Drury 
 Lane to remind the middle-aged Londoner 
 of that famous quarter as it existed in the 
 Eighties, before Kingsway was driven like a 
 broad furrow through festering kennels and 
 pestiferous warrens from the Strand to Holborn. 
 But these remaining records and mouldering 
 souvenirs of a dreadful place are now so open 
 to the wide avenues of respectability, so approach- 
 able from the prosperous streets of civic decency, 
 so exposed to the eye of the police, that only 
 those who carry in their minds a very distinct 
 and intimate impression of the past can really 
 know the thick pack of all that huddled squalor, 
 the dark secrecy of all those burrowing alleys, 
 the density of all that teeming swarm of filthy 
 and debased humanity which once crowded the 
 neighbourhood with horror and made a fastness 
 in the very centre of London for crime and moral 
 abomination. 
 
 Nevertheless, even in the Seventies and 
 Eighties, there were people living in this terrible 
 
 247 
 
248 CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 
 
 quarter of the town who were conscious of the 
 higher life and who made a struggle to realise 
 their souls. A man whom I know very well, and 
 who now occupies the position of chief responsi- 
 bility in one of the principal business houses of 
 London, was born more than forty years ago in 
 the sink of Drury Lane; he and his fatherless 
 brothers and sisters, a large family, were brought 
 up in the knowledge of God and with an aspira- 
 tion towards moral beauty, by a mother who 
 earned the daily bread of the little household as 
 a washerwoman. Nothing that he learned 
 afterwards concerning religion ever approached 
 in its effect on his character the simple instruc- 
 tion and the wonderful example of this toiling 
 mother of Drury Lane. 
 
 In a household far less noble than this, there 
 was born some six-and-thirty years ago in one 
 of the darkest, foulest, and most secret slums of 
 Drury Lane, a girl whose spiritual experience is 
 the subject of this narrative. The father was 
 better than most of his neighbours; he was neither 
 footpad, pickpocket, nor bully; he would take 
 honest work when he could get it. The mother 
 was a weak and feckless creature, but she had 
 come into Drury Lane trailing clouds of glory 
 from the rural respectability of Camberwell, and 
 made out of her past a continual contrast with 
 her present which was not without its moral 
 effect on the children. The swarm of dirty- 
 
CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 249 
 
 faced, ragged, stockingless and shoeless brats 
 knew at least that there was somewhere in the 
 universe a Something better than Drury Lane; 
 playing in those littered gutters they were con- 
 scious of superiority, and among themselves and 
 their playmates the name of Camberwell as- 
 sumed all the majesty and mystery, all the dis- 
 tance and sublimity which Belgravia has for 
 Kensington, and Kensington for Kennington. 
 They were aware of something better than they 
 knew. And as their mother constantly empha- 
 sised the magnificence of her past by assuring 
 them all that she went regularly to church in 
 those days, that the clergyman and his wife used 
 to come and call upon them, and that she had 
 once won a prize in the Sunday School, these 
 little hungry tatterdermalions of Drury Lane be- 
 gan to associate the idea of religion with their 
 vague idea of something better than they knew, 
 and so grew up with a respect for Christianity 
 which was almost unknown among their criminal 
 neighbours. 
 
 Bess, the eldest child, was thrown so constantly 
 into the company of her mother that she may 
 be said to have enjoyed opportunities for moral 
 culture and social refinement of a quite unusual 
 nature. The girl was her mother's handmaid. 
 She minded babies, made beds, emptied slops, 
 peeled potatoes, scrubbed floors, dusted shelves, 
 cleaned windows, darned stockings, and mended 
 
250 CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 
 
 clothes; she was quick enough to do the family's 
 marketing, clever enough to nurse her mother 
 when the family was enlarging itself, and know- 
 ing enough to hunt London for the scraps and 
 broken meats which are given away at night 
 by fishmongers, butchers, confectioners, and 
 restaurateurs. Constantly in the society of her 
 mother, standing in a superior position to the 
 remaining members of the family, and armed 
 even with authority to smack faces, slap hands, 
 and thump backs, this little girl grew into maiden- 
 hood with a sense of power and a consciousness 
 of virtue which might have made her almost 
 odiously Pharisaical but for a stake in the flesh 
 which was ultimately destined to pierce her soul. 
 As it was, she received from intimate conversa- 
 tions with her mother some notion of religion, 
 some floating idea of spiritual responsibility, 
 some shadowy conception of God and Atheists, 
 Christ and Satan, Heaven and Hell. If any one 
 ever said their prayers in that household it was 
 Bess. 
 
 She worked so hard, and the water from the 
 tap was so unsatisfying, that occasionally she was 
 allowed reluctant mouthfuls of her father's beer 
 and her mother's stout. In thus sacrificing 
 themselves for their child, the parents were 
 sowing in her blood seeds of a poison which 
 fructified and bore a harvest terrible to her after- 
 life. 
 
CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 251 
 
 On the death of her father, and when there 
 were other sisters old enough to take her place as 
 maid-of-all-work to the family, Bess was sent out 
 to make her own way in the world. She had for 
 recommendation in the labour market, a strong 
 body, good health, and the advantage of a broken 
 youth. Against her was the overwhelming draw- 
 back of Drury Lane. In vain she went from 
 place to place asking for employment, in vain 
 she entered her name in the books of registry 
 offices, in vain did she take counsel of her friends 
 and acquaintances at the street-corner. There 
 was no work to be had at factories, no private 
 resident would take a girl from Drury Lane as 
 domestic servant, no one could tell her of any 
 opening as a scrubber of stone floors or as a 
 hand in a laundry. It seemed that all her virtue 
 and physical strength were useless to- London. 
 The family connection with Camberwell appeared 
 to mean nothing to mankind. She might just 
 as well have been a cripple and a criminal. 
 
 But one day her mother brought good news 
 to her — brought it back in lurching haste and 
 bosky excitement from the public-house at which 
 she had been consoling her recent widowhood. 
 The publican wanted a servant. He thought, 
 from what the mother had told him, that Bess 
 might do. In any case he was willing to have a 
 look at her, and if she seemed likely he would 
 speak to his wife, and if the wife thought she 
 
252 CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 
 
 would do for the place, they would at least give 
 her a trial. She would have to do all the house- 
 work, which included scrubbing and dusting the 
 bars, and help the lady with the cooking. She 
 must be an early riser, not afraid of hard work, 
 honest, — no mistake about that ! — thorough, civil, 
 respectful, and sober. Her wages would be ten 
 pounds a year. It sounded too good to be 
 
 true. 
 
 It was a day of pomp and glory for Bess when 
 she set out to take up her residence in the " Red 
 Dragon." She wore a new hat, a new dress, and 
 balanced her regal dignity with a new port- 
 manteau in one hand, and a new umbrella in the 
 other. On her hands were gloves. You can 
 imagine the raillery of the brothers, the envy of 
 the sisters, the tears of the mother, and the pride 
 of Bess, at the moment of parting. Her progress 
 through the alley began in consternation and 
 ended with encouraging insults. Barefoot and 
 blasphemous little urchins offered to carry her 
 bag for a pint; slatternly girls inquired from 
 windows, doorways, and the mouths of tunnelling 
 alleys where she had got her hat; but for the 
 presence of two brothers slouching self-con- 
 sciously and unwillingly on either side of her, 
 she would have found her triumphal progress 
 humiliated by horseplay and made comical by 
 practical jokes. 
 
 So passed Bess out of the foul slum in which 
 
CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 253 
 
 she had been born, and entered the great world 
 of nob, snob, and mob whose portals for her were 
 minatory with a Red Dragon. 
 
 There is one thing above all others of which 
 a girl fresh from the self-consequence of her own 
 home and new to the atmosphere of third-rate 
 domestic service swiftly becomes aware. This is 
 the contempt in which she is held by all about 
 her. It is one of the convictions of inferior 
 minds that they can only exercise authority by 
 means of tyranny, and that they can only safe- 
 guard the inviolability of their own importance 
 by an open and constant display of disdain to- 
 wards those who eat their salt. And in such a 
 place as a tavern this contempt for the servant 
 is spread over a wide area. It is not only the 
 publican and his wife and their children who 
 treat the drudge as dirt, but the barmaids and 
 the potmen. She is exposed from morning till 
 night to the hard words and disdainful looks of 
 master and mistress, she is made to feel her posi- 
 tion in fifty petty ways by the barmaids, and if 
 the potmen choose to persecute her with sensual 
 insolence, she must put up with it and expect it 
 as the lowest of human creatures in the estab- 
 lishment. 
 
 It was a bitter experience for poor Bess when 
 she entered upon service in the " Red Dragon.' ' 
 Fresh from the tearful embraces of her mother, 
 and still conscious of the sensation she had caused 
 
254 CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 
 
 in her progress through the streets, she was vio- 
 lently thrown into a position of meanest servitude 
 and found herself treated as something lower 
 than a dog. Determined, however, to give what 
 is called satisfaction, she swallowed the lumps 
 which kept forming in her throat, and endeav- 
 oured to put away with her best dress, her new 
 hat, and her new gloves the feeling of resentment 
 and bitter disappointment which made a pool of 
 tears of her young heart. For weeks and months 
 she fought a great battle with the pride of her 
 nature, and learned at last a submission of soul 
 which seemed to protect her from all dangers. 
 She was made to feel, and she came to believe 
 it with shame and misery, that she was clumsy, 
 slow, idle, and inefficient. She took all the hard 
 words thrown at her head as her just punishment 
 for awkward hands, aching legs, and a tired 
 brain. She struggled to be quicker, that is to say, 
 struggled to do the work of three people with the 
 thoroughness just possible to two. She was al- 
 ways breathless, always hot, always tired. The 
 idea of sitting down for a quarter of an hour 
 never entered her head; found in such a posture 
 she would have been treated as a criminal; her 
 master did not pay people ten pounds a year to 
 sit still and do nothing. So she never rested, 
 never paused for a breath ; but all day long, from 
 morning till night, she was fetching and carrying, 
 cooking and washing, scrubbing and polishing — 
 
CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 255 
 
 the slave of everybody and the scorn of the whole 
 house. 
 
 Consider the life of this girl. Because she 
 was poor, because she had nowhere else to go, 
 because she was a woman — from the dawn of the 
 day till late in the night she was made to toil 
 infinitely longer hours than a galley-slave and was 
 treated worse than a tinker's dog. She had no 
 hour of rest in the middle day, no time of amuse- 
 ment in the evening, no privacy except the soli- 
 tude of her attic under the slates. When she 
 went up to her bed, aching in every limb, she 
 felt guilty, felt conscious of shirking, because 
 the barmaids were still busy, master and mistress 
 were still in the parlour, and the potmen were 
 still on duty. When she woke to the rattle of her 
 merciless alarm-clock she sprang out of bed in a 
 panic of alarm, afraid that her mistress, with hair 
 in pins, would be climbing the stairs to catch her 
 asleep. From the moment when she woke to the 
 moment when she crawled guiltily to bed, this 
 young girl was at the beck and call of everybody 
 in the house, was everybody's slave, and had to 
 get through work which would have tried the 
 sinews and broken the heart of a navvy. And 
 she was in the heyday of life, her Spring was 
 passing in this fashion, never to return. 
 
