Decatur Democrat, Volume 43, Number 44, Decatur, Adams County, 11 January 1900 — Page 7

i IN HIS STEPS. I : “Wit tVcr.ia I J I : 3«u. Do?” i | Ml 8; By Charles H. Sheldon. ;• 1 ’’ > Copyrighted and r"! I'>hnt tn bnolc b’j the '5 T /X Advance PuUirhiug Co, <>/ Chicago. ♦. t *

I “If Milton Wright keeps on. he will one of the most influential preachers Raymond. ’’said Henry Maxwell to mself when he reached his study. The estion rose as to his continuance in is course when he began to lose jney by it. as was possible. Henry ixwell prayed that the Holy Spirit, 10 had shown himself with growing wer in the company of the First urch disciples, might abide long with em all. and with that prayer on his is and in his heart he began the prepition of a sermon in which he was ing to present to his people on Suny the subject of the saloon in Raymd, as he now believed Jesus would He had never preached against the loon in this way before. He knew at the things he should say would id to serious results. Nevertheless he >nt on with his work, and every senace he wrote or shaped was preceded th the question. “Would Jesus say at?" Once in the course of his study went down on his knees. No one expt himself could know what that ■ant to him. When had he done that Kn the preparation of sermons before ■he change that had come into his ■bought of discipleship? As he viewed ■is ministry now he did not dare to ■reach without praying for wisdom. He Eno longer thought of his dramatic delivery and its effect on his audience ■he great question with him now was, ■"What would Jesus do?” I Saturday night at the Rectangle witHiessed some of the most remarkable Scenes that Mr. Gray and his wife had ■ever known. The meetings had intensified with each night of Rachel’s sing6ng. A stranger passing through the SRectangle in the daytime might have jtieard a good deal about the meetings in ■one way and another. It cannot be said I “hat up to that Saturday night there vas any appreciable lack of oaths and mpurity and heavy drinking. The Recangle would not have acknowledged hat it was growing any better or that ven the singing had softened its conversation or its outward manner. It lad too ranch local pride in being ‘tough. ’’ But, in spite of itself, there ras a yielding to a power it had never neasnred and did not know well enough o resist beforehand. Gray had recovered bls voice, so that iaturday he was able to speak. The act that he was obliged to use his voice arefully made it necessary for the peo--ple to be very quiet if they wanted to [Lear Gradually they had come to un[derstand that this man was talking [these many weeks and using his time land strength to give them a knowledge [of a Saviour, all out of a perfectly unIselfish love for them. Tonight the great [crowd was as quiet as Henry Maxwell’s [decorous audience ever was. The fringe [around the tent was deeper, and the [saloons were practically empty. The Holy Spirit had come at last, and Gray [knew that one of the great prayers of his life was going to be answered. And Rachel—her singing was the best, most wonderful Virginia or Jasper [Chase had ever known. They had come together again tonight with Dr. West, [who had spent all his spare time that [Week in the Rectangle with some charity cases Virginia was at the organ, Jasper sat on a front seat looking up at Rachel, and the Rectangle swayed as one man toward the platform as she sang: “Just as I am, without one plea. But that thy blood was shed for me And that thou bidst me come to thee—--0 Lamb of God. I come, I cornel” Gray said hardly a word. He stretched out his hand with a gesture of invitation, and down the two aisles of the tent broken, sinful creatures, men and women, stumbled toward the platform. One woman out of the street was near the organ Virginia caught the look of her face, and for the first time in the life of the rich girl the thought of what Jesus was to a sinful woman came with a suddenness and power that were like nothing but a new birth Virginia left the organ. went to her. looked into her face and caught her hands in her own. The other girl trembled, then fell on her knees, sobbing, with her head down tipon the back of the bench in front of aer. still clinging to Virginia. And Virginia. after a moment's hesitation, kneeled down by her, and the two heads were bowed close together But when the people had crowded in a double row all about the platform, most of them kneeling and crying, a man in evening dress different from the others, pushed through the seats and came and kneeled down by the side Os the drunken man who had disturbed the meeting when Henry Maxwell spoke He kneeled within a few feet of Rachel Winslow, who was still singing softly, and as she turned for a moment ! and looked in his direction she was amazed to see the face of Rollin Pagel For a moment her voice faltered. Then she went on •’Just as 1 am thou wilt receive. Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve. Because thy promise 1 believe. 0 Lamb of God, I come, I come!” The voice was as the voice of divine longing, and the Rectangle, for the time being, was swept into the harbor of redemptive grace. CHAPTER V 0 *ny maa mtt« dm, Ut him folic-w me. It wag nearly midnight before the •ervice at the Rectangle closed. Gray •told up long into Sunday morning

