tihvary of €he t:heolo;gical ^^minavy 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 •a^D* 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 The Efit^.te of the 
 Rev > John B, Wieclinp:er 
 
 BV 1085 .W4 B4 1912 
 Begbie, Harold, 1871-1929 
 The ordinary man and the 
 extraordinary thing 
 
THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 AND 
 
 THE EXTRAORDINARY THING 
 
The Ordinary 
 
 and the 
 
 Extraordinary Thing 
 
 By 
 
 HAROLD ^EGBIE 
 
 AUTHOR OF "SOULS IN ACTION," "OTHER SHEEP," 
 "TWICE BORN MEN," &C. 
 
 HODDER & STOUGHTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
, , , the pressure of the soul Tias increased among manTevnd^ , , , Ut 
 mysterious influence is diffiosing itself among the people. 
 
 It is well that men should he reminded that the very humblest of them 
 has the power to ' 'fashion, after a divine model that he chooses not, a 
 great moral personality, composed in equal parts of himself and the 
 ideal; and that if anything lives in fullest reality, of a surety it is 
 that." 
 
 If you knew that you were going to die to-night, or merely that you 
 would have to go away and never return, would you, looking upon m^n 
 and things for the last time, see them in the same light that you hav« 
 hitherto seen them ? Would you not love as you have never yet loved f 
 Is it the virtue or the evil of the appearances around you that would be 
 magnified ? Would it be given you to behold the beauty or the ugliness 
 of the soul ? 
 
 . . . of so many in this world does the aim, seem to be the discourage- 
 ment of the divine in their soul. 
 
 May it not be the supreme aim of life . . . to bring to birth the 
 inexplicable toithin ourselves ; and do we know how much we add to 
 ourselves when we awake something of the incomprehensible that 
 slumbers in every comer t 
 
 , . , the soul is like a dreamer, enthralled by sleep, who struggles 
 with all his might to move an arm or raise an eyelid. 
 
 We must be heedful; it is not without fi reason that our soul 
 bestirs itself, 
 
 Mattricb Maeterlinck. 
 
 {Translated by Alfred Sutro.) 
 
TO 
 
 MY FRIEND 
 
 PERCY L. PARKER 
 
 EDITOR OF THE INDISPENSABLE REVIEW 
 "PUBLIC opinion" 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IN this book the endeavour is made to bring home 
 to the minds of men one of those great and 
 central truths of life which are so often ignored in 
 the pressure of surface existence. This particular 
 truth may be expressed in various ways : 
 
 The veritable life of a man is lived, not visibly 
 and externally, but in the impenetrable soHtude 
 of his soul. 
 
 Profound and extraordinary changes of soul 
 are experienced by the most ordinary of men. 
 
 Conversion is nob generally a sudden and 
 catastrophic experience, but for most men a 
 gradual and imperceptible process of development. 
 
 Without religion, the moral and physical pro- 
 gress of those great masses of humanity who 
 carry the fortunes of civiUsation can never be 
 assured. 
 
 The narratives which form the main body of this 
 book are true stories of the hves of men ; and they 
 witness, in the midst of all their differences and all 
 the variety of their circumstances, to the truth of 
 Maeterhnck's assertion that in this present time 
 " the pressure of the soul has increased among 
 mankind." 
 
 A 2 
 
X THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 An unknown correspondent, the librarian of a 
 university in America, writing to me about Broken 
 Earthenware and In the Hands of the Potter, asked 
 me some months ago to write a book dealing with 
 " the conversions of ordinary people, respectable 
 men and women, who do not indulge in drunkenness, 
 or theft, or lying, or gross immorality." He went 
 on to say, " Because of the conditions that surround 
 them, many people know only those who belong 
 to the respectable classes, and I am sure that many 
 of your readers, of whom I am one, would welcome 
 a work narrating the reHgious experiences of our 
 brethren who belong neither to the ' submerged 
 tenth ' nor to the ' four hundred.' " 
 
 Of course, the supreme test of rehgion is its in- 
 fluence upon the central host of humanity. If 
 education and refinement can safeguard civihsation, 
 and if the bulk of mankind can advance in virtue 
 and righteousness without religion, such conversions 
 as are narrated in Broken Earthenware might well 
 become merely curious and interesting problems in 
 psychology. 
 
 The investigations which form the body of this 
 book represent an attempt to get at the heart 
 of the ordinary man, to penetrate to that inner 
 consciousness which is the true Hfe of the individual, 
 to reach and explore those recesses of the soul where 
 decisions are made in secret and character is formed 
 in silence — an attempt to understand the com- 
 mimion which exists between the man in the street 
 and the God in his soul. The result of these investi- 
 gations has been the conviction that now, as ever, 
 the heart of representative man is in search of God. 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 The character of the search has changed, the vast ad- 
 venture of Hfe is tangled with a hundred complexi- 
 ties, it is not now so easy to believe, or to believe in 
 the manner of our ancestors ; for, as Joubert says, 
 it is more difficult to be a modern than an ancient ; 
 but, nevertheless, fundamental to our complex 
 civihsation is the quest of the human heart for 
 that everlasting rest, security, and peace which 
 only faith in a good and compassionate Creator can 
 bestow. The stories which compose the pages of 
 this book, not only witness to the truth of this 
 proposition, but prove that civilisation is not safe 
 without religion, that society cannot organise itself 
 without God. 
 
 The reader of this book will find himself walking 
 in the main streets of civilisation, along the most 
 crowded high roads of human progress ; not, as 
 in Broken Earthenware, threading narrow and 
 mephitic alleys, standing with awe and disgust 
 in his soul before the dark entries and filthy door- 
 ways of back streets, where civilisation has made its 
 dust heap. He will discover, however, that in the 
 main streets of modem Hfe there are strange and 
 almost imbeUevable reaHties hidden behind the 
 respectable walls. He will be amazed, I think, 
 by the romance and mystery which exist in the 
 commonplace. And I do not think it will be possible 
 for him, if he is an honest man, to doubt that rehgion 
 is essential to the progress of the human race — more 
 essential to the central host of humanity than to the 
 poor broken and unhappy wretches who creep 
 through Hfe in the shadows and the deprivations of 
 the back streets of civilisation. 
 
xii THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 I must make the confession that it has been more 
 difficult for me to write this book than to write 
 Broken Earthenware. I went for my materials to 
 a wonderful Brotherhood which has overspread the 
 world, which has made itself one of the great 
 safeguards of civilisation, and which is composed of 
 respectable men representative of humanity's central 
 host. But the ordinary man does not easily discuss 
 the inward mystery of his life. Even where his 
 confidence is won, and even where he is anxious for 
 the sake of others to tell the story of his Hfe, even 
 here, in spite of his education and knowledge of the 
 world, he is far less able to express himself than the 
 humble man who has been broken on the wheel of 
 life. It is not so much that he shrinks from speaking 
 of his spiritual experiences, as that his very effort 
 to be intellectual and intelligent in his account of 
 the miracle renders him obscure and sometimes 
 unconvincing. He has none of that elemental 
 reality, none of that fervour of a great gratitude, 
 which makes the humbler man who has suffered 
 tremendously, so movingly eloquent, so entirely 
 convincing, so splendidly real. 
 
 A certain critic of my books, writing in a Roman 
 CathoHc review, admitted the wonder of these 
 documents of conversion, but averred that the 
 reading of them made him shudder. It is as if, 
 he said, a reporter were present taking notes at our 
 'private devotions. Hypersensitive people may 
 applaud this sentiment, and may even reUsh the 
 sneer which it conveys ; but a mind of more robust 
 force wiU perceive its dreadful immodesty. For 
 someone " reported " the Agony in G^thsemane ; 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 and if the private prayer of the Son of God may be 
 given to the world, our little sorrows, our little 
 agonies, our little experiences of God's mercy and 
 forgiveness, if they can help mankind, may surely 
 be given freely to those who are still comfortless. 
 Are we really to suppose that God is whispering 
 into our ears a confidence which is only for us ? — 
 that anything which happens to us is meant to be 
 hoarded in the secrecy of our souls as a private 
 benefaction ? — that we are the favourites of heaven 
 called apart into an empty room to receive gifts 
 and treasures which must be hidden from our 
 brothers and sisters ? 
 
 The real truth of this matter has been declared 
 by Christ Himself : 
 
 " Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. 
 
 " And he saith, Master, say on. 
 
 ** There was a certain creditor which had two 
 debtors : the one owed five hundred pence, and 
 the other fifty. And when they had nothing 
 to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me 
 therefore, which of them will love him most ? 
 
 " Simon answered and said, I suppose that he, 
 to whom he forgave most. 
 
 " And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly 
 judged." 
 
 The ordinary man, I think, and particularly the 
 ordinary man of the rehgious world, does not yet 
 imderstand the meaning of that strange word, Joy 
 shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more 
 than over ninety and nine just persons which need no 
 repentance. He does not reaHse why it was that 
 
xiv THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 Christ sought sinners, was happier in the company of 
 sinners than in the company of Scribes and Phari- 
 sees, was actually the Friend of Sinners. He is still 
 entangled in the meshes of dogmatic theology. He 
 does not perceive that the hunger of heaven is for the 
 love of the human heart, for the overflowing, grate- 
 ful, and self -forgetting passionate love of humanity ; 
 not for a credo, not for the repetition of formal 
 prayers, not for faithful loyalty to a piece of eccle- 
 siastical machinery. Love is the secret of Christ. 
 And it is because to whom little is forgiven, the same 
 loveth little, that the gaze of Christ is turned more 
 tenderly towards the sinner and the outcast than 
 towards the respectable and the religious. 
 
 Pascal, writing of the prophecies mentioned in the 
 New Testament, exclaims : " You believe that 
 they are reported to make you believe. No, it is to 
 keep you from believing." This quite devilish idea 
 of a kind of hide-and-seek between God and man 
 still exists under various forms among religious 
 people. They dress it up in a less revolting shape 
 than the honesty of Pascal permitted him to employ ; 
 but in reaUty it is the same black, sinister, and un- 
 Christly spectre masquerading as the true religion 
 
 The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose, 
 
 An evil soul, producing holy witness, 
 
 Is like a villain with a smiling cheek ; 
 
 A goodly apple, rotten at the heart ; 
 
 0, what a goodly outside falsehood hath 1 
 
 And the truth is so simple, is so palpable, is so 
 persuasive and reasonable. A merciful God, a 
 heavenly Father, asks of His creatures the love of 
 their hearts, asks for that love, not because it is 
 
PREFACE XV 
 
 necessary to Him, but because it is essential to their 
 own welfare, is the one power by which they can 
 come to harmony with the universe, the one means 
 by which they can grow in the hkeness of their 
 Creator, and inherit the joys prepared for them 
 before the foundation of the world. Love is the 
 secret, love is the way, and love is the truth. Her 
 sins, which are many, are forgiven ; for she loved 
 much : but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth 
 little. The conversion of a respectable man can be 
 as wonderful and beautiful a thing as the conversion 
 of a great sinner ; but it is seldom that the result 
 of that conversion utters itself in an uprush of burn- 
 ing and torrential love which bursts the flood-gates 
 of self-repression, and flows over the whole brother- 
 hood of man in a tide of self-forgetting care and 
 compassion. 
 
 But difficult as it has been to write this book — 
 and I have made no effort to exaggerate the miracle 
 or to embroider its consequences — I venture to 
 think that it shows in a very useful manner one 
 particular aspect of conversion which is almost 
 entirely neglected by students of psychology. 
 One of my correspondents, an English engineer 
 living in Burmah, assures me that conversion is 
 a matter of " cortical susceptibiHty," and many 
 others seem to share the delusion common to materi- 
 alists that conversion is always the result of some 
 form of emotional excitement. This idea is entirely 
 fooUsh. It Hmits its painful diagnosis to the single 
 moment of conversion, and conveniently ignores 
 the long after-Hfe of virtue, self-sacrifice, and new- 
 born holiness. It explains, or imagines that it 
 
xvi THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 explains, how a man loses the evil habits of a life- 
 time in the shock of a nervous excitement ; but it 
 does not explain, does not attempt to explain, 
 how it is that long after the excitement has worn 
 away, that life continues in its new path, calm, 
 tranquil, and pure with the love of God. 
 
 And these critics with their " cortical suscepti- 
 bilities " and " explosions of nervous energy," 
 limit their investigations of conversion to those 
 examples of the miracle which become public 
 property through the chronicles of revivaHsm. It 
 is now a vulgar idea that conversions only foUow 
 upon the energies and often the hysterical absurdities 
 of professional revivalists. It would be fatal to 
 religion if such were the case. No one, I think, 
 could more detest the professional revivahst than 
 myself, and than myself no one could more entirely 
 doubt the lasting effect of the majority of conver- 
 sions accompHshed by this means. I can see the need 
 for revivalism, and I can see in the future a develop- 
 ment of revivaHsm which will be of noble service 
 to humanity ; but I disHke the un-Christly character 
 of these worked-up excitements, and I am utterly 
 uninterested by their results. 
 
 Conversion, real conversion, however — as I showed 
 even in Broken Earthenware — is almost always the 
 effect of individual loving-kindness, of personal 
 and quiet love, of intercourse between a happy and 
 an unhappy soul in the normal colloquies of friend- 
 ship, of passionate seeking of the lost by those 
 whose lives are inspired by unselfish love. It may 
 possibly have its culminating point in a pubhc 
 meeting ; the act of standing up and pubhcly 
 
PREFACE xvii 
 
 declaring for righteousness may have tremendous 
 effect ; but even in such cases, such rare cases, 
 the preparation has usually been long and difficult, 
 secret and gradual. And now in this book I show 
 that conversion is a quite common experience 
 among ordinary men, is very often nothing more 
 than a secret turning of the face towards God, a 
 private decision to live a new life, a personal and 
 wholly tranquil choice of the soul for Christ as its 
 Master and Saviour. No priest appears to be 
 necessary, the excitements of the revivalist preacher 
 are absent ; in the privacy of its own soul, the spirit 
 turns from evil and faces towards good. 
 
 It is a matter of great importance to make this 
 truth of conversion more widely known. No occa- 
 sion should be lost to teach the ordinary man that 
 this central fact of religious experience is not the 
 property of the revivaUst. The truest case of normal 
 conversion, the conversion of the ordinary man, 
 is that told in the parable of the prodigal son. 
 There was no one present when he came to himself 
 in a far country; and when he said, "I will arise 
 and go to my father," he was neither the victim 
 of mental excitement nor the hypnotised hysteric 
 of a religious meeting. When he turned he was 
 converted. And when he was yet a great way 
 off his father saw him — only his father — and ran, 
 and fell on his neck, and kissed him. 
 
 Such conversions are common. Christianity 
 recruits its ranks from them. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Foreword , , , , « . i 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 A Man and His Work . ■ • • 9 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 The Work , . . • • • 3© 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 A Decent Man . . • • . 58 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 The Accidents of Life . , • • 7Z 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 A Bad Hat . • . • • • 92 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 The Professional Amateur . • • • iii 
 
XX THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 A Soul in the Street . , , . 127 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 The Opening of a Door . • • . 147 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 Master and Man . . • • . 162 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 An Original Character . • • . 184 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 A Little Publican . . . , , 201 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 The Big Scale . . • • . 218 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 Rank and File • • • • . 234 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 WHEN a newspaper boy runs through the 
 streets with the cry of " Horrible tragedy ! " 
 he is exalted by something more than the certainty 
 of good fortune. Regard his excited eyes, the 
 strain of the muscles round his mouth, the effort 
 of the body to hurl itself ahead of the hurrying 
 legs, the obvious awe and self-importance of a 
 spirit charged with evil tidings. He knows nothing 
 of the news except its headline. Unconscious that 
 he himself is horrible tragedy, he runs in his foul 
 rags through the mud of the gutters thrilled by the 
 mere announcement of horror. . . . Tragedy has 
 occurred, and, the gods be thanked, horrible tragedy. 
 He bawls the adjective with an almost overpowering 
 sincerity, lopping with the shears of his trembling 
 lips the mild, inoffensive, and emasculating *'H." 
 Thus does he make tragedy more than tragedy, 
 and horrible tragedy a thing of awe to which the 
 mere printed letters of these two words afford 
 nothing like so gruesome an index. His sudden cry 
 breaking with hoarse and terrifying menace on the 
 winter darkness of suburban roads, shattering the 
 decorum of tea-parties and bursting lilie a storm 
 upon the fireside calm of uneventful domesticity, 
 
2 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 is like the trumpet of death. It brings the invisible 
 world about the head of those trivial common- 
 places. The clangorous wings of calamity smite 
 that villa comfort in the face. And the terror is 
 welcomed ; the doors are thro^vn open to receive 
 the horror. It is something to talk about. 
 
 Humanity, clearly, is still in the barbarous stage 
 where the drama of life without action, violent 
 action, is reckoned dull and tedious. The multitude 
 must have murders, suicides, divorces, and political 
 crises in their newspapers ; a novel which describes 
 the religious evolution of a soul is relegated some- 
 times even by judicious critics to the ponderous 
 shelf of theology ; a play which does not excite the 
 crude passions is pronounced a tiresome excursion 
 in psychology ; even sermons to be popular must 
 flash with a Httle lightning and reverberate with a 
 morsel of thunder. 
 
 It is difficult for men to realise that the only 
 veritable life is the life of the inward sanctuary, 
 the life of silence and communion with invisible 
 and everlasting truth. Like children, they want 
 something to happen. Like children, they do not 
 want to feel, but to be made to feel. They are 
 perhaps afraid of the solitude of their con- 
 science. 
 
 " I admire Othello," says Maeterlinck, " but he 
 does not appear to me to live the august life of a 
 Hamlet, who has the time to live, inasmuch as he 
 does not act. OtheUo is admirably jealous. But 
 is it not perhaps an ancient error to imagine that 
 it is at the moments when this passion, or others of 
 equal violence, possess us, that we live our truest 
 
FOREWORD 3 
 
 lives ? " And then follows the profound and 
 beautiful passage : — 
 
 " I have grown to believe that an old man, 
 seated in his arm-chair, waiting patiently, with his 
 lamp beside him ; giving unconscious ear to all 
 the eternal laws that reign about his house, inter- 
 preting, without comprehending, the silence of 
 doors and windows and the quivering voice of the 
 light, submitting with bent head to the presence 
 of his soul and his destiny — an old man, who 
 conceives not that all the powers of this world, 
 like so many heedful servants, are mingling and 
 keeping vigil in his room, who suspects not that 
 the very sun itself is supporting in space the little 
 table against which he leans, or that every star 
 in heaven and every fibre of the soul are directly 
 concerned in the movement of an eyehd that 
 closes, or a thought that springs to birth — I have 
 grown to believe that he, motionless as he is, 
 does yet live in reality a deeper, more human, and 
 more universal life than the lover who strangles 
 his mistress, the captain who conquers in battle, 
 or ' the husband who avenges his honour.' " ^ 
 
 II 
 
 The trouble about this universal love of horror 
 and calamity and violent action lies in its influence 
 upon the journalist from whom so many people take 
 their ideas of Ufe. Because Murder multiplies 
 
 ^ The Treasure of the Humble. Translated by Alfred Sutio. 
 (George Allen & Sons.) 
 
4 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 editions and Divorce or Crisis sends up the sales 
 to a zenith of prosperity, it is conceived that all bad 
 news is profitable and all good news is dull. And 
 from this reasoning proceed the pessimism, the 
 cynicism, the hysteria, and even the despair which 
 characterise the modern newspaper. If one's 
 knowledge of hfe were obtained only from the 
 newspaper, who would not conclude that mankind 
 is now staggering at the edge of a precipice, with 
 ruin darkening over its head, and perdition yawning 
 at its feet? Such a word as "Unrest" is seized 
 hungrily and repeated so apprehensively that it 
 comes to mean, not an awakening of the human soul, 
 not an uprising of dim multitudes from mental tor- 
 por to spiritual consciousness, but a menace to 
 civilisation and a portent of cataclysm. Such a 
 phrase as " The Cost of Living " is noisily bruited 
 till it quite obscures the simple, silent fact that 
 never hitherto in the history of organised mankind 
 have the necessities of life been cheaper or the 
 luxuries of life so universally shared by society. 
 And, worse stiU, all that is dark, tragic, discouraging, 
 and perilous in modern life is so harped upon, so 
 underhned, emphasised, and reiterated that the 
 immense energy of religious activity and the 
 splendid impulse of social service, which are every- 
 where carrying humanity forward to the fuUer glory 
 of its destiny, are smothered and obliterated out of 
 knowledge. 
 
 Truly might one conclude from the newspaper 
 that righteousness stands paralysed before the 
 advancing frontiers of hell, and that love lies 
 bleeding at the feet of Satan, 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 III 
 
 Now, as everyone desires to have beautiful sur- 
 roundings, and chooses furniture, pictures, and wall- 
 papers for their charm and graciousness ; and as 
 friends are sought among the best and sweetest of 
 humanity, not among the most terrible and re- 
 pulsive — should we not seek for the furniture of our 
 minds, and the companions of our souls, thoughts 
 that are beautiful and encouraging, knowledge that 
 is strengthening and uplifting ? Should we not 
 resolutely turn our backs upon all that is morbid, 
 gruesome, violent, and hysterical, and keep our 
 face steadfastly and cheerfully towards the calm 
 light of hope which burns upon the forward way of 
 human progress ? For if we do not decorate our 
 walls with pictures of murder and treasonable lust, 
 and ask to our table the criminal financier, the 
 hangman, the screaming journalist, and the brazen 
 woman of fashion, why should we care to read about 
 sordid and disgusting things in the newspaper, or 
 occupy our minds with the vulgarities of second- 
 rate people and the never-ending crises of sen- 
 sationalism ? 
 
 Infamy has its tens, evil its hundreds, and 
 vulgarity its thousands ; but the central host of 
 humanity, the grand army of mankind, which is 
 ever marching to stronger victories over sin and 
 nobler visions of the universe, which is actuated by 
 righteousness and impelled by love, which is kind, 
 tender, considerate, and unselfish, which is hopeful 
 and not despairing, which is noble and not base, 
 which is happy and not sad, and which is doing all 
 
6 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 the great and solid work of humanity — this, the 
 central host, is numbered by millions and tens of 
 milhons, and the variety of its employment covers 
 the whole field of human enterprise. 
 
 To acquaint ourselves as often and as deeply as 
 possible with all the good that is being done in the 
 world, with all the kindness that is sweetening 
 existence, with aU the victories of love which are 
 exalting and redeeming human nature in every street 
 and parish of the globe on which we live, this is 
 to escape from the gloom and to shake off the 
 melancholy of newspaper pessimism ; and to asso- 
 ciate ourselves with those whose lives are beautiful 
 and kind and true is to acquire that healthful spirit 
 of hope and enthusiasm without which no fruitful 
 work can be done, no Hfe really lived in the warmth 
 and blessing of contented faith. 
 
 It is good to remind oneself when reading the 
 newspaper that miUions of people love their gardens 
 more than the tavern, that the innocent pleasures 
 and refining occupations of life are more in number 
 than its much-advertised iniquities, and that the 
 love of home, delight in children, and devotion to 
 books, music, and pleasant games are stiU the 
 mainspring of our national life. But, better still 
 is it to go into the world and see for ourselves 
 how innumerable is the host of those who live for 
 others, and how manifold, unceasing, and miraculous 
 are the activities of religious faith. 
 
 Let me say to those whose existence is narrowed 
 by circumstance, and whose notions of the world 
 are taken from the newspaper, that the longer I live 
 and the more I get to know of the miracles of 
 
FOREWORD 7 
 
 religious energy, the more do I marvel at men's 
 pessimism and stand amazed before the confidence 
 of infidelity.^ 
 
 IV 
 
 This book attempts to tell the story of one single 
 society working in the enormous field of Christian 
 activity. It shows how a small seed planted in 
 London sixty-seven years ago has struck its roots 
 deeply into our national life, has spread its branches 
 throughout every land in the British Empire, has 
 sown itself in nearly every kingdom and republic of 
 the civiUsed globe, and is now a force working for 
 Anglo-Saxon unity, the peace of the world, and the 
 elevation of mankind. Such an achievement in 
 itself is something of a miracle, for the man who 
 sowed the first insignificant seed was a humble clerk, 
 almost friendless at the heart of the Empire ; but 
 when one studies the thing attentively, when one 
 examines the ramifications and increasing energies 
 of this quiet, unobtrusive, and almost silent society 
 — above all, when one comes face to face with 
 individuals composing it, and penetrates to the 
 spiritual passion which inspires it — then with over- 
 whelming force does the intense mystery of our 
 
 ^ As this book goes to press I make acquaintance for the first time 
 with a most interesting and important work, The Christian Mission 
 and Ragged School of Hoxton Market. For the past two years this 
 little-known society of unselfish people has fed some 10,000 hungry 
 children a week. It provides boots and clothing for thousands of 
 children, helps the unemployed of Hoxton, and spreads its Christian 
 influence over the whole of that struggling area. The Superintendent 
 of this Mission is unpaid, has to work hard for his own living, 
 and gives himself body and soul to the work with a quite splendid 
 enthusiasm. Let the reader who is cynical or pessimistic pay a visit 
 to Hoxton Market. 
 
