A Book Of Quaker Saints Part 39

The young men were puzzled what to do next. They could not bear to leave their beloved parents at distant Limoges, and yet it was impossible to reach them or to help them in any way. France was a dangerous place for people with a 'de' in their names in those days, and for young men of military age most dangerous of all. Finally, Etienne and his brother Joseph settled to go to South America.

'Through the kind a.s.sistance of a republican General, a friend of the family, they obtained a pa.s.sage on board a ship bound for Demerara, where they arrived in the First month of 1793, after a voyage of about forty days.'

Unfortunately this long voyage had not taken them away from scenes of violence. The Revolution in France was terrible, but the horrors of slavery in South America were, if possible, even worse. The New World seemed no less full of tragedy than the Old. Etienne saw there husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters torn apart, most cruelly beaten, often sold like cattle to tyrannical masters, never to see each other's faces again.

Amid such scenes Etienne grew more than ever full of despairing thoughts, more than ever inclined to believe that there could not be a G.o.d ruling a world where these evils were allowed to go unpunished.

'Such was the impression made upon Etienne by the scenes of cruelty and anguish he witnessed, that, many years after, the sound of a whip in the street would chill his blood, in the remembrance of the agony of the poor slaves; and he felt convinced that there was no excess of wickedness and malice which a slave-holder, or driver, might not be guilty of.'

Etienne and Joseph stayed in Demerara for more than two years. In the spring of 1795 they left South America and settled in Long Island near New York. There, they made friends with a certain Colonel Corsa, a man who had served in the British army, and who had a daughter who spoke French. As the two brothers at this time knew no English it was a great cheer to them in their loneliness to be able to visit at this hospitable house. One day Colonel Corsa happened to speak of William Penn. Etienne had already heard of the Quaker statesman, George Fox's friend, and when the young girl said she possessed Penn's writings Etienne asked to borrow them. He took back to his lodgings with him a large folio book, intending, with the help of a dictionary, to translate it in order to improve his English. Great was his disappointment when he found that the book contained nothing about politics or statesmanship. It was about religion; and at this time Etienne thought that religion was all a humbug and delusion.

Therefore he shut up the book and put it away, though he did not return it to its owner. One evening, about this time, as he was walking in the fields alone, suddenly the Voice he had heard in his childhood spoke to him once more, close by and terribly clear: 'ETERNITY, ETERNITY, ETERNITY.' These three words, he says, 'reached my very soul,--my whole man shook,--it brought me, like Saul, to the ground.' The sinfulness and carelessness of his last few years pa.s.sed before him. He cried out, 'If there is no G.o.d, doubtless there is a h.e.l.l.'

His soul was almost in h.e.l.l already, for h.e.l.l is despair, and Etienne was very nearly despairing at that moment. Only one way out remained, the way of prayer, the little mossy pathway that he used to tread when he was a child, but that he had not trodden, now, for many years.

Tangled, mossy, and overgrown that path was now, but it still led out from the dark wood of life where Etienne had almost lost his way and his hope.

Etienne took that way. With his whole heart he prayed for mercy and for deliverance from the sin and horror that oppressed him. When no answer came at once he did not stop praying, but continued day and night, praying, praying for mercy. Perhaps he scarcely knew to whom his prayer was addressed; but it was none the less a real prayer.

He expected that the answer to it would come in some startling form that he could recognise the first minute and say: 'There! Now G.o.d is answering my prayer!'

Instead, the answer came far more simply than he had expected. G.o.d often seems to choose to answer prayers in such a gentle, natural fashion, that His children need to watch very carefully lest they take His most radiant messengers, His most wonderful messages, almost as a matter of course. Only if they recognise G.o.d's Love in all that comes, planning how things shall happen, they can see His hand arranging even the tiniest details of their lives, fitting them all in, and making things work out right. Then they understand how truly wonderful His answers are.

The answer to Etienne's prayer came through nothing more extraordinary than that same old folio book which he had borrowed from his friend Miss Corsa, and had put away, thinking it too dull to translate. He took it out again, and opened upon a part called 'No Cross, No Crown.'

'I proceeded,' he says, 'to read it with the help of my dictionary, having to look for the meaning of nearly every word.'