praying and talking with a little group of converts that, in the great experience of their new life, clung to the evangelist with a personal helplessness that made it as impossible for him to leave them as if they had been depending upon him to save them from physical death. Among these converts was Rollin Page. \ irginia and her uncle had gone home about 11 o'clock, and Rachel and Jasper Chase had gone with them as far as the avenue where Virginia lived. Dr. West had walked on a little way with them to his own house, and Rachel and Jasper had then gone on together to her mother's. That was a little after 11. It was now striking midnight, and Jasper Chase sat in his room staring at the papers on his desk and going over the last half hour with painful persistence. He had told Rachel Winslow of bis love for her, and she had not given her love in return. It would be difficult to know what was most powerful in the impulse that had moved him to speak to her tonight. He had yielded to his feelings without any special thought of results to himself because he had felt so certain that Rachel would respond to his love for her. He tried to recall now just the impression she made on him when he first spoke to hep Never had her beauty and her strength influenced him as tonight. While she was singing he saw and heard no one else. The tent swarmed with a confused crowd of faces, and he knew he was sitting there hemmed in by a mob of people, but they had no meaning to him. He felt powerless to avoid speaking to her He knew’ he should speak when they were once alone. Now that he had spoken he felt that he had misjudged either Rachel or the opportunity. He knew, or thought he did, that she had begun to care for him. It was no secret between them that the heroine of Jasper's first novel had been bis own ideal of Rachel, and the hero of the story was himself, and they had loved each other in the book, and Rachel had not objected. No one else knew. The names and characters bad been drawn with a subtle skill that revealed to Rachel, when she received a copy of the book from Jasper, the fact of his love for her. and she had not been offended. That was nearly a year ago. Tonight Jasper Chase recalled the scene between them, with every inflection and movement unerased from his memory. He even recalled the fact that he began to speak just at that point on the avenue where a few days before he had met Rachel walking with Rollin Page. He had wondered at the time what Rollin was saying. “Rachel,’.' Jasper had said, and it was the first time he had ever s[»ken her first name, “I never knew until tonight how much I love you. Why should I try to conceal any longer what you have seen me look? You know 1 love you as my life. I can no longer hide it from you if I would. ” The first intimation he had of a refusal was the trembling of Rachel’s arm in his own. She had allowed him to speak and had neither turned her face toward him nor away from him. She had looked straight on. and her voice was sad. but firm and quiet, when she spoke. "Why do you speak tome now? I cannot bear it —after what we have seen tonight. ” “Why—what’’ — he had stammered and then was silent. Rachel withdrew her arm from his, but still walked near him. Then he cried out with the anguish of one who begins to see a great loss facing him where he expected a great joy“Rachell Do you not love me? Is not my love for you as sacred as anything in all of life itself?” She had walked on silent for a few steps after that. They had passed a street lamp. Her face was pale and beautiful He had made a movement to clutch her arm. and she had moved a little farther from him. “No.” she had replied. “There was a time —I cannot answer for that. \ou should not have spoken to me tonight.' He had seen in these words his answer He was extremely sensitive. Nothing short of a joyous response to his own love would have satisfied him He could not think of pleading with her “Some time, when I am more worthy?” he had asked in a low voice, but she did not seem to hear, and they had parted at her home, and he recalled vividly the fact that no good night bad been said Now. as he went over the brief but significant scene, he lashed himself for his foolish precipitancy He had not reckoned on Rachel s tense, passionate absorption of all her feeling in the scenes at the tent which were so new in her mind But he did not know her well enough even yet to understand the meaning of her refusal When the clock in the First church steeple struck 1, he was still sitting at his desk, staring at the last page of manuscript of his unfinished novel Rachel Winslow went up to her room and faced her evening’s experience with conflicting emotions. Had • she ever loved Jasper Chase? Yes—no. One moment she felt that her life's happiness was at stake over the result of her ac-

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tion; another, she had a strange feeling of relief that she had spoken as she did There was one great overmastering feeling in her The response of the wretched creatures in the tent to her singing, the swift, awesome presence of the Holy Spirit, had affected her as never in all her life before The moment Jasper had spoken her name and she realized that he was telling her of his love she had felt a sudden revulsion for him, as if he should have respected the supernatural events they had just witnessed She felt as if it were not the time to be absorbed in anything less than the divine glory of those conversions The thought that all the time she was singing with the one passion of her soul to touch the conscience of that tent full of sin Jasper Chase had been moved by it simply to love her for himself gave her a shock as of irreverence on her part nB well as on his. She could not tell why she felt as she did; only she knew that if he had not told her tonight she would still have felt the same toward him as she always had. What was that feeling? What had he been to her? Had she made a mistake? She went to her bookcase and took out the novel which Jasper had given her. Her face deepened in color as she turned to certain passages which she had read often and which she knew Jasper had written for her. She read them again. Somehow they failed to touch her strongly. She closed the book and let it lie on the table. She gradually felt that her thought was busy with the sight she had witnessed in that tent Those faces, men and women, touched for the first time with the Spirit's glory What a wonderful thing life was. after all! The complete regeneration revealed in the sight of drunken. vile, debauched humanity kneeling down to give itself to a life of purity and Christlikeness —oh, it was surely a a witness to the superhuman in the world I And the face of Rollin Page by the side of that miserable wreck out of the gutter —she could recall as if she now saw it Virginia crying, with her arms about her brother, just before she left the tent, and Mr. Gray kneeling close by, and the girl Virginia had tak-