8 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 human life come home to the heart and the reality, 
 the penetrating and suffusing reaUty of the reUgious 
 hfe quicken every imagination of the soul. That 
 such a work is meaningless no man in his senses 
 dare affirm, and that it could have been done 
 without faith in God is a thing impossible to beheve. 
 And this is but one activity of our manifold 
 rehgious hfe, but one society among thousands 
 labouring for spiritual evolution, but one small 
 regiment in the grand army of the central host 
 which carries the fortunes of humanity. 
 
 Can it be true, the news He is declaring 1 
 Oil, let us trust Him, for His words are fair : 
 
 Man ! what is this ? and why art thou despairing ? 
 God shall forgive thee all save thy despair I 
 
CHAPTER I 
 A MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 IN the autumn of 1821 — rather a savage and 
 brutal period of English history — there was 
 born in Ashway Farm, Dulverton, a child destined 
 to spread the influence of his personality not only 
 tliroughout the British Isles, not only throughout 
 the British Empire, but throughout the whole 
 world. 
 
 He was the youngest child of a stalwart yeoman 
 named Amos Williams. His brothers were tall, 
 stark, hard-riding men, vigorous with the winds 
 and spaces of the moorland, somewhat barbarous 
 with the roughness and struggle of their remote 
 existence. Amos Williams himself was an excellent 
 farmer, an energetic and go-ahead man who did not 
 allow his love of hunting to interfere with his work 
 in the fields. Ehzabeth WiUiams, his wife, was 
 a notable representative of refinement in that 
 home with the beautiful name. She was the angel 
 of Ashway Farm. Small, gentle, humorous, win- 
 some, and sanguine, this Httle mother of a great 
 man permeated the rough fibres of that Devonshire 
 home-life with something sweet and gentle. She 
 was for ever weaving into the sullen fabric of that 
 existence threads of gold which transformed the 
 
 9 
 
10 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 sternness of the pattern into something which sug- 
 gested beauty, and which was ultimately, in the 
 life of her youngest child, to command the ad- 
 miration of a great Queen, the reverence of nations, 
 and the blessing of humanity. 
 
 This youngest son, George Williams, bore no 
 resemblance to his brothers. He was diminutive ; 
 he was highly strung ; he was sensitive and gentle. 
 But whereas the tall brothers were dour men, silent 
 and stern except in moments of exhilaration, the 
 little Benjamin of the house was for ever and irre- 
 pressibly bright and vivacious, was overflowing with 
 high spirits, was fond of singing, and in all his 
 wits was as sharp and vital as his brothers were 
 serious and stern. Americans would have called 
 him " quick in the uptake." 
 
 He went to Dulverton Church and heard a great 
 many sermons and Hstened to a great many prayers 
 which made no impression on his mind and con- 
 tributed not the smallest influence to his spiritual 
 development. He went to a dame-school, and 
 picked up with average ease the elements of learning. 
 He drove his father's sheep to the moors, and con- 
 tracted the habit of swearing. He chaffed his 
 sterner brothers, but they did not resent his 
 frivolities. He tried on one occasion to lead a 
 waggon-load of hay from the meadows, and a 
 rut, unobserved by the inattentive boy, overturned 
 both waggon and horses. The brothers mourned 
 for him ! It was agreed on aU hands that baby 
 George would never make a farmer. The over- 
 turning of the waggon pitched the lively boy 
 into a shop. His father drove him one day 
 
A MAN AND HIS WORK 11 
 
 from the farmyard, and deposited him as apprentice 
 with Mr. Holmes, draper, of Bridgwater, there to 
 shift for himself. 
 
 As a rule the youth from a country village makes 
 his first experience of evil in the town to which he 
 goes to earn his living. On the contrary in this 
 case, the Uttle George Williams, careless of anything 
 in the nature of rehgion and given to swearing, 
 made his acquaintance with spiritual Ufe in the shop 
 of a Bridgwater draper. There were two other 
 apprentices in this business, and both of them were 
 serious lads. Their conversation, their manner of 
 life, the whole set and purpose of their characters 
 came to the farmer's son as a great awakening. 
 He became vividly aware of another world pene- 
 trating and interpenetrating the world of sense, 
 a world of which he had scarcely begun to dream. 
 His master was a CongregationaHst, and insisted 
 that his apprentices should attend chapel. The 
 early spirit of Methodism was abroad, and in the 
 Bridgwater chapel little George Williams heard 
 sermons which deepened the influence made upon 
 his soul by the conversation of the other appren- 
 tices. He saw that infinity separated good from evil. 
 He became sharply sensible of the great issues of 
 character. He visuaHsed the two great roads 
 on which every man that lives must make his 
 journey to Eternity. He felt in the deepest recesses 
 of his soul the immense separation of sin and the 
 exquisite unifying force of love. " I now began to 
 pray," he said, " but even on my knees oaths would 
 come to my lips." 
 
 A sermon in chapel determined his life. There is 
 
12 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 here nothing of cataclysm or traceable upheaval. 
 It is a case of one who had begun to seek, one who 
 had already detected the great difference between 
 good and evil, quietly but with an iron decision 
 turning the direction of his inward life away from 
 selfishness, vanity, and evil, towards love, beauty, 
 and God. There as he sat and listened to an un- 
 recorded sermon by a preacher whose very name is 
 probably forgotten, the youth in a back pew of the 
 chapel just simply turned his face to God and 
 decided for righteousness. He said of that time : — • 
 
 " I learnt at Bridgwater to see the vital differ- 
 ence, the tremendous importance, of the spiritual 
 life. I saw in this town two roads — ^the downward 
 road and the upward road. I began to reason, and 
 said to myself, ' What if I continue along this 
 downward road, where shall I get to, where is the 
 end of it, what will become of me ? ' Thank 
 God ! I had kept in the clean path ; nevertheless 
 I was on the downward road." 
 
 After the service he returned to the shop, knelt 
 down behind the counter, and, in a phrase sometimes 
 iU-used but too marvellous and beautiful in the 
 history of mankind ever to become false or meaning- 
 less, gave his heart to God. " I cannot describe to 
 you," he said, " the joy and peace which flowed into 
 my soul when first I saw that the Lord Jesus had 
 died for my sins, and that they were all forgiven." 
 
 Uncertainty had come to an end. Darkness had 
 rolled away. Henceforth he saw a straight road, 
 a definite destiny, and a great light streaming from 
 the kingdoms of invisible beauty. 
 
A MAN AND HIS WORK 13 
 
 At the age of nineteen, the days of his apprentice- 
 ship over, George WiUiams was taken up to London 
 and presented to Mr. Hitchcock, head of a great 
 firm of drapers on Ludgate Hill. The mighty man 
 looked at the slender youth, adjudged him poor 
 stuff, and said, " No ! I've no place for him. He's 
 too small." Nelson's reception into the Navy was 
 not colder or more heart-breaking. The brother who 
 had brought George WiUiams to London said that 
 " though there might be little of him it was very 
 good." Mr. Hitchcock considered, and bade the 
 youth come again next day. " Well," he said, on 
 this second view, " you seem a healthy young 
 fellow. I will give you a trial." 
 
 That which follows is like a spiritualised version 
 of Dick Whittington, is certainly one of the most 
 wonderful, picturesque, and romantic stories in 
 modern records of humanity. Beyond everything 
 else, it is as striking and as incontrovertible a proof 
 of the Miracle as anything in the biographies of 
 mysticism. 
 
 George Williams found himself in that great 
 warehouse on Ludgate Hill, one among a host of 
 young men whose lives for the most part were as 
 low and vulgar as it is possible to conceive. They 
 must not be judged. From early morning to late at 
 night they toiled Hke slaves ; it is said that half an 
 hour in the day sufficed for the three beggarly meals 
 provided by the firm ; and beyond the work of the 
 day and the crowded, frightful dormitory — two 
 men occupying in many cases a single bed — there 
 was nothing but the street. 
 
 Horrified by what he saw and heard, George 
 
14 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 Williams looked about him for at least one or two 
 virtuous men with whom he might share his 
 spiritual Hfe in this crowded scene of materialism. 
 It was with him from the very first a certainty of 
 God that the spiritual Hfe is to be shared. He had 
 nothing in his eager blood of the cloister, nothing 
 in his burning soul of the hermit and fakir. To 
 associate with men who loved the Way, whose 
 hearts were consecrated by the Truth, whose souls 
 longed for ever greater indraughts of the Life, this 
 was the peculiar genius of his spirit and the definite 
 achievement of his great career. 
 
 When he had found the two or three, they 
 gathered themselves together and prayed. Perhaps 
 the most interesting element in the story of this 
 man's extraordinary life is his concept of prayer. 
 He believed with impHcit faith in the power of 
 praj^er, he had no shadow of doubt in his soul that 
 prayer reached to God and returned in quiet 
 blessing to the earth ; but he also believed that 
 prayer should be sent not loosely nor aimlessly 
 into the vastness of infinity, but should have for 
 its objective some definite mark here upon earth. 
 He beheved in praying for individuals. 
 
 WTiatever some men may be disposed to think 
 of this idea, the facts are plain, the results are 
 indisputable. It will really not do for the superior 
 person to scoff or for the indulgent man to smile. 
 George Wilhams prayed for particular men, the 
 most unhkely and hardened men, and their lives 
 became transformed. He set his Httle company of 
 faithful friends to pray for other men, again the 
 most unlikely and hardened men, and their lives 
 
A MAN AND HIS WORK 15 
 
 were transformed. Miracles occurred in that ware- 
 house on Ludgate Hill as wonderful and as in- 
 disputable as any natural law in the physical 
 kingdom. A man may be unwiUing to believe this 
 affirmation, but he cannot refute the testimony. 
 He may desire to ignore the fact, but to this day it 
 stares him in the face throughout the civilised globe. 
 
 " It was said in after years," writes Mr. J. E. 
 Hodder WiUiams,^ "that when he joined Messrs. 
 Hitchcock and Rogers it was almost impossible for a 
 young man in the house to be a Christian, and that, 
 three years afterwards, it was almost impossible to 
 be anything else." 
 
 Let it be remembered, we have overwhelming 
 evidence for the truth of a contemporary assertion 
 that in that period of our history " there was no 
 class more degraded and dissolute, none who were 
 sunk deeper in ungodliness and dissipation than the 
 shopmen of London." 
 
 George Williams, we are told, on finding himself 
 one among a host of low, vulgar, indifferent, and 
 depraved young men, immediately singled them out, 
 one by one, and prayed for them individually, day 
 after day, night after night, in the dormitory where 
 life was brought almost as near to perdition as it 
 can go on earth. 
 
 One of the worst men in the house was a gay 
 and uproarious person named Rogers. He was the 
 presiding genius of smoking concerts at a public- 
 house in the neighbourhood, and was so antipathetic 
 to the beautiful in life that he deliberately set 
 
 ^ The Life oj Sir George WilliamSt by J. E. Hodder Williams, 
 (Hodder and Stoughton.) 
 
16 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 himself to prevent men from coming under the 
 influence of religion. Above all others in that 
 estabhshment he was the champion of existing 
 materiahsm, the avowed enemy of a threatening 
 religiousness. George WiUiams immediately marked 
 him out as the Saul of that httle warehouse world, 
 the Saul who must be changed, by the grace of 
 God, into the Paul of the new life. 
 
 This man was first softened by the tact and 
 pleasantness of George WiUiams, was then moved 
 to attend the meetings of the two or three, grew 
 concerned for the health of his spiritual life, and 
 finally became one of them — one of the twelve who, 
 in an upper room in a warehouse by St. Paul's 
 Cathedral, laid the foundations of a Brotherhood 
 which now covers the whole earth. " By a curious 
 coincidence," says Mr. Hodder Wilhams, " his is the 
 only one of the twelve cards of membership which 
 has been preserved." George Williams said to a 
 friend some few days before this notable event, " I 
 was praying for him this morning until it seemed as 
 if I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, ' Yes ' ; 
 and I knew he would be converted." 
 
 It was the fixed opinion of George WiUiams that 
 the first tiventy-four hours of a young man^s life 
 in London usually settled his eternity in heaven or 
 hell. With such a passionate conviction in his soul 
 he could not rest content with one, two, three, four, 
 and five conversions among his fellow-clerks. He 
 sought to change the whole spirit of the estabUsh- 
 ment. To do this it was necessary to convert the 
 master, the gruff and vigorous rich man who sat in 
 his counting-house and directed every energy of 
 
A MAN AND HIS WORK 17 
 
 that great machine with the resolution of a most 
 masterful dictator. 
 
 George Williams, without a single misgiving, 
 began to pray for the soul of George Hitchcock. 
 He was at this time high up in the firm's service, 
 a valuable servant, an industrious worker, not only 
 one who could be trusted and relied upon, but one 
 whose talent for the trade added handsomely to the 
 firm's profits. When it came to the ears of the mas- 
 ter that this youth from Devonshire "was praying 
 for him, that in one of the bedrooms of the establish- 
 ment four or five of his servants met every night 
 and actually prayed for his soul, he was filled with 
 amazement, was staggered, was angry, and sent 
 for George Williams mto his presence. 
 
 It is well for the reader to remind himself that this 
 narrative is no romance, that George Hitchcock, of 
 Ludgate Hill, was no character in a novel, but actual 
 flesh and blood, one of the great master merchants of 
 the City of London. When I was in his warehouse 
 the other day, and looked through the glass partition 
 and saw the clerks at their desks, the cashier in his 
 l)ox, and the coming and going of many people 
 through the swing-doors opening on the street, I 
 thought of old Osborne of Vanity Fair, of young 
 George coming to borrow money from Mr. Chopper, 
 of the Family Bible in Russell Square, and of the 
 old merchant in his broken age going home from 
 the City to see the little George Osborne riding on 
 his pony in Regent's Park. 
 
 But this story is a true story, and it is many 
 times more wonderful. 
 
 George Williams stood in front of his master. 
 c 
 
18 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 " Is it true," demanded Mr. Hitchcock, " this tale 
 I hear about you, that you are praying for my 
 
 SGlll ? " 
 
 George WiUiams was startled, but he faced his 
 master and said, " Yes, sir, it is true." 
 
 Hitchcock measured him with stern eyes, meas- 
 ured the little man of whom he had said not many 
 years ago, " He's too small.'* Perhaps he now 
 seemed bigger than he had thought. 
 
 After a pause he asked, " You pray for my 
 conversion ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 '' You think I need conversion ? " 
 
 '' Yes, sir." 
 
 '' Are you aware that I am a churchwarden ? " 
 
 '' Yes, sir." 
 
 '' But you do not think I am converted ? " 
 No, sir." 
 
 '-' Why not ? " 
 
 The quick, challenging question was opportunity 
 with a golden key. George Williams opened his 
 heart. He told his master many terrible truths 
 about the business. He spoke eloquently of the 
 tainted moral atmosphere. He brought home to 
 the heart and soul of the rich man his frightful 
 responsibility towards those who served him. He 
 magnified nothing, but he spared nothing. He 
 told the truth, and that sufficed. 
 
 Hitchcock heard him out. 
 
 " You can go," he said ; " but continue your 
 prayers for me." 
 
 In a few days the man's life was transformed. 
 He came pubKcly into the office one day and 
 
A MAN AND HIS WORK 19 
 
 announced certain momentous changes in the 
 conduct of the business. He gave his influence 
 to the spiritual work of George Wilhams. He set 
 himself to purify his house from the top to the 
 bottom. 
 
 The work flourished, but George WiUiams was not 
 satisfied. He thought of the thousands of young 
 men pouring into London from the provinces, 
 thousands of pure and innocent lives for whom the 
 City waited like a hungry lion, thousands of men 
 inexpressibly dear to their parents, inexpressibly 
 precious to England, inexpressibly dear and precious 
 to God. They came to London, many of them, 
 upright, chivalrous, manly, industrious, honourable, 
 and, in some cases, dreaming dreams. And London 
 had nothing for them but foul dormitories, heart- 
 breaking hours of labour, the companionship of 
 debased and brutalised minds, the excitements 
 of the tavern, the perils of the street, the hell of 
 disenchantment and despair. Could nothing be 
 done for them ? — nothing to save them ? — nothing 
 to develop and uplift them ? 
 
 One day he was crossing Blackfriars Bridge with 
 a fellow- worker named Edward Valentine. The 
 great warehouses rose above moored barges on either 
 side of the broad river, dark, smoky, and forbidding 
 against the sunlight of a spring evening. The 
 gentleness of the sky was black with spires, towers, 
 roofs, chimneys, and congregating stone. Crowds 
 of people and crowds of vehicles passed to and fro. 
 The sense of humanity which comes to us in a great 
 city was merged into the beauty of the sky, the 
 width of the river, and the peace of a Sunday 
 
20 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 twilight. With the stir of feet and the turning 
 of wheels came the sound of bells. Between the 
 arches of the bridge the most human river in the 
 world flowed towards the sea. Afar to the west, 
 in a haze of smoke and mist, the sun was almost 
 level with the roofs. It was one of those scenes, 
 one of those moments when the stress of material 
 existence sets no darkness between the soul and its 
 destiny, when hfe, real hfe, is felt to he deep within 
 the silence of our invisible being. 
 
 The sweetest thought in the unfathomable depths 
 of his heart rose to the hps of George WiUiams. 
 He took the arm of his friend, and asked him if he 
 was prepared to make a great sacrifice for Christ. 
 The friend, Edward Valentine, rephed, " If called 
 upon to do so, I hope and trust I can." They had 
 been very silent up to this point, each man lost in his 
 own reverie. But now George WiUiams became 
 eloquent. He told his dream for the first time. 
 
 And this was the dream. To spread into every 
 large estabHshment throughout the City of London 
 the same spirit of profound religion which had now 
 begun to move in the warehouse on Ludgate Hill, 
 a spirit of prayer, a spirit of love, a spirit of service, 
 so that the whole trade of London might one day 
 be associated in worship of God and devotion to the 
 life of Christ, so that no single s'oul might be lost to 
 the eternal truth of existence save those who 
 definitely elected for evil. 
 
 He said he felt himself persuaded that if a few 
 earnest, devoted, and self-denying men could be 
 found to unite themselves for this purpose, the 
 work could be accomphshed. It would mean hard, 
 
A MAN AND HIS WORK 21 
 
 incessant work. It would mean an absolute self- 
 sacrifice. It would mean a lifelong service. But 
 it could be done, with God's blessing. 
 
 Edward Valentine said that he agreed. 
 
 And this was the beginning of the great Brother- 
 hood. 
 
 From that moment when he gave the first utterance 
 to his thought, George Williams lost not a single 
 day till the end of his long life in toiling for its 
 realisation and its greater power for righteousness. 
 From that moment on Blackfriars Bridge to the 
 other moment in Devonshire when he passed to the 
 invisible and eternally beautiful murmuring the 
 words " Beloved young men ! " the whole life of this 
 man was consecrated to the still greater glory of his 
 idea, which, even in the vigour of his own fife time, 
 had passed into every region of our Empire, and 
 into every country of the civilised world. 
 
 A circular was sent out to all the chief drapery 
 estabHshments at both ends of the town ; satis- 
 factory answers were received ; a meeting was 
 decided upon ; a society was formed ; and the 
 Young Men's Christian Association came into being. 
 
 In the chapter which follows I shaU trace briefly 
 the fortunes of this Association from its humble 
 beginnings in 1844 down to the present day, when 
 it is recognised by America, by Canada, by Aus- 
 tralasia as a force of tremendous importance in 
 the national life, and when it seems as if it is about 
 to enter on an even more vigorous existence in the 
 home and city of its birth. 
 
 For the present I would tell the reader the rest 
 of George Williams's story, so far as its many and 
 
22 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 strange events can be compressed into a few words 
 of narrative. 
 
 George Hitchcock's health gave way in the year 
 1863 ; his wife consulted the family solicitor as to 
 the future of the business ; the sohcitor's advice 
 resolved itself into a phrase. He said, " Take young 
 George WiUiams into partnership." 
 
 The little boy from a Devonshire farm became a 
 partner in one of the world's greatest business 
 houses. At the age of thirty-two he married the 
 daughter of his former master, Helen Hitchcock, 
 whose life was given with an impulse of the most 
 earnest and enthusiastic devotion to the great 
 charitable purposes of her husband. From that 
 moment everything prospered with our Dick 
 Whittington. But blessed with enormous and 
 increasing wealth, he Hved not merely frugally, but 
 parsimoniously, ordering the lives even of his 
 children, whom he adored, with a rigorous regard 
 to economy, in order, as he told them with a pleasant 
 smile, that they might have more money to give 
 away. He was a man of whom it may be said with 
 entire truth, and not merely as a convenient phrase 
 for expressing a lavish generosity, that he never 
 thought of himself. His wealth was his opportunity 
 to help others ; his time was only his own that he 
 might devote it to his feUow-creatures ; his energies, 
 his faculties, his enthusiasms, and his strength of 
 soul and body belonged to God. 
 
 When, on the occasion of the Association's 
 Jubilee, Queen Victoria made him a knight, he 
 accepted the honour, not for himself, but for the 
 object of his life. It was to make the Association 
 
A MAN AND HIS WORK 23 
 
 better known in England and throughout the world 
 that he laboured from morning till night, and 
 thought, and prayed, and lived 'wdth all the splendid 
 courage and determination of his royal character. 
 
 It must not be supposed that he devoted himself 
 exclusively to the Association which he himself 
 had called into being. This had the first affection 
 of his heart, and the first caU on his sympathy ; but 
 he gave himself with extraordinary energy and a 
 most earnest devotion to many other agencies for 
 good — some of which sprang from the loins of the 
 Association. At the time of his death he was pre- 
 sident of thirty-nine societies. How he contrived 
 to support the tax upon his physical powers it is 
 difficult to imagine. He was no decorative president 
 or figure-head of philanthropy, and no sleeping 
 partner in the warehouse of his gigantic business. 
 And in addition to aU this work there was the 
 labour of a private correspondence sufficient to 
 break the strength of an ordinary man. Letters 
 rained upon him from aU quarters of the world, 
 and not only from men of one class, but from every 
 class in the community. No one wiU ever know — 
 for his son burned all his correspondence and 
 will disclose no secrets — how many men, from the 
 highest to the lowest, George WiUiams rescued from 
 ruin, lifted from despair, and strove to direct to 
 God. On the day that followed the announcement 
 of his death over ten thousand letters of sympathy, 
 many of them expressing a most heartfelt gratitude 
 for help he had given to the writers, were received 
 by Lady Williams and her sons. For several months 
 a staff of clerks was employed acknowledging the 
 
24 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 letters which continued to pour upon his family 
 from every quarter of the world. 
 
 One who knew him well, quite well, said to me, 
 " He was not really a very first-rate man of business. 
 Clever, industrious, courageous, and far-seeing, yes ; 
 but not a mighty organiser and pioneer. His genius 
 lay in this, that he saw the folly of doing ten men's 
 work himself, and got the right ten men to do his 
 own work. His knowledge of human character, 
 his judgment of a man was almost infaUible. He 
 seemed to read a man's heart in a glance of his 
 eyes. I don't know that he was ever once mistaken 
 in the men he chose for directing his business." 
 
 That he was a pioneer in humanitarianism one 
 need not trouble to argue. It is enough to state, 
 what is perhaps not widely known, that the great 
 Early Closing Movement sprang from his brain, 
 that he set it going in his own house against aU the 
 warnings and protests of business men, and went 
 to America and initiated it there. He was told it 
 meant ruin to his firm, that no one would foUow 
 his example, and that he would be laughed to scorn 
 by the traders of the whole world. But the man 
 smiled at these solemn words. " You wiU see," he 
 retorted, " that the thing wiU become general and 
 universal. It is the right thing, and therefore it is 
 the wise thing." He never once regarded righteous- 
 ness as a foohsh or dangerous speculation. His 
 rational mind, with its shrewd judgments and 
 shining humour, saw that righteousness was but 
 spiritual common sense. He did nothing for the 
 sake of money, but what he did brought money and 
 increased prosperity. 
 
A MAN AND HIS WORK 25 
 
 One likes to think that every clerk and shopman, 
 from those employed in the greatest banks down to 
 those who slave in a little draper's shop, every one 
 of the vast army of employed citizens throughout 
 the whole world owe their Saturday afternoons and 
 their week-day hours of leisure, in the first instance, 
 to the httle son of a Devonshire yeoman who began 
 his Hfe by spilling a cart of hay. 
 
 " You must be careful to remember/' one of his 
 friends told me, " that George Williams, in spite of 
 his theology, was one of the brightest and happiest 
 men alive. I do not think I ever met a man so 
 contagiously cheerful. It was splendid to see him 
 enter a hall where a great meeting was expected, and 
 where perhaps only a dozen people were congre- 
 gated ; his eyes would shine, his lips break into a 
 smile, and, rubbing his hands, he would exclaim, 
 ' This is splendid ! We can have a real talk ! ' I 
 may truly say that I never once saw his face faU, 
 or once knew him dejected or disappointed. He 
 was the noblest optimist that ever gave himself to 
 humanity. And I need not tell you what was the 
 secret. His faith was that of a httle child. God, 
 for him, was a Father, a living and a most loving 
 Father. He knew that so long as he worked his 
 hardest, prayed with all his heart, and really 
 beheved, God Himself, in some way and at some 
 time, would give the increase." 
 