 The trial of her temper was considerable, but 
 the trial of her bodily strength was greater. She 
 came to feel at times that it was impossible for 
 
256 CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 
 
 her to do the work. Early in the morning, roused 
 out of natural sleep by the unnatural clock, she 
 was increasingly visited by a feeling of despair, 
 a sensation of impending collapse : she would cry 
 to herself, groan to herself as she dressed, and 
 descend the stairs with something like the des- 
 peration of mutiny in her labouring heart. 
 
 One morning it came to her that she would be 
 able to do her work better, get more heart into 
 her, if she had a little drink at the beginning 
 of the day. It was not difficult to procure this 
 stimulant, and she felt no shame in taking it. 
 The sensation was pleasant; a delightful vigour 
 and a cheerful warmth pervaded her body; she 
 went about her work with a will. 
 
 But during the day the body seemed to droop 
 and slacken; the need for stimulant was unmis- 
 takable; she kept her eyes open, seized an oppor- 
 tunity, and took what she wanted. Henceforth 
 there entered into her life a new joy. It was not 
 only the sensation of the alcohol which pleased 
 her; there was the exercise of brain cunning in 
 getting it. Of a sudden she woke up to find 
 herself an intelligent creature. She could watch: 
 she could plot: she could bide her time: she 
 could steal! These people who treated her as a 
 fool — she could cheat them! That satisfied her 
 pride, that soothed her growing feeling of re- 
 sentment. 
 
 Not many months before this girl had been 
 
CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 257 
 
 perfectly honest and perfectly sober. In the 
 centre of depravity and crime she had been chaste 
 and virtuous. What a miracle! And now, in a 
 few months, she had a new nature; respectable 
 employment had driven her to drink and made a 
 thief of her. A little touch of Camberwell in 
 the night of the " Red Dragon ' might have 
 saved her; kindness, humanity, religious love 
 might almost have made her a noble woman. 
 
 She grew more daring in her pilferings, and 
 more reckless in the satisfaction of her craving. 
 The end was certain, but she had reached a point 
 where she really did not care. One day a bitter 
 word from her mistress made her answer back, 
 sharply, insolently, and with defiance. Alcohol 
 had made her bold. She was given a month's 
 notice. 
 
 Now, a girl who has once been a servant in a 
 public-house can never hope for any other em- 
 ployment. It is a curious thing that taverns — 
 about which so much cheerful poetry has been 
 written, which are the legitimate shops of a 
 legitimate trade, which bring occasional dividends 
 to widows, spinsters, and even clergymen among 
 the investors in breweries, and which are only 
 denounced by fanatical teetotallers for whom 
 every sensible man has a prodigious contempt — 
 it is a curious thing, I say, that taverns should 
 have this evil reputation. I am told that no re- 
 spectable lady would ever take into her service a 
 
258 CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 
 
 girl from a public-house. I am told that even 
 in the fringes of society, among very poor middle- 
 class people, who find it difficult to get any serv- 
 ants at all, the mention of a public-house shuts 
 the door in the face of an applicant for employ- 
 ment. Not only this, in houses of ill-fame, where 
 men and women are living continually in the 
 shadow of the policeman, a girl from a public- 
 house would stand no chance whatever of a place 
 in the kitchen. For some reason or another, soci- 
 ety seems to have made up its mind that the at- 
 mosphere of a tavern is prejudicial to the morals 
 of a young woman. In any case, society will 
 not take the risk of introducing into its base- 
 ments and its attics a girl who has once scrubbed 
 the floor of Bottle and Jug and dusted the china 
 ornaments of a publican's mantelpiece. Once in 
 a public-house, always in a public-house — this, I 
 am told, is the invariable rule of domestic service. 
 
 Bess was unacquainted with this custom, and 
 never gave the subject a thought, when she took 
 service in the " Red Dragon"; she was soon 
 brought to realise its existence and appreciate 
 its force, when she tried to get service elsewhere. 
 No one would have her. Registry offices told 
 her that they did not deal with publicans. Her 
 mother said that she would look about in the 
 neighbourhood — which meant that she would in- 
 quire among the taverns of Drury Lane. 
 
 At last a second place was found for poor 
 
CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 259 
 
 Bess, and once again she began a hard life which 
 speedily degenerated into a life of cheating and 
 of secret drinking. The poison was now deep- 
 rooted in the fibres of her moral being, and if her 
 employer had been an angel she would still have 
 cheated him, and still have drunk herself into 
 oblivion. There was a certain laxity in the man- 
 agement of this house, and the publican and his 
 w if e — w ho were often fuddled themselves — 
 seemed to expect a little tippling on the part of 
 their servants. Therefore Bess kept this situation 
 for over a year, and might have kept it for ever 
 if she had not on one occasion taken so much 
 alcohol that she lay senseless on the kitchen floor 
 for many hours, and was found with cinders 
 smouldering in her apron and skirt — "quite 
 enough," as her mistress said, who took brandy 
 to recover from the shock of the affair, " to set 
 the house on fire." 
 
 After some months of idleness, in which all 
 her savings vanished into the tills of the publican 
 — their original source — this poor desperate and 
 descending woman got a situation in a low beer- 
 house and vanished for some considerable time 
 from the ranks of the leisured classes. It was 
 such a tavern as the cut-throats of Eugene Sue 
 chose for their meeting-place. Hidden among 
 the darkest and most crooked sewers of Drury 
 Lane, it hooded itself from observation under 
 a cloak of grime, and stooped down as low as 
 
260 CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 
 
 it could get in the mud and garbage of the gutters; 
 it was a place never visited by respectable work- 
 ing-men; footpads, murderers, and bullies filled 
 its dirty bars, and the vilest of low women made 
 it their place of gossip and business; it was a 
 veritable thieves' kitchen, a boozing ken for the 
 worst ruffians in London, a place where you could 
 buy a murder for a few shillings. 
 
 In one respect this situation was the easiest 
 of the three. The landlord and his wife were 
 not particular as to cleanliness. Bess had time 
 on her hands. She could sit down and rest; it 
 was even possible to snatch forty winks in the 
 afternoon. A very little labour in the morning 
 was sufficient to accomplish the greater part of 
 her duties; for the rest of the day she had only 
 to assist her mistress in front of a smoky fire 
 with grimy saucepans and greasy frying-pans. 
 And the mistress was kind. " Take a drink, girl; 
 I'm sure you must need it," was a common 
 speech with her. They would sit together in the 
 kitchen boozing and talking, almost like sisters, 
 while the landlord smoked his pipe, drank his 
 beer, and listened to the jargon of his customers 
 in the bar. 
 
 But while the landlord's wife could drink all 
 day and seldom needed to be carried up to bed, 
 Bess was often so drenched in alcohol that by 
 three or four in the afternoon she was helpless 
 and useless for the rest of the day. This dismay- 
 
CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 261 
 
 ing weakness of their servant gave such concern 
 to master and mistress that at last they had to 
 speak roughly to her, to threaten her with dis- 
 missal, and treat her with a brutal severity. But 
 neither curses nor blows had any power to effect 
 a change. One night, drunk and deep-sleeping, 
 they left her where she lay on the kitchen floor — 
 a pail of dirty water thrown over her having 
 failed to wake her up. On the following morn- 
 ing the landlord came downstairs to find her in 
 the bar. She was sitting in his chair, her feet 
 outstretched, her head drooping, her eyes glazed 
 and heavy — drunk and senseless. This was too 
 much for the master. The girl was thrown out 
 of the chair, thrown out of the bar, and thrown 
 out of the house. 
 
 From that day forward her life was passed 
 in the gutters of the city. She was so sunken 
 that no one in the world would give her decent 
 employment, even if she had sought it. But she 
 was too far gone for ambition. Only to drink, 
 only to sleep — this was the fulness of her life. 
 She wandered from street to street, made ac- 
 quaintance with women in like case with herself, 
 learned how to cadge, discovered corners where 
 she could sleep undisturbed by police, formed the 
 usual friendships of the lodging-house, and sank 
 beneath the scum of destitution to the ooze and 
 slime of unthinkable depravity. 
 
 Poor Bess ! To have seen her as she was then 
 
282 CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 
 
 — in her clammy rags, her broken boots, her bat- 
 tered hat; to look at the matted hair, the inflamed 
 skin, the glittering eyes; to watch the slouch of 
 her gait and to mark the indifference of her soul 
 to censure or to ridicule — this was to feel anger 
 against a low brute who could so vilely, in the 
 sight of children and young girls, degrade the 
 sacred honour of womanhood. But if one had 
 known the impressions of life stored in her brain 
 from childhood, one must have pitied her. She 
 had never known nobility of character, she had 
 never seen beauty, she had never felt the influence 
 of holiness. From infancy she had been sur- 
 rounded by poverty and deprivation; untaught to 
 read, untaught to play, she had been a drudge in 
 childhood, a maid-of-all-work in girlhood, and at 
 the dawn of womanhood an overdriven slave 
 to heartless taskmasters. This was her knowl- 
 edge of life. If one pure word of love had been 
 said to her in childhood, if one kind hand had 
 been stretched to her in youth, if at the threshold 
 of her womanhood one glimpse of loveliness had 
 been shown to her soul, might she not have trod- 
 den another road and had another music in 
 her heart? One shudders to think how vast 
 a multitude of rich and leisured people sur- 
 rounded the neglected childhood of this London 
 
 girl. 
 
 Occasionally remorse visited her brain. The 
 influence of Camberwell was drugged, but it still 
 
CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 263 
 
 existed. When she was more than usually beg- 
 gared for a coin and forced to sleep night after 
 night in a doorway without a sufficient supply 
 of alcohol for indifference or oblivion, she would 
 be conscious of that vague and shadowy Some- 
 thing better in life, which had been the only Hans 
 Andersen, the only Arabian Night, nay, the only 
 Christ of her childhood. And in these moments 
 she would draw her rags close about her, fold 
 her thin arms tightly together, rock herself back- 
 wards and forwards on the doorstep, and moan, 
 and whimper, and shed bitter tears, conscious of 
 immense loss. 
 