When he had finished, he read it straight through again. 'I had never met with anything of the kind before,' and all the time he was reading the Voice inside his heart kept on saying, 'Yes, Yes, Yes, that is true!'

'I now withdrew from company, and spent most of my time in retirement, and in silent waiting upon G.o.d. I began to read the Bible, with the aid of my dictionary, for I had none then in French. I was much of a stranger to the inspired records. I had not even seen them before that I remember; what I had heard of any part of their contents, was only detached portions in Prayer Books.

'Whilst the fallow ground of my heart was thus preparing, my brother and myself, being one day at Colonel Corsa's, heard that a Meeting was appointed to be held next day in the Friends' Meeting-house, by two Englishwomen, to which we were invited. The Friends were Deborah Darby and Rebecca Young. The sight of them brought solemn feelings over me; but I soon forgot all things around me; for, in an inward silent frame of mind, seeking for the Divine presence, I was favoured to find _in_ me, what I had so long, and with so many tears, sought for _without_ me. My brother, who sat beside me, and to whom the silence, in which the forepart of the meeting was held, was irksome, repeatedly whispered to me, "Let us go away." But I felt the Lord's power in such a manner, that a secret joy filled me, in that I had found Him after whom my soul had longed. I was as one nailed to my seat. Shortly after, one or two men Friends in the ministry spoke, but I could understand very little of what they said. After them Deborah Darby and Rebecca Young spoke also; but I was so gathered in the temple of my heart before G.o.d, that I was wholly absorbed with what was pa.s.sing there. Thus had the Lord opened my heart to seek Him where He is to be found.

'My brother and myself were invited to dine in the company of these Friends, at Colonel Corsa's. There was a religious opportunity after dinner, in which several communications were made. I could hardly understand a word of what was said, but, as Deborah Darby began to address my brother and myself, it seemed as if the Lord opened my outward ear, and my heart. She seemed like one reading the pages of my heart, with clearness describing how it had been, and how it was with me. O what sweetness did I then feel! It was indeed a memorable day. I was like one introduced into a new world; the creation, and all things around me, bore a different aspect, my heart glowed with love to all.... O how can the extent of the Lord's love, mercy, pity, and tender compa.s.sion be fathomed!'

After the visit of the two Friends had made this change in his life Etienne decided to give up his French name and t.i.tle, and to be no longer Etienne de Grellet, the French n.o.bleman, but plain Stephen Grellet, the teacher of languages. Later on, he was to become Stephen Grellet the Quaker preacher; but the time for that had not yet come.

After Deborah Darby's visit he went regularly to the Friends' Meetings in Long Island, but they were held for the most part in complete silence, and sad to say not one of the Friends ever spoke to him afterwards. He missed their friendliness all the more because the people he was lodging with could not bear his attending Quaker Meetings, and tried to make him give up going to such unfashionable a.s.semblies. His brother, Joseph, also could not understand what had come to him, and both Joseph and the lodging-house people teased poor Stephen about his Quaker leanings, till he, who had been brave enough when his life was in danger, was a coward before their mockery. He did not want to give up going to his dear Meeting, but he hated to be ridiculed. At first he tried to give up Meeting, but this disobedience gave him, he says, 'a feeling of misery.' When the next Sunday came he tried another plan. He went to the Meeting-house by roundabout ways 'through fields and over fences, ashamed to be seen by any one on the road.' When he reached the Meeting-house by these by-lanes, the door was closed. No Meeting was to be held there that day. The Friends happened to have gone to another place. Stephen, therefore, sat down, 'in a retired place and in a very tried state,' to think the whole question over again, with much humility. He decided that henceforth, come what might, he would not be a coward; and he kept his resolution.

The next Sunday he went to Meeting 'though it rained hard and I had about three miles to walk.' Henceforward he attended Meeting regularly, and at last his brother ceased reproaching him for his Quakerism, and one Sunday he actually came to Meeting too. This time Joseph also enjoyed the silence and followed the worship. 'From that time he attended meetings diligently, and was a great comfort to me.

But, during all that period,' Stephen continues, 'we had no intercourse with any of the members of the religious Society of Friends.' These Friends still took no notice of the two strangers.

