The Empire of Love Part 6

_And Thine shall the Kingdom be, Thou Lord of Love and Pain, Conqueror over death By being slain.

And we, with the lives like Thine Shall cry in the great day when Thou earnest to claim Thine own, "All Hail! Amen."_

XIV

THE BUILDERS OF THE EMPIRE

It may be long before the world recognizes this leadership of the loving, and accepts their judgment, but nevertheless the world is debtor to them for all that sweetens life, and makes society tolerable.

Such men and women move unrecognized, doing their kindly work without praise, and not so much as asking praise from men; but theirs is a securer triumph than earth can give, and on their brows rests a rarer crown than earthly monarchs wear. I know many of these men and women, and I never meet them without the sense that the seamless robe of Christ has touched me. I meet them in unlikely places; I overtake them on the road of life, oftenest in the places where the shadows lie most thickly; but on each brow is the white stone which is the sign of peace, and in each voice is that deep note of harmony that belongs alone to those who walk through tribulations which they overcome, griefs of which they know the meaning, sorrows which they have the skill to heal. Their very footsteps move more evenly than other men's, as though guided by the rhythm of a music others do not hear; their very hands have a softness only known to hands that bind up wounds and wipe men's tears away; and in all their movements and their aspect is a stillness and a sweet composure, as of hearts at rest. Whence are these, and why are they arrayed in white robes? And we know the answer, though no angel-voice may speak to us; these are they on whose bowed heads the starlight of Gethsemane has fallen, in whose hands are the wounds of service, in whose b.r.e.a.s.t.s is the heart that breaks with love for men.

One such man I met some months ago, fresh from the forests of Wisconsin. Through a long spring day he told me his story, or rather let me draw it from him episode by episode, for he was much too modest to suppose anything that he had done remarkable. After wild and careless years of wasted youth, Christ had found him, and from the day of his regeneration he gave himself to the redemption of his fellow men. He became a "lumber-jack," a preacher to the rough sons of the Wisconsin forests. He told me how he first won their respect by sharing their toil--he, a fragile slip of a man, and they giants in thew and muscle: how by tact and kindness he got a hearing for his Master; how he travelled scores of miles through the winter snows to nurse dying men, wrecked by wild excesses; how he had sat for hours together with the heads of drunken men, on whom the terror had fallen, resting on his knees, performing for them offices of help which no other would attempt; how he had heard the confessions of thieves and murderers, who had fled from justice to the refuge of the forest; how he had stood pale, and apprehensive of violence in an angry drunken mob, and had quelled their rage by singing to them "Anywhere with Jesus"; how, finally, he had fallen ill, and had hoped in his extreme weariness for the great release, but had come back from the gates of death with a new hope for the success of his work; and as he spoke, that light which fell upon the face of the dying Stephen rested also on his face; for he also saw, and made me see, the heavens opened, and Jesus standing at the right hand of the throne of G.o.d. He was only a lumber-jack, but to these men he was a Christ. He was poor, so poor, that I marvelled how he lived; but he had adopted into his home the forsaken child of a drunken lumberman, whose wife was dead. His life was full of hardship, but never have I met a happier man. For he had found the one secret of all n.o.ble and tranquil living, the life of service; and as I grasped his hand at parting and remembered how often it had rested in healing sympathy upon the evil and the weary, I thought of the words of the blessed Master, "He laid His hands upon her, and the fever left her, and she rose and ministered unto Him."