 One night as she wandered aimlessly and 
 sorrowfully through the lamplit summer air, she 
 came upon a group of men and women holding 
 a religious service at a street-corner. She stopped 
 and listened. A young man was preaching; at 
 his side was a wooden contrivance suspending a 
 hymn-sheet; just below him was another young 
 man seated at a harmonium. The crowd was 
 composed chiefly of ragged and wretched men; 
 immediately in front of the preacher and the 
 harmonium was a line of decent women, among 
 them a fair-haired Sister in uniform. 
 
 Not curious, not in the least conscious of re- 
 pentance, Bess stopped and listened. She was 
 tired, and it was pleasant to rest. She was melan- 
 choly, and this thing was a distraction. Now 
 and then she looked away from the crowd and let 
 
264 CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 
 
 her eyes rest on the opposite windows of a public- 
 house. If she only had twopence! 
 
 After the sermon, of which she understood 
 nothing, and to which she had hardly listened, 
 the preacher gave out the words of a hymn. 
 Some one began to handle the wooden contriv- 
 ance at his side, and presently to turn the sheets. 
 This interested Bess. Then the young man at 
 the harmonium laid his hands upon the keys. 
 A sense of pleasantness, of movement, of some- 
 thing happening, came to the poor Miserable on 
 the kerb. She looked at the grim faces of the 
 people about her, and half -smiled. It was like 
 the warmth and cheerfulness of a public-house 
 after the hostility of the streets. She told her- 
 self that she liked music. 
 
 As they were singing, she looked across the 
 street and watched with greedy eyes the crowd 
 of men and women in the bars of the tavern. 
 Surely some one there, with this cheerful music 
 in the air, would give her a drink. No one 
 ought to be mean now Oh, God, what would 
 she not give for just one glass ! 
 
 Suddenly she became aware of something 
 more than the music. That music now ceased to 
 strike her as cheerful; it became, as it were, the 
 expression of her own longing and craving; she 
 wondered what these people were longing after 
 and craving for, with so much sadness and yearn- 
 ing. They told her, in the words of the hymn: 
 
CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 265 
 
 " Take all my sins away, 
 Take all my sins away ! " 
 
 Something seemed to cry out in her heart. She 
 forgot the tavern across the road, lost all craving 
 for drink, and remained stunned and dazed, 
 listening to this faint wailing of her own heart. 
 It was as if some magician had suddenly swept 
 everything in the scene away, and left this woman 
 alone in the midst of a great darkness with the 
 noise of her heart whimpering in her ears. Again 
 and again the words repeated themselves: 
 
 "Take all my sins away, 
 Take all my sins away ! " 
 
 A longing, deep and intense, rose out of the 
 depths of her heart. It was a longing to be clean. 
 She knew nothing of theology. The dogma of 
 the Atonement had never been explained to her. 
 She was not even acquainted with the story of 
 Christ. But out of the need of her own dying soul 
 there rose this clamorous longing for a Saviour. 
 On the muddied kerb of the street, her blood 
 poisoned with alcohol, her brain sodden with the 
 fumes of this poison, her will paralysed, her 
 moral sense all but destroyed, her appearance 
 shouting to all mankind that she had long sunk 
 to the irretrievable depths of degradation — this 
 poor creature of doorways and arches, this child 
 of the Lane, this harried servant of beer-houses, 
 
266 CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 
 
 this depraved and befouled drunkard, felt sud- 
 denly and passionately in her heart the longing 
 for some Power greater than herself to save her 
 soul from death. 
 
 The words of the hymn — " Take all my sins 
 away ! " — had opened a window for her, which 
 looked on heaven. She was conscious of a large 
 and ample Spirit in the universe able to cleanse 
 the heart and restore the soul even of such as 
 her. She was convinced of a Saviour, without 
 knowing His Name, without understanding His 
 place in theology. Into the arms of this Power 
 she surrendered her will and her weakness, and 
 lay there with one cry on her lips, one cry which 
 expressed all her bitter experience of life, all her 
 knowledge of religion, and all the longing of her 
 soul — 
 
 "Take all my sins away, 
 Take all my sins away ! " 
 
 A miracle happened. The low and long- 
 habituated craving for alcohol was expelled and 
 cast out of her by the lofty and hitherto in- 
 experienced craving for holiness. A divine pity 
 descended out of heaven and drew her then and 
 there into the haven of miraculous immunity. 
 She lost the least wish for drink. She felt an 
 intense longing for purity. She was conscious 
 of new birth. 
 
 Her phrase to the Sister was very simple and 
 
CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 267 
 
 very pathetic. Perhaps the loving tenderness of 
 that young saint, and the brightness of her in- 
 nocent glad face, made the poor penitent woman 
 who had been so miraculously born again, sud- 
 denly conscious of the depths to which she had 
 descended. With tears in her eyes, an agony on 
 her lips, holding the Sister's hands tightly in 
 her own, she cried, " Oh, I would love to rise 
 again ! " — and this phrase she repeated again and 
 again. 
 
 It was told her that the way was clear ahead 
 to resurrection. She had taken the first step. 
 God had heard the cry of her soul. Henceforth 
 by prayer and supplication she would steadily 
 advance along the road, every step of which was 
 an ascent, until she stood upon the heights. 
 
 They prayed with her, ministered to her needs, 
 showed her love and sympathy, kept her in their 
 care, and when she was strong enough carried 
 her to the rescue-home where women are trained 
 for service. 
 
 She never once looked back. 
 
 From the moment when she felt that sudden 
 longing to be cleansed of sin, she advanced stead- 
 fastly towards purity of heart and nobility of 
 soul. Religion, from the outset, was wonderfully 
 real to her. A very little teaching — because it 
 was the heart they were educating — sufficed to 
 acquaint her with the knowledge of Christ. She 
 experienced the deepest joy in receiving this 
 
268 CLEANEST THING IN THE HOUSE 
 
 knowledge. Neither pitying herself for the dep- 
 rivations of childhood, nor abusing herself for 
 the sins of her womanhood, she contented every 
 thought of her brain and every aspiration of 
 her heart with the idea of Christ as the Saviour 
 of sinners. With joy she did the work that was 
 given to her, with pride she sought to satisfy 
 those in authority over her, and every day you 
 could see fresh beauty shining in her face 
 till every mark and vestige of depravity was 
 obliterated. 
 
 She is now in domestic service. Nothing has 
 occurred to tempt her from virtue. The aspira- 
 tion, " Oh, I would love to rise again! " has been 
 realised. She is in every way a noble soul. 
 
 The Sister to whom she uttered that aspira- 
 tion at the street-corner long ago went the other 
 day to see her in the place of her employment. 
 She was telling me about this visit, and as she 
 spoke her face became bright with pleasure. ' I 
 wish you could have seen her," she said; "she 
 is really splendid; it does one good to look at 
 her; she is the cleanest thing in the house." 
 
SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 
 
 IT is a part of the genius of the West London 
 Mission to allow a wide latitude of liberty 
 to its workers. When a lady is found who 
 desires to serve in the Mission as a Sister, as soon 
 as the authorities are satisfied that she is in 
 earnest, possesses tact, and is moved by a sym- 
 pathy so sincere that it is unerring in its en- 
 thusiasm, she is put in charge of a district and 
 left almost entirely free to administer its spiritual 
 government. Thus it is that you may meet 
 among these good Sisters very diverse tempera- 
 ments and discover in their methods a delightful 
 freedom from sameness and a quite engaging 
 tone of individuality; and it is this diversity 
 which more than anything else, I think, marks 
 the true catholicity of the Christian religion, and 
 brings home to the mind the miracle of the 
 universal attraction of the Master. 
 
 Sister Agatha stands for the matronal charac- 
 ter of Christianity. She is a towering and mas- 
 sive woman, with the deportment of a dowager, 
 the pride and cheerfulness of a happy mother, 
 and all that brisk sense of a managing and 
 scrupulous intelligence which we associate with 
 
 269 
 
270 SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 
 
 the dame of a store-cupboard. She has a broad 
 and benign countenance, " a thanksgiving for 
 her former life and a love-letter to all mankind "; 
 through gold-rimmed spectacles she beams good- 
 nature on the world, and there is a ripple of 
 light in her white hair which seems like the 
 symbol of a halo; it must be a dull mind or a 
 cold heart which is not sensible in her presence 
 of serenity and blessing. 
 
 I spoke to her on one occasion of Sister Mil- 
 dred's work in Piccadilly and Regent Street. 
 At once a shadow fell upon the luminous face, 
 the soft and pleasant skin became hard, and one 
 saw a deep and poignant pain in her kind eyes. 
 " That is work," she said, in her quiet voice, 
 " which I could not do. I wish I could ; but I 
 know that I should fail. Sister Mildred goes 
 with a bunch of flowers where I want to go with 
 a sword ! " As she finished her eyes shone, the 
 splendid head was lifted, and there was almost a 
 ring in the low voice. One felt the spirit of 
 the crusades. 
 
 " Sometimes, when X am walking at night 
 through the streets of this neighbourhood, in 
 Euston Road, for instance, I see sights which 
 fire my blood with indignation. I ought to feel 
 pity and compassion; I know I am wrong; but 
 the feeling of shame and horror is uppermost. 
 All my sympathies go out to the young men 
 who are so dreadfully exposed to temptation. 
 
SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 271 
 
 I long to stop them and remind them of their 
 mothers, and speak to them of the ideals of a 
 pure womanhood. All I can do, however, is to 
 pray. As I pass them in the lamplight, I raise 
 my helplessness to God : ' O God,' I pray, ' give 
 these young men strength to withstand tempta- 
 tion.' Sister Mildred is able to do more than 
 that; the answers to her prayer come through 
 her own hands." 
 
 You will gather from this remark that Sister 
 Agatha is something of a warrior for God; and 
 the first story I have to tell about her will show 
 how boldly and how nobly she can fight for 
 righteousness. But it is necessary, if you would 
 possess the secret of her nature, to know that a 
 womanly tenderness and a matronly kindness 
 are the foundation pillars of her personality. She 
 is what I think may be called a true daughter 
 of Victorian Evangelicalism — a righteous and 
 most motherly good soul, believing all dogmas 
 and doctrines that she has been taught in child- 
 hood, reading her Bible piously and receptively 
 for a blessing, finding comfort in prayer-meetings, 
 refraining from all things which have the appear- 
 ance of ungodliness, execrating evil with the force 
 of an entirely wholesome mind, loathing atheism 
 and agnosticism with a shuddering abhorrence, 
 and mothering those lost souls who truly turn to 
 God with a most tender and beautiful affection. 
 
n% SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 
 
 I, 
 
 The Bookseller 
 
 The neighbourhood in which Sister Agatha 
 lives is a very bad one — so bad that, although 
 it is outside the bounds proper of West London, 
 the Mission could not refrain from planting its 
 flag there. An abject poverty and an odious 
 ugliness affront the gaze at every turn. One 
 sees nothing but dismal houses, broken-down 
 shops, littered gutters, slatternly women, dirty 
 children, and ruffianly-looking men. There is 
 everywhere a stifling odour of foul clothing. I 
 have seen nothing so repellent and nauseating 
 even in the filthy reservations for Red Indians 
 in Canada. 
 