 He was a man who spoke jerkily, walked jerkily, 
 and made all his movements jerkily. He was 
 one of those electric personalities which break up 
 stagnation in a wide radius of their contact, and 
 set the duUest torpor into motion. No man could 
 
26 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 easily yawn in his presence. He had the most benign 
 smile, the most contagious twinkle of the eyes, and 
 the most lovable way of saying kind or stimulating 
 things. On occasions he could be sharply amusing. 
 One of his friends, a fat and comfortable person, 
 once said to him, very lugubriously, "I'm ill, 
 seriously ill. I don't know what to do. My doctor 
 says I must take care of myself. What would you 
 advise me to do? " " Change your doctor," was 
 the answer. 
 
 Men of all nations and the most various occupa- 
 tions entertained towards him a feeling of the very 
 warmest, almost a fihal affection. At the time of 
 the Association's jubilee in America, Mr. Pierpont 
 Morgan, Mr. Rockefeller, and Mr. Dodge happened 
 to be breakfasting together in America. It was 
 suggested that they should send " the dear old 
 man " a cable of congratulations. The message was 
 composed, and was about to be despatched when 
 Mr. Morgan, who is a better and kinder Christian 
 than many people suppose, exclaimed with a note 
 of rebuke in his voice, " But stop a minute ! Anyone 
 can send a telegram. Surely we ought to do some- 
 thing to show our appreciation and affection." 
 The others agreed. After a few minutes it was 
 decided to ascertain from the Central Office of the 
 Young Men's Christian Association in America the 
 extent of its debts and liabilities. This was done 
 by telephone. The sum was wiped out then and 
 there, and a few words were added to the original 
 cable, saying that the Association in New York was 
 now clear of debt. 
 
 Another instance. One day a poor widow called 
 
A MAN AND HIS WORK 27 
 
 upon Sir George Williams begging his assistance in 
 a great tragedy. Her son had run away from home. 
 The good man, to whom the widow was a complete 
 stranger, gave himself up to help her. It was 
 discovered that the boy had taken service in a ship 
 bound for America. George Williams at once sent 
 a cablegram to a friend of his in Philadelphia, the 
 millionaire John Wanamaker, asking him to have 
 the boy met, reasoned with, and sent back to 
 England. When the ship arrived Mr. Wanamaker 
 himself was there to meet it ; he carried off the boy 
 to his own house, entertained him, and sent him 
 back to England with his love to George Williams. 
 No man could ever do too much for this noble 
 spirit. 
 
 But of all the men who knew him and felt for 
 him this warmth of affection, none, of course, ever 
 got nearer to his heart, or more perfectly appreciated 
 the man's depth of soul, than his son, Mr. Howard 
 Williams. To most people Mr. WilUams is known 
 chiefly as treasurer to perhaps the wisest charity 
 in England, Dr. Barnardo's Homes, although very 
 few people are aware to what extent he has given 
 himself, heart and soul, to that great business of 
 saving children and making citizens. But Mr. 
 WiUiams is also one of the great forces at the back 
 of the Young Men's Christian Association, and not 
 only because he believes in the work, and not only 
 because he sees that the room for its development 
 is enormous, but because of his father's memory. 
 
 It is impossible for me to relate here what Mr. 
 Williams told me of his father's Hfe, still more 
 impossible to convey the tone of affection in his 
 
28 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 voice, the light of love and devotion in his eyes, 
 as he spoke of that great and remarkable man. One 
 saw that the impression made by the father on the 
 son's heart was as deep and everlasting as the eSect 
 of a great revelation or the memory of a profound 
 beauty. " We believe and hold," he said, speaking 
 of the Association and its developments, " the 
 faith my father taught us. First, that the most 
 important thing in hfe is Character ; second, that 
 without Christ the perfection of Character is im- 
 possible ; and third, that the way of approach to 
 Christ is by prayer and reading of the Bible. That 
 was the foundational thing in my father's soul. 
 That was the inspiration of his hfe. And it is the 
 foundational fact of the Association. The Associa- 
 tion will grow in England as it has grown in the 
 United States, in Canada, and in Austraha. It 
 will change as everything changes in time. It will 
 certainly march forward and enlarge its vision. But 
 it wiU always have as the rock of its foundation 
 those three dogmas of my father's hfe : Character ; 
 Character through Christ ; Christ through prayer 
 and reading of the Bible. And I don't beheve any 
 good and lasting work can be done in the world 
 where those three foundational things are absent, or, 
 if present, weak and unemphatic. My father made 
 religion the base of the Association and the base of 
 his own life. His motto was. First things first. ^"^ 
 
 On the 14th November, 1905, under darkened 
 heavens, and in suUen faUing rain, the people of 
 London stood in the shuttered streets, stood in the 
 midst of the arrested traffic, and watched the 
 passing of the body of George Williams to St. Paul's 
 
A MAN AND HIS WORK 29 
 
 Cathedral. In the almost unnatural gloom of the 
 wintry afternoon letters in white flowers on a 
 background of violets, shining from a wreath at the 
 back of the hearse, were visible to every eye — the 
 one utterance, the one intelhgible sound in that 
 dumb and solemn progress of the dead. These words 
 were, " Loved by all." 
 
 That simple epitaph, spoken by white flowers, 
 moved through the hush of London Hke the deep 
 Amen of angels at the end of a beautiful life. No 
 spot of rain seemed to duU those shining flowers, 
 no speck of London's mud besmirched their purity. 
 Through the sombre gloom, close at the head of 
 the dead man, those letters shone to right and left of 
 the darkened streets, and breathed a sense of ten- 
 derest humanity and sweetest divinity on a great 
 and mighty City whose iron pulses beat to the ends of 
 the earth. Just those words, woven by the hands 
 and hearts of the dead man's staff in his house of 
 business, and the rest, silence and the turning of 
 wheels. 
 
 Without pomp or pageantry of any kind, the 
 gentle, sweet-hearted, and courageous man was 
 borne from the streets of the great City and laid 
 to rest close to the place of Nelson's burial. Like 
 Nelson, he had begun his life in dehcacy and in 
 ridicule, and like Nelson, but with even a more 
 universal blessing, he was laid to rest at the heart of 
 the British Empire, 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE WORK 
 
 ON Midsummer Day in the year 1844 a meeting 
 was held in St. Martin's Coffee House, to 
 report upon the result of the circular sent out to the 
 big drapery establishments in London, suggesting the 
 formation of a society for young men on rehgious 
 lines. George Wilhams presided at this meeting, 
 announced that the answers to the circular were 
 encouraging, and a sum of thirty shillings was raised 
 towards expenses. 
 
 In a few weeks, so successful was the undertaking, 
 larger premises were needed, and a room was taken 
 in Radley's Hotel, Blackfriars, at a rental of seven 
 shiUings and sixpence a week — "an increased 
 expenditure which seemed to many almost too 
 daring a venture ! " 
 
 " The first months of the Association's existence," 
 says Mr. Hodder Williams, " were marked by many 
 signs of steady progress. Religious services were 
 established in fourteen other houses of business, 
 while weekly meetings were held at Radley's Hotel, 
 ' from which gatherings the members of the Associa- 
 tion separated to their various places of business 
 strengthened and cheered by such fellowship for 
 the difficult task of keeping their flag flying in dor- 
 
 30 
 
THE WORK 31 
 
 mitory, shop, and warehouse.' The members were 
 increasing constantly, and fresh conversions were 
 announced at every meeting. ... It must not be 
 forgotten that the work began as an association of 
 Christian young men, young men full, it is true, of 
 missionary zeal, but anxious, first of all, so to 
 strengthen each other by this bond of companionship 
 that they might, by their united stand, show a bold 
 front against the forces of evil which threatened 
 to overcome the weaker brethren." 
 
 Thus, as little else but a society for prayer and 
 Bible reading, the Association grew rapidly in the 
 metropolis, and became presently a society for 
 " mental culture," without losing its essential 
 spirit of religion. Before it was five months old as 
 many as 160 men attended to hear the reading of 
 the first reports. Lectures were dehvered by such 
 distinguished men as Archbishop Whately, Dean 
 Stanley, and Professor Richard Owen on a variety 
 of subjects which ranged *' from the Tabernacle of 
 Israel to the Mythology of the Greeks, from Renan 
 to Hogarth, and from Christian Evidences to 
 Popular Amusements." Nearly three thousand 
 people attended some of these lectures. 
 
 The great masters of trade and commerce gave 
 warm encouragement to this prospering society. 
 *' It is no exaggeration to say that the platform 
 at the yearly gatherings of the Young Men's Chris- 
 tian Association . . . was occupied by more notable 
 men from aU sections of society than were to be 
 found at any other public gathering of a reHgious 
 nature. . . . The most noble of all names connected 
 with the Association will ever remain that of the 
 
32 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 heroic philanthropist and statesman, Lord Shaftes- 
 bury. It was in 1848, when, as Lord Ashley, he had 
 reached the height of his power in the House of 
 Commons . . . that he first came into close personal 
 touch with George WiUiams. . . . The complete 
 story of their friendship will never be told. George 
 WiUiams would not have wished the details of such 
 a relationship to be made pubhc, and silence is the 
 golden tribute to both men. It is enough to say 
 that one of the finest, strongest characters of these 
 latter days spoke of Sir George WiUiams as his 
 ' best friend,' and asked repeatedly for him as 
 he lay waiting for Death." In the estimation of 
 Lord Shaftesbury the Association was a " valuable 
 institution set for the glory of God and the good of 
 men." 
 
 But it was not aU plain sailing. To George 
 WiUiams it became every day more evident that 
 the Association must open ever wider gates to the 
 increasing host of young men exposed to the 
 loneliness and temptations of London. He was 
 broad-minded, tolerant, far-seeing, and tender- 
 hearted. He had an infinite compassion for young 
 men surrounded on every side by the bewitchments 
 of evil. He would have done almost anything, 
 short of renouncing the reUgious basis of the 
 Association, to draw aU men into its fold. But he 
 was opposed by the timorous, the intolerant, and the 
 narrow-minded. It was not until after a great fight 
 that the Association, as a body, recognised the 
 importance of what Herbert Spencer caUed " phy- 
 sical morahty " and the necessity for greater 
 activity in the region of mental refinement, 
 
THE WORK 33 
 
 Mr. Hodder Williams quotes in his biography of 
 Sir George Williams what he truly caUs " two 
 amazing extracts " from the official organ of the 
 Association : — 
 
 " We have no hesitation in saying that a 
 Christian young man had better not compete in 
 a swimming match, or indeed in a match of any 
 kind. The desire of distinction will in itself be a 
 snare, while if he should win in the strife, passions 
 of envy, jealousy, or disappointment may be en- 
 gendered in his competitors." 
 
 A few days later Archbishop Trench and Dr. Dale, 
 of Birmingham, for attending some Shakespearean 
 celebration, were accused of having " trailed their 
 Christian priesthood in the dust to offer homage 
 at the shrine of a dead playwright " : — 
 
 "We see that Archbishop Trench closed his 
 discourse at Stratford Church by referring to the 
 correctness of Shakespeare's views on the cor- 
 ruptness of human nature and on the atoning 
 sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. Did he think 
 such matters were of much account to those 
 who were about to join in idle pageants, theatrical 
 fooleries, and, above aU, that oratorio of the 
 Messiah^ wherein, as John Newton once said 
 roughly but pointedly, * the Redeemer's agonies 
 are illustrated on catgut ' ? Masquerade and 
 sermon, pageant and oratorio ! — it is very 
 mournful." 
 
 Thoughtful and reflective people, acquaiated with 
 the spirit of that age, wiU be able to find some excuse 
 
34 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 for these pious opinions ; but the great, coarse, 
 hurrying world, so quick with sneers for what is 
 pure and refined, hears of them gladly and with 
 chuckles, only eager for an opportunity to laugh 
 at goodness and to ridicule the hfe of the righteous. 
 
 In spite of noble men who fought manfuUy in the 
 Association against this pitiful spirit of a quite 
 pinchbeck puritanism, a certain section of society 
 passed contemptuous judgment on its work and 
 made its members the target of their scorn. The 
 letters " Y.M.C.A." began to figure in comic prints 
 with the accompaniment of derision. A young 
 man who hated to be dubbed " milksop " held aloof 
 from its gatherings. There was a fairly general 
 feeling that the Association existed for the manu- 
 facture of prigs. 
 
 Deadly as was this impression, George Williams, 
 and the best of the men supporting him, went 
 manfully forward with the great work, and continued 
 to win young men by hundreds and thousands. 
 The Association became more manful and vigorous, 
 more intellectual and refined. Local branches were 
 established throughout the country. They were 
 recognised by Church and commerce as beneficent 
 institutions. In spite of narrowness within, and 
 ridicule without, the Association prospered. 
 
 In the year 1852 George Williams was in Paris 
 on the business of his house. He asked a pastor 
 if a Young Men's Christian Association existed in 
 the city. He was told that such a society did not 
 and could not exist in that city. Not satisfied by this 
 answer, George WiUiams called a meeting, opened a 
 subscription list, and established the first foreign 
 
THE WORK 35 
 
 branch of the Association in the City of Paris. A 
 commercial traveller, present at this meeting, 
 introduced the Association into Holland, from 
 whence it spread to other European countries. " In 
 the same year Richard Searle, a young man from 
 a business house in London, laid the foundation of 
 a flourishing Association in Adelaide, and shortly 
 afterwards branches were also started in Calcutta, 
 in Montreal, in Boston, and in other cities in the 
 United States." The Association had become 
 within eight years of its foundation — when twelve 
 young men prayed for it in a dingy little upper room 
 in St. Paul's Churchyard — imperial and inter- 
 national. 
 
 At this day the Association claims to be " the 
 greatest Brotherhood in the world — from humble 
 beginnings in 1844 of twelve young men, with the 
 modest expenditure for rent of 2s. 6d. weeldy, it has 
 so multiphed itself that to-day there are upwards 
 of 8000 branches in 46 countries, with a membership 
 of nearly one miUion, some 1300 Associations 
 possessing their own buildings, valued at sixteen 
 miUion pounds." 
 
 Now, it must be confessed that if England can 
 give praise for the birth of this wonderful Brother- 
 hood at the heart of her kingdom, America is the 
 country which can most justly claim the chief 
 glory of its present prosperity. For what England 
 began to do timorously and on a rather niggardly 
 scale, America has done boldly, whole-heartedly, 
 and on a scale of confident magnificence. England 
 is now about to make up for lost time, is now about 
 to recover her lost ground, and it is possible — for so 
 
36 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 great is the newly awakened enthusiasm — ^that she 
 may even rival and surpass America. But it is only 
 fair and right to say that the extraordinary genius 
 of the American nation for realising a good thing, for 
 appreciating a splendid opportunity, and for sparing 
 neither money nor energy in a really great under- 
 taking, is the inspiration of the present enthusiasm 
 in England. 
 
 One of the foremost workers for the Association 
 in America said to me the other day : "I could 
 almost have cried when I first came to England and 
 saw how the Association had fallen to sleep. I went 
 to a provincial city. It was evening when I arrived. 
 The streets were crowded with people. I asked the 
 first man I saw to direct me to the Young Men's Chris- 
 tian Association. He didn't know it ! I asked another, 
 and another, and at last I found someone to tell me. 
 It was down a back street. The door stood open. 
 In a dark passage two or three dirty bicycles leaned 
 against the wall. I went upstairs. A kerosene 
 lamp was burning in a dull and stuffy room. A few 
 old papers lay on the table. Not a sound was to be 
 heard. The room was empty. The whole house 
 seemed to be deserted. Well, as I teU you, I could 
 have cried. Why ! in America, in a city of that size, 
 the finest and most prominent building in the whole 
 place would be the Young Men's Christian Associa- 
 tion. Not a soul there but would know it. It would 
 be the chief landmark, and the centre of the town's 
 social and religious fife. Yes, it is high time you 
 woke up in England." 
 
 America has seen the immense possibilities of this 
 Association. Not a whit less insistent than England 
 
THE WORK 37 
 
 as to the religious basis, it has developed the moral, 
 mental, and physical view-points of the Association 
 on a really gigantic scale. The buildings, vast and 
 utihtarian buildings, are hives of energy. Education 
 proceeds in numerous class-rooms on almost every 
 subject under the sun, from theology to chemistry ; a 
 physical director is kept hard at work with squads 
 of athletes in the gymnasium ; there are swimming- 
 baths, shower-baths, fives-courts, running- tracks, 
 and rifle ranges ; biUiard-rooms, and music-rooms are 
 provided on a handsome scale ; nothing innocent 
 and healthy is excluded from one of these huge 
 clubs, where classes for study of the Bible are not 
 less well attended than the gymnasium and the swim- 
 ming-bath. 
 
 But the reader will learn in a subsequent chapter 
 of this book how entirely England has been out- 
 paced by America in the matter of developing Sir 
 George WiUiams's great idea of associating young 
 men in a society for reHgious and intellectual 
 improvement. For the present I would attempt 
 to show how wide and considerable is the influence 
 for good exercised by the Association in England 
 even in its present condition, and how stimulating 
 and boundless are the possibilities now presented 
 to our vision in the awakening of this EngHsh 
 Association to the immense field of action which 
 hterally clamours for its activity. 
 
 The influence of the Association has long per- 
 meated our commercial life. Just as the early- 
 closing movement, now universal, owes its success 
 to the brilliant thought and courageous energy of 
 the Association's founder, so does the provision 
 
38 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 now made in most of the big business houses for the 
 comfort and well-being of their servants have its 
 spring and origin in the example of the Association. 
 The indirect influence of this Brotherhood, the 
 more one studies its history and the concurrent 
 history of the nation's trade, is seen to be amazing. 
 One might almost say that the humanitarian spirit 
 which now characterises so many of the largest 
 shops and warehouses and factories of England had 
 its sole birth in the quickening impulse of the Young 
 Men's Christian Association. 
 
 Perhaps the general pubHc is not aware of the 
 rehgious spirit which works behind the scenes of 
 material commerce, the rehgious spirit which is 
 busy with the souls of men even in the midst of 
 London's ceaseless trade. It may be weU, therefore, 
 if I give a brief account of the inner life of one 
 estabhshment in London, where a most prosperous 
 rehgious activity keeps pace with an increasingly 
 successful trade, where the whole immense volume 
 of material activity is consecrated by a spiritual 
 influence. In this particular case the entire char- 
 acter of the religious life is directly due, not indirectly 
 traceable, to the work of the Young Men's Christian 
 Association. 
 
 To begin with, aU the young people employed 
 by this firm, if they have no relations in London, 
 are, with very few exceptions, boarded and housed 
 in lodges of a most comfortable order. These 
 lodges contain from thirty to sixty individuals, who 
 are subjected to the same rules that obtain at 
 universities, with the exception that they are 
 allowed to go out at night until 11.15 and, for one 
 
THE WORK 39 
 
 night a week, until 12 o'clock. The dormitories and 
 smaller bedrooms are comfortable and well venti- 
 lated ; the furniture is good ; the whole atmosphere 
 is refined and civilismg. In each lodge there are a 
 room for games, a writing-room, a smoking-room, 
 and a music-room. 
 
 The rehgious welfare of this great concern is 
 superintended by a chaplain, who reads morning 
 praj^ers every day of the week, and by a missionarj^ 
 society among the staff of the estabHshment. This 
 society, which holds prayer meetings and Bible 
 classes every week, held its seventy-first annual 
 meeting last year, and for many years has con- 
 tributed from £120 to £160 annuaUy towards mission 
 work. 
 
 The firm has its own sports ground. It has 
 cricket, football, hockey, bowls, lawn tennis and 
 other outdoor clubs. On the Saturday of the 
 week in which I visited the estabhshment eight 
 football and two hockey teams were engaged in 
 matches. In addition to these sports and games, 
 the firm possesses a miniature rifle-range ; and in 
 order to teach its young people the duties of 
 citizenship, and to encourage a national spirit, 
 it gives an extra week's hohday on full pay every 
 year to each man who becomes a Territorial and 
 goes to camp. 
 
 A quahfied medical man is employed to attend 
 the sick, and no one loses wages through ilhiess. 
 Where a young man has no place to go to for 
 recuperation, he is sent to a Convalescent Home 
 at the firm's expense. 
 
 The social side of the firm's life is provided for by 
 
40 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 a library committee, which arranges entertainments 
 and lectures throughout the winter season, and 
 by an Eclectic Association which provides for im- 
 promptu speeches, discussions, set debates, and 
 lantern lectures. Draughts and chess clubs are 
 popular, and a rambhng club has devoted members 
 who prefer long and philosophic walks to violent 
 exercise in the form of athletics. 
 
 Educational work is steadily maintained through- 
 out the autumn, the winter, and early spring. 
 Classes are held for elocution, composition, French, 
 singing, and even for ambulance work. 
 
 To encourage thrift, the members of the staff 
 are allowed to deposit with the firm the savings of 
 their salaries at 5 per cent interest. Coal and other 
 clubs are arranged for the benefit of married men. 
 
 From this necessarily brief and hurried statement, 
 the reader will perceive how very great is the change 
 which has come over the commercial fife of England 
 since the formation of the Young Men's Christian 
 Association. At that time uncarpeted and never- 
 dusted rooms at the top of the warehouse served 
 for dormitories ; men slept two in a bed ; half an 
 hour served for the three wretched meals of the day ; 
 and in almost every single warehouse nothing was 
 done either for the physical or moral weKare of the 
 staff. 
 
 Three reflections will suggest themselves to the 
 mind of a man who quietly considers the accoimt 
 I have just furnished of this firm's conscientious 
 regard for the welfare of its staff. First, the miracle 
 — ^the miracle that all this benefit has flowed from 
 the thought of a youth who came from Devonshire 
 
THE WORK 41 
 
 to London less than a hundred years ago in search 
 of humble employment. No man can fail to be 
 struck, if he patiently considers the immense 
 change in pubHc opinion, by the miracle of this 
 single life, the hfe of a friendless and almost penniless 
 youth, which by prayer and earnest faith in God 
 became one of the very greatest powers in the 
 evolution of the commercial conscience. 
 
 Second, the interest of modern life when we get 
 behind the apparent and the exterior, and explore the 
 inner workings of even that which appears at first 
 sight an entirely material undertaking. Is it not 
 interesting to reflect that within the grim and 
 crowded warehouses of London there is an organised 
 religious hfe permeating everything ? — a hfe in 
 which men seek to help each other, to be kind to 
 one another, to improve and develop both their 
 minds and bodies, to understand the evolving 
 revelation of Almighty God, and to hasten the 
 Kingdom of Christ by prayer and supphcation. 
 Does not this thought at once deepen and intensify 
 our interest in hfe ? — does it not draw us, as it were, 
 a httle closer to the heart of humanity ? — are we 
 not aware, as we reflect upon the spiritual life of a 
 London warehouse, of some invisible, mystic, and 
 overshadowing spirit which transcends the whole 
 orb of physical existence as our own individual 
 soul transcends the operations of the body ? 
 
 And finally, the reflection arises that it is im- 
 possible to trace the beneficent influences which 
 flow from the operations of organised goodness, 
 and that to count heads in the Young Men's Christian 
 Association, to number international branches, and 
 
42 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 to estimate the capital value of their buildings, is 
 by no means to exhaust the catalogue of blessings 
 which have come to humanity from the idea of 
 Sir George WiUiams. 
 
 From this final reflection emerges another thought. 
 If the beneficent effect of the Young Men's Christian 
 Association has been so general, and the estabhsh- 
 ment of which I have given an account is only one 
 of many which now conduct their business with a 
 genuine rehgious inspiration at the back of their 
 machinery — is there any longer need of the Associa- 
 tion as a separate and amalgamating institution ? — 
 has it not, by the force of its own influence, destroyed 
 the reason for its existence ? 
 
 The backward condition of the Association in 
 England, as compared with America and Australasia, 
 is due far more to this awakening of the moral 
 conscience among the great London firms than to 
 any previous narrowness on the part of its organisers. 
 In a great measure one may say that the principal 
 firms of London now offer their servants advan- 
 tages and boons which are beyond the means of 
 the Association to provide for its members. But 
 the need for the Association has become even 
 greater than before, and it is the realisation of this 
 tremendous need that is now inspiring the devoted 
 men at the head of the English Association to a 
 great forward movement. 
 
