Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 October 1900 — ROBERT HARDY'S SEVEN DAYS [ARTICLE]

ROBERT HARDY'S SEVEN DAYS

A DREAM AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 1, . By Her. GHABLEB M. BHELDOH. UUhor of “In Bit Stop*," “TJw Qrudflrton cf FMUp Strong," "BcUcom Kir*," JRo. Copyright, 1900, by Adnirn Publishing Oa.] xnere were the usual opening exercises common to such public gatherings. Several well known business mertyind two or three of the ministers. Including Mr. Jones, made appropriate addresses. The attention of the great audience was not labored for, the occasion Itself being enough to throw over the people the spell of subdued quiet When the chairman announced that “Mr. Robert Hardy, our well known railroad manager, will now address ns,” there was a movement of curiosity and some surprise, and many a man leaned forward and wondered In his heart what the wealthy railroad man would have to say on such an occasion. . He had never appeared as a speaker In public, and he passed generally In 1 Barton for the cold, selfish, haughty man he had always been. CHAPTER X. Mr. Hardy began In a low, clear tone: “Men and Women of Barton—To- j night I am not the man you have known me these 25 years I have been among you.' I am, by the grace of God,; a new creature. As I stand here 11 hav6 no greater desire in my heart j than to say what may prove to be a blessing to all my old townspeople and to my employees and to these strong! young men and boys. Within a few I short days God has shown me the self- j lshness of a human being’s heart, and that heart was my own, and it is with' feelings none of you can ever know j that I look into your faces and say these words.” Robert paused a moment as If gathering himself up for the effort that fob j lowed, and the audience, startled with' an unexpected emotion by the strange beginning, thrilled with excitement, as,' lifting his arm and raising his voice,! the once cold and proud man continued, his face and form glowing with the transfiguration of a new manhood: “There is but one supreme law in thife world, and it is this: Love God and your neighbor with heart, mind, soul, strength. And there are but two things worth living for: The glory of God and the salvation of man. Tonight 1, who look into eternity in a sense which 1 will not stop to explain, feel the bitterness which comes from the knowl- 1 edge that I have broken that law and have not lived for those things which alone are worth living for. | “But God has sent me here tonight with a message to the people which my heart must deliver. It Is a duty even more sacred in some ways than what I owe to my own kindred. I am aware that the hearts of the people are shock-' ed into numbness by the recent horror. I I know that, more tlinn one bleeding J heart is in this house, and the shadow of the last enemy has fallen over many thresholds in our town. What! Dili I not enter into the valley of the shadow of death myself as I stumbfed over the ghastly twins of that wreck, my soul torn in twain for the love of three of my own dear children? Do I not sympathize In full with all those who bitterly weep and lament and sit In blackness of horror this night? Yea, but, men of Barton, why Is It that we are so moved, so stirred, so shocked, by the event of death when the far more awful event of life does not disturb us in the least? “We shudder with terror, we lose our accustomed pride or indifference, we speak In whispers, and we tread softly in the presence of the visitor who smites but once and then smites the body only, but in the awful presence of the living image of God we go our ways careless, Indifferent, cold, passionless, selfish. “I know whereof I speak, for I have walked through the world like that myself. And yet death cannot be compared for one moment with life for majesty, for solemnity, for meaning, for power. There were 75 persons killed in the accident. But in the papers this morning I read in the column next to that in which the accident was paraded in small type and in the briefest of paragraphs the statement that a certain young man In this very town of ours had been arrested for forging his father’s name on a check and was In the grasp of the law. “And every day In this town and In every town all over the world events like that and worse than that are of frequent occurrence. Nay. In this very town of ours more than 75 souls are at this very moment going down Into a far blacker neli oi destruction man me one down there under that fated bridge, and the community Is not horrified over It. How many mass meetings have been held In this town within the last 25 years over the losses of character, the death of purity, the destruction of honesty? Yet they have outnumbered the victims of this late physical disaster a thousandfold. “And what does mere death do? It releases the spirit from its house of earth, but aside from that death does nothing to the person. But what does life do? Life does everything. It prepares fer heaven or for hell. It starts Impulses, molds character, fixes character. Death has no kingdom without end. Death is only the last enemy of the many enemies that life knows. Death, is a second; life is an eternity. 0 men, brothers, IX, as I solemnly and truly believe, this la the last opportunity I shall have to speak to you in such large numbers, I desire you to remember, I have vanished from your sight, that I spent nearly my last breath In an appeal to you to make the most of dhlly life, to glorify God and save men.