 The premises occupied by Sister Agatha take 
 the form of a coffee-tavern and club. They are 
 fairly commodious, wonderfully clean, and have 
 an air of struggling brightness. There are rooms 
 for men, rooms for lads, and a large hall where 
 prayer-meetings, magic-lantern lectures, and re- 
 ligious services are regularly held. At a harvest- 
 festival (imagine a harvest- festival in this vil- 
 lainous London slum!) the hall is dazzling with 
 gifts of flowers, vegetables, and fruit, and 
 crowded with the wondering Miserables of the 
 neighbourhood. 
 
SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 273 
 
 These premises stand in the principal market- 
 street of the locality, where there are shops on 
 either side of the road, and an unbroken line of 
 costermongers' stalls in both gutters. The pave- 
 ments and carriage-way are always inconveniently 
 crowded, and at night the whole long street is a 
 dense and seething mass of deplorable humanity. 
 
 One evening Sister Agatha became aware of 
 an unusual gathering in this street. It was a 
 grinning crowd of men listening to the witticisms 
 of a cheap-jack, and the cheap- jack was selling 
 books of which he insinuated a prurient vileness. 
 The crusading temper of Sister Agatha was 
 roused into action. She forced her way into 
 the crowd and interrupted the blackguard. " Do 
 not buy these shameful books," she cried, " until 
 you have heard what I have to say. Listen! 
 If in this market-place men were selling impure 
 food for your bodies, I would feel it my duty 
 to warn you, whatever the consequences might 
 be. Here is a man who would poison your 
 souls! Will you let him? Will you give him 
 money for what will corrupt your minds and 
 destroy your souls? I beg you not to do so." 
 You can picture the scene; you will admire the 
 courage. 
 
 Something of a hubbub ensued, and a police- 
 man appearing at this moment, the seller of vile 
 books was obliged to beat a retreat. 
 
 A few months later Sister Agatha found the 
 
274 SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 
 
 man one evening addressing a crowd immediately 
 outside the Mission premises. In a loud voice 
 he proclaimed : " I was put in prison for selling 
 these books I am now offering to you. And 
 while I was in prison they gave me three books 
 to read in my cell — the Bible, a Prayer-Book, 
 and a hymn-book. I studied those books care- 
 fully to see where they beat mine, and I freely 
 own that for immorality and indecency they win 
 hands down. But why aren't the people who 
 give your children the Bible put in prison? Do 
 you know what you can find in the Bible if you 
 read it carefully? — I will tell you." 
 
 Then he gave a mocking and derisive account, 
 sparing no details and employing an intention- 
 ally coarse vocabulary, of the plague-spots in 
 human life recorded in the ancient Jewish books. 
 You might have thought to hear him that the 
 Bible contained no Sermon on the Mount, no 
 Fifteenth Chapter of St. Luke, no Epistle to the 
 Galatians, and that the Old Testament expressed 
 no longing after the righteousness of an Eternal 
 God; you might have thought that the whole 
 Book was written in the spirit of the " Decam- 
 eron " and with the baseness of gutter literature 
 in France. 
 
 At this point Sister Agatha appeared, splendid 
 and terrible. The man stopped and regarded 
 her. Then he bowed and said, " Madam, if you 
 will be so kind as not to interfere with my 
 
SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 275 
 
 business, I shall be obliged to you." There was 
 a threat in the words, and yet a hidden fear. 
 It was evident to the Sister that he had been 
 drinking heavily. She looked him full in the 
 face and said, " I will not interrupt you, on one 
 condition — that you come and see me when your 
 work is done." 
 
 While she stood there several men asked her, 
 " Is it true, Sister, what he says about things 
 in the Bible ? " 
 
 " It is true and false," she answered, and the 
 cheap- jack glowered at her with increasing rage. 
 " False, because he doesn't finish by telling you 
 how against the evil which the Old Testament 
 records it places the law which condemns it. 
 There are dreadful things in medical books, but 
 they are not put there to corrupt the mind. Those 
 books are written for the purpose of curing 
 disease, removing pain, and making men well. 
 It is the same with the Bible. The Bible is the 
 Book of Life. Think what the Bible has done 
 for the human race! — and then say if you can 
 mention it in the same breath with these wicked 
 books." 
 
 With that she walked away, after steadily 
 meeting the frown of the cheap- jack, which was 
 full of menace. 
 
 In half an hour's time he knocked at her door. 
 There was something so " fiery " in his eyes, she 
 tells me, that for a moment she was seized with 
 
276 SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 
 
 a sensation almost of fear. The man was big, 
 brutal, truculent; he had been fortifying his 
 courage and feeding his rage at a public-house; 
 he looked capable of outrage. 
 
 Sister Agatha admitted him, but led the way 
 to a room where her assistant was sitting. She 
 motioned the man to be seated; he remained 
 on his feet, the heavy head lowered like a bull 
 that would charge. " I've come here," he said, 
 angrily, " to tell you something you don't know. 
 I've come to tell you that you're driving me to 
 crime. A man must live ! What right have you 
 to interfere with me? Why should you prevent 
 me from gaining a livelihood ? It is hard enough 
 work, without " 
 
 She interrupted him. " Do you really think," 
 she asked, " that I interfered in your business 
 to prevent you from earning a living? You know 
 better than that. I interfered to prevent you 
 from poisoning the minds of poor people and 
 corrupting their souls." She drew a step nearer 
 to him, regarded him with kinder eyes, and 
 lowered her voice to the gentle tone of a re- 
 proach that is an appeal. " Have you thought 
 what it is you are doing?" she asked. " Have 
 you seriously contemplated the awful mischief 
 you are making? We are here, helping people 
 who are very pitiful and destitute to be pure and 
 holy, trying to make them good and happy, 
 labouring day and night to save the souls of 
 
SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 277 
 
 wretched men and sorrowful women who have 
 turned away from God and are living in sin and 
 misery; and it is among these sad and miserable 
 people that you come with those dreadful books, 
 making a mock of religion, making their minds 
 more impure and more dark, frustrating our 
 work, which is so difficult, and obstructing the 
 love of God ! " 
 
 He grew calmer, and appeared troubled. He 
 sat down, and apparently began to cast about 
 in his mind for a reply. But the Sister con- 
 tinued her appeal. 
 
 With an irresistible sweetness and with all 
 the loftiness of a pure mind and a noble purpose, 
 she appealed to the man's higher nature and 
 implored him to perceive the evil of his work. 
 It was the mother reproaching the tempter of her 
 children. She had sheltered from him the mul- 
 titudinous children whom God had given her to 
 mother, because she knew how hard it was for 
 them to see the light, how difficult for them to 
 feel the attraction of purity, how easy to fall. 
 Could he not perceive their danger? Could he 
 not realise her difficulty? Was it not clear to 
 his eyes that such a life as he was leading was 
 displeasing to God and full of terrible hazard 
 to his own soul? It could not be right to cor- 
 rupt the hearts of men and women. It could 
 not be right to poison their souls. It could not 
 be right to hinder the work of God. 
 
ns SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 
 
 Suddenly the man bowed his head and covered 
 his face with his hands. 
 
 " You are right, Sister," he said, with broken 
 speech and bitter sobbing; " and you are the first 
 one to speak to me, and check me. God forgive 
 me; I am in the gutter, and I can't get out." 
 
 She spoke to him very tenderly and encour- 
 agingly. 
 
 " I will tell you this," he said, getting control 
 of himself. " Those books are rubbish. There's 
 nothing in them. My insinuations are far worse 
 than anything in the books themselves. You 
 may burn them all; I'm sick of them; but help 
 me to get an honest living." 
 
 Then he told her his story. He had once been 
 in regular employment as a printer, earning 
 good wages, and never worried for a shilling. 
 " My downfall began with betting. Every man 
 in the shop where I worked followed racing. 
 I was the keenest of all. I lived for it. There 
 was always a halfpenny newspaper in my pocket. 
 I couldn't talk of anything else. It was a mania. 
 That led to drinking. The swells have their 
 clubs; working-men have their pubs. It was 
 there we talked horses, got tips, heard the odds, 
 and learned the results as they came up from 
 the course. I was always in and out of public- 
 houses, and in the evening spent the whole of my 
 time there. Then drink got such a hold of me 
 that I was good for nothing. I used to be drunk 
 
SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 279 
 
 in the morning; my hands were all of a shake; 
 and my head was so fuzzy that I couldn't see 
 straight. Job after job I lost, until at last no 
 one would employ me. Then I took to cadging, 
 and finally I got to this. It doesn't pay; it's hard 
 work; and I loathe it. I've always wanted to 
 get back, but now you've made me determined 
 to do it. Only, how can I start? Who will take 
 me? Is there any one in London who'll give 
 me a second chance ? ' 
 
 " The first step for you," she said quietly, " is 
 plain, and it can be taken now. If you are in 
 earnest, you will have no hesitation in taking it. 
 You must sign the pledge, and you must pray 
 to God for strength to keep it." 
 
 "Yes," he said promptly; "I'll do that. I'll 
 sign the pledge for a start, and then I'll go away, 
 and I'll come back to you when I'm sober." 
 
 She had no great hopes of this broken man, 
 and it was with astonishment that she saw him 
 some days later standing at the door of the Mis- 
 sion hall, waiting for her. He was sober. The 
 scowling fierceness had gone out of his manner. 
 He had made an attempt at brightening up his 
 shabby clothes. 
 
 In this interview he told her the full story 
 of his life, which was a tragedy dark and sordid 
 enough to depress the soul of an angel. Then 
 he spoke of the change which had come over 
 him. " Signing the pledge has done a lot for 
 
280 SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 
 
 me, but what you said has gone deeper into my 
 life. I feel now that come what may I must 
 make a fight for my soul. I want to be a good 
 man. I want to be what I never was, but what 
 I might have been long ago and without much 
 trouble if I had only felt as I feel now." 
 
 He did not ask her this time to help him to 
 find work. He seemed to have recovered his 
 self-respect and something of the independence 
 of manhood. He said that he was not afraid 
 of the future, that he would take his chance as 
 to that. It was about the beginnings of a new 
 birth that he wanted to speak, of the self-knowl- 
 edge she had brought to his soul. 
 
 Then he said to her, " I want you to give me 
 a Bible. Will you do that? I want one, and I 
 should like it to come from you." 
 