 The reader will easily perceive that the need for 
 the Association has increased rather than decreased 
 with the philanthropic efforts of the great London 
 firms, when it is pointed out that the very success 
 of these large houses renders the struggle of the 
 
THE WORK 43 
 
 small employer to keep head above water more 
 and more difficult, so that it is wholly impossible 
 for him to devote either time or money to the social 
 and moral welfare of his servants. There are in 
 London and throughout the provinces innumerable 
 warehouses and factori-es where nothing of a saving 
 character is done for the staff ; and in addition 
 to these small and struggHng warehouses and 
 factories there exist a vast number of offices in 
 which it has never been the fashion of the employers 
 to interest themselves in the moral and spiritual 
 life of their clerks. To leave this huge army of young 
 men, the great majority of whom live in lodgings — 
 like beasts of the field, as Stevenson would say — to 
 leave them with no provision for cultivating those 
 mystic quaHties which alone can give a logical 
 interpretation to the fierce struggle for existence, 
 to leave them entirely unguarded from the tempta- 
 tions of London streets, to leave them with nothing 
 in fife beyond the office desk and the back bedroom 
 of a suburban lodging-house — this is to commit a 
 most signal offence against the law of Christian 
 brotherhood, and to leave undone one of the first 
 and most urgent things every intelligent man should 
 do, both as patriot and humanitarian. The young 
 and lonely men of London are said to number 
 800,000 — a host which exceeds the whole population 
 of the next greatest city to the metropoHs — and it is 
 a wild thought that so vast an army can be ade- 
 quately guarded from temptation by the philan- 
 thropic enterprise of a few of the largest firms — 
 an enterprise entirely restricted, of course, to their 
 own employes. 
 
44 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 And the welfare of these young men is a matter 
 of considerable importance even when religion is left 
 out of count. For the most part they leave school 
 and coUege, or come up from towns and villages in 
 the country, with their innocence but Uttle soiled, 
 their tenderness and gentleness but Uttle hardened. 
 And they find themselves free and untrammelled — 
 to aU intents and purposes their own masters — ^in 
 a city where gross, horrible, and revolting forms of 
 vice are pubhcly paraded in the most fashionable 
 and popular streets, and where the guardians of law 
 and order look on as if this violation of purity and 
 virtue were a thing of no account. 
 
 It is not only that quite young girls are there, 
 pubhcly walking the streets, but that they are 
 there unashamed. These young men from clean 
 and virtuous homes see something far worse than 
 vice ; they see, naked to their eyes, the immodesty 
 of a fallen soul. They see vice laughing and tri- 
 umphant. They see girls, who have thrown their 
 very chastity away like a toy of childhood, walking 
 the streets of the town without one sigh, without one 
 tear, even without one blush. They are staggered. 
 They are shocked. Their inmost soul revolts 
 against this pubhc desecration of virtue and modesty. 
 But they are spellbound. They are fascinated. 
 They become curious. And unless their souls are 
 strong, they fall. They become one of the crowd 
 that goes by, laughing and unashamed. 
 
 On every side of them are taverns, wine-bars, 
 theatres, music-halls. A thousand doors to bright 
 interiors stand open for them. The day has been 
 long and hard. If they go home there is only a dull 
 
THE WORK 45 
 
 bedroom, a gas-jet, and a grubby chair. Is it 
 wonderful that they feel the magic of the streets, 
 that they glance in at those open doors, that they 
 are conscious of an incHnation not to struggle any 
 longer, no longer to aspire ? 
 
 The more I see of London the greater grows 
 my amazement that there is so much virtue, 
 goodness, sobriety among the youth of the city. 
 For in London vice is not of the back street and 
 among the disreputable, but in the very centre of 
 the city's existence, and among the most splendid 
 and fashionable of the inhabitants. In a village, 
 in a smaU town, even in an average provincial city, 
 vice has its own deplorable quarter, and its guilty 
 votaries steal there, with fear of being observed. 
 But in London the most central music-halls, the 
 most central streets, the most central taverns are in 
 the frank and challenging possession of iniquity. 
 The men who crowd these places are not the shabby 
 and disreputable, but apparently the prosperous, 
 the fashionable, and the respectable. Vice is not a 
 thing of which the city is ashamed, but apparently 
 the very heart of its nightly pleasure. Sin is not 
 a thing from which humanity is strugghng to Hberate 
 itself, but apparently the single occupation of its 
 leisure. Until a man has talked with a youth 
 who came pure to London, he cannot know how 
 terrible and destructive is the shock of London's 
 pubhc and triumphant shame. 
 
 Happily, such a Brotherhood as the Young Men's 
 Christian Association exists to protect modesty, 
 innocence, and purity — which the State leaves 
 absolutely alone to shift for themselves — from the 
 
46 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 carnival of the midnight streets. And still more 
 happily, the Central Association in London has at 
 length awakened to the necessity of a much more 
 vigorous and splendid crusade against iniquity 
 than anything which has hitherto been attempted. 
 Great and wonderful work it has already accom- 
 plished — as the narratives that follow will help 
 to show — but much greater and more wonderful 
 confronts it now. I believe that with the active 
 and generous support of London's wealthy citizens, 
 the Association in England will become as potent a 
 force for righteousness, as triumphant against vice 
 and wickedness as the vigorous branches in America 
 and Australia. That this is a very great claim to 
 make, let the following incident suffice to prove. 
 
 At the time when the United States set about 
 their gigantic task of cutting the Panama Canal, 
 it was felt by the Cabinet that some provision should 
 be made for the social and moral welfare of the 
 25,000 white men employed in the operations. 
 The climate of the Panama Zone, the activity of 
 the saloon-keepers, and the energy displayed by the 
 agents of iniquity made it necessary for the State to 
 interfere on the side of righteousness. Accordingly, 
 great club-houses were erected at considerable cost, 
 in which the white men were invited to take their 
 ease and spend profitably the hours of their leisure. 
 But the saloons remained full, the clubs were 
 deserted. Then Mr. Roosevelt, one of the most 
 enthusiastic supporters of the Association, suggested 
 to his Cabinet that these houses, adequately 
 financed by the State, should be handed over to the 
 Young Men's Christian Association. Some misgiving, 
 
THE WORK 47 
 
 I believe, was expressed as to the consequences of 
 such a step — the jealousy of other organisations, 
 the demands likely to be made on the State by 
 missionary societies, etc. — but Mr. Roosevelt held 
 to his course and carried the Cabinet with him. 
 They all knew that the Association in America is 
 " a real thing." And now those great buildings in 
 the Panama Zone are crowded from base to roof 
 with a strong and virile manhood, the saloons to 
 all intents and purposes are deserted, the agents 
 of iniquity have packed their bags and departed. 
 Such is the force, the power, and the irresistible 
 efficieiicy of the Association in America. And such, 
 also, is its reputation with Government. 
 
 That a similar destiny awaits the Association in 
 England one cannot doubt. For not only has a 
 wholly adequate and really magnificent head- 
 quarters at last been erected in London, but a 
 hard-headed and sensible man likely to drive 
 the Association forward by the force of his 
 own ringing enthusiasm has been called from 
 AustraHa to direct the new campaign, and is 
 confident of victory. Mr. J. J. Virgo brings to the 
 Mother Country the freshness, the energy, the 
 courage, and the exuberance of spirit which as much 
 characterise the Britons beyond the seas as the 
 United States of America. He is a man whom 
 neither our tragic snobbery can daunt, nor our ice- 
 cold aversion from enthusiasm can chill. He knows 
 what the Young Men's Christian Association is in 
 AustraHa, in Canada, and in the United States; 
 and, better still, he knows what has made it a 
 recognised force in the national life of those coun- 
 
48 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 tries. The same methods which he employed so 
 successfully in Australia will be employed here, 
 and unless the wealthy men of England are behind 
 their kinsmen across the sea in patriotism, in 
 humanity, and in a sense of responsibihty to God, 
 those methods will assuredly make the Association 
 here a force of equal magnitude in the national Hfe. 
 
 An orthodox Jew, in giving £10 to the palace now 
 erected in Tottenham Court Road, as the Associa- 
 tion's memorial to Sir George Williams, said that 
 though he remained a Jew he should like to feel 
 that he had helped to put a few bricks and a Httle 
 mortar into so noble a factory for the making of 
 Character. This is Mr. Virgo's central enthusiasm — 
 the Association makes men. He feels that the making 
 of Character is the greatest work to which a man can 
 set his hand, and if he thought the Association 
 manufactured prigs and milksops he would be the 
 first man to laugh it out of our imperial existence. 
 But he knows that this fault, if it ever existed in any 
 considerable degree, has now entirely passed away. 
 The Association stands for the development of the 
 whole man — body, mind, and spirit. It exists to 
 make men physically wholesome, mentally efficient, 
 and spiritually strong. It does not develop only one 
 side of a man's character, and leave the rest to shift 
 for itself, to decay, to become corrupt, to atrophy. 
 It holds that no one side can be developed alone 
 without tajury to the rest. And it holds the faith 
 that the future of the race, and the future of the 
 British Empire — which carries so much of the 
 welfare of other nations — must depend upon the 
 training of the young men throughout the whole 
 
THE WORK 49 
 
 of the King's dominions in physical, mental, and 
 spiritual efficiency. 
 
 In discussing this question with me for the first 
 time, Mr. Virgo constantly made use of a single 
 phrase which I have since found out is the spring of 
 his optimism, if it is not the foundation of his en- 
 thusiasm. This phrase was, " The scope is bound- 
 less." While some people in England were inclined 
 to say " We have come to the end of our furrow," 
 this AustraUan was standing on a hill-top and per- 
 ceiving with glad eyes that " the scope is boundless." 
 
 "When a man sees, really sees, without any mis- 
 take about it," he said to me, " that the scope of his 
 work is boundless, absolutely boundless, he isn't 
 Ukely to sit still whittUng a stick. And it is bound- 
 less. Think what it means, first of all, from a 
 national point of view. No one who is not out of his 
 senses will deny that a sober, virtuous, and athletic 
 people are essential to a nation's greatness. A 
 nation cannot be great where young men are 
 abandoned to intemperance, gambling, vice, and 
 slothful lounging. The competition is too keen. 
 The stress of fife is too severe. The other fellow 
 won't let you ! An immoral nation goes under, 
 sooner or later. But a nation, on the other hand, 
 composed of vigorous, intelhgent, healthy, and 
 moral people — no matter how old its history or how 
 enormous its heritage — stands, sure and steady, 
 against every attack ; nothing can destroy it. Ask 
 an employer of labour whether he would rather have 
 sober or drunken workpeople, whether he finds 
 an earnest, athletic, and virtuous clerk more 
 profitable than a little, white-faced, cynical ninny 
 
50 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 or a lounging, lisping masher ! Ask the doctors, ask 
 the eugenists ! But, of course, the thing is obvious. 
 The only serious point of the matter is this, that 
 the nation does not seem to reahse, as a nation, 
 how important, how essentially and tremendously 
 important to its whole general welfare, is the 
 morahty and purity of its young people at the start. 
 One does not seem to feel in England — at least 
 I do not feel it at present — that the whole nation 
 is convinced heart and soul of this importance. 
 But what an England it will be — my word, what an 
 England ! — when the nation does realise that 
 morality is its first concern, and does set itself, 
 this great and splendid England, to the manufacture 
 of men ! In that day you will not only get rid of 
 the scandal of 'the remittance man,' so injurious 
 to England throughout the colonies, but you wiU 
 have in England itself a manhood worthy of the 
 heart of the empire. 
 
 " Then, think what it means from an imperial 
 point of view. What ties are the strongest ? Are 
 they commercial ? Is a man more closely aUied 
 with his tradesmen than with those whom he loves, 
 whether they serve him or not ? Surely affection is 
 the strongest and most unifying of all human bonds. 
 And what is the rock foundation of affection ? Is 
 it not a moral enthusiasm, a fervour of rehgious 
 ideahsm ? Throughout AustraHa and Canada you 
 have an immense organisation hnked to a similar 
 organisation in England and waiting to develop 
 itself on imperial hnes. That organisation is 
 religious. It is concerned with the manufacture of 
 men. It desires above everything else to feel itself 
 
THE WORK 51 
 
 at unity with a triumphant body in the Mother 
 Country. It seeks to make the empire such a 
 power as the world has never known — an empire of 
 Christian manhood. A great awakening in England 
 would be felt to the uttermost parts of this empire. 
 It would quicken the whole fabric of British exist- 
 ence. For there is nothing Hke religious enthusiasm ; 
 it does not matter how far off or how sundered our 
 race may be, if they feel that they are one in religious 
 spirit, that they are one in a subhme rehgious idea], 
 they will be a single people and a single nation. 
 Responsibihty ties us together ; enthusiasm for a 
 great destiny makes us literally one people. Our 
 scope is boundless. 
 
 " One of the big things which lie before the 
 Association is the work of emigration. We seek 
 to send more and more men from England to 
 religious houses in the colonies, and to bring from 
 the colonies into England some of the best and most 
 go-ahead of their enthusiastic manhood. Again I 
 say, the scope is boundless. England, I think, 
 neither realises how deeply she is loved in the 
 colonies, nor how earnest are the colonies for a 
 rehgious unity with the Mother Country. Think 
 what it will mean when the Young Men's Christian 
 Association is the great central labour exchange of 
 the whole empire, and when our conferences are 
 held, with delegates from every nation, in aU the 
 countries of the British Commonwealth ! 
 
 " There is one other point for England to consider. 
 The most prosperous branch of the Association is 
 in the United States and Canada. The prospect is 
 not only imperial, but international. The ideal 
 
52 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 before our eyes is one of Anglo-Saxon unity. 
 Through the Association, more easily than any other 
 agency, can this great unity of the race be achieved. 
 America, according to some of your newspapers, 
 is composed only of a greedy and grasping com- 
 mercial people ; but in truth it is, I really beheve, 
 the most religious nation under heaven. The 
 religious life in America has its aberrations and 
 extravagances, but at bottom it is deep, manful, 
 and enthusiastic with a most splendid common sense. 
 If England desires the friendship of America, she 
 will not leave the matter to her statesmen and 
 diplomatists, but will herself propose a union for 
 moral, philanthropic, and rehgious ideahsm. She 
 cannot, in fact, too frequently remind America that 
 the supreme object of her existence is the Kingdom 
 of God, or too warmly invite the American nation 
 to co-operate with her in achieving this ideal. And 
 the Association, firm-fixed and universally extended 
 throughout the States, is the best organisation 
 for this cordial co-operation in a spiritual destiny. 
 Yes, the scope is boundless. A moral, manful, 
 and rehgious England linked up with a moral, 
 manful, and rehgious empire is a great and glorious 
 thought ; but greater and more glorious is the 
 equally possible consummation of a moral, manful, 
 and rehgious British Empire hnked up with a moral, 
 manful, and rehgious America for the peace of 
 the world, the blessing of humanity, and the glory 
 of God. It is not a dream ; it is an eminently 
 practical possibihty. Wherever an EngMsh member 
 of the Young Men's Christian Association goes in 
 the colonies or in America he makes straight for the 
 
THE WORK 53 
 
 head-quarters of the Association, and there he finds 
 not only kindness and hospitahty, but a genuine 
 eagerness to serve him in finding useful work. It 
 is not a question of a foreign country, or a scattered 
 empire ; he feels himself one of a consecrated 
 Anglo-Saxon brotherhood." 
 
 The comprehensiveness of the Association is 
 witnessed by the provision made in Tottenham Court 
 Road for physical and mental culture. On the upper 
 floors one sees an endless succession of class-rooms, 
 where the young men of London will be able to 
 get the very best instruction in every subject of 
 commercial education. This is a branch of activity 
 which the American Association has brought to the 
 highest pitch of perfection. It was long ago 
 recognised in America that mental efficiency is not 
 only necessary to commercial success, but valuable 
 to spiritual culture. The educational classes in 
 America are perhaps the most flourishing depart- 
 ment of the Association's work, and they are to be 
 equally successful in England, if enthusiasm and 
 thoroughness can make them so. 
 
 Just as an expert in education has been carefully 
 chosen for the new London head-quarters, so an 
 expert has been as carefuUy engaged for the Associa- 
 tion's work in physical culture. The gymnasium 
 will be a serious business, and not a mere playground 
 for senseless antics and unprofitable tomfooleries. 
 There will be regular courses of instruction, and 
 classes for every form of drill and athletic exercise. 
 In addition to the gymnasium, the head-quarters 
 possesses a swimming-bath, shower-baths, a minia- 
 ture rifle-range, and a room for fencing and boxing. 
 
54 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 There are something Hke two hundred bedrooms 
 in this beautiful building, where a young man can 
 lodge as cheaply as three and sixpence a week. The 
 restaurants are on a most elaborate scale. The cook- 
 ing is to be as good as the money of the Association 
 can make it. 
 
 Besides the usual attractions of a club, the 
 Association provides a lecture theatre, a music- 
 room, a wonderful range of dark-rooms for the 
 developing of photographs, quiet rooms for private 
 study, and a bureau of inquiry as regards emigration 
 and employment. 
 
 But not less thorough is the organisation for 
 entirely rehgious purposes. There are rooms set 
 apart for the study of the Bible, and the best men 
 possible wiU help in the work of directing religious 
 enthusiasm into the most useful channels. A 
 missionary earnestness wUl characterise the whole 
 hfe of this vast estabhshment. Pubhc meetings of 
 a religious nature will be constantly held in the 
 auditorium. Men from aU the churches will compose 
 the membership, and sectarianism will be entirely 
 obhterated by the single and central ambition to 
 make right reason and the Will of God prevail in 
 the hfe of the metropohs. 
 
 To this great and noble condition has the Associa- 
 tion now come in London, and before the closing 
 of this chapter, and passing to some remarkable 
 narratives of rehgious experience, I would invite 
 the reader to consider the urgent need for multiply- 
 ing such buildings as the London head-quarters 
 throughout the capital city, the suburbs, and the 
 provinces. 
 
THE WORK 55 
 
 The very best safeguard for a young man's virtue 
 and honesty is association with virtuous and honest 
 men. Too poor to do anything but take a miserable 
 room in a back street, and with Httle else to do in 
 his spare time but wander aimlessly through the 
 town, the average young man who comes to London 
 for employment falls first into sin, then into a mood 
 of bitterness and depression, and finally passes to 
 a careless acquiescence in the general fife of the 
 irreligious community. Neither wholly good nor 
 wholly bad, he drifts with the tide of indifference 
 and becomes a feeble creature, as unprofitable 
 to the State as useless to the purposes of God. 
 
 But such a young man, lodged and boarded in a 
 splendid hou.se, surrounded on every side by the 
 bracing influences of moraHty, encouraged by those 
 who share this club-life to develop his bodily powers, 
 to educate himself as a rational being, and to 
 address his imagination and the thoughts of his 
 heart to the great God of the Universe, becomes 
 a man to whom the streets offer no temptation, 
 and one whose fife may grow to be a blessing to his 
 fellow-men. He is definitely associated with good- 
 ness ; not sohtary and aimless in the midst of a 
 city loud with senseless pleasure and bold with 
 shameless depravity. He is one in a moral army, 
 a unit in a spiritual force, a comrade in a clean 
 and rejoicing brotherhood. Such a lot is as 
 certain for righteousness as the other is certain 
 for ruin. 
 
 Now, this is the thought I would leave in the 
 reader's mind. Young men do not usually go to 
 their ruin with gladness and determinate purpose. 
 
56 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 They fall into sin. And they do not keep away from 
 the Young Men's Christian Association because 
 they dishke and deny such an organisation, but 
 because the Association has neither the room nor 
 the equipment to receive them. If such a building 
 as the head-quarters in Tottenham Court Road were 
 erected twenty and thirty times in London, it would 
 fill itself with a host of young men eager for its 
 club-Mfe, its educational and physical advantages, 
 and the pleasures and refinements of its friendships. 
 Such is the state of things in America. There is 
 no reason in the world to imagine that such a state of 
 things cannot exist in England. 
 
 If, then, young men perish for want of moral 
 companionships, and if they are ready for such 
 a Hfe as the Association provides, ought we not to 
 make it the immediate business of our Christian 
 brotherhood to set up these hostels throughout the 
 length and breadth of England ? 
 
 Think how frightfully the soHtary man is exposed 
 to temptation in London ! Can you expect him to 
 go from his office or his warehouse to a Httle dingy 
 viUa in the suburbs or to a hole-and-corner habitation 
 of the Young Men's Christian Association, as dark 
 and melancholy and depressing as his own lodgings ? 
 There are some people who appear to think that 
 when they have provided a young man with a back 
 room, a Bible, and a text for the wall, it is his own 
 deliberate fault if he goes with the crowd. But is 
 this, indeed, our whole duty to the solitary and 
 friendless young man at the most critical hour of 
 his career ? Are we quite certain that we have 
 done for him all that God would have us do ? 
 
THE WORK 67 
 
 Have we shown him personal love and personal 
 kindness ? 
 
 Even more than this, I venture to ask religious 
 people whether they can say on their conscience that 
 it would be wholly good for a young man employed 
 all day in shop or factory to spend his evenings in a 
 gas-lighted room reading the Bible or praying to 
 God to save the world ? Is it not certain that such 
 a man would become morbid, feeble, degenerate, 
 and useless ? Is it not certain, on the other hand, 
 that the more his muscles are braced by healthy 
 exercise, the more his brain is developed by rational 
 education, and the more his mind is refined by 
 the companionship of cultured people in his own 
 class, the more readily and usefully wiU his soul 
 respond to the call of God, and the more worthily 
 wiU he fill his place in the citizenship of the British 
 Empire ? 
 
 Let us awake to our duty and to our opportunity. 
 Man, to be perfect, must develop body, mind, and 
 soul. The organisation most fitted to perform this 
 task stands ready to our hand. Two things alone 
 are lacking — the enthusiasm of the religious pubhc 
 and the wealth of those whom God has blessed 
 with fortune. And in the meantime thousands are 
 perishing in London — perishing in body, mind, and 
 soul — because there is no adequate provision made 
 for the youth of the city. 
 
 To England a chance is now offered the magnitude 
 of whose promise cannot be exaggerated. For — 
 the scope is boundless. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 A DECENT MAN 
 
 A POOR man of Scotch extraction, born in County 
 Antrim, moved to the land of his forefathers at 
 the dawn of his manhood, and settled down as a 
 quarryman in the village of Houston, some few miles 
 out of Paisley. His stature was of the giant order, 
 and he was possessed of prodigious strength. To the 
 deep reflectiveness of his Scotch ancestry he added 
 the gracious humour of the Irish people, so that his 
 words were wise and witty at the same time, so 
 that his society was at the same time serious and 
 delightful. The foundation of his character was 
 reverence for " the Name of God, the Book of God, 
 the Day of God, and the House of God." Everything 
 in his life sprang from this foundational seriousness. 
 He was what we call a deeply rehgious man. 
 
 Soon after settling down to work he married a 
 girl from the Highlands. She was wholly unlike 
 her huge and herculean husband, save in the fullness 
 of her faith. She was smaU, weak, deUcate, and 
 soon after marriage was visited by a long and 
 wasting affliction of the body ; but she clung with 
 a strength that equalled her husband's to the faith 
 which illumined not only their own Hves, but the 
 lives of their children. 
 
 68 
 
A DECENT MAN 69 
 
 The son, whose story we are now about to follow, 
 has given the world a glimpse of the mother's faith, 
 a ghmpse of the Ufe in that Scotch cottage. " My 
 sweetest memory," he once declared, "is to re- 
 member, lying awake at night on my bed in my Httle 
 room, hearing the voice of my dear mother, who 
 for twenty-five years had never a night without pain, 
 and never a night with two hours' unbroken sleep 
 on end ; and through all that quarter of a century 
 this light shone, till it brought in the everlasting day. 
 My earliest and tenderest memory is lying awake 
 and hearing her, not singing, for she could not sing, 
 but trying to forget her pains by reading in the 
 silence of the night, with all the house, as she thought, 
 sleeping around her, though I was awake. And I 
 can hear her in her woman's voice — and all memories 
 hover over it, for the sweetest voice that can fall 
 on a man's ear is that of his mother — ' Yea, though 
 I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I 
 will fear no evil ; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort 
 me ! ' Sweet mother ! may your child rise up some 
 day and bear a Hke testimony for you ! " 
 
 This son, not so tall a man as his father, but of 
 sturdy build, thick-set, and enduring, was put to the 
 village school, and learned, with the elementary 
 subjects taught in similar Enghsh schools, the 
 rudiments of Latin. When his father moved to a 
 maritime village on the east shore of the Firth of 
 Clyde, the boy attended the local school and prose- 
 cuted his studies with a slow and laborious earnest- 
 ness. From the first he was nothing of a firework. 
 Always he was a plodder, taking slow steps, looking 
 where he went, and considering his purpose in going. 
 
60 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 The local minister " remembers being struck by the 
 lad's habit of sitting alone on the doorstep for long 
 spells of meditation." 
 
 At the age of thirteen he was put to work. The 
 revenue of the cottage was small, the family was 
 increasing, it became necessary for the son to help 
 his father. The boy put down his Latin Grammar 
 and went out to open and shut a railway gate at the 
 level crossing of the local station. In addition to 
 this labour, he shifted luggage, chpped tickets, and 
 made himself generally useful at the station. He 
 was popular. The taU and burly youth had a red 
 countenance, brown eyes that sparkled mischiev- 
 ously, a big-chested voice peculiar for the tenderness 
 of its tone. People hked to talk to him. He was 
 witty, genial, frank, and, above all things, kind- 
 hearted. 
 
 It seemed to him that he was fitted for higher 
 employment. His education was not perhaps 
 above the average in Scotland, where almost every 
 man is something of a scholar, but it was the 
 sense of power within himself, the pressure of a 
 power which seemed greater than his own capacity, 
 and demanded greater opportunities before it could 
 develop that capacity, which drove him to a step 
 destined, most strangely, to affect his future life. 
 The boy in his father's cottage sat down and wrote 
 to the head-quarters of his railway company, stating 
 his opinion that he could worthily fiU a higher 
 position than that of porter and ticket-coUector. 
 He suggested that the railway company was wast- 
 ing him. 
 