en into her heart bending her head while Virginia whispered something to her. All these pictures, drawn by the Holy Spirit in the human tragedies brought to a climax there in the most abandoned spot in all Raymond, stood out in Rachel’s memory now, a memory so recent that her room seemed for the time being to contain all the actors and their movements. “No, no!” she had said aloud. “He had no right to speak to me after all that! He should have respected the place where our thoughts should have been. lam sure Ido not love him. not enough to give him my life.” And after she had thus spoken the evening’s experience at the tent came crowding in again, thrusting out all other things. It is perhaps the most striking evidence of the tremendous | spiritual factor which had now entered the Rectangle that Rachel felt, even when the great love of a strong man ' had come very near her. that the spir I itual manifestation moved her with an agitation far greater than anything Jasper had felt for her personally or she for him The people of Raymond awoke Sunday morning to a growing knowledge of events which were beginning to revolutionize many of the regular customary habits of the town. Alexander Powers’ action in the matter of the railroad frauds had created a sensation, not only in Raymond, but throughout the country Edward Norman's daily changes of policy in the conduct of his paper had startled the community and caused ' more comment than any recent polit- [ ical event Rachel Winslow's singing 1 at the Rectangle meetings had made a . stir in society and excited the wonder j of all her friends. Virginia Page’s con- 1 duct, her presence every night with j Rachel, her absence from the usual circle of her wealthy, fashionable acquaintances. had furnished a great deal of material for gossip and question. In addition to Kie events which centered about these persons who were so well known, there had been all through the city, in very many homes and in business and social circles, strange happenings. Nearly a hundred persons in

Henry Maxwell’s church had made the pledge to do everything after asking. “What would Jesus do?” and the result had been, in many cases, unheard of actions. The city was stirred as it had never been. As a climax to the : week's events had come the spiritual manifestation at the Rectangle and the announcement, which came to most : people before church time, of the actual [ conversion at the tent of nearly 50 of the worst characters in the neighborhood. together with the conversion of Rollin Page, the well known society ■ and club man. It is no wonder that, under the presj sure of all this, the First church of Raymond came to the morning service in a condition that made it quickly sensiI tive to any large truth Perhaps nothing had astonished the i people more than the great change that | had come over the minister since he , had proposed to them the imitation of Jesus in conduct. The dramatic delivery of his sermons no longer impressed them The self satisfied, contented, easy attitude of the fine figure and the refined face in the pulpit had been displaced by a manner that could not be compared with the old style of his delivery The sermon had become a message It was no longer delivered. It was brought to them with a love, an earnestness, a passion, a desire, a humility. that poured their enthusiasm about the truth and made the speaker no more prominent than he had to be as the living voice of God. His prayers i were unlike any the people had ever | beard before. They were often broken i Even once or twice they had been actu- ; ally ungrammatical in a phrase or two | When had Henry Maxwell so far for- | gotten himself in a prayer as to make a i mistake of that sort ? He knew that he had often taken as much pride in the diction and the delivery of his prayers as of his sermons. Was it possible he now so abhorred the elegant refinement of a formal public petition that he purposely chose to rebuke himself for his previous precise manner of prayer ? It is more likely that he had no thought of all that His great longing to voice the needs and wants of his people made

him unmindful of an occasional mistake. It is certain he had never prayed so effectively as he did now. There are times when a sermon has a value r.nd power due to conditions in the audience rather than to anything new or startling or eloquent in the words or the arguments presented. Such conditions faced Henry Maxwell this morning a> he preached against the saloon. according to his purpose determined on the week before. He had no new statements to make about the evil influence of the saloon in Raymond. What ne-.v facts were there ? He had no startling illustrations of the power of the saloon in business or politics. What could he say that had not teen said by temperance orators a great many times ? The effect of his message this morning owed its power to the unusual fact cf his preaching about the saloon at all, together with the events that had stirred the people. He had never in the course of his ten years’ pastorate mentioned the saloon as something to be regarded in the light of an enemy, not only to the poor and the tempted, but to the business life of the place and tho church itself. Ho spoke now with a freedom that seemed to measure his complete sense of the conviction that Jesus would speak so. At the close he pleaded with the people to remember the new life that had begun at the Rectangle. The regular election of city officers would be an issue in that election. What of the poor creatures surrounded by the hell of drink while just beginning to feel the joy of deliverance from sin ? Who could tell what depended on their environment? Was there one word to be said by the Christian disciple, business man, professional man. citizen, in favor of continuing to license [TO BE CONTINUED. J

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