 She could not give him money, and the only 
 Bible she possessed was one that she had kept 
 at her side for many years, which was dear to 
 her with the memory of a thousand consolations, 
 and consecrated by the thankfulness of the pure 
 spirit which it had so constantly illuminated. 
 This little Pocket Bible, so old, so worn, so 
 sacred, and so loved, was marked throughout its 
 pages by her hand; it chronicled occasions when 
 a certain passage had darted new meaning into 
 her mind, or when a text or parable read aloud 
 to some poor seeking soul had brought the light 
 of heaven to earth. You can imagine how dear 
 
SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 281 
 
 to her was this companion of her service, this 
 record of her ministration. 
 
 And yet some impulse moved her to give it 
 up, to surrender it, to give it even to this rough, 
 unlovely soul who but a few days ago had mocked 
 it and blasphemed it, with his hands full of per- 
 nicious vileness. 
 
 He took the book, knowing nothing of her 
 sacrifice, and said, " I'll read it and speak about 
 it to others, not as I spoke in the street outside, 
 but of its judgment on sin, and the promise of 
 God's forgiveness. " 
 
 With that he left her, and she watched him 
 go, her Bible in his hand, with something like 
 pain in her heart but with a prayer on her 
 lips. 
 
 Never again did she speak to him; but she 
 heard of him once, and on one occasion saw him. 
 He was then standing in the gutters of a market 
 street selling harmless things from a tray, and 
 the neatness of his dress and the respectability 
 of his appearance, gave her hope that he had 
 kept his pledge. When she heard of him again, 
 it was from some one who had seen him at a 
 Sunday service of the West London Mission. 
 
 From that day she has seen or heard nothing 
 of him. He disappeared in the great tide of 
 London life, whether for good or for evil she 
 does not know. Who can tell, she often thinks, 
 what my Pocket Bible has done for him, and for 
 
282 SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 
 
 others? Somewhere in London it is some one's 
 companion, and perhaps there are new markings 
 on its pages. 
 
 II 
 
 Transfigured 
 
 I was sitting with Sister Agatha one day in 
 her Mission hall when a man entered and greeted 
 her so warmly and affectionately that I was 
 moved to curiosity. He was a grey-headed 
 workman, dressed in his best clothes, washed 
 and brushed, with that precise look and conscious 
 pride in discipline which marked the best soldiers 
 of the old English Army whose last representa- 
 tives are seen upright on the steps of clubs or 
 nodding to sleep in the gardens of Chelsea 
 Hospital. 
 
 This fine fellow, so typical of the best London 
 workman, had suffered and fallen and risen 
 again. His story, which I learned partly from 
 him and partly from Sister Agatha, is a story 
 which witnesses in a wonderful manner to the 
 amazing power of conversion. It must be a great 
 man of whom Sister Agatha can say, her eyes 
 shining with love behind their spectacles, " He 
 is the brightest proof of God's grace that I have 
 ever seen." 
 
 After his retirement from the Army he earned 
 
SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 283 
 
 his living in London as a painter. He was a 
 fairly sober and a very industrious man, married 
 and with several children. He lived entirely 
 without religion, and spent his leisure in a slouch- 
 ing ease, utterly uninterested in life and careless 
 of anything beyond the street in which he 
 
 lived. 
 
 The death of his wife gave him a decided 
 impulse towards evil. The trouble of a large 
 family, the emptiness of his life, the dulness of 
 existence, drove him to drink. He was one of 
 those men who cannot support the ennui of their 
 own vacuity, who seek to escape from the bore- 
 dom of their own unemployed intelligence, who 
 find in drink oblivion and a certain mounting 
 upwards into fields of higher consciousness. 
 
 He became so completely a drunkard that his 
 children were brought to the edge of starvation. 
 The scandal of their condition resulted in an 
 application to Sister Agatha. They were taken 
 away from him, and he was made to contribute 
 to their expense. In this way the fierce drunkard 
 and the benign Sister came into conjunction. He 
 had to visit her in order to pay the weekly money 
 for his children's support. 
 
 " I shall never forget my first sight of you, 
 Mr. Taylor," says Sister Agatha, with a smile. 
 
 " I was shocking to look at," he agrees. 
 
 " If I may say so, Mr. Taylor " 
 
 " Oh, you may say anything, Sister. God bless 
 
284 SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 
 
 you ! Nothing that you say will be anything but 
 truth." 
 
 " I want to say it, because the change is so 
 wonderful." She turns to me. " The word I 
 feel I must use is e repulsive/ I don't think I ever 
 saw in my life an expression of the human face 
 more repulsive than Mr. Taylor's in those terrible 
 days. We all felt the same. There was in his 
 face something that repulsed sympathy and made 
 the heart shudder. We did not so much fear 
 him, or dislike him, as feel this extraordinary 
 repulsion — as if he were inhuman. Do you re- 
 member, Mr. Taylor," she inquires, with a clear- 
 ing face, " how we used to try and avoid you? ' 
 
 " Ah, Sister, I remember it well. And I know 
 that what you say is true. Sometimes when I 
 caught sight of my own face I used to feel that 
 I had better kill myself before I got worse than 
 I was." 
 
 He came to such misery that he did at last 
 contemplate suicide. He was torn between two 
 disgusts. On the one hand was his increasing 
 craving for drink, which his wages were not 
 enough to satisfy; and on the other his increas- 
 ing consciousness of degradation, which his will 
 was not strong enough to overcome. In abject 
 misery he got hold of a razor, and went back to 
 his foul lodging to make an end of himself. 
 
 He had opened the blade and the sweat was 
 bursting from his forehead, when something 
 
SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 285 
 
 stopped him. He does not know what it was. 
 Something definitely interposed between him and 
 his purpose. He felt himself opposed and inter- 
 rupted. But of what nature this interference 
 was, or from whence it proceeded, he could not 
 
 say. 
 
 It came to him as he sat on the edge of his 
 bed, the razor still in his hand, that his soul was 
 in a terrible peril. He felt that he must save 
 himself from some colossal terror. 
 
 The idea of rescuing himself associated itself 
 in his mind with religion, and when he thought 
 of religion he thought of Sister Agatha. 
 
 Now, although his heart was on fire for salva- 
 tion, he yet could not prevent himself from show- 
 ing a surly and scowling face to the Sister. He 
 complained of his life, masked his real feelings, 
 inquired about religion as though he were con- 
 ferring a favour and stooping his intelligence to 
 something trivial. " He was complaining and 
 unattractive," says Sister Agatha regretfully. 
 
 He attended the services, came to see Sister 
 Agatha, haunted the Mission premises. It is 
 pathetic to think of this man with the repulsive 
 face and surly manner hanging about that place 
 with a heart hungering and thirsting for a new 
 life, and yet with so repellent a manner and so 
 unattractive an appearance that he inspired no 
 love and awoke no pity. 
 
 Sister Agatha would speak to him, would tell 
 
286 SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 
 
 him all she knew of religion — so far as he would 
 let her — and on many occasions she sought to 
 break down the rough and brutal barrier which 
 he seemed to oppose between his soul and hers; 
 but it was heartbreaking work ; she was busy and 
 the man became a bore. 
 
 One day she was just going out on her rounds 
 when her assistant came and said to her, " Mr. 
 Taylor is here ; he wants to see you." 
 
 " Oh, bother Mr. Taylor ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 She went to the door of her room, which was 
 on the first floor, and was just going to tell her 
 assistant to get rid of the man, when he sprang 
 half-way up the stairs, his face shining and trans- 
 figured. " Sister, I won't detain you/' he said, 
 in a new voice ; " I only wanted to tell you what 
 has happened. The light has come. Last night 
 I gave my heart to God — to-day my tools have 
 been wet with my tears — but they are joy tears 
 now, for I know that all the past is forgiven." 
 
 The change was so remarkable that Sister 
 Agatha could scarcely believe her eyes. She 
 heard what the man said, but her mind was dazed 
 by the look in his face. It was not the same 
 man. The very features were changed. 
 
 " I shall never forget that moment, and neither 
 will you, Mr. Taylor ! " she exclaims, with loving 
 remembrance. "We prayed together, and we 
 were very happy, were we not? It was a true 
 case of ' Once I was blind, now I see/ The light 
 
SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 287 
 
 came suddenly, in a moment, and all was 
 changed." She turns to me. " His face was 
 transfigured. It was shining/' 
 
 He told me that in the loneliness of his own 
 room he had been thinking of his sinful and 
 wretched life, and feeling how impossible it was 
 for him ever to be a different man, when all of 
 a sudden, just like a voice in his soul, he heard 
 the announcement that Christ alone can take away 
 the sins of a man. In a flash he saw that he had 
 nothing to do but surrender : that he was not to 
 strive, but to be grateful: that God was only 
 asking him to believe, not to struggle, not to 
 build up the ruins of his life. 
 
 I simply gave myself to God," he said quietly. 
 
 I don't know how else to put it. I surrendered, 
 laid down my arms, and felt all through my soul 
 that I was pardoned and restored." 
 
 That is nine years ago. For nine years this 
 man has not only been immune from drink, has 
 not only made a comfortable home for his chil- 
 dren, has not only been a first-rate workman and 
 a good citizen, but throughout those nine years 
 he has been, in Sister Agatha's phrase, " a worker 
 for Christ, beloved by all, and a hiding-place for 
 many." 
 
 If you could see the brightness of his face and 
 feel the overflowing happiness of his heart, you 
 would better realise the miracle of conversion. 
 The man is a living joy. 
 
 
288 SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 
 
 III 
 The Little Lion 
 
 However profound the change produced by 
 conversion, however complete and miraculous the 
 revolution of new birth, the individual note of 
 the disposition preserves its tone. A man may 
 alter every one of his habits and may become 
 literally transfigured in appearance, but there 
 will remain with him that total impression of 
 personality, that deep and inward undercurrent 
 of character, by which his friends have always 
 known him. 
 
 One of Sister Agatha's devoted disciples was 
 a droll and waggish little Cockney before his 
 conversion, and he remains a droll and waggish 
 little Cockney years after the great hour of new 
 birth and the exalting experience of illumination. 
 The man is entirely different in every other re- 
 spect. You might say of him that the old heart 
 has been removed from his body and a new heart 
 put in its place. You might say that his char- 
 acter has been not so much improved, or revolu- 
 tionised, as substituted by another. And yet the 
 men who knew him in the old days could not fail 
 to know him now. The quizzical look is still in 
 his eyes, the ripple of laughter still in his voice, 
 and he cannot help himself from regarding life 
 
SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 289 
 
 even in his new condition with the same spirit of 
 amusement as diverted him in days of darkness 
 and debauchery. 
 
 The foreground of existence remains the 
 same; the change wrought by conversion is 
 in that " curious sense of the whole residual 
 .cosmos as an everlasting presence, intimate or 
 alien, terrible or amusing, lovable or odious, which 
 in some degree every one possesses ' (William 
 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience) . 
 