 No answer was received to this letter. 
 
A DECENT MAN 61 
 
 One day he was walking beside a train which had 
 just pulled up at the station, when a man looked 
 hastily out of a carriage window, called him, and 
 asked : " Are you the young man who considers 
 himself too good for his present situation ? " The 
 young man's eyes sparkled, and he answered, " I 
 am that young man." 
 
 He who looked out from the carriage window was 
 one of the highest officials. He took stock of the 
 fine youth, asked him a few questions, and then, 
 as the train went forward, bade him good-bye, 
 without making a promise of any kind. But a few 
 weeks afterwards the village porter received a letter 
 appointing him second booking-clerk in the Cale- 
 donian Station at Greenock. This was a great step. 
 But still the youth felt in his soul the pressure of 
 that sense of power which was like the Hand of God. 
 
 The larger life of the city did not bewitch him. 
 There was that in his soul which neither the be- 
 guilements of vice nor the materiahsm of a self- 
 absorbed commerce could satisfy or even attract. 
 The influence of his mother in his mind was like her 
 presence in his room. He was held by her purity, 
 consecrated by her piety. Deep and ineffaceable 
 was the impression made upon his character by 
 this good mother and the cottage life of simple faith 
 and steadfast earnestness. 
 
 It was a walk from Greenock to his home, and 
 whenever occasion offered he strode out from the 
 city with his face to the village. " He used to walk 
 to Inverkip, when his work was done, late on Satur- 
 day night, so that he might wake up on Sunday 
 morning and know that he was at home for the day." 
 
62 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 At the Free Church on Sunday a pastor preached 
 who greatly stirred the depths of this young man's 
 soul. Combined with the sweetness and tenderness 
 of the home reunion, these sermons served to pro- 
 duce in the soul of the youth that change of the 
 spirit's poise and direction which we call conversion. 
 " I was a decent man," he says, " and the decent 
 man is the hardest of all to convert." This con- 
 version was quiet and tranquillising. It was the 
 case of a decent man slowly perceiving that decency 
 is not the highest flower of the spirit, that something 
 radically and inherently bad in human nature calls 
 for extirpation, and that the redemption of human 
 nature by the Son of God is the great pivotal fact of 
 history. 
 
 I asked him when he began to be aware of rehgion 
 
 as something tremendously real in his hfe. He re- 
 
 phed : '" As soon as I began to take notice." Mothers 
 
 use that phrase about their children. Perhaps God 
 
 i) may use it about us. There comes a time in the Ufe 
 
 / of a man when he begins to take notice. And then 
 
 / he sees deep and wide, high and far, and knows 
 
 that he must decide. 
 
 Very quietly this young booking-clerk came to 
 see that steep heights of spiritual progress con- 
 fronted him, and that without a Divine Companion 
 he could never rise from the level of the common- 
 place. He publicly declared himself a converted 
 man, and this act was the one thing in his conversion 
 which was not invisible, inaudible, and perfectly 
 secret to his soul. He had definitely decided. At 
 this time he was nineteen years of age. 
 
 He says that the outward and immediate result 
 
A DECENT MAN 63 
 
 of his conversion was a happy countenance, the 
 expression of an inward and spiritual calm. It was 
 like a Hberation. He became brighter and keener. 
 He gave himself more freely to games, sports, and 
 athletic exercises. He had the feeling at last that 
 life was good — good to the very core. His soul, 
 hitherto struggling and obscure, was now conscious 
 of Life, and Life more abundantly. 
 
 Another promotion came to him soon after this 
 spiritual experience. He was moved to Edinburgh, 
 to take charge of the Company's office in Princes 
 Street. And very soon after this considerable step 
 he was offered the appointment of clerk in the 
 General Superintendent's Office of the North 
 British Railway Company. Almost the first thing 
 he did in Edinburgh was to become a member of the 
 Young Men's Christian Association, " one of the 
 wisest things a young man can do when he goes to 
 push his way in a town or city." Now that he looks 
 back on his life of extraordinary and world-wide 
 service, this man says that, humanly speaking, his 
 career was determined by that one simple action of 
 joining long ago in Edinburgh an association of 
 young men devoted to the Christian Life. 
 
 " I'll tell you," he said, " why the Young Men's 
 Christian Association is such a splendid thing in the 
 life of a big city. It gives the young and lonely 
 man, who Uves in lodgings, somewhere to go to. 
 Ah ! that's a great thing. Somewhere to go. Consider 
 the lodgings in a back street. The dark, cold room. 
 A fire burning, perhaps ; yes, but a fire you could 
 put in your hat ! LoneHness, cold, dullness, and 
 idle hours. Outside, the glare of the streets, the 
 
64 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 laughter, the merriment, the vulgarity, the de- 
 pravity, the sin of those who deny God. I tell you 
 it's well for a young man, living alone in a great 
 city, to have somewhere to go to in his leisure hours. 
 No man is safe at any time without a sure goal." 
 
 The Association in Edinburgh was not only a 
 pleasant club, it was a community fired by the 
 missionary spirit. It sought to fight pubhcly 
 against what is wrong and base, and to proclaim 
 with aU its force the gospel of what is right and 
 noble. It organised itself for missionary work and 
 for open-air preaching. Every member who felt 
 in his soul the importance of conversion was a 
 missionary in his home, his office, the streets and 
 churches of the city. This young railway clerk 
 threw himself into the missionary work. He dis- 
 covered that he was a fluent speaker, he learned that 
 he was something better — a persuasive speaker ; 
 later he knew himseK to be called to the service of 
 God. 
 
 At the age of twenty-three, encouraged by all 
 who worked with him, he decided to prepare himself 
 for the ministry of the Church. No one was more 
 earnest in this encouragement than the President of 
 the Young Men's Christian Association. There were 
 difficulties ahead, many and great. Long years of 
 study, coUege fees, a fife of poverty and stress. But 
 when he told his mother of this thought, and the 
 brave invahd repHed, " I never told you, but I 
 meant you for that from the first," his mind was 
 determined. He resigned from the railway company, 
 became a student missionary of St. Bernard's 
 Church, and entered Edinburgh University. For 
 
A DECENT MAN 65 
 
 three years he attended the necessary Arts classes — 
 " a long, hard, and sore battle " ; and afterwards, 
 for a spell of four years, he was preparing himself 
 theologically in Glasgow. Thus working as a lay- 
 missionary he supported himself, and devoted every 
 other minute of his day to the mental preparation 
 demanded in Scotland of him who would serve in 
 the pastorate. It is a story marked throughout, 
 splendidly marked, by that phrase of Gladstone's, 
 " a long persistency of purpose,^'' Never once did the 
 man waver, never once did he turn aside, never once 
 did he lose heart and question if the long, hard, 
 and sore battle was worth the fighting. Grimly he 
 stuck to his task. The httle Latin and less Greek 
 of the ex-railway porter marched to an academical 
 approbation at the side of active and human work 
 for Christ done in the slums of Glasgow and Edin- 
 burgh. 
 
 From the first moment of his pastoral work, he 
 became a famous man. His church was packed 
 from end to end. He held open-air services which 
 were thronged. An Irishman who heard this 
 Ulster Scot said that of aU the men he had ever met 
 this man " Hcks them entoirely for puttin' it on the 
 right foundation and givin' ye the right kind o' 
 feelin'." Dr. Blaikie said of him : " He has con- 
 trived to get from his curriculum a refinement and 
 enlargement of mind not common in men who have 
 had his history, while his mind continues to move 
 freely in its native grooves, and to express itself 
 with a simpHcity and want of self-consciousness 
 that are very charming. " 
 
 In appearance he is like a countryman, rugged, 
 
66 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 red-faced, bearded, and genial, with shrewd eyes, 
 eyebrows that are seldom at rest, a broad forehead, 
 a full countenance, and a smile which seems at 
 certain moments as if his heart would embrace the 
 whole world. But for this smile the face might 
 be even unpleasing, certainly it would not attract 
 attention ; but the smile is the presence of a 
 noble spirit. At the first glance he reminds one of 
 the famous cricketer. Dr. W. G. Grace, and, hke 
 Dr. Grace, he has been ever a great sportsman — 
 swimmer, rider, golfer, and man of the open air; 
 but the deep notes of his voice, the rolling accents 
 of his speech, and, above all, the earnest and un- 
 compromising opinions which he utters with a firm 
 assurance, soon acquaint one with the fact that 
 beneath an exterior uncouth, ordinary, and some- 
 what bucoHc, here is a soul unlike any other soul, 
 a man really unique and remarkable, a personahty 
 that is refreshing in the depths of its most true 
 originaHty. 
 
 I do not know that I have ever met man 
 in my hfe who made me so sharply and pro- 
 foundly conscious of what I would call an 
 isolated personality — a personahty absolutely itself ; 
 an originahty entirely uninfluenced by other men, 
 by books, by the circumstances of environment 
 or the fashions of the day. " Most people," says 
 a cynic, "are other people." This man is himself 
 alone. An ordinary man, but real ; not a copy of 
 someone else. Whether he be right or wrong in his 
 views, whether his ideas strike one as broad or 
 narrow, true or false, at least one feels that they 
 are veritably his own views, his own ideas. He is 
 
A DECENT MAN 67 
 
 neither echo nor reflection, but a living voice ; one 
 who has looked at life for himself, has gone deep 
 into his inward soul for the answers to our human 
 riddles, who is himself one of Ufe's reaUties. 
 
 There are few lives more full of danger to the 
 modesty of the soul, I imagine, than the life of a 
 popular preacher. To see one's name " billed " 
 in huge letters on the railings of church and taber- 
 nacle, to feel on entering a pulpit that a vast congre- 
 gation is expecting something remarkable and unique, 
 to be conscious in the commonest humanities of 
 daily life that one is on the pedestal of a particular 
 apostleship, and that even in brushing one's hair 
 before a spectator one must be careful not to 
 dislocate the halo — this is surely to live in a spiritual 
 peril as great as that which comes from carnal 
 iniquity. Then, too — unfortunately for the religious 
 life in our period — there is a competition for pulpits, 
 a rivalry for newspaper notoriety, and a necessity, 
 if the popularity of a preacher is to continue, for 
 incessant publicity. I do not think it is an un- 
 charitable comparison to liken these idols of the 
 pulpit to fashionable beauties who, to maintain 
 their position, must for ever wage a millinery 
 warfare one against the other. 
 
 Moreover, behind the scenes of sectarian propa- 
 ganda are a thousand pitiful jealousies, a thousand 
 contemptible meannesses. Until one has made 
 acquaintance with the inner life of organised religion, 
 one cannot realise the immense danger which exists 
 for the preacher in these infinitely small and in- 
 finitely trivial workings of the huge machine. I 
 
68 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 once spent an hour with a popular preacher whose 
 views on religious experience I was really anxious to 
 obtain, and he wasted that entire hour for me, and 
 would, I think, have wasted many more if I had 
 allowed him to do so, in pouring out his grievance 
 against a certain journalist on the staff of a religious 
 paper who had minimised the reports of his revival 
 services, and had hinted that his popularity was on 
 the wane ! 
 
 I have found among men of the world more 
 religion, more beauty of the spiritual hfe, than I 
 have yet found among professional disciples. In 
 conversation with the members of the Young Men's 
 Christian Association I discovered far greater depth 
 of spiritual reality, a far more sensitive appre- 
 hension of the sweetness and modesty of Christ, 
 than I have found among popular preachers. It 
 would be, I am sure, a most excellent discipline 
 for the preacher if he mixed with such a body of 
 laymen as that which composes the Young Men's 
 Christian Association, if he put off the orator, 
 forgot himself as Sir Oracle, and with all modesty 
 and humiHty gave himself to the work of sympa- 
 thetically understanding the thoughts and feelings 
 of these apparently lesser men. 
 
 In the case of the man whose story I have briefly 
 sketched above, the danger of an almost world-wide 
 popularity has been greatly mitigated by his 
 experience of the Association, by his companionship 
 with humble struggles after virtue, by his knowledge 
 of the immense valour and noble endurance which 
 inspire the soul of Christianity's anonymous laity. 
 Yet I would not pretend that he has altogether 
 
A DECENT MAN 69 
 
 escaped the perils of notoriety, or that he has arrived 
 at a just estimate of the worth of his pedestal. But 
 I do think that he has retained, and with a firm 
 hold, the great essentials of the Christian verity, 
 and that he is in no danger of substituting a personal 
 and original theology for the ancient rehgion of his 
 Master. 
 
 He holds, if I understand him aright, that con- 
 version is the central fact of the Christian religion. 
 He maintains that Christ made it the central fact. 
 For him, beyond all doubt, there is a moment in 
 a man's Hfe when decision is made, one way or 
 another — the decision to accept or to reject Christ 
 as Saviour-Redeemer. And he declares that the 
 chronicles of conversion supply at once the proof 
 of Christianity's divine origin and a refutation of 
 the theses of materialism. 
 
 I have heard of a preacher who would lift a 
 tumbler of water from the ledge of a pulpit, let it 
 fall to the pavement of the church, and then, 
 leaning over his pulpit, contemplating the shivered 
 glass and the spreading trickle of spilt liquid, would 
 ask someone to give him back that tumbler of water. 
 In some such way this Scot regards the miracle 
 of conversion ; and with that miracle challenges 
 the man of science. He says that the mechanical 
 evolutionist cannot explain how a man smashed to 
 pieces by sin and iniquity is restored, suddenly, 
 in the twinkling of an eye, to a man wholly different 
 from that he was before. He thinks that David 
 in the Fortieth Psalm presented a truer view of life 
 than the hasty protagonist of evolution, who would 
 reduce existence to the iron laws of mechanics. 
 
70 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of 
 the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and 
 established my goings. In these few words is ex- 
 pressed for him the whole miracle of conversion 
 and the complete answer to the materialistic man of 
 science. A poor wretch, smashed to pieces at the 
 bottom of a pit, shattered out of the Hkeness of 
 humanity, and lying helpless in the midst of miry 
 clay, is suddenly lifted up, lifted into fresh air, 
 placed upon a rock, and inspired with an entirely 
 different spirit of existence. From miry clay to 
 rock — where is the evolution ? From the bottom 
 of the pit to an established way of going — where 
 is the machinery ? He challenges science, not only 
 to account for this miracle, but to perform a like 
 act without the aid of God. 
 
 He views the present time, if I am not mistaken, 
 with some misgiving. He thinks that the present 
 generation does not reahse the immense difference 
 in value between things temporal and things 
 eternal. He regards the general passion for aesthetics 
 as a grave danger — the act of a madman who 
 refuses the bread of life and seeks to support his 
 strength with the decorations of existence. He does 
 not play the Philistine towards art, but he says 
 that art is not the object of life, that a man cannot 
 nourish his soul by art, that Christ and His Apostles 
 certainly did not labour for art at the beginning 
 of our era. For what purpose did Christ come ? 
 and by what means did the Acts of the Apostles 
 come to be written ? — ^let a man, he says, honestly 
 face those two questions, and he wiU be forced to see 
 that there is something beyond art, that art is at 
 
A DECENT MAN 71 
 
 least secondary — in fact, that the soul of man is 
 the one object of existence. He does not believe 
 that any solution wiU ever be found for political 
 and social problems, until the nation is convinced 
 that Christ is the universal Saviour, and that the 
 supreme purpose of human hfe is the education of 
 the soul. 
 
 He will have nothing to do with new theologies. 
 These teachings he is inclined to regard as short- 
 cuts, not to Christianity, but away from Christianity. 
 Those who follow the new theologies do not live 
 the Christ life ; they think that they think that 
 life, but they cannot imagine that they really live 
 it. Do they convert sinners ? Do they visit the 
 sick, the prisoners and captives, the widows and the 
 fatherless ? Do they hunger and thirst for the souls 
 of men ? He asks if the Acts of the Apostles — that 
 great fountain-head of the Christian religion — 
 could ever have been written if those who followed 
 Christ had held the views of the new theologies. 
 
 There is, I think, something harsh and something 
 hard and something narrow in his presentment of 
 the Christian reUgion, but one cannot doubt that 
 he holds with a most virile tenacity the original 
 essentials — the divinity of Christ and the need of 
 a new birth for the spirit. 
 
 In the narratives which follow the reader will find 
 that these two verities influence the souls of ordinary 
 men, and transform human life in a most extraordi- 
 nary manner. And he wiU see that the revolution 
 of a spiritual change does not always proceed from 
 gradual or sudden adhesion to a certain doctrine, 
 does not always flow from the excitement of a 
 
72 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 revivalist meeting, is not always inspired by some- 
 thing said very eloquently or very strikingly by a 
 popular preacher. I am disposed to think that there 
 are as many conversions outside the churches as 
 within, that many of them are entirely independent 
 of theological opinion, and that in the majority of 
 cases they are experienced without one throb of 
 excitement, without one spasm of violence. I 
 believe that many men quite outside the churches 
 say to themselves, " I will arise and go to my 
 Father " ; and that no one save the Father is 
 aware of the turning round of that soul. 
 
 It has been to me an ever-increasing experience 
 to discover much Christianity outside the folds of 
 theology, and within those folds but little. I am 
 as greatly surprised by the number of Christians 
 outside the churches as by the paucity of Christians 
 within. And a saying of Christ's has become for 
 me exceedingly real and exceedingly wonderful in 
 consequence ; that saying which should be of 
 tremendous warning to the professional Christian, 
 and of singular encouragement to the good man 
 who does not dare to caU himself a Christian : — 
 
 " Many shall say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, 
 have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name 
 have cast out devils, and in thy name done many won- 
 derful works ? Then will I profess unto them, I never 
 knew you,^* 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE ACCIDENTS OF LIFE 
 
 NOT many years ago a young journalist came 
 to London from the North of England, and 
 took up a humble position on one of those numerous 
 and struggling newspapers which are published in 
 the suburbs. 
 
 He was at this time only nineteen years of age, 
 typical of the North Country in the shrewdness and 
 energy of his character, and on every possible score 
 a youth of whom one would say that for him at 
 least the manifold temptations of the metropolis 
 presented scarcely the element of danger. He came 
 to London not aimlessly, but with the definite 
 purpose to push his fortunes. Even his ambition 
 was practical ; he did not dream of establishing 
 a reputation or of chmbing to an editorial chair. 
 " I knew," he told me, " that London was the best 
 school of journalism, and my theory was to work 
 hard, learn my business, get all the experience I 
 could, and then return as soon as possible to my 
 native town and the provincial newspaper on which 
 J had begun my career." 
 
 Not only was his ambition practical and earnest, 
 but his temperament was antipathetic to vice, 
 frivolity, and looseness of any kind. He was not 
 
 73 
 
74 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 one of those men to whom the streets of London 
 are like a fiery furnace. In the cold and garnished 
 chambers of his brain the hghts of the town shone 
 with no glamour of illusion. He was a spectator 
 of the drama of the streets, moved neither by the 
 apparent gaiety of the swarming crowds nor by the 
 obvious misery, destitution, and depravity which 
 mocked at every turn the pageant of this crowding 
 pleasure. He looked on. He observed. He 
 reflected and made notes. A cooler brain, a more 
 detached philosopher, has seldom come to the great 
 city even from the North of England. I feel about 
 him that he is one of those rare children of tem- 
 peramental isolation for whom there exists no 
 contagion. 
 
 He is now a man of six- or seven-and-twenty, and 
 the experience through which he has passed can 
 almost be read in his worn and haggard face before 
 it is dragged, slowly, thoughtfully and reluctantly, 
 from his hps. He has suffered terribly, frightfully, 
 suffered nearly every bitterness and deprivation 
 which can befall unlucky men at the crowded centres 
 of hfe ; and the true measure of his agony is the 
 strong and stoical character of his nature, his 
 isolation of soul, his soHtude and loneliness of brain, 
 so that, Hstening to him as he describes those 
 experiences and seeks to analyse his feehngs — a pale 
 and rather cynical smile on his Hps — one reahses 
 that this man has endured tragedy of a very deep 
 and penetrating order, a tragedy deeper than 
 the heart, an unshared and bitterly self -annotated 
 tragedy of the brain and soul. 
 
 The face is handsome but not attractive at the 
 
THE ACCIDENTS OF LIFE 76 
 
 first glance. There is a suggestion of scorn on the 
 lips that are never firmly closed, of mockery in the 
 eyes that are weary and rather contemptuous ; it is 
 the face of a man who cannot easily " give himself," 
 who is never carried away by passion or enthu- 
 siasm, who is self -watchful, self-critical, self-centred, 
 and perhaps distrustful of every single creature 
 on the earth until he has searched them through and 
 through for himself, and come to a judgment, 
 which, he would probably say, laughing at himself, 
 is quite Hkely to be wrong. Yet there are moments, 
 rare and silent, when one feels that his solitude 
 has at last established, or at any rate is beginning 
 to estabhsh, the only contact that counts. 
 
 He had been brought up from childhood by an 
 aunt of whom he thought censoriously at the time, 
 but for whom he is now incHned to entertain gentler 
 feelings, almost of affection. " She was a hard 
 woman," he said, " one of those rigid and cast-iron 
 personalities, so sure of themselves that they think 
 it an easy matter to manage other people. But I 
 recognise now that she meant to be kind, and that 
 her rigorous dragooning was intended for my benefit. 
 She thought she could drill me into decency and 
 success." 
 
 I asked him if he had received from this woman, 
 the earliest influence on his life, any definite notions 
 of religion. 
 
 "No," he rephed, " not directly from her, and 
 nothing definite. I cannot recall any single reference 
 ever made by her to rehgion. That is to say, she 
 neither taught me religion, nor, what would perhaps 
 have been much better, discussed the subject with 
 
76 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 me. But she sent me to a Sunday-school, and on 
 the occasions when I grew restive she would tell 
 me that it was the right thing to do, to go to Sunday- 
 school, and that I must submit to her judgment. 
 She was of the Church of England, but so far as I 
 remember did not very often go to church ; she 
 sent me there, however, and always spoke of church 
 attendance as one of the usual duties of Hfe." 
 
 At school he had exactly the same feeling for 
 religion as he had for arithmetic ; it was one of the 
 subjects. He grew up with exactly the same feehng 
 for religion as he had for the wash-basin and the hair- 
 brush ; it was one of the respectabiUties. 
 
 When he arrived in London he was far too much 
 concerned with his daily work to give a single 
 thought to rehgion. It simply dropped out of his 
 life, and the loss of it made no difference. If he 
 had dropped his watch, or his pocket-handkerchief, 
 he would have missed it and looked about for it. 
 But rehgion fell from his thought, and he was even 
 unconscious of the fall. 
 
 " I think it is very Hkely," he said, " that I 
 should have gone occasionally to church, if my 
 work had allowed ; for, you see, to go to church on 
 Sunday was something of a habit with me, and at 
 any rate it would at least have been something to 
 do. But I simply never gave it a thought, because 
 my work occupied every hour of Hfe from week-end 
 to week-end. People have no idea how hard a 
 journahst is worked on these suburban papers. 
 Why should they ? Who is Hkely to be interested 
 or care a jot for the obscure writer on a local rag ! 
 But really it was hard work. I very often wrote 
 
THE ACCIDENTS OF LIFE 77 
 
 eighteen or twenty columns a week, and besides the 
 writing I had to superintend the printing and the 
 proof-reading, besides doing what I could to push 
 the sales. I reaUy doubt if ever a slave worked 
 harder than I did then, and as many a man is doing 
 now, on a London suburban newspaper. There was 
 certainly no time for going to church." 
 
 To add to his depression of mind and to increase 
 his gradual feehng of bitterness, was the matter of 
 lodgings. 
 
 " Heaven save a man," he exclaimed, " from 
 living in London suburban lodgings ! I shall never 
 forget my experiences. I put an advertisement 
 in the paper, and received over a hundred answers. 
 At how many doors I knocked I can't say, but I 
 could almost swear that at every one a different 
 smell encountered my nostrils. The gloom of those 
 narrow passages ! The suffocation of those dirty 
 little rooms ! The grime upon everything — windows, 
 furniture, hangings, and bed-hnen ! Ugh ! And 
 worse than the houses, worse than the rooms, worse 
 than the furniture — the landladies ! Oh, yes, a 
 thousand times worse. I think I could almost 
 write a book about those women. They seemed to 
 come to the front door from some frightful lair in 
 the back regions, hke hungry animals disturbed in 
 sleep. Dirty tired faces, dirty unbrushed hair, 
 dirty slattern clothes — ^Uke scarecrows. It always 
 seemed to me that those women were not properly 
 awake. They were sleep-walkers, crawHng about 
 in their dark houses, like figures in an evil dream. 
 I have been in pretty low places since those da^^-s, 
 and I have got accustomed to the doss-house and 
 
78 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 the coffee-shop ; but I could not bring myself to go 
 back to suburban lodgings in London without a 
 struggle. You see, I could only afford to pay 
 fourteen shillings a week." 
 
