Ordinary man and the extraordinary thing, The

Front matter

fjPoooo 53 i

AND

THE EXTRAORDINARY THING and the

Chapter XIII I

WHEN a newspaper boy runs through the streets with the cry of “ Horrible tragedy ! ” he is exalted by something more than the certainty of good fortune. Regard his excited eyes, the strain of the muscles round his mouth, the effort of the body to hurl itself ahead of the hurrying legs, the obvious awe and self-importance of a spirit charged with evil tidings. He knows nothing of the news except its headline. Unconscious that he himself is horrible tragedy, he runs in his foul rags through the mud of the gutters thrilled by the mere announcement of horror. . . . Tragedy has occurred, and, the gods be thanked, horrible tragedy. He bawls the adjective with an almost overpowering sincerity, lopping with the shears of his trembling lips the mild, inoffensive, and emasculating “H.” Thus does he make tragedy more than tragedy, and horrible tragedy a thing of awe to which the mere printed letters of these two words afford nothing like so gruesome an index. His sudden cry breaking with hoarse and terrifying menace on the winter darkness of suburban roads, shattering the decorum of tea-parties and bursting like a storm upon the fireside calm of uneventful domesticity, is like the trumpet of death. It brings the invisible world about the head of those trivial commonplaces. The clangorous wings of calamity smite that villa comfort in the face. And the terror is welcomed ; the doors are thrown open to receive the horror. It is something to talk about.

Humanity, clearly, is still in the barbarous stage where the drama of life without action, violent action, is reckoned dull and tedious. The multitude must have murders, suicides, divorces, and political crises in their newspapers ; a novel which describes the religious evolution of a soul is relegated sometimes even by judicious critics to the ponderous shelf of theology ; a play which does not excite the crude passions is pronounced a tiresome excursion in psychology ; even sermons to be popular must flash with a little lightning and reverberate with a morsel of thunder.

It is difficult for men to realise that the only veritable life is the life of the inward sanctuary, the life of silence and communion with invisible and everlasting truth. Like children, they want something to happen. Like children, they do not want to feel, but to be made to feel. They are perhaps afraid of the solitude of their conscience.

“ I admire Othello,” says Maeterlinck, “ but he does not appear to me to live the august life of a Hamlet, who has the time to live, inasmuch as he does not act. Othello is admirably jealous. But is it not perhaps an ancient error to imagine that it is at the moments when this passion, or others of equal violence, possess us, that we live our truest lives ? ” And then follows the profound and beautiful passage : —

“ I have grown to believe that an old man, seated in his arm-chair, waiting patiently, with his lamp beside him ; giving unconscious ear to all the eternal laws that reign about his house, interpreting, without comprehending, the silence of doors and windows and the quivering voice of the light, submitting with bent head to the presence of his soul and his destiny — an old man, who conceives not that ah the powers of this world, like so many heedful servants, are mingling and keeping vigil in his room, who suspects not that the very sun itself is supporting in space the little table against which he leans, or that every star in heaven and every fibre of the soul are directly concerned in the movement of an eyelid that closes, or a thought that springs to birth — I have grown to believe that he, motionless as he is, does yet five in reality a deeper, more human, and more universal life than the lover who strangles his mistress, the captain who conquers in battle, or ‘ the husband who avenges his honour.5 55 1

II

The trouble about this universal love of horror and calamity and violent action lies in its influence upon the journalist from whom so many people take their ideas of fife. Because Murder multiplies

1 The Treasure of the Rumble. Translated by Alfred Sutro. (George Allen & Sons.)

editions and Divorce or Crisis sends up the sales to a zenith of prosperity, it is conceived that all bad news is profitable and all good news is dull. And from this reasoning proceed the pessimism, the cynicism, the hysteria, and even the despair which characterise the modern newspaper. If one’s knowledge of fife were obtained only from the newspaper, who would not conclude that mankind is now staggering at the edge of a precipice, with ruin darkening over its head, and perdition yawning at iti feet? Such a word as “Unrest” is seized hungrily and repeated so apprehensively that it comes to mean, not an awakening of the human soul, not an uprising of dim multitudes from mental torpor to spiritual consciousness, but a menace to civilisation and a portent of cataclysm. Such a phrase as “ The Cost of Living ” is noisily bruited till it quite obscures the simple, silent fact that never hitherto in the history of organised mankind have the necessities of life been cheaper or the luxuries of life so universally shared by society. And, worse still, all that is dark, tragic, discouraging, and perilous in modern life is so harped upon, so underlined, emphasised, and reiterated that the immense energy of religious activity and the splendid impulse of social service, which are everywhere carrying humanity forward to the fuller glory of its destiny, are smothered and obliterated out of knowledge.

