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It was nearly midnight before the services at the Rectangle closed. Gray stayed
up long into Sunday morning, praying and talking with a little group of
converts who, in the great experiences 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.
Virginia and her uncle had gone home about eleven 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 home, and Rachel and
Jasper had then gone on together to her mother's.
That was a little after eleven. 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 his love for her, and she had not given him 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 to-night. 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. He tried to recall the
impression she made on him when he first spoke to her.
Never had her beauty and her strength influenced him as to-night. 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 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 something
for him. It was no secret between them that the heroine of Jasper's first novel
had been his own ideal of Rachel, and the hero in 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 had 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.
To-night he 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 spoken her
first name, "I never knew until to-night how much I loved you. Why should I try
to conceal any longer what you have seen me look? You know I love you as my
life. I can no longer hide it from you if I would."
The first intimation he had of a repulse was the trembling of Rachel's arm in
his. 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 to me now? I cannot bear it -- after what we have seen
to-night."
"Why -- what --" he had stammered and then was silent.
Rachel withdrew her arm from his but still walked near him.
Then he had cried
out with the anguish of one who begins to see a great loss facing him where he
expected a great joy.
"Rachel! Do you not love me? Is not my love for you as sacred as anything in
all of life itself?"
She had walked silent for a few steps after that. They 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 -- you
should not have spoken to me now."
He had seen in these words his answer. He was extremely sensitive. Nothing
short of a joyous response to his own love would ever have satisfied him. He
could not think of pleading with her.
"Some time -- when I am more worthy?" he had asked in 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 had 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 struck one 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 action. Another, she
had a strange feeling of relief that she had spoken as she had. There was one
great, overmastering feeling in her. The responses of the wretched creatures in
the tent to her singing, the swift, powerful, 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 was 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 unmoved by it except to love her for
herself, gave her a shock as of irreverence on her part as well as on his. She
could not tell why she felt as she did, only she knew that if he had not told
her to-night 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 sights she
had witnessed in the 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 witness to the superhuman in the world! 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 taken into her heart while she whispered something to her before
she went out. 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 said aloud. "He had no right to speak after all that! He should
have respected the place where our thoughts should have been. I am sure I do 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 to her, that the spiritual 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 political event. Rachel
Winslow's singing at the Rectangle meetings had made a stir in society and
excited the wonder of all her friends. Virginia's conduct, her presence every night with 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 these 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 one 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 before. 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 fifty
of the worst characters in that neighborhood, together with the conversion of Rollin Page, the well-known society and club man.
It is no wonder
that under the pressure of all this, the First Church of Raymond came to the
morning service in a condition that made it quickly sensitive to any large
truth.
Perhaps nothing had astonished the 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 attitude of the fine figure and
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 its enthusiasm about the truth and
made the speaker no more prominent than he had to be as the living voice of
God. His prayers were unlike any the people had heard before. They were often
broken; even once or twice they had been actually ungrammatical in a phrase or
two. When had Henry Maxwell so far forgotten himself in a prayer as to make a
mistake of that sort? He knew that he had often taken as much pride in the
diction and 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 that he had never prayed so effectively as he did now.
There are times when a sermon has a value and power due to conditions in the
audience rather than to anything new or startling or eloquent in the words said
or arguments presented. Such conditions faced Henry Maxwell this morning as 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 new 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
been said by temperance orators a great many times? The effect of his message
this morning owed its power to the unusual fact of 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
tempted, but to the business life of the place and the church itself. He spoke
now with a freedom that seemed to measure his complete sense of 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
was near at hand. The question of license would be an issue in the 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, citizen, in favor of continuing to license crime and shame-producing
institutions? Was not the most Christian thing they could do to act as citizens
in the matter, fight the saloon at the polls, elect good men to the city
offices, and clean the municipality? How much had prayers helped to make
Raymond better while votes and actions had really been on the side of the
enemies of Jesus? Would not Jesus do this? What disciple could imagine Him
refusing to suffer or to take up His cross in this matter? How much had the
members of the First Church ever suffered in an attempt to imitate Jesus? Was
Christian discipleship a thing of conscience simply, of custom, or tradition?
Where did the suffering come in? Was it necessary in order to follow
Jesus, steps to go up Calvary as well as the Mount of Transfiguration?
His appeal was stronger at this point than he knew. It is not too much to say
that the spiritual tension of the people reached its highest point right there.
The imitation of Jesus which had begun with the volunteers in the church was
working like leaven in the organization, and Henry Maxwell would, even thus early in
his life, have been amazed if he could have measured the extent of desire on the
part of his people to take up the cross. While he was speaking this morning,
before he closed with a loving appeal to the discipleship of two thousand
years' knowledge of the Master, many a man and woman in the church was saying
as Rachel had said so passionately to her mother: "I want to do something that
will cost me something in the way of sacrifice -- I am hungry to suffer
something." Truly Mazzini was right when he said that no appeal is quite so
powerful in the end as the call, "Come and suffer."
The service was over, the great audience had gone, and Maxwell again faced the
company gathered in the lecture room as on the two previous Sundays. He had
asked all to remain who had made the pledge of discipleship, and any others who
wished to be included. The afternoon service seemed now to be a necessity. As he
went in and faced the people there his heart trembled. There were at least one
hundred present. The Holy Spirit was never before so manifest. He missed Jasper
Chase. But all the others were present. He asked Milton Wright to pray. The
very air was charged with divine possibilities. What could resist such a
baptism of power? How had they lived all these years without it?
They counseled together, and there were many prayers. Henry Maxwell dated from
that meeting some of the serious events that afterward became a part of the
history of the First Church and of Raymond. When finally they went home, all of
them were impressed with the glory of the Spirit's power.
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