 For some three years, at a beggarly wage, he 
 slaved on this little paper, and then moved to 
 another suburban district and into better circum- 
 stances. All this time, the reader must be careful 
 to remember, he had lived a moral and an earnest 
 Hfe, unbeguiled by any one of the temptations 
 which drag a man swiftly or slowly down to the 
 gutter and inevitably defile his soul. He was too 
 hard-worked to go to church or to think about 
 religion, and too hard-worked to go to the dogs. 
 A trivial circumstance broke the connection with 
 this new paper after he had been there a couple of 
 years. However, the loss of regular employment 
 and steady pay was not in the nature of disaster. 
 He had learned the ropes. He knew how the great 
 London daihes get their news. And, what was more 
 important still, he had made the acquaintance of 
 several men on the sub-editorial staffs of some of the 
 principal London papers. He was in the position to 
 start as a free lance. 
 
 It must be explained to the reader that beneath 
 the regular editorial staff of a newspaper, and below 
 the regular sub-editorial staff of reporters and news 
 writers, there are two wings of a great and numerous 
 free-lance army. In the one wing are men of 
 letters, people of note or position, who contribute 
 special articles and are well paid for this occa- 
 sional work ; and in the other wing are the 
 young writer struggling for a foothold, the old and 
 
THE ACCIDENTS OF LIFE 79 
 
 broken writer struggling to keep up appearances, 
 and a heterogeneous host of Hfe's failures from every 
 trade and profession in the world, seeking to keep 
 body and soul together by the easiest way of 
 obtaining bread without much effort and without the 
 necessity of special knowledge. Paragraphs are 
 paid for by shiUings and half-crowns. 
 
 Our young man from the North came into this 
 free-lance army with the determination to make 
 himself useful and without a single misgiving. 
 It was, in some wa3^s, a step up. The opportunities 
 for experience were innumerable, the field of dis- 
 covery was enormous. He dreamed no dreams, 
 but he looked confidently to getting a regular place 
 on one of the great papers, and then, crammed with 
 a rich experience, to go back to his native town, a 
 much more valuable commodity in that local 
 market. 
 
 Even here, in the larger and infinitely more 
 dangerous world of London journaHsm, he stood 
 clear of foUy and uncontaminated by vice. So far 
 as conduct goes he was an ordinarily moral man; 
 virtue did not attract him, but sin had no bewitch- 
 ments for him. He was a clever, rational, and 
 industrious young man following a definite road 
 to material prosperity. 
 
 For some time he did very weU as a free lance. 
 He ran here and there, picked up news, got informa- 
 tion, discovered interesting things, and turned 
 them all into brief and simple " copy." Occasion- 
 ally he received a commission from a newspaper 
 and served as a reporter at pubhc functions, ban- 
 quets, and even in the Press GaUery of the House of 
 
80 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 Commons. There were certainly weeks when he 
 earned little money, but there were also single days 
 when he earned as much as he had hitherto received 
 in the suburbs for a whole week's work. He was 
 quite contented. He had no misgivings. 
 
 Then there occurred one of those great events in 
 Hfe whose consequences reach into the remotest 
 corners of national existence. King Edward died. 
 For days, for weeks, the newspapers filled them- 
 selves with this tremendous matter. Special corre- 
 spondents, distinguished contributors and photo- 
 graphers were kept busy from morning to night. 
 The news-getter was crowded out. 
 
 Our man went hither and thither, but in vain. 
 His news might be good, might be interesting, 
 might be better than anything he had done before, 
 but there was no room for it. He asked to be put 
 on special jobs. They were all filled. 
 
 His money melted away. He became anxious. 
 
 Some weeks after the Royal funeral he began to 
 get occasional work, but with nothing like the same 
 regularity. It was one of those accidents in Hfe 
 which seem to sever many and long-accustomed 
 connections. 
 
 The Coronation of King George proved our man's 
 culminating disaster. Long before the day of the 
 great pageant the papers concerned themselves 
 with httle else than the preparations. He found 
 it impossible to earn sufficient money for his daily 
 needs. 
 
 " I thought it weU out," he told me, " and then 
 I saw that it was a case of surrender. I was beaten. 
 I hated to do it, I struggled against it, for I suppose 
 
THE ACCIDENTS OF LIFE 81 
 
 I'm rather proud, and anyhow it was a thing I had 
 never done before or ever contemplated for a 
 moment — I determined to ask for help from my 
 
 relatives. I knew of cousins who lived in R . 
 
 I knew they were well-off, for I had heard my 
 aunt speak of property they owned in the town. 
 And I knew that they kept a shop. The money I 
 possessed was just sufficient to take me there by 
 train and buy me a clean coUar. I went down 
 one afternoon, hating it as you can imagine, and 
 approached the street in which the shop was 
 situated, penniless and self-loathing. But other 
 feelings soon took possession of me. The shop was 
 not to be found ! I inquired here and there, but 
 no one could give me information of any kind. 
 Like a true journahst I made for the local news- 
 paper oifice. The proprietor could tell me nothing 
 beyond the fact that the family had long left the 
 town. I told him my position. He was quite decent, 
 but he said he really had not work enough for his 
 own staff. His son said he could put me up for 
 the night, and I slept there, grateful for a bed. 
 Next day I set out and wallved to London. 
 
 " I am a good walker, but I shall never forget 
 how my whole body ached that day. I arrived in 
 London at night, very footsore, very dusty, and 
 absolutely ravenous for food. B}^ good fortune, 
 I met a fellow- journalist who had a sixpence in his 
 pocket. The good chap bought me a glass of 
 milk and a scone, and smuggled me, without being 
 seen by the landlady, into the cubicle where he 
 lodged by the week. I slept till eight o'clock the 
 next morning ! " 
 a 
 
82 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 And then our man came down upon the bed-rock 
 of life. 
 
 For weeks he walked and starved upon the 
 London streets, for weeks he slept and starved on 
 the Embankment. Now and then a friend in luck 
 took pity upon him ; now and then he earned a 
 few pence ; but for days he absolutely starved, 
 was pierced by cold and rain, and regarded the river 
 as perhaps the best solution of his difficulty. 
 
 It was only with the very greatest difficulty that 
 he could bring himself to speak of those days. He 
 seemed to tear the words from his heart. There was 
 always the pale smile on his lips, always the mocking 
 look in his eyes — half as if he detested himself for 
 speaking at aU, and half as if he knew that no one 
 else could understand these matters — but the worn, 
 thin face would flush again and again, his voice 
 would almost break, and he would suddenly, with 
 an effort, look straight in my eyes and say, " You 
 know it's awfully difficult to say all this." 
 
 In brief, this is what he told me. 
 
 " There are two ways of describing those days. 
 The point of view then, the point of view now, I 
 dare say, too, that another man would describe 
 exactly the same things quite differently. It 
 depends on the temperament. I remember one 
 thing very clearly. As I was walking about the 
 streets, awfuUy tired and awfuUy hungry, it seemed 
 to me that everybody I passed knew it perfectly 
 well, just as well as I did, and didn't care a hang. 
 It seemed to me, too, that they were all tre- 
 mendously rich and comfortable. And I used to 
 think that these very rich and comfortable people 
 
THE ACCIDENTS OF LIFE 83 
 
 knew how awfully hungry I was, and how awfully 
 tired, and that they didn't care. 
 
 " Of course, it was absurd. I look back now and 
 laugh. But that was my feeling at the time, and it 
 was rather bad. In the case of a man with less 
 restraint and hotter blood it might have been 
 dangerous. When a chap is starving on the streets 
 he hves in a kind of dazed illusion. It's very queer. 
 I wonder if people think about that. Nothing is 
 quite real, except his hunger ; even that becomes at 
 last a numb ache. Everything is Hke a dream, 
 the sort of dream in which you want to shriek. The 
 cheapest jeweller's shop seems to flash with the 
 wealth of Monte Cristo. The meanest baker's 
 window suggests a royal banquet. The smells 
 of a greasy cookshop are simply dehcious, but 
 maddening. And everybody, as I said, seems to be 
 prodigiously rich, and to know.^'' 
 
 Then I got this from him. 
 
 " It was while I was starving on the streets that 
 I first thought definitely about God, or religion. 
 Not very beautiful thoughts, as you can imagine ! 
 It seemed to me that all these immensely rich 
 people who knew I was hungry and didn't care, were 
 Christians. It made me angry with Christianity, 
 to think what a false and humbugging thing it was. 
 I never considered it as a theology ; I just thought 
 of it as a rehgion. It seemed to me a most ghastly 
 sham. Here was I, hungry and tired in the very 
 centre of London, and no one cared a curse for me ! 
 AH these preposterously rich Christians looked at 
 me, knew my need, and passed on without a twinge 
 of conscience ! One Simday I was frightfully 
 
84 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 weary, and slipped into a churcli, just for the rest. 
 The prayers and music rather soothed me ; I knew 
 them quite well, and their famiharity was something 
 in the nature of a consolation. But when the 
 parson got up to preach all my ire rose up in my 
 soul. I don't know the man, not even his name, 
 but I'd lay anything he's a humbug. Truly, he 
 made me wild. Every word rang false ; the in- 
 tonation was an affectation ; the gestures were 
 all studied ; and — weU, the whole thing was 
 perfectly beastly to me ! I simply couldn't stand it. 
 I got up in the middle of his preaching, and walked 
 out of church, disgusted with religion. 
 
 ** I had always believed in a God, in some great 
 Power overruling the universe, although I had 
 never seriously concerned myself with the question. 
 It was rather at the back of my mind ; it seldom 
 presented itself to my definite consciousness. But 
 I began now to doubt if God of any kind existed at 
 aU. It wasn't on account of my own misfortune ; 
 my own bitterness had nothing to do with it. It 
 was from what I saw. I don't like to tell you these 
 things. I doubt if they can be told. But I saw 
 things which made me feel as if God could not 
 possibly exist." 
 
 I pressed him to tell me. 
 
 " Here is one thing," he said reluctantly, " but 
 it's rather horrible, and I can't describe it fuUy ; 
 you'U have to imagine the real horror for yourself. 
 One night I was sitting on a seat by Blackfriars 
 Bridge, joUy tired and nearly nodding oS to sleep. 
 Two women came shuffling towards the bench and 
 sat down together. They were middle-aged women, 
 
THE ACCIDENTS OF LIFE 85 
 
 dressed in most filthy rags. They spoke to each 
 other in that whimpering and complaining, but 
 perfectly resigned tone of voice which is common 
 to aU miserable women. They talked of their aches 
 and pains. They were comforting each other. Then 
 one of them spoke of her cancer, and said it was 
 getting terrible. She opened her dirty jacket to 
 show her friend. I turned my head to look. Both 
 breasts were eaten away. " God in heaven ! " I 
 cried to myself, and got upon my feet and walked 
 away as hard as I could go. I looked up at the stars ; 
 they seemed devilish. I looked at the river ; it 
 seemed infernal. I can't tell you exactly what I 
 felt at that moment, but I was certainly then what 
 men call Godless. I did not arraign God, or feel 
 animosity against Him. I simply felt that He could 
 not exist. That woman — ^homeless and penniless 
 on the streets ! . . . 
 
 " But these were sudden uprushes, which came 
 and went. I was never persistently without the 
 sense of some God in the universe. However, my 
 thoughts were generally pretty bitter. Most of 
 them were directed against Christianity as a sham 
 rehgion. 
 
 " Then I came to see that my position, my 
 material position, was absolutely desperate. I saw 
 that I must make a final effort or perish on the 
 streets. A friend gave me a few coppers, and I 
 bought a clean collar, had a wash, and set out to caU 
 on sub-editors. I surprised myself. I never knew 
 I had such audacity. I wasn't ashamed at the time, 
 although I am now, but I was amazed at my own 
 cheek. I simply refused to take their No. I 
 
86 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 stood there and said I was hungry, that I was 
 literally starving, that they had got to give me work. 
 And do you know what most of them said ? It hurt 
 me more than anything else. They said, * My 
 dear fellow, I know dozens of chaps like you.' 
 WeU, that seemed awfuUy hard. It seemed reaUy 
 brutal. I — weU, I simply couldn't stand it. Dozens ! 
 — ^yes, dozens and hundreds, and that was the 
 excuse for not giving me a crust of bread ! Of 
 course, I see it differently now. But at the time 
 it hurt me awfully. 
 
 " An idea occurred to me. I had once written 
 some paragraphs for a theatrical man. I went off 
 to the theatre and offered myself as his press agent. 
 I couldn't see him, but his manager said there was 
 no chance of such work for me. I begged him to let 
 me have a shot. He said No, and gave me his 
 reasons for thinking that such work did not affect 
 the bookings. 
 
 " I left him, and walked away in absolute despair. 
 I suppose I must have been very near a physical 
 coUapse. Presently I felt that I could walk no 
 further. I came to a street corner in the Strand, 
 and stopped. What should I do ? It was the end 
 of things for me. I recognised that. But what 
 should I do ? — ^how should I take it, and where ? 
 At that moment, I can't teU you why, I raised my 
 head and looked up at the taU building on the oppo- 
 site side of the road. I knew it well. It was the 
 office of the Morning Post. But I looked above the 
 windows of the newspaper to the windows of the 
 second floor — how or why I cannot tell you — and 
 there I saw the words, * Young Men's Christian 
 
THE ACCIDENTS OF LIFE 87 
 
 Association.' It didn't strike me at the time as an 
 inspiration, nor was I conscious of anything mys- 
 terious in the fact that I had looked up, straight 
 at those words. The only thought I had was an 
 angry one, at any rate a bitter one. I remembered 
 that I had heard in my native town something about 
 this Association and its machinery for helping young 
 men in great cities. I thought to myself, ' Well, 
 I'U test their Christianity ! ' I crossed the road, 
 entered the building, and went up to the second 
 floor. 
 
 " My manner must have been very bad, but I 
 think it was in keeping with my appearance. I 
 went straight up to the first man I saw, a good- 
 looking and rather well-dressed young feUow, and 
 said, ' I want a job.' It was really more in the 
 nature of a challenge than anything else that I 
 had come, a loud, arrogant, and cynical challenge, 
 testing this religion of Christianity. I shaU never 
 forget what followed. It was nothing dramatic. 
 It was nothing that can be said in actual words. 
 It aU came from the look in that man's eyes and the 
 tone of the voice in which he answered me. AU of 
 a sudden the miracle had happened. Christianity 
 was a real thing. 
 
 " I was so completely aware of this reality that 
 I was instantly ashamed of the way in which I had 
 spoken. The young man did not give me time, 
 however, to express contrition. He asked me what 
 work I could do, and what I had done in the past. 
 His questions were quite business-hke, but all the 
 time there was that look in his eyes, that tone in his 
 voice, which — weU, which made a tremendous dis- 
 
88 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 turbance in my soul. At the time, of course, I did 
 not analyse my feelings. I simply accepted the 
 revelation that religion was a real thing. And even 
 this feeling passed, when he went to the telephone 
 and I knew that I had got work. Heavens, how 
 happy I was ! 
 
 " He spoke to me about rehgion, in a perfectly 
 sincere and whoUy inoffensive way ; but I did not 
 rehsh a colloquy, and simply said I had not thought 
 about it. He said, ' Well, think about it now ; no 
 man can be happy outside the Kingdom of God.' 
 I said I would think about it, and then he asked me 
 if I had any money. He lent me sixpence, and I 
 bought another new collar, had a shave, and went off 
 to my work. 
 
 " The man to whom he sent me has a Home for 
 boys. I shall never forget him. He is a prince of 
 men. From the first moment he showed me kind- 
 ness and trusted me. He gave me a sovereign in 
 advance of my wages, and did it so naturally and 
 pleasantly that it didn't hurt. I began to think 
 again that there was something real in religion. 
 And then I saw that man's life and work. I saw 
 the scum of the gutter brought into the Home and 
 turned into the cream of human nature before my 
 very eyes. I looked on, wondered, and reflected. 
 
 " I think my first definite step to what I now 
 understand as religion came from the reflection 
 that these people helped me and were kind to me — 
 helped heaps of others and were equally kind to 
 them — because they were religious. I knew that 
 there was nothing Hkeable in me ; that I had no 
 rational reason to suggest why I should be helped 
 
THE ACCIDENTS OF LIFE 89 
 
 by them; and that therefore it must be for some 
 other reason that they were so very kind and so 
 willing to help me. 
 
 " I went frequently to see my original friend at 
 the Association. I used the rooms for writing. I 
 liked the warmth. I hked the companionships I 
 found there. I played chess ; I smoked ; I read the 
 papers ; and I thought. I really can't teU you 
 what passed through my mind. It was simply a 
 deepening of the first feeling. I grew to reflect more 
 and more upon that act of kindness towards me 
 which had first made me conscious of rehgion as a 
 real thing. It led me far afield. I began to wonder 
 if there are really any accidents in life, if everything 
 is not in some strange way invisibly controlled from 
 without us. I thought of the sudden inclination at 
 the street corner, which had led me to look up to 
 those windows on the second floor. I could not 
 explain it. I saw that it might have been chance, 
 but I felt that there was something more than that 
 in it ; I could not rid my mind of the idea that it 
 was destined. 
 
 " Then I began to wonder about refigion as a 
 real thing, as a vital principle of fife, not simply as 
 theology. I saw that these men I met at the 
 Association — and, by George, they are men, real 
 men, I can give them no higher title — were not 
 formahsts, certainly not humbugs, but were in some 
 strange way, a way that at flrst seemed to me a 
 little uncanny, different from myself and the men 
 with whom I had hitherto hved. They were separate 
 and distinct. I observed that they were profoundly 
 happy. I noticed that there was something bright 
 
90 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 and attractive in their faces. I liked their manner, 
 their behaviour, their goodness and vigour, which I^ 
 felt to be extraordinarily thorough. 
 
 " How can I tell you the rest ? It's the most 
 difficult of aU. In fact, even to myself, I can't 
 express it in words. I try to analyse it, but I can't. 
 I try to see it vividly, but it eludes me. And besides, 
 it isn't a thing, it's a process ; and I don't know 
 myself where it will lead me." 
 
 I spoke about the two forms of conversion — ^the 
 swift and sudden turning about, the slow and 
 gradual turning round. 
 
 " Yes, I know," he repHed ; " there are the 
 two things. I've heard about sudden moments of 
 illumination, flashes of light, and immediate new 
 birth ; but nothing like that has occurred to me. 
 No ; it's altogether different. And it's going on 
 now, just as I suppose most men feel that their 
 spiritual life is a gradual matter, an evolution, an 
 approach to something always ahead. It began 
 with me the very moment I entered the Association, 
 deepened as I saw the hfe Hved by the men, and it 
 came to something rather big and something rather 
 beautiful, one night, at a service, in the Association's 
 room. There was a man who gave an address ; 
 it touched me ; there were one or two stories in 
 it that really did move me ; and afterwards he 
 came and spoke to me ; we were there, I think, 
 till after midnight, alone together. And — ^well, you 
 know that phrase about giving the heart to God ? 
 I think I did that then. WeU, I know I did. I 
 did, that night, give my heart to God." 
 
 He paused for some time. 
 
THE ACCIDENTS OF LIFE 91 
 
 " Nothing happened," he continued, " except 
 a feehng that I had done what was right, and that 
 the thing would work itself out. It's working itself 
 out now. There is a difference in me, but I can't 
 define it. I can only tell you that I am happy, 
 and that I look back on all that I went through as 
 something that was necessary. It has a meaning 
 for me. Perhaps that is my illumination — the 
 feehng that everything in life is Hnked up and that 
 God is at work. There are no accidents. But we 
 can't explain these ideas, these feelings, which 
 swim in the soul. They are there, and if we let them, 
 they will control us." 
 
 Very soon after this deHverance from despair, 
 and this turning about to the hght, he received a 
 letter in answer to an application he had made 
 months before for a situation on a provincial news- 
 paper. 
 
 " That is another thing," he said, " that struck me 
 as mysterious. I saw the advertisement in a paper 
 when I was beginning to go rather badly down ; I 
 spent a penny on answering it, and the next day 
 forgot aU about it. If the answer had come at once, 
 I should never have had this experience of con- 
 version ; and it has come just when I want it. 
 Of course, it may only be coincidence. But it 
 seems mysterious. At any rate, I feel certain that 
 things have happened to me from outside myself. 
 And I can't believe that there are any accidents." 
 
 However far he may be from the " central 
 touch," the absolute union of the soul, at any rate 
 he has escaped from the isolation of his former hfe. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 A BAD HAT 
 
 AT the age of seventeen he was sent out to 
 - Canada. His parents felt that England 
 was not big enough for his energies. " All I hope 
 is this," said the father, " that you won't Hve to 
 be hanged." He had once thrown a table-knife at 
 his mother. 
 
 He is a man of forty, bright, alert, and animated. 
 His appearance is decidedly handsome, and he 
 rather lays himself out, one thinks, to heighten 
 these natural advantages. He is very well dressed, 
 carefully groomed, and suggests prosperous circum- 
 stances — perhaps a good conceit as well. You 
 would pass him in the street for a successful stock- 
 broker. I really do not think that one man in a 
 miUion would guess for a single instant that the 
 extraordinary thing had happened to him. 
 
 " When I went to Canada," he told me, " the 
 only bad things about me were temper and a love 
 of devilry for its own sake. My temper started 
 when I was quite a chicken. I was turned out of 
 the Sunday-school again and again ; I had rather 
 a decent voice and sang in the church choir, but 
 they hoofed me out of that as well. I was for 
 ever doing wild things, and then rushing into a 
 
 d2 
 
A BAD HAT 93 
 
 blazing temper directly I was called to account. 
 But I had moments of remarkable gentleness ; 
 there were times when I was even tender and 
 affectionate, particularly with my mother. It 
 used to be a saying with my father that I was 
 either a Hon or a lamb. In my gentle moments I 
 wanted to be good ; in my wild moments I had 
 but one single concern, and that was to keep out 
 of prison. I didn't care what I did, so long as I 
 was not laid by the heels." 
 
 I asked him if the rehgion he was taught in 
 Sunday-school, and the religion he heard about in 
 church, had had any conscious effect upon his mind. 
 
 " I don't think," he rephed, " it made the smallest 
 difference to me. In Sunday-school I was always 
 thinking of larks and mischief ; and in church, 
 beyond the singing, which simply interested me 
 as singing, I was only bored to death by the repe- 
 tition of prayers and the intolerable length of the 
 sermons. I went to church far too often to care 
 about it. At last it got on my nerves, and I didn't 
 go at aU." 
 
 Then he told me about the change which came 
 over him in America. 
 
 " I worked on a line of steamers among the 
 lakes. It was a wild part of the world. My mates 
 represented every class of Enghshman. Some 
 were scholars, some were gentlemen, some were 
 working-men ; and the whole crowd of them were 
 blackguards. They thought of absolutely nothing 
 but drink and vice. There was one Uttle station 
 on a certain lake where all the houses were occu- 
 pied by women who were far more Hke fiends than 
 
94 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 human beings. Men used to go there from the 
 neighbouring towns. When any of our fellows 
 rowed out, the women would come right into the 
 water to meet them, wearing no clothes at aU. . . . 
 " I soon got sick of hfe aboard ship, and managed 
 to get some work in the States. Someone recom- 
 mended me to a boarding-house in the town where 
 my job lay. It was managed by a woman whose 
 husband was an old humpbacked veteran, half silly 
 or, at any rate, unnaturally quiet and self-absorbed. 
 He used to sit all day in a rocking-chair on the 
 verandah, one leg over the arm, swinging himself 
 slowly to and fro, a sad, far-away sort of smile on 
 his face, his eyes looking straight ahead of him — 
 a most queer and sad old man. And his wife — well, 
 she was a demon. That woman got hold of me, 
 and I was powerless in her hands. Not only that, 
 there were two unmarried girls in the house, and 
 they were just as bad as the woman. . . . When 
 I look back now, I see that that house was like 
 heU. I didn't think so at first, and I didn't see 
 it as it reaUy was even when I left. I used to 
 laugh at the poor old humpbacked man in the 
 rocking-chair. I was proud of my attractions. 
 Life seemed to me, at first, highly amusing and 
 exciting. I was young, tremendously strong, and 
 fancied my good looks. Besides this, I was some- 
 thing of a fighting-man, and took pride in making 
 myself cock of the walk. I Uked to feel that men 
 feared me. I hked to know that I was pointed out 
 as a terror. I worked hard, made money, and 
 lived Hke a real bad one. Those who called me 
 a bad hat weren't far out. 
 
A BAD HAT 95 
 
 " Of course, I never once thought of going to 
 church. For one reason, there was not a single 
 white man's church in the place. There were a 
 few nigger churches about, and I would sometimes 
 go there with a friend or two, just for the fun of 
 hearing a nigger preach. We used to make game 
 of the poor fellows, used to laugh at them, just 
 as if we were in a theatre. Religion didn't occupy 
 my mind in any way, and this nigger religion only 
 seemed to me a thing for amusement. 
 
 " But after some months, nearly a year, I was 
 suddenly visited by the most intense feeling of 
 home-sickness. I can't tell you how it came, and 
 perhaps the cause was only physical exhaustion, 
 but anyhow I felt such a tugging of my heart home- 
 wards as was absolutely irresistible. I got to hate 
 the town, to hate my work, to hate the saloons, 
 and to loathe — oh yes, to loathe — those women 
 and the boarding-house. It became unbearable. 
 The feehng that I must go home was most intense. 
 