Truly might one conclude from the newspaper that righteousness stands paralysed before the advancing frontiers of hell, and that love lies bleeding at the feet of Satan.

III

Now, as everyone desires to have beautiful surroundings, and chooses furniture, pictures, and wallpapers for their charm and graciousness ; and as friends are sought among the best and sweetest of humanity, not among the most terrible and repulsive— should we not seek for the furniture of our minds, and the companions of our souls, thoughts that are beautiful and encouraging, knowledge that is strengthening and uplifting ? Should we not resolutely turn our backs upon all that is morbid, gruesome, violent, and hysterica], and keep our face steadfastly and cheerfully towards the calm light of hope which burns upon the forward way of human progress ? For if we do not decorate our walls with pictures of murder and treasonable lust, and ask to our table the criminal financier, the hangman, the screaming journalist, and the brazen woman of fashion, why should we care to read about sordid and disgusting things in the newspaper, or occupy our minds with the vulgarities of second-rate people and the never-ending crises of sensationalism ?

Infamy has its tens, evil its hundreds, and vulgarity its thousands ; but the central host of humanity, the grand army of mankind, which is ever marching to stronger victories over sin and nobler visions of the universe, which is actuated by righteousness and impelled by love, which is kind, tender, considerate, and unselfish, which is hopeful and not despairing, which is noble and not base, which is happy and not sad, and which is doing all the great and solid work of humanity — this, the central host, is numbered by millions and tens of millions, and the variety of its employment covers the whole field of human enterprise.

To acquaint ourselves as often and as deeply as possible with all the good that is being done in the world, with all the kindness that is sweetening existence, with all the victories of love which are exalting and redeeming human nature in every street and parish of the globe on which we live, this is to escape from the gloom and to shake off the melancholy of newspaper pessimism ; and to associate ourselves with those whose lives are beautiful and kind and true is to acquire that healthful spirit of hope and enthusiasm without which no fruitful work can be done, no life really lived in the warmth and blessing of contented faith.

It is good to remind oneself when reading the newspaper that millions of people love their gardens more than the tavern, that the innocent pleasures and refining occupations of life are more in number than its much-advertised iniquities, and that the love of home, delight in children, and devotion to books, music, and pleasant games are still the mainspring of our national fife. But, better still is it to go into the world and see for ourselves how innumerable is the host of those who live for others, and how manifold, unceasing, and miraculous are the activities of religious faith.

Let me say to those whose existence is narrowed by circumstance, and whose notions of the world are taken from the newspaper, that the longei I live and the more I get to know of the miracles of religious energy, the more do I marvel at men’s pessimism and stand amazed before the confidence of infidelity.1

IV

This book attempts to tell the story of one single society working in the enormous field of Christian activity. It shows how a small seed planted in London sixty-seven years ago has struck its roots deeply into our national life, has spread its branches throughout every land in the British Empire, has sown itself in nearly every kingdom and republic of the civilised globe, and is now a force working for Anglo-Saxon unity, the peace of the world, and the elevation of mankind. Such an achievement in itself is something of a miracle, for the man who sowed the first insignificant seed was a humble clerk, almost friendless at the heart of the Empire ; but when one studies the thing attentively, when one examines the ramifications and increasing energies of this quiet, unobtrusive, and almost silent society — above all, when one comes face to face with individuals composing it, and penetrates to the spiritual passion which inspires it- — then with overwhelming force does the intense mystery of our

1 As this book goes to press I make acquaintance for the first time with a most interesting and important work, The Christian Mission and Ragged School of Hoxton Market. For the past two years this little-known society of unselfish people has fed some 10,000 hungry children a week. It provides boots and clothing for thousands of children, helps the unemployed of Hoxton, and spreads its Christian influence over the whole of that struggling art a. The Superintendent of this Mission is unpaid, has to work hard for his own living, and gives himself body and soul to the work with a quite splendid enthusiasm. Let the reader who is cynical or pessimistic pay a visit to Hoxton Market.

human life come home to the heart and the reality, the penetrating and suffusing reality of the religious life quicken every imagination of the soul. That such a work is meaningless no man in his senses dare affirm, and that it could have been done without faith in God is a thing impossible to believe.

And this is but one activity of our manifold religious life, but one society among thousands labouring for spiritual evolution, but one small regiment in the grand army of the central host which carries the fortunes of humanity.

Can it be true, the news He is declaring ?

Oh, let us trust Him, for His words are fair :

Man ! what is this ? and why art thou despairing ?