 Born in wretched circumstances, stunted in 
 growth, and with only the animal intelligence 
 of his brain quickened into activity, this man of 
 whom I write, growing up with all the colour 
 of his surrounding squalor in his soul and with 
 all the fierce cries of a brutal neighbourhood 
 ringing a kind of martial music in his brain, 
 reached a manhood that was belligerent, quarrel- 
 some, and cruel. Although he was so brief in 
 stature as to be little more than a dwarf, he 
 was yet so perfect in his parvitude, so herculean 
 in his scale, so fearless and pugnacious in his 
 disposition, that he was like an Iliad in duo- 
 decimo or an eagle of the bantam yard. " I 
 was like a little lion," he said to me. 
 
 Sharp as a pin, quick as a trigger, and singing 
 like a kettle with his overcharge of physical 
 energy, this little lion of the London gutters 
 went about seeking whom he might devour. No 
 day was satisfactory to his mind which had not 
 
290 SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 
 
 been marked by a battle. His sense of touch 
 craved for the feel of yielding flesh and col- 
 lapsing cartilage, his sense of colour demanded 
 a scarlet-spilling nose, his sense of hearing could 
 not be satisfied with anything but the thud of 
 knuckles and the heave of exhausted breath. He 
 loved fighting as another man loves music or 
 postage stamps. He gloried in his squatness be- 
 cause of its temptation. He sought battle under 
 the mask of his epitome, and never took off his 
 coat and disclosed his sinews till it was too late 
 for the other man to draw back. The sweetest 
 of all adventures was to encounter a man bigger 
 than himself but not so powerful or quick, and 
 the sweetest of all human words was the familiar 
 cry of a London crowd, " Go it, little 'un! " 
 
 He haunted public-houses because it is in drink 
 that blows come quickest. Alcohol, which is 
 said to make glad the heart of man, also has the 
 property of making blue his nose and, indirectly, 
 black his eye. He is a poor creature who can- 
 not in the bar of a four-ale public-house make a 
 pot the bridge to a fight. 
 
 As years advanced the reputation of this little 
 lion became so firmly established that the popu- 
 lation of his neighbourhood began to regard 
 him as a general nuisance. Peace-loving men, 
 who went to the tavern for a quiet pipe, a 
 friendly pot, and the satisfaction of open-hearted 
 conversation, resented the perpetual bellowing 
 
SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 291 
 
 of the little lion and objected to the everlasting 
 lashing of his tail. Instead of forming a 
 cheerful ring round him, and calling out " Go 
 it, little 'un ! " these false friends began to turn 
 their backs upon him when he strutted into their 
 midst, and to talk over his head to their neigh- 
 bours when he addressed a remark to them. 
 Touched to the heart by this disaffection, the 
 little lion took to drink, and over his drink 
 made mock of the general company. He was 
 a painter, like the man in the last story, and 
 could earn good wages. He was never without 
 money for drink. At last he became a 
 drunkard. One day when he was painting 
 a lamp-post on Waterloo Bridge, being stupidly 
 drunk at the time, he fell from the ladder and 
 came with a shattering concussion on the pave- 
 ment. For some weeks he was in hospital, and 
 when he returned to civil life it was with all the 
 lion taken out of him. 
 
 He drank now, not for comfort, but for 
 delusion. Drink was the magic that trans- 
 formed him from a broken-down, trembling, red- 
 nosed little painter into the majestic Lilliputian 
 of his leonine period. When he was drunk 
 he felt himself capable of fighting the whole 
 human race. 
 
 " Was it a craving with you? " I inquired. 
 
 He pondered the word, turned it over uncer- 
 tainly and rather disgust fully on his tongue, and 
 
292 SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 
 
 with down-pressed cogitating lips, shook his head. 
 " No," he said thoughtfully, " I shouldn't have 
 said it was a crave." His face brightened. " I 
 didn't feel I should die without it, but I had to be 
 where it was/' That explained his condition. 
 
 In all his misery he had a little son, the ex- 
 press image of himself, who watched over him 
 with the tenderness of a woman. It was this 
 midge of humanity who came to fetch him from 
 the public-house, who guided him through the 
 streets, who steered him clear of policemen, and 
 helped him up the stairs of his tenement. " Lean 
 on me, dad," he would speak; "I'm terrible 
 strong, I am." 
 
 Sometimes father and son would speak to- 
 gether. " I wish I could give up the drink, 
 sonny." "Why don't you try?" "I have." 
 "And you can't?" "It don't look like it, do 
 it?" "/ would, if I was you." "So would I 
 if I was somebody else." " Look what a lot 
 more money you'd have." " I've thought of 
 that." "We could enjoy ourselves, couldn't 
 we ? " " I'll have another shot." " Bert's father 
 signed the pledge; he says it did the trick for 
 him." "I could not knock his face in!" 
 
 It was through his affection for the son who 
 watched over him that the little lion at last set 
 himself to overcome his failing. He did not 
 sign the pledge, whether out of contempt for 
 Bert's father or not is unrecorded, but he struck 
 
SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 893 
 
 a step higher, and went straight to religion. 
 Sister Agatha's open-air services in the market- 
 street had often caught his attention; he knew 
 that religion dealt with the soul; he had a feel- 
 ing that what he wanted was not a pledge-card 
 nor a blue-ribbon in his coat, but an entirely new 
 rig-out in the spiritual line, and religion was the 
 shop for that. 
 
 " So I went to these 'ere services," he says, 
 " and I thought the singing might have been a 
 little more lively, and the praying a little more 
 something that I could understand; but Sister 
 Agatha took my fancy from the very first. 
 There's a lady! I thought; a real lady. Not a 
 fashion-plate, but an angel — one of the big mar- 
 ried ones ! Lor, what a little chap I felt looking 
 up into her big sweet face ! " 
 
 He came regularly to these services and at last 
 began to frequent the Mission hall. But drink 
 was a habit. He had to be where it was. And 
 sometimes he was drunk. 
 
 Nevertheless he still clung to his first idea 
 that religion was the way of escape, and only 
 dimly comprehending the idea of God, and only 
 vaguely feeling the idea of Christ, he prayed 
 often — prayed as he walked along the street, 
 prayed and sweated as he passed a public-house, 
 prayed as he worked, and prayed in his home. 
 Into the universe he breathed the cry from his 
 poor little Cockney heart that a strength which 
 
294* SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 
 
 he had never known and could not understand, 
 might be given to his will, that what he had 
 been might be forgiven, that what he desired 
 to become, so earnestly and yet so stumblingly, 
 might by the grace of God be accomplished. 
 
 When he fell, so full was his heart with shame 
 that he could not bring himself to enter the 
 Mission hall. " This was a new feeling for me," 
 he said; "and it made me think. I had never 
 found my master before." He began to see that 
 he was in for the greatest fight of his life. 
 
 One day his wife came to Sister Agatha with 
 grief and despair in her poor eyes. The little 
 lion had got drunk, had made war upon the 
 police, had been taken before the magistrate, 
 had been sentenced to fourteen days' imprison- 
 ment. 
 
 Prison made him hate himself, and made him 
 determined to throw up the sponge. He would 
 make no more pretence of being good; he would 
 live like the rest ; he would drink when he wanted 
 to, fight when he felt inclined, and used the 
 Name of God only to round off an oath. 
 
 As he stepped through the prison gateway he 
 saw two women waiting for him. One was his 
 wife, the other was Sister Agatha. 
 
 " You've done me," he said. " If you hadn't 
 met me here, I'd never have looked at the hall 
 
 again. I couldn't have. But now Well, 
 
 Sister, it's all up. You've done me." 
 
SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 295 
 
 It was this loving action of the Sister — her 
 tenderness and loving-kindness in his disgrace, 
 her unswerving faith in his rectitude when he 
 had fallen; her exquisite sympathy and encour- 
 agement when his heart was overfull with bit- 
 terness and resentment, that brought illumina- 
 tion to the soul of the little lion. It made him 
 feel the reality of Christ. He saw the character 
 and nature of religion. He was conscious of 
 love. 
 
 From that day he never fell. His victory over 
 drink was complete ; his progress in the knowledge 
 of Christian revelation was sure and unbroken. 
 
 " He used to come to my Bible Class," said 
 Sister Agatha, " and we would choose a text, and 
 all the men present would speak about it in turn; 
 do you remember, Mr. Burton ?" 
 
 " Well," he answered, with a smile at me, " I 
 can remember that the speaking began with Sis- 
 ter Agatha, but I don't seem to remember that it 
 ever came round to me ! " 
 
 "That is his way!" says Sister Agatha, 
 bubbling with soft laughter. 
 
 While he was attending the Bible Class, 
 Sister Agatha was taken ill. She left the 
 district for the time being, and went to the 
 headquarters of the Mission. One day he came 
 to see her. " I came yesterday," he said, " but 
 the big white step frightened me. I could 
 manage the little one at the hall right enough, 
 
296 SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 
 
 I could step over him; but this was too much 
 for me the first time I saw it. I had to give it 
 up." Later he came with a basket of new-laid 
 eggs; they were marked with his wife's love 
 and bore the date of their laying. He said that 
 his home was happy, that life seemed quite differ- 
 ent to him; there was brightness in his face, and 
 a new quietness in his voice. The man was full 
 of serenity. 
 