They seem to have been Friends only in name.

About this time bad news came from France. 'My dear mother wrote to me that the granaries we had at our country seat had been secured by the revolutionary party, as well as every article of food in our town house. My mother and my younger brother were only allowed the scanty pittance of a peck of mouldy horse-beans per week. My dear father was shut up in prison, with an equally scanty allowance. But it was before I was acquainted with the sufferings of my beloved parents, that the consideration of the general scarcity prevailing in the country led me to think how wrong it was for me to wear powder on my head, the ground of which I knew to be pride.' He gave up powder from this time. It would not be much of a sacrifice nowadays, but it was a very real one then, when powder was supposed to be the distinguishing mark of a gentleman. The two brothers were now obliged to learn to support themselves. All their estates in France had been seized. 'Our means began to be low, and yet our feelings for the sufferings in which our beloved parents might be involved, caused us to forget ourselves, strangers in a strange country, and to forward them a few hundred dollars we had yet left.'

It was no easy matter to find employment. The brothers went on to New York, and there at last the Friends were kind: Friends in deed and not in name only. They found a situation for Joseph in New York itself, and arranged for Stephen to go to Philadelphia, where he was more likely to find work.

And at Philadelphia the Friends were, if possible, even kinder to him than the Friends at New York. They were spiritual fathers and mothers to him, he says, and seemed to know exactly what he was feeling. 'They had but little to say in words, but I often felt that my spirit was refreshed and strengthened in their company.' At Philadelphia, he had many offers of tempting employment, but he decided to continue as a teacher of languages in a school. He gave his whole mind to his school work while he was at it, and out of school hours wandered about entirely care free. But although he was a teacher of languages and although the English of his Journals is scrupulously careful, it has often a slight foreign stiffness and formality. He was often afraid in his early years of making mistakes and not speaking quite correctly.

There is a story that long afterwards, when he was in England and was taking his leave of some schoolgirls, he wished to say to them that he hoped they might be preserved safely. But in the agitation of his departure he chose the wrong words. His parting injunction, therefore, never faded from the girls' memory: 'My dear young Friends, may the Lord _pickle_ you, His dear little _muttons_.'

If, even as an old man, Stephen was liable to fall into such pitfalls as this, it is easy to understand that in his earlier years the fear of making mistakes must have been a real terror to him, especially when he thought of speaking in Meeting. Very soon after he became a Friend he felt, with great dread, that the beautiful, comforting messages that refreshed his own soul were meant to be shared with others. Months, if not years, of struggle followed, before he could rise in his place in Meeting and obey this inward prompting. But directly he did so, his fears of making a mistake, or being laughed at, vanished utterly away. After agony, came joy. 'The Lord shewed me how He is mouth, wisdom and utterance to His true and faithful ministers; that it is from Him alone that they are to communicate to the people, and also the _when_ and the _how_.' At that first Meeting, after Stephen had given his message and sat down again, several Friends, whose blessing he specially valued, also spoke and said how thankful they were for his words. Among those present that day was that same William Savery, who, in the last story, had a bundle of valuable hides stolen from his tanyard, and punished the thief, when he came to return the hides, by loading him with kindness and giving him a good situation.

Certainly William Savery would not tell the story of 'the man who was not John Smith' to Stephen Grellet on that particular day; for Stephen was so filled with the thankful wonder that follows obedience, that he had no thought for outside things. 'For some days after this act of dedication,' he says, 'my peace flowed as a river.' In the autumn of this year (1796), Stephen Grellet, the French n.o.bleman, became a Friend. About two years later, he was acknowledged as a Minister by the Society.

'In those days,' he writes, 'my mind dwelt much on the nature of the hope of redemption through Jesus Christ.... I felt that the best testimony I could bear was to evince by my life what He had actually done for me.'

Henceforth Stephen's life was spent in trying to make known to others the joy that had overflowed his own soul. He did indeed 'put the things that he had learned in practice,' as he journeyed over both Europe and America, time after time, visiting high and low. His life is one long record of adventures, of perils surmounted, of hairbreadth escapes, of constant toil and of much plodding, humdrum service too.