God shall forgive thee all save thy despair 1

Chapter I

IN the autumn of 1821 — rather a savage and brutal period of English history — there was born in Ashway Farm, Dulverton, a child destined to spread the influence of his personality not only throughout the British Isles, not only throughout the British Empire, but throughout the whole world.

He was the youngest child of a stalwart yeoman named Amos Williams. His brothers were tall, stark, hard-riding men, vigorous with the winds and spaces of the moorland, somewhat barbarous with the roughness and struggle of their remote existence. Amos Williams himself was an excellent farmer, an energetic and go-ahead man who did not allow his love of hunting to interfere with his work in the fields. Elizabeth Williams, his wife, was a notable representative of refinement in that home with the beautiful name. She was the angel of Ash way Farm. Small, gentle, humorous, winsome, and sanguine, this fit tie mother of a great man permeated the rough fibres of that Devonshire home-life with something sweet and gentle. She was for ever weaving into the sullen fabric of that existence threads of gold which transformed the sternness of the pattern into something which suggested beauty, and which was ultimately, in the life of her youngest child, to command the admiration of a great Queen, the reverence of nations, and the blessing of humanity.

This youngest son, George Williams, bore no resemblance to his brothers. He was diminutive ; he was highly strung ; he was sensitive and gentle. But whereas the tall brothers were dour men, silent and stem except in moments of exhilaration, the little Benjamin of the house was for ever and irrepressibly bright and vivacious, was overflowing with high spirits, was fond of singing, and in all his wits was as sharp and vital as his brothers were serious and stern. Americans would have called him “ quick in the uptake.”

He went to Dulverton Church and heard a great many sermons and listened to a great many prayers which made no impression on his mind and contributed not the smallest influence to his spiritual development. He went to a dame -school, and picked up with average ease the elements of learning. He drove his father’s sheep to the moors, and contracted the habit of swearing. He chaffed his sterner brothers, but they did not resent his frivolities. He tried on one occasion to lead a waggon-load of hay from the meadows, and a rut, unobserved by the inattentive boy, overturned both waggon and horses. The brothers mourned for him ! It was agreed on all hands that baby George would never make a farmer. The overturning of the waggon pitched the lively boy into a shop. His father drove him one day

II from the farmyard, and deposited him as apprentice with Mr. Holmes, draper, of Bridgwater, there to shift for himself.

As a rule the youth from a country village makes his first experience of evil in the town to which he goes to earn his living. On the contrary in this case, the little George Williams, careless of anything in the nature of religion and given to swearing, made his acquaintance with spiritual life in the shop of a Bridgwater draper. There were two other apprentices in this business, and both of them were serious lads. Their conversation, their manner of life, the whole set and purpose of their characters came to the farmer’s son as a great awakening. He became vividly aware of another world penetrating and interpenetrating the world of sense, a world of which he had scarcely begun to dream. His master was a Congregationalist, and insisted that his apprentices should attend chapel. The early spirit of Methodism was abroad, and in the Bridgwater chapel little George Williams heard sermons which deepened the influence made upon his soul by the conversation of the other apprentices. He saw that infinity separated good from evil. He became sharply sensible of the great issues of character. He visualised the two great roads on which every man that lives must make his journey to Eternity. He felt in the deepest recesses of his soul the immense separation of sin and the exquisite unifying force of love. “ I now began to pray,” he said, “ but even on my knees oaths would come to my lips.”

A sermon in chapel determined his life. There is here nothing of cataclysm or traceable upheaval. It is a case of one who had begun to seek, one who had already detected the great difference between good and evil, quietly but with an iron decision turning the direction of his inward life away from selfishness, vanity, and evil, towards love, beauty, and God. There as he sat and listened to an unrecorded sermon by a preacher whose very name is probably forgotten, the youth in a back pew of the chapel just simply turned his face to God and decided for righteousness. He said of that time : —

“ I learnt at Bridgwater to see the vital difference, the tremendous importance, of the spiritual life. I saw in this town two roads — the downward road and the upward road. I began to reason, and said to myself, 4 What if I continue along this downward road, where shall I get to, where is the end of it, what will become of me ? ’ Thank God ! I had kept in the clean path ; nevertheless I was on the downward road.”

After the service he returned to the shop, knelt down behind the counter, and, in a phrase sometimes ill-used but too marvellous and beautiful in the history of mankind ever to become false or meaningless, gave his heart to God. 44 1 cannot describe to you,” he said, 44 the joy and peace which flowed into my soul when first I saw that the Lord Jesus had died for my sins, and that they were all forgiven.” Uncertainty had come to an end. Darkness had rolled away. Henceforth he saw a straight road, a definite destiny, and a great light streaming from the kingdoms of invisible beauty.