 " One day I sold everything up, and started 
 home. There was nothing in my heart of repent- 
 ance, no shame for the life I had been living, no 
 desire for goodness. I was simply filled with a 
 giant disgust, a feeling that I must get away, a 
 kind of ravenous hunger to be home in England. 
 That was all. But looking back now I see what 
 was really happening to me at that time. It was 
 the beginning of a most marvellous mercy. 
 
 " Well, I got home at last, welcomed with tears 
 of rejoicing by my mother, and not too warmly 
 received by my father. However, I had sobered 
 down a bit, and soon made it clear that I intended 
 
96 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 to get work and stick to it. My father was evi- 
 dently relieved by this change in me. He took 
 steps to help me, and at the age of twenty I found 
 myself in the employ of Government. 
 
 *' For some months I hved a more or less regular 
 Hfe, my only real trial that hotness of temper which 
 seemed to get worse the more virtuously and tem- 
 perately I lived. At the sHghtest provocation I 
 would hit a man, and many a big fight marked my 
 calendar of those days. I don't suppose anybody 
 but a man who has suffered in this way can under- 
 stand the violence and savagery of a really fiery 
 temper. The smallest thing sets the blood boihng. 
 The least contradiction in an argument is in- 
 sufferable. Let one little thing go wrong in dress- 
 ing or in eating or in working, and you want to 
 chuck the whole caboodle out of the window. 
 
 " There was an old man working close at my side 
 in this Government office, a really dear old fellow, 
 who quite quietly, quite gradually, estabUshed a 
 feeling of friendship in my heart. I got to like 
 him, and we would talk together, and look at each 
 other as men do when there is an understanding of 
 soul between them. We would go out to luncheon 
 together. He used to ask me about Canada and the 
 States. I told him stories and he would listen with 
 interest. Gradually, and I cannot recall how it 
 came about, the dear old man used to talk about 
 life and conduct, about the difference between 
 goodness and wickedness. I was interested, and 
 gave my opinion in the downright fashion which 
 characterised my manner in those days. He never 
 showed the least resentment, and would listen 
 
A BAD HAT 97 
 
 patiently, and reply very gently, always like a 
 man of the world who is not easily shocked or un- 
 naturally good. 
 
 " But one day he said to me, ' Why don't you 
 come with me to the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
 ciation ? Do you know, I think you'd enjoy it. 
 There are some very pleasant fellows up there, and 
 we get some really good intelligent conversations.' 
 The name. Young Men's Christian Association, gave 
 me a kind of shudder. I almost laughed ; I almost 
 scoffed. But he went on speaking so simply and 
 naturally, that I forgot this first feeling, and finally 
 said I would go with him one day. To this he 
 answered, ' There's an Indian missionary over here 
 just now, a very fine man, a Hindu Christian ; he 
 is speaking at Exeter Hall on the Opium Question ; 
 you ought to hear him. — Wliat do you say if 
 we go to-morrow in the dinner-hour ? ' I said, 
 ' All right ; if you're going, I'll go with you ' ; and 
 never gave the matter another thought till next day. 
 
 " And that next day was the beginning of my 
 awakening. The Hindu was a fine speaker, and a 
 very impressive man altogether. As I sat and 
 listened to him I was fascinated. Then the horror 
 of opium seized upon me. Then the thought that 
 England, my country, was concerned in the trade, 
 set me on fire with indignation. My blood began 
 to boil. I wanted to start off then and there, to 
 fight the devihsh thing. I could see the homes of 
 men and women brought to desolation by the 
 poisonous drug, I could see children turned out 
 upon the road to die of starvation, I could see the 
 souls of milUons going down to perdition, rotten 
 
98 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 and corrupted and destroyed. And England made 
 
 money out of it. Not only permitted it, but profited 
 
 by it — profited by the ruin of millions of helpless 
 
 men. I tell you, my blood was on fire. I wanted to 
 
 start up, then and there, and be off to do something. 
 
 I didn't think what, but anything to stop this most 
 
 damnable shame." 
 
 He had never thought, in the midst of his own 
 
 sins, how he dragged souls down to ruin. It had 
 
 never occurred to him that he had responsibiHty 
 
 towards those who tempted him and to whose 
 
 temptations he so readily yielded. He had never 
 
 once experienced the agony of that emotion which 
 
 cried out to God from the soul of a saint — 
 
 Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won 
 Others to sin, and made my sin their door ? 
 
 But now, confronted with the thousandfold desola- 
 tions wrought by a sin in which he had never shared, 
 his soul revolted, and he was consumed with a 
 passionate indignation. He ranged himself incon- 
 tinently on the side of righteousness. He was ready, 
 on the instant, to rise up and strike for God. 
 
 From that moment he was facing in the right 
 direction. It is clear that his eyes were not yet 
 opened, that his heart was far from being cleansed, 
 and that the mystery of the new birth had not yet 
 changed and transformed his whole nature. Never- 
 theless, in the sense that he had swung clean round, 
 was no longer facing away from God, but was facing 
 towards God, he was at that moment converted. 
 The fuU conversion of spirit was soon to follow. 
 
 For a week he talked to his old friend at the 
 Government office about the Opium Trade, about 
 
A BAD HAT 99 
 
 Christianity, about the life of the soul. At the 
 end of this period, willingly and eagerly, he accom- 
 panied his friend to a spiritual meeting of the Young 
 Men's Christian Association. 
 
 The speaker on this occasion dealt with the neces- 
 sity for a hfe of service. 
 
 " One word," the man told me, " rang through 
 all he said. It was the word Work. He insisted 
 again and again that no man could truly be said 
 to love Christ who did not work for Him. Any 
 man who deeply realised that the beautiful and 
 holy Christ was his Saviour and his Redeemer, 
 would work for Him and fight for Him against the 
 hosts of evil. 
 
 " That word Work stuck in my mind. It seemed 
 to be echoing itself in my soul. All the time he 
 was speaking I was saying to myself, Work, work, 
 work — knowing that it was true, and wondering 
 how I could work for Christ. I wanted to work. 
 I was eager to do something. But I couldn't see 
 what I should do. It was perfectly clear to me, 
 as clear as daylight, that if a man really once felt 
 that he owed Christ an immense debt, he would 
 work day and night for his triumph over sin. That 
 was quite clear. But how to work, what kind of 
 work — that puzzled me. 
 
 " After the address came a prayer, and in the 
 prayer was the word armour. Man had to put on 
 the whole armour of Christ. Before he could do 
 anything for his Saviour, before he could safely 
 attack the enemy, he had to put on that Saviour's 
 armour. I remember, as if it was yesterday, the 
 question springing up in my mind, Have I got that 
 
100 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 armour ? It was like a sudden cry of, ' Hands up ! ' 
 on a dark road. It jerked me right back upon myself. 
 I was startled, confused, frightened. I felt abso- 
 lutely helpless. 
 
 " Then it dawned upon me, and it must have 
 been a message from God, that the armour of 
 Christ was faith — faith in Him as Saviour and 
 Redeemer. Difficulties against believing that came 
 crowding into my soul, like a swarm of living 
 things. For a moment I was bewildered. How 
 could I believe when I didn't believe ? What was 
 the use of saying I would have faith in Christ as 
 my Saviour and Redeemer when the faith was 
 absent from my brain ? While these chaotic 
 thoughts were chasing themselves about in my 
 troubled mind I realised, all of a sudden, that the 
 soul could seize upon faith, seize it and hold it by 
 one tremendous effort, in spite of every difficulty 
 in the mind. As I reafised that, I asked myself 
 if I had strength for the effort. I remembered my 
 sins. I felt my infamy and guilt. I was conscious 
 of a great need for a Saviour. Then I knew I had 
 strength for the effort. 
 
 " There was a caU at the end of the meeting for 
 those who felt their need of a Saviour to stand up 
 and make their Decision then and there. I stood 
 up. The very act of getting up, publicly getting 
 up, and by the very fact of standing up pubficly 
 confessing my need for a Saviour, seemed to change 
 my whole nature. At that moment I was converted. 
 There is no question about it, no getting away from 
 the fact, and no possibility of thinking that I de- 
 ceived myself. And I wiU tell you why I say that. 
 
A BAD HAT 101 
 
 If only my ordinary sins had ceased from that 
 moment I might perhaps be tempted to think that 
 just deep emotion produced some kind of change 
 in my mind which a psychologist could explain. 
 But something much more wonderful occurred to me, 
 and occurred instantaneously — something that no 
 psychologist can explain, and no psychologist, un- 
 less he is a Christian, can understand. From that 
 moment my temper departed, like a devil cast out 
 by the power of God. 
 
 " That was what staggered me, and even now, 
 all these long years afterwards, I look back with 
 amazement on that tremendous miracle. For I 
 beheve truly that I was one of the hottest-tempered 
 men that ever lived. My temper was infinitely 
 worse than all my other sins lumped together. I 
 was sensual enough, God knows, but not ever- 
 lastingly ; there were periods when the very thought 
 of such sins disgusted me and made me feel sick ; 
 I was never wholly unconscious of the pleasure which 
 comes from wholesome exercise and manly sports 
 and clean habits. But my temper was the very 
 core of me. It was my life's blood, the beat of my 
 heart, the pulsation of my brain. I simply couldn't 
 brook interference. Authority was galhng to me. 
 A man had on]y to offer me the slightest insult to 
 get my fist in his face. As to forgiving an injury — 
 why, I should have laughed at such a thing. 
 
 " But conversion changed me — instantaneously, 
 mind you — into absolute peace of mind. I lost all 
 sense of heat and tempest and obstruction. Life 
 was clear sailing. I could see far ahead of me, and 
 was easy in my mind, as easy as a little child. 
 
102 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 " To show you how complete was the change. 
 At this time my old friend joined a society which 
 worked for abstinence from alcohol and tobacco. 
 Men who belonged to it wore in their button- 
 holes a little blue ribbon with a white line down the 
 centre. Well, he got me to join. I had liked drink, 
 and I was a great smoker ; but I experienced 
 no difficulty in giving up both these habits. I 
 wore the ribbon in my coat. Immediately, I be- 
 came the target for jokes among the other men at 
 the office. They saw I was converted, lost their 
 former fear of me, and took advantage of my re- 
 ligion to tease and chaff and even mock me. Well, 
 I never minded it in the least. And only a few 
 days before, mind you, I should have been all over 
 them in a moment ! " 
 
 He smiled and looked at me with the very straight 
 gaze of a hard-punching man, the teeth locked, the 
 chin protruded, a nod of the head giving emphasis 
 to the words, " I should have been aU over them 
 in a moment." 
 
 The strange story of this man's eventful life does 
 not end with his conversion. He became a member 
 of a London church, and there fell in with a beauti- 
 ful and noble girl for whom he speedily contracted 
 a great affection. She was destined to exert a re- 
 markable influence on his life. 
 
 There was in her rich and noble nature something 
 of that depth and mysticism which make the earhest 
 women of Methodism as beautiful in modern eyes 
 as the most enchanting of the medieval saints. 
 Her whole character had the spiritual atmosphere 
 of Adam Bede. To the sweetness and humanity of 
 
A BAD HAT 103 
 
 her nature was added a profound tenderness, an 
 almost sorrowful beauty of faith which conferred 
 upon her presence and breathed from her personality 
 something sacred and exalted. In the midst of 
 modern London, surrounded by all the vulgarity 
 and coarseness of our period, this noble girl hved an 
 existence of beauty and tranquillity. 
 
 As soon as he became engaged to such an inspiring 
 creature, the man was filled with desire for a wider 
 and more splendid life. London became oppressive 
 to him. The darlaiess, the poverty, the tragedy, 
 the sunken degradation, misery, and destitution 
 which crowd upon the soul from every side of the 
 vast unhappy city, grew intolerable to his heart and 
 brain. 
 
 " I could feel Canada calling to me," he said, 
 " just as if it was a human being calhng to me by 
 name across the sea. Honestly, it was just like a 
 voice, a human voice. And I longed to go, simply 
 longed to shake the dust of London off my feet, and 
 get out there at once — into the big, wholesome land 
 with its pure air and its clean skies." 
 
 He told his desire to her whom it most con- 
 cerned. He was surprised to find that she made 
 no appeal for him to stay. Her dark, haunting 
 eyes regarded him with quiet searching for a mo- 
 ment, and then she said, " Yes, go ; it is a good 
 move ; it will bring a blessing." He spoke of his 
 hopes about getting land near the railway, hundreds 
 of acres of land, and making a comfortable income 
 as a farmer ; they would be wonderfully happy 
 together. She smiled, and listened, and said 
 nothing till the end. Then she said to him, " Will 
 
104 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 you promise me one thing ? — ^Whatever happens 
 to you, good fortune or bad fortune, promise me 
 that you will never lose your faith. Keey believing. 
 Keep 'believing.'''' She smiled at him, and added, 
 " That is our motto, yours over there and mine 
 waiting here. Keep believing ! " 
 
 A friend of his had the same inchnation towards 
 Canada. This man was a fine and splendid charac- 
 ter, just the very partner one would desire for a new 
 venture. He was an ordinary upright and pro- 
 fessing Christian, but had never experienced a pro- 
 found change of heart. For the rest, he was a 
 steady, moral, industrious, and ambitious man — 
 the very salt of those who carry England's best 
 traditions into other lands. 
 
 The two started together. Arrived in Canada, 
 one went one way and one the other, prospecting 
 for land. The man whose story I am telling was 
 struck down by an attack of rheumatic fever soon 
 after this separated quest had begun. Letters from 
 the saint in England had regularly arrived with 
 two httle capitals in the corner of the envelope — 
 ''K.B." And at the end of each letter those same 
 two capitals always appeared below the signature, 
 the last message from her soul. The man took to 
 his bed, determined to keep his promise. His letters 
 and envelopes, too, had always carried that signal 
 back to England. He was strong and steadfast. 
 At all costs, he would Keep Believing. 
 
 The time came when fever carried his conscious- 
 ness into the region of delirium. He was lying in 
 the bedroom of an hotel that had not long been 
 built and yet was almost as old as the town in 
 
A BAD HAT 105 
 
 which it flourished. His bedroom window opened 
 on the pubhc square. All day long a procession of 
 vehicles passed across this centre of a new market. 
 At night, when the whole place blazed with electric 
 light, the square was very often discordant with 
 drunken voices and the sound of degradation 
 striving to sing itself into happiness. 
 
 The man who had put on the whole armour of 
 Christ lay and tossed on his bed, doctors and 
 nurses watching the struggle of his soul. 
 
 One afternoon familiar music came to his ears. 
 He listened intently. The music became clear. He 
 realised that it was close at hand, just outside and 
 below his window. He had no notion why he lay 
 in bed, nor where he was ; but he listened to the 
 music, glad that it was so near. It was a hymn. 
 Above the din of the band he could hear the voices 
 of men and women, singing words which he knew 
 by heart. 
 
 " I don't know how to tell you what that hymn 
 did for me," he said thoughtfully. " It was some- 
 thing very quiet and beautiful ; it seemed to flow 
 into my soul with a message of peace, and to touch 
 me, at the very heart of my being, with the thought 
 of God's Presence. I seemed too, at that very 
 moment, to know all that had happened to me. I 
 turned to the nurse and asked what band was 
 playing. She replied, ' Oh, it's only one of those 
 Missions ; does it worry you ? ' I smiled, and said, 
 ' No ; it doesn't worry me.' Then I closed my eyes 
 and lay thinking. 
 
 " Without any excitement or wonder in my 
 mind, I knew then and there what I had got to do. 
 
106 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 Without surprise, I found that all my plans and 
 ambitions had vanished. I accepted, without the 
 smallest demur, my new destiny. And it seemed 
 the most beautiful thing that had come to me. 
 I was going to give up everything, embrace poverty, 
 and become a missioner. 
 
 " The next day as I lay in bed, with closed eyes, 
 thinking of this new life, I heard the doctors whisper- 
 ing together and expressing doubts as to my re- 
 covery. I learned afterwards that it was a special 
 consultation ; there were no fewer than five doctors, 
 for I was on the very verge of death. I opened my 
 eyes, looked at the doctors, smiled, and said, 
 ' Don't be anxious ; I'm not going to die ; my life 
 has only just begun ! ' It was no utterance of 
 delirium. I remember saying it. And I meant it. 
 I felt that I had been born again. 
 
 " Directly I got well, and was able to walk, I went 
 to the local Mission and offered myself for ser- 
 vice. I wrote home and told the news. I knew 
 that whatever happened, however it was received, 
 I should have to go on. I looked that sacrifice in 
 the face, and was prepared to make it. Everything 
 seemed ordered for me, as if it must be and had 
 to be. 
 
 " One thing puzzled me, and that concerned my 
 friend. He had not returned, nor sent me a line. 
 I wanted to write and teU him of this great altera- 
 tion in my ideas, to prepare him for the change in 
 his plans which, of course, it entailed ; but I didn't 
 know where to find him. 
 
 " Then a strange thing, an extraordinary thing, 
 occurred. My friend arrived and announced that 
 
A BAD HAT 107 
 
 he had abandoned all idea of farming, as he had been 
 greatly influenced by the same Mission in British 
 Columbia and intended to give up his life to that 
 service. While I had come to a similar resolution 
 in Eastern Canada, he — unconverted till that mo- 
 ment — had surrendered to the same influence in 
 Western Canada, nearly four thousand miles away ! 
 We had both gone to Canada, keen and ambitious 
 young men, to make our fortunes, and thinking of 
 little else. We had discussed again and again our 
 plans, our schemes, our hopes. We had talked 
 grain, stock, implements, and labour for months 
 together. And now — at our first meeting after a 
 separation to fulfil all these fine dreams — we each 
 discovered that the other partner had determined 
 to become a missioner ! 
 
 " When I received the anxiously awaited letter 
 from home I was still further startled by the 
 mysterious. She knew I should not become a 
 farmer, she wrote, and she knew that I would 
 become a missioner. She had been perfectly cer- 
 tain of this before I started, and it was what 
 she herself desired above anything else. But there 
 was bad news in this letter as well. Her parents 
 would not hear of her marriage to a missioner, 
 and would not permit her to become a missioner 
 either in England or Canada. However, she com- 
 forted me by saying that everything would pre- 
 sently work out as we both wished, and she con- 
 cluded with a strong and underlined * K.B.,' which 
 now had an interpretation for my heart as well as 
 for my soul. I tell you I clung to that ' K.B.' 
 with both hands ! 
 
108 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 " And all turned out weU. Her parents yielded ; 
 I sent home the money for her passage ; and she 
 came out to me, longing, simply longing, for the 
 work. She made a magnificent sister of mercy. 
 For nearly nine years we Uved and laboured in 
 America, getting to know the human heart and the 
 tragedy of hfe as neither of us knew it before, for 
 our work lay among the broken men of all classes 
 who turn to a rehgious Mission for help when they 
 get right down to rock level. We worked both in 
 Canada and the States. Sometimes it was thrilling 
 work ; sometimes encouraging ; sometimes heart- 
 breaking ; but all through my wife was simply 
 splendid, and absolutely gave herself up to it. Her 
 faith — well, I've never come across anything hke it. 
 It seems as if she knows what God is going to do." 
 
 The rest of the story is an uneventful history of 
 development and progress. An opportunity for very 
 much more extended and responsible work among 
 outcasts and miserables presented itself after these 
 nine years in America. 
 
 For eight years the man was a great and 
 steady force in an agency which deals with social 
 failures. By his influence the entirely social and 
 humanitarian nature of this work was given a re- 
 ligious consecration. He did a noble work among 
 thousands and tens of thousands of unhappy people. 
 
 And now he occupies a high and responsible 
 position in one of the great trading concerns of the 
 empire ; but one of those undertakings which even 
 while they remain purely commercial play an enor- 
 mous part in the restoration of fallen and degraded 
 manhood. His work still Hes with helping the weak. 
 
A BAD HAT 109 
 
 " No one," he once said to me, speaking of his 
 life's work, " could see such misery and wreckage 
 as I have seen, and am Mkely to see till the end 
 of my days, without coming to the conclusion that 
 the most serious thing in the whole world is sin. 
 People who make light of sin can really know nothing 
 of the world. Its consequences are something fright- 
 ful. They cannot be exaggerated. And it's not 
 only such obvious things as drink, gambling, and 
 sensuality in general, but what are called spiritual 
 sins — pride, selfishness, snobbery, vanity, and miser- 
 liness — they, too, very often, more often than people 
 think, drag human nature down into dirty water, 
 very dirty water. 
 
 " And I'll teU you something else I'm certain 
 about, after a pretty long and varied experience. 
 The very means which society employs to minister 
 to misery, without religion, can be turned by misery 
 against society, for its own undoing. Take, for one 
 instance, the model, municipal, and charitable 
 lodging-houses which are now being set up all over 
 the place. On the face of it they are perfectly 
 splendid ; nothing could be better ; compared with 
 the old and horrible doss-house they are like heaven. 
 But go inside, talk to the men you find there ! Do 
 you think they want to reform ? Not they ! Do 
 you think they are conscious of shame ? Not a 
 bit of it ! Do you think they are making a single 
 effort to become good and useful citizens ? Not 
 one in a hundred ! Why ? — because it's all made 
 so very cheap and comfortable for them. A man 
 can nowadays slip away from his wife and children, 
 burrow into one of these fine houses, be lost to all 
 
110 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 who know him, and support himself quite easily, 
 like a prince, on an hour's work in the market or 
 three hours' cadging in the streets. They hve better, 
 these fellows, a jolly sight better, than the honest 
 workman who has to rent a house and support a 
 family. 
 
 " Religion is the one means whereby a man can 
 be changed from bad to good. Charity tan change 
 him from poor to rich ; philanthropy can change 
 him from hungry to filled ; county councils and 
 local rates can change him from homeless to housed ; 
 but nothmg except religion can change him from 
 bad to good. Let society try, and see if they can 
 do it. 
 
 " And, of course, I don't mean a merely formal 
 religion. That's not a bit of good ; indeed, 1 really 
 think it's worse than useless — for it angers and 
 embitters miserable and degraded men, it makes 
 them mock. But the religion that goes straight 
 for the heart of a man, that tells him his peril, that 
 is not content with a lip profession of faith, but 
 insists on a cleansed heart, a changed nature, and 
 a converted so^.il- that's the religion which alone 
 can hft the fallen and restore the lost. 
 
 " It seems to me that some people are afraid to 
 say anything nowadays of the chief thing that makes 
 rehgion a Hving fact and the supreme mystery of 
 existence. They^re afraid of the miracle. 
 
 " Why ! without conversion rehgion is nothing 
 more tha?i a j)uilosophy. And imagine taking 
 philosophy into a prison, a lodging-house, a gin- 
 palace, or a brothel ! 
 
 " But yon c.ixn take Christ there." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 THE PROFESSIONAL AMATEUR 
 
 THERE is a precision about this man which is 
 bracing and invigorating. He holds his head 
 well, is fresh-coloured, keen-looking, has a trick of 
 voice which is penetrating and incisive, speaks to 
 the point, is alert and watchful. You imagine that 
 he never yawns. You cannot picture him collapsed 
 and dishevelled in a chair. As I talked to him it 
 occurred to me that an ingenious treatise might be 
 written on the Psychology of a Rigid Backbone. 
 
 As a boy he must have been one of those of 
 whom nurses say that " it pays to wash." I am not 
 satisfied to declare of him as a man that he is well 
 groomed ; I desire to add that he is well tubbed 
 or well soaped. He has the appearance of one 
 fresh from the Turkish bath and more than ready 
 for a meal. A keen man. 
 
 As certainly as the profession of priest or soldier 
 sets its seal upon a man's countenance, the pro- 
 fession of the law has set its seal upon the face of 
 this fresh-coloured and trenchant gentleman of my 
 story. He is a barrister. One could never mistake 
 him for merchant or doctor or engineer. 
 
 The tale of his life is what one would expect from 
 his appearance, save for one incident, and even that 
 
 111 
 
112 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 is not bold in the miracle. He looks like a pro- 
 fessional man who from the first has kept a straight 
 course, who has never turned aside by the breadth 
 of a hair from the goal of his ambition, and who 
 will continue to his hfe's end the fixed and rigid 
 habits of his mind. It would not easily occur to a 
 casual observer that this man is an amateur minister 
 of religion, or that his whole Hfe is consecrated 
 by rehgious idealism. It certainly would not occur 
 to a casual observer that this alert and vigorous 
 man devotes a great part of his Hfe to saving his 
 fellow-creatures from sin, and that he has been the 
 human means of rescuing many from the greatest 
 peril of soul. 
 
 He came to London from a country home, and 
 settled down in chambers to prepare for the Bar, 
 The home was religious. He was born and bred 
 a Churchman, and remains a Churchman to the 
 present day. But at the time of his coming to 
 London religion was only one of his good habits. 
 He had no enthusiasm for the subject. He had 
 reaUy never deeply considered it. 
 