 One day he came to see her when she was 
 out visiting. He followed to the buildings 
 where she was engaged and waited for her. 
 They walked away together. Near St. Pancras 
 Station they stopped to say good-bye. There 
 was a solemn, Sister Agatha says a kingly, 
 expression in his eyes, as he said, " I want to 
 say one thing before I go home. I want to 
 ask you to remember, among all the disappoint- 
 ments of your work, that there is one man who 
 by the grace of God will never go back to his 
 old life. ,, 
 
 That is nine years ago. Never once has he 
 gone back to drink; never once has he had a 
 fight; always he has been a devout and humble 
 Christian. He has moved to one of the outer 
 suburbs of London, where his children feel them- 
 selves in heaven, and where he can grow flowers 
 and keep chickens and rabbits in his garden. 
 " It's very nice down there," he told me. ' Some 
 of my mates say to me, ' What, Bill ! don't your 
 
SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 297 
 
 old woman never give you no beer money ? ' ' Oh, 
 yes,' I answer, ' shillings and shillings.' Then 
 I say to them, ' Here, where's your last week's 
 beer money ? Where's it gone ? What have you 
 got to show for it ? ' They don't like that ! I 
 tell 'em, particularly on a bright sunny morning, 
 when a chap can't help wishing he was in the 
 country, ' 1 was looking at my beer money this 
 morning,' I says; 'lor, it has grown! some of it 
 has got roses on it, and dahlias, and chrysanthe- 
 mums, and Michaelmas daisies; some of it has 
 got feathers on it and wakes me crowing; some 
 of it hops about with fur on it; you never saw 
 such beer money in your life — smells of roses, 
 cackles with egg-laying, and tastes of rabbit! 
 By the way, how is your beer money looking 
 this nice autumn morning? ' I always speak like 
 that to them when it's public; it's not a bit of 
 use talking serious to a lot of fellows who don't 
 care for anything but the booze; of course, I 
 speak differently to a chap who asks me on the 
 quiet what I think of religion. I tell him straight 
 what I think, and advise him to get right with 
 God. Of course, I have to stand a bit of chaff. 
 Some of my mates will make a ring round me 
 and say, ' Here, Bill, you're a Christian man; tell 
 us all about it ? ' ' What would be the use ? ' I 
 answer; ' it isn't eternal life you want, it's beer.' 
 Once or twice they've put up a chap to make me 
 look small — one of the talkers, who read atheist 
 
298 SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 
 
 books. ' Kow do you explain this, and what do 
 you make of that ? ' he asks. ' I don't know ; I'm 
 not clever enough,' I answer. ' You believe in 
 something you don't understand ! ' they all laugh. 
 'Yes, mates/ I say, 'that's perfectly true; I do 
 not understand it. But I'll tell you what I do 
 know. I know what religion has done for me. 
 Hold on a minute. My children have got boots 
 on their feet; have yours? My missus is glad to 
 see me come home, my garden has got flowers 
 in it, on a Bank Holiday we go to the seaside, 
 when a friend is up a tree we can help him, 
 when I'm out of work we've got bread; can you 
 say the same? I know what I was; I know what 
 I am; and I know how the change was made. 
 That's enough for me.' I don't say I convert any 
 of them ; I'm not good enough for that ; but I've 
 made a few of them think about the drink. Take 
 it from me, all the misery of the working-classes 
 comes through drink ; first and last, it's the public- 
 house that causes all the mischief. Get rid of 
 drink and you'd have a new nation — a happy na- 
 tion, a strong nation, and a religious nation. 
 But I'm talking. Sister Agatha, your turn 
 now!" 
 
 On the anniversary of this man's conversion, 
 a letter comes every year from the outer suburb 
 to the slum where Sister Agatha saved him and 
 is still saving others, and a letter from Sister 
 Agatha reaches him in his happy home on the 
 
SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 299 
 
 same morning. They give thanks to God for 
 His great mercy. 
 
 It would be a pleasant diversion and a really 
 formative experience, if men and women of 
 leisure would give an afternoon every week to 
 visiting such people as Sister Agatha, Sister 
 Mildred, Sister Marjorie, and Mrs. Price Hughes 
 — people who are living the most romantic and 
 useful lives of all the myriads in London — and 
 to making themselves acquainted with the work 
 of Christianity in action. 
 
 So much can be done by such a little expend- 
 iture of sympathy. Since the coming of Sister 
 Agatha, the slum where she works has made an 
 effort to cover its ugliness. She has taught peo- 
 ple the joy of flowers, and you will see here and 
 there window-boxes of geraniums, like the shrines 
 of saints in Latin countries. Gifts of flowers 
 are brought by these people to .the harvest- 
 festival. There is quite a movement towards 
 beauty and homeliness. 
 
 Among the sad and sorrowful of this wretched 
 quarter, the figure of Sister Agatha moves like 
 an angel — " one of the big married ones " — and 
 she stands in the lives of hundreds of people 
 for law and order, for respectability and decency, 
 for kindness and family love, for aspiration and 
 religion. Like Sister Mildred, she is a reproach 
 to the sinful. Compassionate enough to those 
 
300 SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 
 
 who confess their sinfulness and cry to God 
 for His mercy and forgiveness — then she is like 
 a mother clasping her son to her love, like a 
 hen gathering its chickens under her wings — 
 she is stern, implacable, and indignant with those 
 whose lives are bad. She is not of that tem- 
 perament which loses sight of the power of 
 conscience in its contemplation of environment 
 and its consideration of heredity. She believes 
 that every man and woman knows good from 
 evil. She holds that there is no excuse for sin. 
 She declares that there is a conscience in every 
 soul, and that to the voice of conscience every 
 soul is answerable. Only in such a spirit can 
 a good woman really accomplish a great work, 
 whatever the strata of human society in which 
 she stands for the religious life. Sentimentalism, 
 unction, and the excusing spirit of emotional 
 tolerance have worked and are still working im- 
 mense harm. The line between good and evil is 
 clear marked. The right and the wrong of life 
 are visible to the dimmest eyes. The most de- 
 graded can recognise the difference between God 
 and the Devil. 
 
 " Man," says Ernest Hello, " is led into error 
 with appalling facility. He receives it through 
 all the senses by means of which he communi- 
 cates with the outer world. He absorbs it at 
 every pore; heart, mind, and body, each and 
 all are cruelly and frightfully corruptible." This 
 
SISTER AGATHA'S WAY 301 
 
 is true, but the road to evil is easier when it 
 is paved with excuses, and the way is clear to all 
 mankind unless goodness is there to obstruct the 
 path. " The execration of evil," says the same 
 author, " is the rarest of virtues and the most for- 
 gotten of glories." 
 
 Would it not be helpful to humanity and more 
 harmonious with the spirit of Faith, if all the 
 Churches broke down their little sectional fences 
 and enclosures, and united in one great confident 
 army of God to execrate evil, to denounce sin, and 
 to affirm that only by the power of Christ can a 
 soul attain to everlasting life? This day will 
 come for the Churches of the Reformation, 'but 
 not yet. In the meantime, I would beg the chil- 
 dren of the Establishment who read this book, 
 when they next hear such expressions as " the dis- 
 sidence of dissent," and " the Nonconformist 
 Conscience," to call to their minds the sword of 
 Sister Agatha and the bunch of flowers of Sister 
 Mildred. 
 
NOTES 
 
 NOTE A. (Page 24.)' 
 
 The school of thought which shrinks from the idea of 
 happiness in religion and regards the idea of joy even in 
 heaven with a shocked and mournful disapproval, has 
 recently found a writer to express its opinions in the 
 columns of a Church newspaper. He says : " Our Lord 
 did not say, 'Blessed are the happy'; He said, 'Blessed 
 are they that mourn.' " To which I reply : Our Lord did 
 not say, "Blessed are the happy," because it would have 
 been tautological to do so ; and He did not say, " Blessed 
 are they that mourn," because it would have been ob- 
 viously untrue. He said, "Blessed are they that mourn: 
 for they shall be comforted." The blessing does not lie 
 in the mourning, but in the immense change which takes 
 place in the soul when comfort has changed the whole 
 attitude and light has swept away the darkness. 
 
 " I suspect a religion," he goes on to say, " that makes a 
 great deal of happiness. It seems to me rather pagan 
 than Christian." Humanity, on the other hand, has come 
 to suspect a religion that makes a great deal of unhap- 
 piness. Such a state of mind seems to the intelligence of 
 the world neither pagan nor Christian, but morbid and 
 unhealthy. " Let those who thus suffer," says St. Teresa, 
 "understand that they are ill." And for my part I sus- 
 pect the honesty of the affirmation. I do not believe that 
 the writer of it would refuse a rich estate, or that he 
 would voluntarily live in Houndsditch. I do not believe 
 that any healthy and rational man ever refused a hap- 
 piness that he could accept with honour to himself and 
 
 302 
 
NOTES 303 
 
 without hurt to other people. It seems to be the opinion 
 of physicians that people who whip themselves and wear 
 hair-shirts next to the skin do so because such practices 
 make them happy ; it is a case of one of those perversions, 
 common and shocking to the human conscience, which are 
 rather matters for the alienist than for discussion in 
 society. 
 
 That sorrow is a noble discipline no one in his senses 
 will deny. But it would be a man surely out of his senses 
 who chastised his son in order to make him long for more 
 chastisement, and who stimulated him to look forward to 
 manhood as an opportunity for receiving and enduring 
 even more chastisement than he could rightly expect to 
 enjoy in his tender youth. All the miseries and afflictions 
 of this life — most of which come from wrong-living or 
 foolish laws — can only be regarded as helpful so far as 
 they strengthen the soul to gird up its loins and seek the 
 blessing of happiness. It would be a mad politician who 
 set about the destruction of all beneficent legislation, on 
 the dogma that the ideal of happiness is "rather pagan 
 than Christian." 
 
 " What strange rage possesses some people," says Vol- 
 taire, " to insist on our all being miserable ! They are like 
 a quack who would fain have us believe we are ill, in order 
 to sell us his pills. Keep thy drugs, my friend, and leave 
 me my health." 
 
 "It is pathetic and ludicrous sometimes," says Pro- 
 fessor Granger, "to find the results of unwholesome 
 surroundings, want of cleanliness, and bad cooking, treated 
 as part of the necessary discipline of life, and the victims 
 of their own and other's incompetency treated as though, 
 like Job, their misfortunes were a special token of the 
 divine interest." 
 
 Finally, for my purpose, the writer says : " It is true the 
 word ' happy ' is used in some places in the English 
 Bible, but is not that a mistake?" Well, I hope not! 
 
 Perhaps he will see how far his morbidity carries him, if 
 he take his English Bible or his Greek Testament, and 
 wherever he finds such words as stand in the common 
 
304 NOTES 
 
 acceptation of men as synonymous with happiness, substi- 
 tute for them any terms he finds to his taste which stand 
 in the common acceptation of men for the contrary to 
 happiness. I think he will soon find himself over the 
 ankles in blasphemy and up to the eyes in foolishness. 
 
 " Our business henceforth is not with death, but with 
 life." "Joy is the great lifter of men, the great unf older." 
 "For life to be fruitful, life must be felt as a blessing." 
 
 It is just such a faith as that to which this writer clings 
 which has poured Christianity out of France and is fast 
 emptying it from Italy and even Spain. " Communion 
 with such a God," said George Sand, " is impossible to me, 
 I confess it. He is wiped out from my memory; there is 
 no corner where I can find Him any more. Nor do I find 
 such a God out of doors either; he is not in the fields and 
 waters, he is not in the starry sky. . . . It is an addition 
 to our stock of light, this detachment from the idolatrous 
 conception of religion. It is no loss of the religious 
 sense, as the persisters in idolatry maintain. It is quite 
 the contrary, it is a restitution of allegiance to the true 
 Divinity. It is a step made in the direction of this Divinity, 
 it is an abjuration of the dogmas which did Him dis- 
 honour." George Sand was brought up in a convent, in 
 the odour of abasement, and under the frown of dis- 
 pleasure. 
 