Another man of the same order I have talked with as these concluding lines were written. He had begun life with brilliant prospects as a lawyer, had been wrecked by drink, and one night while drunk had fallen overboard into deep water, and had with difficulty been brought back to life. From that hour his life was changed. He went to a Western city and became a missionary to drunkards and harlots. He told me of a youth of nineteen he had recently visited in prison. The youth was a murderer, and the woman he had loved had committed suicide. He was utterly impervious to reproof, did not want to live, and said that if his mistress had gone to h.e.l.l he wanted to go there too, for she was the only human creature who had ever loved him. "G.o.d loves you," said my friend; "yes, and I love you too. I know how you feel. You want just to be loved. Come, my poor boy, let me love you." And at that appeal this youth, with triple murder on his conscience, melted, and flung his arms round the neck of his visitor, and sobbed out all the story of his sin and shame. O exquisite moment when the heart melts at the touch of love--could all the heaped-up gains of a life of pleasure or ambition yield such felicity as this? For this man's face, rough and plain as it was, glowed as he spoke with the same light that beatified the features of my friend the lumber-jack--"the Lord G.o.d gave them light," and the Lamb upon the throne was the light of all their seeing.

A little while ago to this man came the offer of restoration to the social place which he has lost. He might have gone back to his forfeited career, with an ample income. He put the case to his wife and to his boys; with instant unanimity they said, "Never; this work is the best work in the world." And so the once brilliant lawyer is happy on a pittance, happier than he ever could be on a fortune, because he is doing Christ's work of love among his fellow men. And these instances are typical. In every corner of the world are those who belong to the true Society of Jesus--the Order of Love and Service,--and the happiest lives lived on earth are lived by these men and women. For Jesus will not suffer any man to be the loser by Him; He overpays those who truly follow Him with a happiness that worlds could not buy; and "even in the present time," so enriches with the love of others those who love, that they are unconscious of any deprivation in their lot, knowing in all things, amid poverty, insult, violence, hardship and pain, that their gain exceeds their loss by measureless infinitudes of joy.

We may be neither wise nor great, but we may be loving, and he who loves is already "born of G.o.d, and knoweth G.o.d, for G.o.d is love." We may have but a poor understanding of conflicting theologies and philosophies, and may even find our minds hostile to accepted creeds; but we can live lives of pitiful and serviceable love. He who does these things is the true Christian and no other is. Against the man who loves his fellows Heaven cannot close its doors, for He who reigns in Heaven is the Lover of men, and the greatest Lover of them all. We know now why He is loved as no other has been loved. We know now what His religion truly is; it is the religion of Love. To accept this religion requires in us but one quality, the heart of the little child which retains the freshness and obeys the authority of the emotions; but unless we become as little children we cannot enter this kingdom.

This is the condition of entrance, and the method is equally simple.

It is to follow Jesus in all our acts and thoughts, to allow no temper that we do not find in Him, to build our lives upon His ideals of love and justice, remembering always that He is more than the Truth,--He is the Way in which men may confidently tread, and the Life which they may share.

All things in the intellectual and social life of men move, as by a fixed law, towards simplification. May we not hope that this same tendency may permeate the universal Church of Christ, dissolving the accretions of mistaken and conventional piety, combining the vital elements into a new synthesis, at once simple and convincing,--the new which is the oldest and the earliest,--that the Church is the organ of the Divine Love, and that love alone is the Christian equivalent of religion?

May we not even antic.i.p.ate that the visible decay of many symbols that once were authoritative, of many forms of creed that are now barely tolerated rather than respected, may work towards this issue; that gradually the test of service will supplant the test of intellectual belief, and that a new Church will arise founded not on creed at all, but on a real imitation of the life of Jesus? If this should happen we need not regret the dissolution of the forms of religious life which is so evident to-day, for though the older kingdom be shaken, we shall arrive in G.o.d's time at the better kingdom which cannot be shaken.

When the Church does manifestly become the organ of the Divine Love, visibly creating a type of loving and lovable men and women found nowhere else, whose lives are as lamps borne before the feet of the weary and the lost, then the world, now hostile or indifferent to the Church, will love the Church even as by instinct it loves the Christ.

Such lives have been lived, and they are, even to those who have the least instinct for religion, the most sacred memories of history, and the most inspiring. Such lives may still be lived by all who love the Lord Christ Jesus in sincerity.