At the age of nineteen, the days of his apprenticeship over, George Williams was taken up to London and presented to Mr. Hitchcock, head of a great firm of drapers on Ludgate Hill. The mighty man looked at the slender youth, adjudged him poor stuff, and said, “ No ! I’ve no place for him. He’s too small.” Nelson’s reception into the Navy was not colder or more heart-breaking. The brother who had brought George Williams to London said that “ though there might be little of him it was very good.” Mr, Hitchcock considered, and bade the youth come again next day. “Well,” he said, on this second view, “ you seem a healthy young fellow. I will give you a trial.”

That which follows is like a spiritualised version of Dick Whittington, is certainly one of the most wonderful, picturesque, and romantic stories in modern records of humanity. Beyond everything else, it is as striking and as incontrovertible a proof of the Miracle as anything in the biographies of mysticism.

George Williams found himself in that great warehouse on Ludgate Hill, one among a host of young men whose lives for the most part were as low and vulgar as it is possible to conceive. They must not be judged. From early morning to late at night they toiled like slaves ; it is said that hall an hour in the day sufficed for the three beggarly meals provided by the firm ; and beyond the work of the day and the crowded, frightful dormitory — two men occupying in many cases a single bed — there was nothing but the street.

Horrified by what he saw and heard, George

Williams looked about him for at least one or two virtuous men with whom he might share his spiritual life in this crowded scene of materialism. It was with him from the very first a certainty of God that the spiritual life is to be shared. He had nothing in his eager blood of the cloister, nothing in his burning soul of the hermit and fakir. To associate with men who loved the Way, whose hearts were consecrated by the Truth, whose souls longed for ever greater indraughts of the Life, this was the peculiar genius of his spirit and the definite achievement of his great career.

When he had found the two or three, they gathered themselves together and prayed. Perhaps the most interesting element in the story of this man’s extraordinary fife is his concept of prayer. He believed with implicit faith in the power of prayer, he had no shadow of doubt in his soul that prayer reached to God and returned in quiet blessing to the earth ; but he also believed that prayer should be sent not loosely nor aimlessly into the vastness of infinity, but should have for its objective some definite mark here upon earth. He believed in praying for individuals.

Whatever some men may be disposed to think of this idea, the facts are plain, the results are indisputable. It will really not do for the superior person to scoff or for the indulgent man to smile. George Williams prayed for particular men, the most unlikely and hardened men, and their lives became transformed. He set his little company of faithful friends to pray for other men, again the most unlikely and hardened men, and their fives were transformed. Miracles occurred in that warehouse on Ludgate Hill as wonderful and as indisputable as any natural law in the physical kingdom. A man may be unwilling to believe this affirmation, but he cannot refute the testimony. He may desire to ignore the fact, but to this day it stares him in the face throughout the civilised globe.

“ It was said in after years,” writes Mr. J. E. Hodder Williams,1 “that when he joined Messrs. Hitchcock and Rogers it was almost impossible for a young man in the house to be a Christian, and that, three years afterwards, it was almost impossible to be anything else.”

Let it be remembered, we have overwhelming evidence for the truth of a contemporary assertion that in that period of our history “ there was no class more degraded and dissolute, none who were sunk deeper in ungodliness and dissipation than the shopmen of London.”

George Williams, we are told, on finding himself one among a host of low, vulgar, indifferent, and depraved young men, immediately singled them out, one by one, and prayed for them individually, day after day, night after night, in the dormitory where life was brought almost as near to perdition as it can go on earth.

One of the worst men in the house was a gay and uproarious person named Rogers. He was the presiding genius of smoking concerts at a public-house in the neighbourhood, and was so antipathetic to the beautiful in life that he deliberately set

1 The Life oj Sir George Williams , by J. E. Hodder Williams. (Hodder and Stoughton.)

himself to prevent men from coming under the influence of religion. Above all others in that establishment he was the champion of existing materialism, the avowed enemy of a threatening religiousness. George Williams immediately marked him out as the Saul of that little warehouse world, the Saul who must be changed, by the grace of God, into the Paul of the new life.

This man was first softened by the tact and pleasantness of George Williams, was then moved to attend the meetings of the two or three, grew concerned for the health of his spiritual life, and finally became one of them — one of the twelve who, in an upper room in a warehouse by St. Paul’s Cathedral, laid the foundations of a Brotherhood which now covers the whole earth. “ By a curious coincidence,” says Mr. Hodder Williams, “ his is the only one of the twelve cards of membership which has been preserved.” George Williams said to a friend some few days before this notable event, “ I was praying for him this morning until it seemed as if I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, ‘ Yes 9 ; and I knew he would be converted.”