 It should not be necessary for me to explain that by 
 "happiness" I mean everything that the soul of man can 
 glimpse, with the utmost reach of its aspiration, on receiv- 
 ing into itself the meaning of such divine words as: "I 
 am come that they might have Life, and that they might 
 have it more abundantly." I cannot be supposed to mean 
 the transitory happiness of a mere hedonism. I am con- 
 scious of a deeper happiness in the saddest music of 
 Chopin than anything the sensualist can possibly derive 
 from the jigs and catches of the music-hall. I am con- 
 scious of a profounder and more glorious happiness in 
 health and exercise than anything the sot can gain from 
 the wildest intoxication. By watching over and waiting 
 upon beautiful flowers I enjoy a sense of happiness which 
 
NOTES 305 
 
 cannot be brought without violence into comparison with 
 the pleasure a public woman gets from the glamour and 
 racket of a fashionable supper-room. " Our sweetest 
 songs are those which tell of saddest thought," is a true 
 saying, if we lay as much emphasis on the sweetness as 
 upon the sadness. A lugubrious hymn turns the stomach 
 of healthy people. " Prosperity is the blessing of the 
 Old Testament, Adversity of the New," is only true when 
 we understand that Adversity is not a blessing unless it 
 leads away from a transient and soul-killing prosperity 
 to the eternal happiness and everlasting felicity of faith 
 in God. The final Beatitude makes plain the mind of 
 Christ. " Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, . . . 
 rejoice and be exceeding glad." Melancholy people dwell 
 on the means; it is surely wiser to get as quickly as pos- 
 sible to the goal. 
 
 When one reflects upon the instruction that it is neces- 
 sary to become as little children before we can enter 
 the Kingdom, it must be clear to us that we are yet 
 outside the gates of love when our hearts are full of 
 apprehensions, abasement, and self-distrust. Such a con- 
 dition means egoism, and egoism of a very dangerous 
 order : it is the contradiction of Christianity, which is 
 selflessness. The happy Christian is not like the Pharisee 
 in the parable, full of self-righteousness, and poised in 
 self-assurance; he is secure because the Fatherhood of 
 God is a reality to him, and happy because he has found 
 everything he can desire, not in himself, but in Christ. 
 In a fine phrase used, I think, by Bishop Gore, such a man 
 does not so much tarry to exorcise the devil as hasten 
 to exercise the angel. 
 
 Christianity is not arrayed against the world for being 
 happy, but is in the world to declare and to give the only 
 happiness which is lasting and divine. 
 
306 NOTES 
 
 NOTE B. (Page 26.) 
 
 One of my correspondents, who has had an intimate 
 knowledge of the East, writes as follows: "The real 
 contrast between Christianity and other religions is seen 
 in the fact that flagrant sins condemned in the one are 
 practised as part of the religion itself in the others, as 
 shown by Miss Amy Wilson Carmichael in Things as 
 they are in Southern India. . . . Contact with things as 
 they are dispels many illusions." 
 
 "Asian religions," he says, "make no effort to con- 
 vert evil men to righteousness. Ceremony counts for 
 more than character in every false religion. . . .For 
 a Hindu to eat with one of another caste, or of no caste, 
 is a greater sin than murder or adultery. Is it not also 
 a ' mortal sin ' for a Roman Catholic to eat meat on 
 Friday unless he pays for a dispensation? Hindus and 
 others may become Mohammedans without change of char- 
 acter or the abandonment of any evil practices to which 
 they are known to be addicted." 
 
 A well-known Mahatma, highly commended for holiness 
 by Professor Max Miiller, and said to be one of the 
 greatest persons in India, swaying millions of men, told me 
 on one occasion that I did wrong to be interested in poor 
 people and that I should leave them alone in their miseries 
 and destitutions. " They are suffering," he said, " for sins 
 in their past lives." Some few months afterwards he 
 was arrested, charged with a disgusting offence, and sent 
 to prison. 
 
 At the Edinburgh Missionary Conference, Professor 
 James Denney, of Glasgow, said : " People had got a smat- 
 tering of comparative religions which made them indiffer- 
 ent, instead of realising from a far deeper study that the 
 difference between the Christian and the non-Christian atti- 
 tude to the Lord Jesus Christ was not a difference of 
 more or less, better or worse, but a difference of life and 
 death." 
 
NOTES 307 
 
 A doctor in India says that "the dedication of girls to 
 certain gods remains a perpetual source of recruitment to 
 the ranks of immorality and gives the latter a religious 
 sanction." Young girls in India are married to Hindu 
 gods : they are trained to dance and sing evil songs in 
 preparation for a life of shame in Hindu temples. " It 
 is well known in India," says my correspondent, " that in 
 the Penal Code obscene representations in connection with 
 religion are exempted from the penalties of the law." 
 Can there be greater blasphemy or profounder ignorance 
 than to liken such a devil's religion to the revelation of 
 Christ? 
 
 NOTE C. (Page 64.) 
 
 Some idea of the effect of Society's vulgarity on the 
 poor and miserable may be gathered from the following 
 description of an Anarchist meeting given by Miss Olive 
 Christian Malvery in her book called Thirteen Nights 
 (Hodder and Stoughton, 1909) : — 
 
 " Three years ago I was one night the guest of a Russian 
 lady and gentleman in London. They took me as a 
 ' camarade ' to a meeting of ' Red-caps,' held at eleven 
 o'clock at night. What a company it was ! Men and 
 women filled with grim purpose — ' the destruction of 
 tyranny/ they called it. I sat cold with fear, yet I could 
 not steel my heart against those outcasts. The foreigners 
 impressed me most favourably; they had reasons for their 
 hate. The English Anarchists were merely ruffians or 
 tub-thumpers — creatures who would rather talk than 
 work. 
 
 "Here I heard a strange gospel preached. A man — he 
 was an Italian, I think — stood up; he was dressed all in 
 black, but in his coat lapel was tied a tiny crimson knot. 
 He held in his hand a sheaf of cuttings from the daily 
 papers, and as he read them out slowly I judged that 
 most of them must have been extracts from the ' Court 
 and Society ' or ' Fashionable Intelligence ' columns. 
 
308 NOTES 
 
 There were notices of balls and theatricals and dinner- 
 parties, with descriptions of the costly decorations and 
 the ladies' expensive dresses and beautiful jewels. After 
 these items came political news and very cleverly selected 
 futilities that had been occupying Parliament. The strange 
 company was stung to ironic laughter. 
 
 "When the man had finished reading his cuttings a 
 young woman got up. She also was dressed in black, 
 and wore on her breast a little crimson knot. She was a 
 Jewess — evidently well educated. She had a packet of 
 newspaper cuttings also, and read them slowly and sol- 
 emnly in a fine full voice. 
 
 "This time the cuttings were from police news and odd 
 news paragraphs. As the woman read one saw Hogarth- 
 like pictures of realistic ugliness. Now it was a woman 
 suicide, now a girl brought up for theft, she being a slave 
 in some milliner's shop at 5s. a week. Then there was the 
 case of a workman taken up for breaking windows. It was 
 discovered that he had touched no food for two days, and 
 had a starving wife and three little children. Again, there 
 was the sentence on a poacher lad of 16, sent to jail for 
 many months for snaring rabbits on a gentleman's estate. 
 The cases were selected with marvellous cleverness for 
 their purpose. 
 
 " When the woman had done an old man got up, he 
 had fierce eyes and a long white beard. He was very tall 
 and spoke in a commanding voice. His text was from 
 the lessons that had been read — he contrasted the items of 
 news and held up together the ' acts of justice ' and the 
 sentences. He showed side by side the bedizened women 
 at the rich table and the cold little starvelings in the 
 sweat-shop. The listeners wept — I with them. It was one 
 of the most dramatic and thrilling sermons I have ever 
 heard. The grim order and cruel method of the meeting 
 made me shiver. After the texts had been expounded 
 the foolish gabble of Parliament was held up to scorn. 
 ' See what the Government is occupied with,' the man 
 cried out, ' while we die ! ' 
 
 " There were groans from the audience. Every one was 
 
NOTES 309 
 
 in black, and a sinister gloom seemed to pervade the 
 place. 
 
 " When the man finished speaking the whole company- 
 stood up, and a long silence ensued. Then a woman held 
 up a scarlet handkerchief. Instantly every member of the 
 company did the same ; there was a waving sea of red 
 flags, and the woman spoke somewhat like this : — 
 
 " ' Comrades, this to our unity and steadfastness ! In 
 life and to^death we pledge ourselves to sacrifice ourselves 
 for the overthrow of tyranny and the upraising of justice. 
 Through blood to freedom.' 
 
 " ' Amen ! ' came the solemn chorus from the standing 
 people." 
 
 NOTE D. (Page 120.) 
 
 In another narrative I have indicated the difference 
 which separates drunkenness from dipsomania. Briefly, in 
 the one case the will consents, the vice is sought, repent- 
 ance, if it manifests at all, is an after-effect; in the case 
 of dipsomania there is a struggle of the will against the 
 inclination, often of a most terrible nature, and then the 
 will is swept aside and the madness has full sway. 
 
 It is interesting to observe that even after conversion 
 a soul is distracted and torn by temptation. One may be 
 allowed to think that in these sufferings is manifested the 
 clear will of God on a matter almost wholly neglected by 
 religious instruction — the pre-natal responsibility of parents 
 to their posterity. The sins of the fathers are indeed 
 visited upon the third and fourth generation, and a recog- 
 nition of this law ought to be man's greatest security 
 against intemperance and sin. Who can bear to think of 
 bequeathing to his children a legacy of syphilitic blood 
 and alcoholic tissues? 
 
 The mercy of God is exercised, so far as we can judge, 
 by a provision of strength to the converted soul for re- 
 sisting this recurring temptation. The strength increases, 
 and the temptation diminishes, in equal ratio. In this 
 
310 NOTES 
 
 process the great and salutary warning of "visited sins" 
 is not abrogated, and neither is the promise of answered 
 prayer broken. It would no doubt seem to us a greater 
 miracle if the sufferer were instantaneously delivered 
 from the curse at the moment of conversion ; but we may 
 question if such an interposition of Divine power would 
 be an act of mercy towards the human race. The penalty 
 of the broken law is the elementary education of the soul, 
 and mankind is very far at present from having learned 
 that lesson. 
 
 It is neither a " dearest Mama " nor a weak and in- 
 dulgent Father that the best of humanity seek in heaven, 
 but a Power whose Fatherhood is manifested by a love 
 that braces only the highest faculties and a mercy that 
 strengthens to resist sin. We do not desire to be saved 
 from ourselves, nor to sneak into a heaven sticky with 
 sugar; but strengthened and inspired to mount upwards to 
 the heights of being. 
 
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