His message brought him into the strangest situations, as he gave it fearlessly. He sought an interview with the Pope at Rome in order to remonstrate with him about the state of the prisons in the Papal States. Stephen gave his message with perfect candour, and afterwards entered into conversation with the Pope. Finally, he says, 'As I felt the love of Christ flowing in my heart towards him, I particularly addressed him.... The Pope ... kept his head inclined and appeared tender, while I thus addressed him; then rising from his seat, in a kind and respectful manner, he expressed his desire that "the Lord would bless and protect me wherever I went," on which I left him.'

Not satisfied with that, though it seems wonderful enough, Stephen another time induced the Czar of all the Russias, Alexander I., to attend Westminster Meeting. Both these stories are well worth telling.

But there is one story about Stephen, better worth telling still, and that is how the Voice that guided him all over the world sent him one day 'preaching to n.o.body' in a lonely forest clearing in the far backwoods of America.

FOOTNOTES:

[41] 'From my earliest days,' he writes, 'there was that in me that would not allow me implicitly to believe the various doctrines I was taught.'

x.x.xII. PREACHING TO n.o.bODY

_'All the artillery in the world, were they all discharged together at one clap, could not more deaf the ears of our bodies than the clamourings of desires in the soul deaf its ears, so you see a man must go into silence or else he cannot hear G.o.d speak.'_--JOHN EVERARD. 1650.

_'G.o.d forces none, for love cannot compel, and G.o.d's service is therefore a thing of complete freedom.... The thing which hinders and has always hindered is that our wills are different from G.o.d's will. G.o.d never seeks Himself, in His willing--we do.

There is no other way to blessedness than to lose one's self will'_--HANS DENCK. 1526.

_'The inward command is never wanting in the due season to any duty.'_--R. BARCLAY. 1678.

_'I think I can reverently say that I very much doubt whether, since the Lord by His grace brought me into the faith of His dear Son, I have ever broken bread or drunk wine, even in the ordinary course of life, without the remembrance of, and some devout feeling regarding the broken body and the blood-shedding of my dear Lord and Saviour.'_--STEPHEN GRELLET.

_'One loving spirit sets another on fire.'_--AUGUSTINE.

x.x.xII. PREACHING TO n.o.bODY

Stephen Grellet, after much waiting on the Lord to shew him His will, was directed by the Spirit to take a long journey into the backwoods of America, and preach the Gospel to some woodcutters who were felling forest timber.'[42]

At first Stephen did not know which was the wood he was meant to visit, having travelled through hundreds of miles of forests on his journey. So he waited very quietly, his heart as still as a clear lake, ready to reflect anything G.o.d might show him.

Suddenly a picture came. He remembered a lonely forest clearing, far away. Workmen's huts were dotted about here and there, and a big wooden building rose in the midst of the clearing. All around were woodcutters, some busy sawing timber, some marking the tall forest trees, others carting huge logs and piling them at a little distance.

Stephen now remembered the place well. He remembered, too, the workmen's rough faces, and the wild shouts that filled the air as he had pa.s.sed by on horseback. He had noticed a faint film of blue smoke curling up from the large building, and he had supposed that that must be the dining-shanty where the workmen's food was prepared and where they had their meals. He remembered having thought to himself, 'A lonely life and a wild one!' But the place had not made a deep impression on his mind, and he had forgotten it as he journeyed, in the joy of getting nearer home. Now, suddenly, that forest clearing, with the huts and the dining-shanty and the busy woodmen all round, came back to him as vividly as a picture in a magic-lantern view, while a Voice said, distinctly but very gently in his own heart, so that only he could hear, 'GO BACK THERE AND PREACH TO THOSE LONELY MEN.'

Stephen knew quite well Whose Voice it was that was speaking to him, for he had loved and followed that Voice for many years. Obedience was easy now. He said at once, 'Yes, I will go;' and saying good-bye to his wife, he left his home, and set forth again into the forest. As he journeyed, a flood of happiness came over his soul. The long ride through the lonely woods, day after day, no longer seemed tedious. He was absolutely alone, but he never felt the least bit lonely. It was as if Someone were journeying with him all the way, the invisible Friend whose Voice he knew and loved and obeyed.