| “The greatest enemy of minv is not j death; it is selfishness. He sits on the throne of the entire world. This very disaster which has filled the town with sorrow was due to selfishness. Let us see If that is not so. It has been proved, by Investigation already made that the drunkenness of a track Inspector was the cause of the accident. What was the cause of that drunkenness? The drinking habits of that Inspector. How did be acquire them? In a saloon which we taxpayers allow to run on payment of a certain sum of money into our own treasury. “So, then, it was the greed or selfishness of the men of this town which lies at the bottom of this dreadful disaster. Who was to blame for the disaster? The track Inspector? No. The saloon keeper who sold him the liquor? No. IJho then? We ourselves, my brothers; we who licensed the selling of the stuff which turned a man’s brain into liquid fire and smote his judgment and reason with a brand from out the burning pit. “If I had stumbled upon the three corpses of my own children night before last, I could have exclaimed In justice before the face of God, ‘I have murdered my own children,’ for I was one of the men of Barton to wte for the license which made possible the drunkenness of the man in whose care were placed hundreds of Jives. - “For what is the history of this case? Who was this wretched track Inspector? A man who, to my own knowledge, trembled before temptation; who, on the testimony of the foreman at the shops, was and always had been a sober man up to the time when we as a municipality voted to replace the system of no license with the saloon for the sake of what we thought was a necessary revenue. This man had no great temptation to drink while the saloon was out of the way. Its very absence wfis his salvation. . But its public open return confronted his appetite once more, and he yielded and fell.

“Who says he was to blame? Who are the real criminals in the case? We ourselves, citizens;, we who. for the greea or gain, ror tne saving oi mar which has destroyed more souls In hell than any other one thing, made possible the causes which led to the grief and trouble of this hour. Would we not shrink In terror from the thought of lying In wait to kill a man? Would we not repel with holy horror the Idea of murdering and maiming 75 people? We would say ‘lmpossible!’ Yet when I am ushered at last Into the majestic presence of AJmighty God I feel convinced I shall see in his righteous countenance the sentence of our condemnation just as certainly as if we had gone out In a body and by wicked craft had torn out the supporting timbers of that, bridge just before the train thundered upon it, for did We not sanction by law a business which we know tempts men to break all the laws, which fills our jails and poorhouses, our reformatories and asylums, which breaks women’s henrts and beggars blessed homes and sends innocent children to thread the paths of shame and vagrancy, which brings pallor into the face of the wife and tosses with the devil's own glee a thousand victims into perdition with every revolution of this great planet about its greater sun ? “Men of Barton, say what we will, we are the authors of this dreadful disaster. And if we sorrow as a community we sorrow in reality for our own selfish act. And, oh, the selfishness of it! That clamoring greed for money! That burning thirst for more and more and more at the expense of every godlike quality, at the ruin of all that our mothers once prayed might belong to us as men and women! “What is it, ye merchants, ye business men, here tonight that ye struggle most over? The one great aim of your lives is to buy for as little as possible and sell for as much as possible. What care have ye for the poor, who work at worse than starvation wages, so long as ye can buy cheap and sell at large profits? What is the highest aim of us railroad men in the great whirl of commercial competition which seethes and boils and surges about this earth like another atmosphere, plainly visible to the devils of other worlds? “What is our aim but to jnnke money our god and power our throne? How much care or love is there for flesh and blood at times when there is danger of losing almighty dollars? But, O Almighty Saviour, it was not for this that we were made! We know it was not. “To whom am I speaking? To myself. God forbid that I should stand here to condemn you, being myself the chief of sinners for these 25 yearn, What have I done to bless this community? How much have I cared for the men in my employ? What difference did It make to me that my example drove men away from the church of Christ and caused anguish to those few souls who were trying to redeem humanity? To my Just shame I make answer that no one thing has driven the engine of my existence over the track of its destiny except self. And, oh, for that church of Christ that I professed to believe in! How much have I done for that? How much, O fellow members (and I see many of you here tonight), how much have we done In the best cause ever known and the greatest organization ever founded? “We go to church aft r reading the Sunday morning paper, saturated through nnd through with the same things we have had poured into us every day of the week, as if we begrudged the whole of one day out of seven. We criticise prayer and hymn ana sermon, drop Into the contribution box kali the amount we paid during the week for a theater-or concert ticket, and then when anything goes wro n Si > n I the community or our children fall into Vice scorn the chnrch for weakness and the preacher for lack of ability. [