It was the fixed opinion of George Williams that the first twenty- four hours of a young man's life in London usually settled his eternity in heaven or hell. With such a passionate conviction in his soul he could not rest content with one, two, three, four, and five conversions among his fellow-clerks. He sought to change the whole spirit of the establishment. To do this it was necessary to convert the master, the gruff and vigorous rich man who sat in his counting-house and directed every energy of that great machine with the resolution of a most masterful dictator.

George Williams, without a single misgiving, began to pray for the soul of George Hitchcock. He was at this time high up in the firm’s service, a valuable servant, an industrious worker, not only one who could be trusted and relied upon, but one whose talent for the trade added handsomely to the firm’s profits. When it came to the ears of the master that this youth from Devonshire was praying for him, that in one of the bedrooms of the establishment four or five of his servants met every night and actually prayed for his soul, he was filled with amazement, was staggered, was angry, and sent for George Williams into his presence.

It is well for the reader to remind himself that this narrative is no romance, that George Hitchcock, of Ludgate Hill, was no character in a novel, but actual flesh and blood, one of the great master merchants of the City of London. When I was in his warehouse the other day, and looked through the glass partition and saw the clerks at their desks, the cashier in his box, and the coming and going of many people through the swing-doors opening on the street, I thought of old Osborne of Vanity Fair , of young George coming to borrow money from Mr. Chopper, of the Family Bible in Russell Square, and of the old merchant in his broken age going home from the City to see the little George Osborne riding on his pony in Regent’s Park.

But this story is a true story, and it is many times more wonderful.

George Williams stood in front of his master, a

“ Is it true,” demanded Mr. Hitchcock, “ this tale I hear about you, that you are praying for my soul ? ”

George Williams was startled, but he faced his master and said, “Yes, sir, it is true.”

Hitchcock measured him with stern eyes, measured the little man of whom he had said not many years ago, “ He’s too small.” Perhaps he now seemed bigger than he had thought.

After a pause he asked, “ You pray for my conversion ? ”

“ Yes, sir.”

“ You think I need conversion ? ”

“ Yes, sir.”

“ Are you aware that I am a churchwarden ? ”

“ Yes, sir.”

“ But you do not think I am converted ? ”

“ No, sir.”

“ Why not ? ”

The quick, challenging question was opportunity with a golden key. George Williams opened his heart. He told his master many terrible truths about the business. He spoke eloquently of the tainted moral atmosphere. He brought home to the heart and soul of the rich man his frightful responsibility towards those who served him. He magnified nothing, but he spared nothing. He told the truth, and that sufficed.

Hitchcock heard him out.

“ You can go,” he said ; “ but continue your

prayers for me.”

In a few days the man’s life was transformed. He came publicly into the office one day and announced certain momentous changes in the conduct of the business. He gave his influence to the spiritual work of George Williams. He set himself to purify his house from the top to the bottom.

The work flourished, but George Williams was not satisfied. He thought of the thousands of young men pouring into London from the provinces, thousands of pure and innocent lives for whom the City waited like a hungry lion, thousands of men inexpressibly dear to their parents, inexpressibly precious to England, inexpressibly dear and precious to God. They came to London, many of them, upright, chivalrous, manly, industrious, honourable, and, in some cases, dreaming dreams. And London had nothing for them but foul dormitories, heart-breaking hours of labour, the companionship of debased and brutalised minds, the excitements of the tavern, the perils of the street, the hell of disenchantment and despair. Could nothing be done for them ? — nothing to save them ? — nothing to develop and uplift them ?

One day he was crossing Blackfriars Bridge with a fellow- worker named Edward Valentine. The great warehouses rose above moored barges on either side of the broad river, dark, smoky, and forbidding against the sunlight of a spring evening. The gentleness of the sky was black with spires, towers, roofs, chimneys, and congregating stone. Crowds of people and crowds of vehicles passed to and fro. The sense of humanity which comes to us in a great city was merged into the beauty of the sky, the width of the river, and the peace of a Sunday twilight. With the stir of feet and the turning of wheels came the sound of bells. Between the arches of the bridge the most human river in the world flowed towards the sea. Afar to the west, in a haze of smoke and mist, the sun was almost level with the roofs. It was one of those scenes, one of those moments when the stress of material existence sets no darkness between the soul and its destiny, when life, real life, is felt to He deep within the silence of our invisible being.