"stoats* «n us, men of Barton, members of the church of Christ, that we have so neglected our own church prayer meeting that out of a resident membership of more tbap 400, living in easy distance of the church, only 60 have attended regularly and over 200 have been to that service occasionally. Yet we call ourselves disciples of Christ! We say we believe In bis blessed teachings; we say we believe In prayer, and in the face of an these professions we torn our becks with Indifference on the very means of spiritual growth and power which th# church, places within our reach. “If Christ were to come to the earth , today, he would say, unto us, ‘Woe unto yon, church members, hypocrites!’ He wotM say unto us, ‘Woe unto you, young disciples in name, who have promised to love and serve me and then, ashamed of testifying before me, | have broken promise and prayer and ; ridicule those who have kept their | vows sacredly!’ He would say to ns | men who have made money and kept It to ourselves: ‘Woe unto you, ye rich men, who dress softly and dine luxuriously and live in palaces, while tbs poor cry aloud for Judgment and tbs laborer -sweats for the luxury of the Idle! Woe unto you who speculate in flesh and blood and call no man brother unless he lives In as fine a house and hua as much money In the bank! Therefore ye shall receive tne greater condemnation!’ “O Belt, god of the earth yet! Wit-ls 2,000 years of the Son of God written Into its history, still goes up the cry of those who perish with hunger, who break into the sanctuary of their souls because they cannot get' work to do and are weary of the struggle of existence. Self, thou art king, not Jesus Christ. But, oh, for the shame of it, the shame of It! Were it not for the belief in the mighty forgiveness of sins I would stand here tqnlght with no hope of ever seeing the paradise of God. But, resting In that hope, I wish to say to you who have beheld the example of my selfish life I repudiate >t all. In the world I have passed as a moral citizen and a good business man; in society there has been no objection to my presence on account of my wealth and position; In the church I have been tolerated because I gave it financial support, but in the sight of that perfect aud crucified Lamb of God I have broken the two greatest laws which he ever announced. I have been a sinuer of the deepest dye; 1 have been everything except a disciple of Jesus Christ. I have prayed for mercy. I believe my prayer has been answered. “I am conscious that some here present may think that what i have said has been in poor taste; that it has been an affront to the object of the meeting or an insult to the feelings of those who have called the audience together. In order that the people may know that I am sincere In all I have said I will say that I have placed In the bank the sum of SIO,OOO to be used as the committee may deem wisest and best in the education of children In bereaved homes or in any way that shall be for the best good of those In need. This money Is God’s. I have robbed him and my brother man all these years. Whatever restitution I can make In the next few days I desire to make. “But the great question with us all, my friends, is not this particular disaster. That will in time take its place as one event out of thousands in the daily life of this world. The great event of existence is not death; it is life. And the great question of the world Is not the tariff nor the silver question nor the labor question nor temperance nor this nor that nor the other. The great question of the whole world Is selfishness In the heart of man. The great command Is, ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God.’ If we had done that in this town, I believe such a physical disaster as the one we lament would never have happened. That is our trreat need. ~ir we go'nome rrom tms meeting resolved to rebuke our selfishness In whatever form It Is displeasing to God, and if we begin tomorrow to act out that resolution in word and deed, we shall revolutionize tills town in Its business, its politics, Its church, Its schools, Its homos. If we simply allow our emotions to be stirred, our sympathies to be excited to the giving of a little money on this occasion, it will do ns and the community little permanent good. God wants a complete transformation In'the people of this nation. Nothing les3 than a complete regeneration can save us from destruction. Unconspcrated, selfish money and selfish education, selfish political power and selfish genius In art, letters and diplomacy will sink us as a people into a gulf of annihilation. There Is no salvation for us except In Jesus Christ. Let us believe In him aud live in him. “I have said my message. I trust you have understood it I would not say otherwise if I knew that I should step off this platform now and stand before the* judgment scat of Christ. God help us aU to do our duty! Time is short; eternity Is long. Death la nothing; life Is everything." Five years after this speech of Robert Hardy to the people of flarton in the town hall one who was present in the audience described the sensation that passed through it when the speaker sat down to be like a distinct’electric shock which passed from seat to seat and held the people fixed anti breathless as If they had'been smitten Into fcnages of stone. The effect on the chairman of the meeting was the same. He sat motionless. Then a wave of emotion gradually stirred the audience, and without a word of dismissal they poured out of the building and scattered to their nome*.