 Among the men with whom he came into contact 
 were many who had no sense of rehgion at aU, 
 and were disposed to live very much in defiance 
 of religious principles. Untempted by these men, 
 and as much shocked by the carelessness with which 
 they prosecuted their studies as by the general moral 
 tone of their characters, he was conscious in their 
 society of a feehng of loneliness and isolation. 
 
 He was distinctly unhappy. 
 
 There was, apparently, no risk that he would 
 form coarse or vulgar habits, no peril that he would 
 
THE PROFESSIONAL AMATEUR 113 
 
 faU into actual sin. But in the society of these men 
 who were entirely without the sense of seriousness, 
 whose conversation was rather base and con- 
 temptible, who were given to gambling and the 
 sin which some suppose is inevitable to youth in 
 crowded cities, he was exposed to the risk of an 
 indirect contamination, and might easily have come 
 to entertain views of religion disastrous to a really 
 noble life. 
 
 His story helps one to see clearly a truth often 
 obscured by crude thinking. Sin is not beaten only 
 when it is withstood ; the dangers of bad influence 
 are by no means confined to the seduction of souls 
 into acts of sin ; it is possible for a man to be pure, 
 honest, upright, and industrious, and yet corrupted 
 by iniquit}^ And this indeed is one of the first 
 lessons that a wise man would impress upon the 
 mind of a son whom he greatly loved. He would 
 warn him against that contagion of sin which, while 
 it leaves the heart unspotted, paralyses the activities 
 of the soul. How many men hve reputable and 
 moral lives, in whom the soul is almost destroyed, 
 or at any rate completely paralysed ? I tliink the 
 host of such men is weU-nigh as numerous as the 
 host of reckless wrong-doers. And the Hfe of their 
 soul has been thus poisoned or destroyed by the 
 contamination of surrounding iniquity — the atmo- 
 sphere in which sin thrives of a flippant frivohty, 
 a wholesale irresponsibility, a contempt for the 
 rehgious life, an indifference to the whole region of 
 spirit. They consider that it is no good to think 
 about God and no use to bother themselves with 
 the open question of immortality. And so imagina- 
 
114 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 tion withers at its roots, existence dwindles to the 
 petty round of the individual ambition, and the 
 mind shuts and bolts its doors against mystery. 
 
 Difficult is it for such men to understand the 
 meaning of MaeterHnck's thought — " It is not 
 unreasonable to believe that the paramount interest 
 of life, all that is truly lofty and remarkable in the 
 destiny of man, reposes almost entirely in the 
 mystery that surrounds us." 
 
 It is no exaggeration, but a veritable truth of 
 existence, to say that the hobbies, fads, and recrea- 
 tions of respectable people ma}^ be just as destructive 
 of the spiritual life as tlie crimes and excesses of the 
 disreputable. A man whose whole life is absorbed 
 in the cult of old china, the growing of roses, the 
 breeding of dogs, or the collection of postage- 
 stamps will suffer as utterly in his spiritual existence 
 as the man abandoned to sensuality. In one case 
 the soul is murdered ; in the other it is starved. 
 
 The danger of this particular man was not moral, 
 but spiritual. He had none of those propulsions 
 towards vice which drive other men so easily into 
 vulgar sins. His nature, one might almost say, was 
 sinless. Sin had no attraction for him. He was 
 untempted. There was in his nature a fineness of 
 feeling, a delicacy of refinement, which held him 
 not merely free from sin, but superior to sin. 
 Still, he was in peril. The society into which he 
 was thrown had strength enough to destroy in a 
 more Christian man than this the beauty and the 
 purity and the enthusiasm of the rehgious Hfe. He 
 might easily have abandoned church-going, forgotten 
 that he possessed a Bible, given up the habit of 
 
THE PROFESSIONAL AMATEUR 115 
 
 prayer, and drifted into the dull and inactive ranks 
 of agnosticism, or at any rate of indifference. 
 
 He was in a rather depressed and unhappy state of 
 mind, when he came across a man of his own age 
 who happened to introduce the subject of religion 
 into their conversation. This man mentioned 
 certain churches in London, certain preachers, and 
 suggested that they should go together on the 
 following Sunday to hear a particular man. A 
 friendship was in this way estabhshed, and the 
 feeling of loneliness somewhat abated in the mind 
 of the young barrister. But he was, nevertheless, 
 afflicted from time to time by a sense of something 
 lacking in his life, some void which at present 
 nothing had begun to fill. He sought by regular 
 attendance at church, by earnest prayer, and by 
 industry at his work, to get rid of this uneasiness 
 of mind. Sometimes he thought he had succeeded. 
 But eventually the feeling returned — a feeHng of 
 vague unrest. 
 
 His friend spoke to him one day of certain men 
 actively engaged in the work of the Young Men's 
 Christian Association at Exeter Hall in the Strand, 
 He became interested, and expressed a desire to 
 visit the hall and make acquaintance with the work 
 of the Association. The very first experience of this 
 company induced him to become a member of the 
 Association, and he at once began to take a quiet 
 and humble part in the missionary adventures of 
 the Brotherhood. He was happy in having found 
 congenial companionships, and stiU happier in 
 having discovered a field for work. 
 
 From the young barristers who surrounded his 
 
116 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 life he came in for the usual amount of banter 
 and ridicule. It was sometimes hard to bear, 
 but never intolerable. It was irritating and annoy- 
 ing, but not cruel. 
 
 Something in this chaffing opposition of the 
 world prevented him, apparently, from losing aU 
 sense of self in the work of the Association. He was 
 by no means conscious of doubt, by no means 
 tempted towards infidehty ; but, thoroughly believing 
 and earnestly working, he was aware of the world 
 and conscious in his soul of something he knew 
 not what which came between himself and peace. 
 
 The one incident in his religious experience which 
 touches the miracle occurred at this period. He 
 was walking swiftly and happily one day to a 
 meeting of the Association, when he suddenly felt 
 himself stopped in the street, and found himself 
 cross-examined, as it were, by his own soul. There 
 in the London streets, jostled by a procession of 
 passers-by, he stopped dead, and his soul asked him 
 a question : Was he going to that meeting to hear 
 an address, to meet friends, to pass his time away ? 
 or was he going there because he belonged to Christ 
 and desired to serve Him ? 
 
 Such was the question that faced him as he stood 
 in the street, and would not let him go on till it 
 was answered. Those acquainted with the varieties 
 of rehgious experience will recognise in this arrest 
 of the whole body by a sudden activity of the 
 conscience the features of a common occurrence. 
 A self divided, if it be but dimly aware of the 
 division, dimly conscious of two influences in the 
 mind, can never rest, never be satisfied, till the 
 
THE PROFESSIONAL AMATEUR 117 
 
 soul has decided one way or the other. The word 
 decision is one of the most important in the literature 
 of religious experience. It is almost a synonym 
 for conversion. There is in the soul of a man 
 once awake to religious impulses, but still resting his 
 head on the pillow of his former habits, a hunger 
 and a longing for decision which presses for satis- 
 faction with enormous weight on the whole of the 
 moral nature. The soul feels the need for absolute 
 decision, but cannot bring itself to rise and stand 
 upright. It fences and prevaricates. It turns 
 this way and that, to think it over. But the pressure 
 increases. Up ! — up ! — nothing wiU happen while 
 you he stiU ; come to the penitent form, stand up 
 in the midst of the meeting, or kneel down here in 
 the solitude of your room — anything so long as it is 
 action, anything so long as it is decision, anything 
 so long as it is not meditation, vacillation, a 
 balancing of this and that. 
 
 I have heard from the Hps of numerous men, 
 representing many classes in the community and 
 many degrees of culture, the phrase, " When I 
 decided for Christ. ..." Until I heard it from 
 real men, whose souls woke in me a sincere admira- 
 tion, I had the feeling of one who hears a sharp 
 discord, or who is offended by a coarse accent. 
 It vexed me. It irritated me. It seemed to me akin 
 to cant. But my experience of men and my reading 
 of books have brought me to know that the word 
 decision expresses, as weU as human language ever 
 can express the things of the spirit, one of the 
 most common and one of the most striking needs 
 of the human soul. And I believe thoroughly that 
 
118 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 what the world calls " unrest " is the inevitable 
 condition of the soul of man until it has arisen from 
 the distractions of the world and decided for the 
 laws of God. The price of the attempt to serve 
 two masters is unrest. Even if the decision be 
 resolutely made for the world, unrest wiU depart. 
 To decide for God means, as is amply proved in 
 the crowded chronicles of rehgious experience, 
 the attainment of peace and an impulse towards 
 personal service. 
 
 This barrister tells me that as he stood in the 
 London street, confronted by the question of his 
 soul, he received the assurance that Christ came 
 first in his life. He does not know how to express 
 his sensation in words. He says he felt himself pass 
 " from death unto life," and when I ask him if he 
 can find words outside the language of metaphor, 
 ordinary and natural words, to express his experi- 
 ence, he says frankly that he knows of none. And 
 he is emphatic in his protest that the language of 
 metaphor accurately expresses the sensation of his 
 soul. It was a feeling of having passed from one 
 state of being to another, from a state of death to 
 a state of life, a feeling of resurrection and vital 
 existence, a glorious and iUuming sensation of the 
 Personal Love of a Personal God. 
 
 So real was this feeling, he teUs me, that he went 
 back next day to the very spot where he had stopped 
 in the streets and said to himself, "Here, yester- 
 day, by the grace of God, I was converted and 
 bom again." Many years have gone by since then. 
 The world has prospered with him. He is a married 
 man, with the care of children on his hands. But, 
 
THE PROFESSIONAL AMATEUR 119 
 
 he tells me, in the midst of many and great 
 activities, that single incident stands out clear and 
 vivid in his mind, and for evermore that stone in 
 the pavement wiU be for him most sacred ground. 
 
 Soon after this experience the branch of the 
 Association whose meetmgs he attended received 
 a visit from Sir George Williams. The barrister 
 tells me that he was greatly struck at the time by 
 the simple fact that IMr. WiUiams, as he then was, 
 had come at considerable inconvenience to himself, 
 and would have to depart at six o'clock the next 
 morning to fulfil another engagement. He re- 
 flected on this fact, and it led him to see that men 
 who devoted themselves to rehgion, who reaUy 
 lived the hfe of a Christian, counted no cost in the 
 service of Christ. This reflection worked in his 
 soul. At the same meeting an address was given by 
 Mr. Hind Smith on the text. To me to live is Christ. 
 The idea contained in this address of service and 
 devotion, ceaseless service and passionate devotion, 
 haunted the barrister for weeks and months. 
 
 He learned soon afterwards, he says, to show his 
 colours. " To stand on the street," he says, with 
 a smile, " where one was weU known, and invite the 
 passing young men to the meetings, was not always 
 pleasant to the flesh, but it was good discipline, and 
 not without its use in character buildmg." 
 
 There was a feeling of joy that he had given 
 himself to Christ, that his colours were at last 
 firmly nailed to the mast, that the irrevocable step 
 had now been taken boldly and certainly. But he 
 had his moments when he rather shrank from the 
 ordeal of pubhc activity and public demonstra- 
 
120 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 tion ; smiling, he teUs one that sometimes it was 
 necessary to make a great effort. 
 
 His spiritual life, however, was deepening and 
 intensifying. He learned at this period to beheve 
 with a reaUy profound faith in the power of prayer. 
 The incident wfiich produced this particular effect 
 upon his mind may appear trivial and uncon- 
 vincing to many people ; but to the man himself 
 it had a marked significence. 
 
 " The extension of the work of the Association," 
 he says, " had necessitated a new building. When 
 aU available funds had been collected there stiU 
 remained a substantial debt. The situation was 
 rather serious. At a meeting of the Committee 
 one of the members proposed that they should aU 
 give up their business for a whole day and devote 
 it to prayer for the removal of the debt. Now, it is 
 a strange thing but true, that a certain merchant 
 at that time made his wiU, and, quite unknown to 
 any of the Committee, left one-fourth of his re- 
 siduary estate to the Association, subject to his 
 wife's Hfe-interest. Soon after the making of this 
 wiU he died ; but his widow was destined to Hve 
 for many years. The will, however, did not suit 
 her, as she desired to become absolute owner of her 
 husband's money. In the end, with the sanction 
 of the Court, the widow bought up the reversionary 
 interests, and the amount payable to the Associa- 
 tion was just enough to cover the outstanding 
 mortgage debt." 
 
 He tells me of one or two incidents in his career 
 as a worker for the Association which have greatly 
 impressed him. 
 
THE PROFESSIONAL AMATEUR 121 
 
 A young man once came to the meetings of the 
 Association who appeared to be very unhappy and 
 distressed in his mind. He told the barrister that 
 
 he was a valet to Lord , that his situation 
 
 was a good one, that nothing troubled him about 
 his future, but that for many weeks he had been in 
 much anxiety about his soul. Somehow, he said, 
 the peace which he sought eluded him. 
 
 It was a case of unrest, proceeding from indecision. 
 He wanted to surrender his soul to Christ, but cer- 
 tain considerations, more or less intellectual, held 
 him in check. He could not be quite sure whether 
 he beheved the Bible. Certain arguments he had 
 heard troubled him. 
 
 One evening a few members of the Association 
 interested in the young man remained talking with 
 him after a meeting, striving to settle his intellectual 
 doubts and doing all they could by persuasion to 
 make the man surrender. They not only talked with 
 him, but there in the room knelt and prayed with 
 him. It was useless. He acknowledged the cogency 
 of their arguments, professed himself unworthy of 
 their kindness, but said that he could not yet bring 
 himself to take the plunge. 
 
 At this point the barrister turned aside and wrote | 
 on a piece of paper the words, " / now reject the 
 Lord Jesus Christ as my Saviour ^ He then passed 
 the paper to the young man and suggested that he ! 
 should sign it. The poor feUow read the words, ■ 
 started, and said, No, he would not sign it — much 
 wondering at the suggestion. The barrister took 
 back the piece of paper, turned it over, and wrote ^ 
 on the other side, "/ now accept the Lord Jesus i 
 
122 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 Christ as my Saviour. ^^ Then he passed it to the * 
 man, saying nothing. For a moment he hesitated ? 
 after reading the words ; then with a kind of spring 
 of suddenness he took a pen and wrote his name- 
 underneath. In the ^ of signing he was conscious | 
 of Hberation. 
 
 Within a very few days of this end to his spiritual 
 wretchedness he was arrested on a charge of steal- 
 ing some sleeve-links belonging to his master. He 
 was brought before a magistrate and sent for trial. 
 A previous employer happened to see a report of 
 the proceedings in the newspaper, and convinced 
 of the man's innocence at once went and bailed him 
 out. He then took steps, at his own expense, to 
 get Mr. Montagu WiUiams instructed for the defence. 
 At the trial, however, the whole case coUapsed. 
 The jury stated that they did not wish to hear the 
 defence, and the innocent man was instantly 
 acquitted. 
 
 The barrister told me that he was greatly 
 impressed by the man's quiet confidence and 
 singular calm aU through this most trying and 
 testing time of trouble. " Not a word of com- 
 plaint," he said, " passed his lips as to the false 
 charge, but many expressions of gratitude for 
 God's faithfulness to him in that time of heavy 
 trial. I constantly met him in after years, and the 
 last occasion I saw him was in Hyde Park taking 
 part in a rehgious meeting." 
 
 He told me that he had known scores of men 
 whose lives had been entirely changed, some of them 
 completely revolutionised, by contact with the 
 Association. He mentions a certain squire in the 
 
THE PROFESSIONAL AMATEUR 123 
 
 south of England who has given up a Hfe of sport 
 and pleasure to devote himself entirely to the 
 missionary work of the Association ; a barrister, 
 who had been " more than a little wild at the 
 'Varsity," who became a worker for the Associa- 
 tion while he was in London reading for the Bar, 
 and who since his father's death has lived in the 
 country, " where he administers justice from the 
 county bench and astonishes his fellow-justices with 
 his outspoken Christianity " ; a prominent surgeon 
 of the present day, who joined the Association as 
 a medical student, worked exceedingly hard for it, 
 and keeps up his connection to the present day ; a 
 young London solicitor, who, influenced by Moody's 
 Mission in 1884, came to the Association "with a 
 view of getting some Christian work," and has 
 ever since been an active member ; an architect, 
 by no means unknown, who joined the Association 
 many years ago and ascribes " much of his Christian 
 development and character to his connection with 
 and work in the Association " ; a young country 
 lawyer, in London for the last years of his articles, 
 who then joined the Association, and is now " well 
 known in a West-country town as an out-and-out 
 Christian and is always willing to testify to the 
 definite blessing and help he got at the Association 
 in his London days." 
 
 And then he says : " Others I could name who for 
 a time ran well and then fell off, but the faUing off 
 always came after they had severed their connection 
 with the Association." 
 
 He told me of one rather remarkable incident in 
 his experience of the Association's work. At a 
 
124 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 certain meeting held in the Strand three men from 
 the country passing along the street were persuaded 
 to come in. They were obHged to leave before the 
 close of the meeting, in order to catch a train at 
 King's Cross. Within a week a letter arrived at 
 the Association's quarters in the Strand, addressed 
 to " The Chairman of the Meeting." It was written 
 by one of the three men, and told that while two of 
 them had been willing, as Christian men, to attend 
 the meeting, the third had held back at first and 
 had only consented at last on the persuasions of his 
 friends. At the meeting, however, this man heard 
 something that touched his heart, and there and then 
 " gave himself to Christ." In the train, on their way 
 home, the three countrymen rejoiced together in 
 a common enthusiasm for the rehgious life. In less 
 than a week the man who had surrendered himself 
 at the meeting was dead. 
 
 The barrister told me why he remains an active 
 worker for the Association, in spite of his loyalty 
 as a Churchman. 
 
 " The Association brings one," he said, " into 
 intimate communion with men of aU denomina- 
 tions, and gives one in this way a broadness of out- 
 look which is withheld, I think, from those who have 
 not known work outside their own church. I count 
 this right adjustment — Christian first, Churchman 
 second. A man gets a most useful knowledge of 
 the world-wide influence and appeal of Christianity 
 by mixing with Christians of aU the various churches 
 and chapels. No proselytising takes place. The 
 members are united on the essentials of Christianity, 
 and the Association may be said to represent the 
 
THE PROFESSIONAL AMATEUR 125 
 
 Church of Christ in its spirit of brotherhood which 
 is superior to mere differences of opinion, and which 
 unites men of the most opposite Churchmanship 
 in a missionary unanimity for the essentials of 
 rehgion. 
 
 " Another great advantage of the Association, 
 one which every young man starting hfe ought to 
 take into account, is the opportunity it affords for 
 the formation of noble friendships. You meet men 
 of most classes in the Association, and among them 
 a man wiU always find those with whom he can 
 associate in his social hfe, and who may very Hkely 
 be most helpful to him in his professional or business 
 career. Several of my friendships date back twenty- 
 five and even thirty years in connection with Asso- 
 ciation work. 
 
 " Finally, there is the immense advantage of 
 finding in the Association a field of active service. 
 And this service, so important to the development 
 of spiritual life, differs materially from that of one's 
 own church. With the latter it is a specified work, 
 such as a Sunday-school class, and done at a speci- 
 fied time. There is something of machinery about 
 it. On the other hand, the Association teaches a 
 man that he is always on duty, as it were — particu- 
 larly in the sphere of his own daily caUing. The 
 outcome of this is individual dealing, fishing for men 
 in aU waters — a form of service which brings more 
 success and more joy than any other. The open-air 
 work, evangelistic work, Bible study, and the Hke, 
 all combine to make one open one's mouth in pubho 
 — not only in testimony, but also, in a measure, in 
 teaching and preaching." 
 
126 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 His own life is devoted in this way to the service 
 of his Master. 
 
 The reflective reader wiU consider what might 
 have happened to this man if he had drifted into 
 a condition of indifference and had never felt it his 
 duty to Uft a finger for rehgion. He might have 
 remained scrupulously moral, but would his hfe 
 have been so useful or his heart so restful ? 
 
 He gave me above every other impression the 
 feeling that in active work for Christianity there is 
 a pleasure and a satisfaction which, besides develop- 
 ing the spiritual life — that Hfe which demands a 
 perpetual culture and a particular atmosphere — 
 adds enormously to the mere interest and adventure 
 of human existence. He struck me as one of the 
 happiest men I have ever encountered. He enjoys 
 the work of amateur missionary with an almost 
 athletic zest, and few things give him so much 
 pleasure, he tells me, as occasionally forgathering 
 with his friends of the Association and talking over 
 old times and old strivings for the souls of men. 
 
 For the man who does nothing to spread the 
 glory of the Kingdom of God he has a sorrowful 
 pity — such a compassion as Cicero may have had 
 for the dumb and Shakespeare for the blind. And 
 yet, remember, he began life with no taste for such 
 work ; he had to drive himself to it at the beginning 
 with a great effort of the will. 
 
 We think these things are decided for us by 
 temperament. But character is made by the 
 decision of the will. 
 
 Quo vadis ? 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 A SOUL IN THE STREET 
 
 ONLY a reader who is not afraid to explore the 
 dark and innermost recesses of a morbid mind, 
 and to behold naked before his eyes the soul of 
 one whom science would perhaps describe as a 
 degenerate, should give himself the trouble of 
 perusing this present chapter. For I confess at the 
 outset it is a tale of extraordinary gloom, a most 
 morbid and dismal story — one of those psycho- 
 logical autobiographies which a healthy man will 
 probably read with increasing aversion and disgust 
 only to find that he has taken into his memory a 
 haunting and unforgettable unpleasantness. It is 
 like a story by Guy de Maupassant, or a visit to the 
 dissecting-room of a hospital. One shudders, turns 
 away with rehef, but never forgets. 
 
 Why, then, do I tell the tale ? Is it not a useless 
 task to which I address myself ? — something which 
 can do no good to anybody ? 
 
 " Useless,'" writes Myers, " is a pre-scientific, even 
 an anti-scientific term, which has perhaps proved 
 a greater stumbling-block to research in psychology 
 than in any other science. In science the use of 
 phenomena is to prove laws, and the more bizarre 
 and trivial the phenomena, the greater the chance 
 
 127 
 
128 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 of their directing us to some law which has been 
 overlooked till now." Properly regarded, nothing 
 in life is either trivial or without significance. 
 
 And not only this. The longer one Hves and 
 the more one becomes acquainted with the secrets 
 of the human mind, the less one is inclined to divide 
 men into the ranks of normal and abnormal. I 
 should be glad if I could think the man of this 
 story was soHtary in the midst of London's milHons, 
 or that he was one of a httle, ill-starred brotherhood 
 moving through the obscure shadows with envy 
 of the happier multitude. But I am persuaded that 
 he represents a considerable host of human beings, 
 and I am strongly disposed to think that this host 
 will not diminish but increase, while the tendency 
 of mankind to coagulate in vast masses continues 
 to impoverish the fields and pack the unnatural 
 cities. These unhappy men, I mean, are manu- 
 factured by a civilisation which tends to be- 
 come every day more careless of the laws of 
 nature. 
 
 It is certainly well that those able to contemplate 
 the tragic depths of the human mind should read 
 such a tale as this, read it, reflect upon it, and con- 
 sider what may best be done for those suffering in 
 like case ; but I even go so far as to say that the very 
 people whom I warn against the reading of it would 
 probably broaden their sympathies and usefuUy 
 enlarge their knowledge of existence, if they per- 
 suade their intelligence to take the place of their 
 prejudices and read the story as a man of science 
 would examine a problem in phj^sics. With this 
 warning I proceed to tell the tale. 
 
A SOUL m THE STREET 129 
 
 He is a man of medium stature, thin, but broad- 
 shouldered, with a worn and troubled face, to which, 
 it would seem, smiles had never come, even in 
 childhood. The complexion is the dusty grey of 
 London's indoor population, a pallor which has no 
 freshness, an anaemic condition which is without the 
 refining sense of disease ; no amount of soap and 
 water could give this pallor the appearance of 
 cleanliness ; it is hke a face that has been washed, 
 but dried with a dirty towel. 
 
 The head is finely shaped, but disproportionately 
 large for the flat-chested and starved-looking body. 
 The hair grows thickly and stands upright. The 
 eyebrows are as heavy as a sybarite's moustache ; 
 the moustache is Hke a Frenchman's beard. Sur- 
 rounded on every side by this bushy hair, the 
 large eyes, set deep in their sockets, look sadly and 
 pathetically forth from under the heavy eave of the 
 white brow, and through eyeglasses which are stained 
 and smudged. They would be beautiful eyes but 
 for their look of woe, which dulls the brightness 
 of the brown iris, and robs the whole expression of 
 animation and vitahty. One sees that the soul is 
 never near the surface, never pressing its face 
 close to the windows of its tenement ; it is far away, 
 busy at the back of the house, and obsessed by 
 internal problems ; only from thence does it strain 
 occasionally to see what is taking place out of doors. 
 
 He sits very quietly, looking smaller than he 
 really is ; the head sinks a httle towards the breast ; 
 the hands are clasped over one of the knees which 
 is crossed upon the other leg ; the thick eyebrows 
 are raised high in the wrinkled forehead. He speaks 
 
 K 
 
130 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 in a low and even voice, like a man who has just 
 suffered a great bereavement. His frankness in- 
 creases as he proceeds ; he is amazingly pitiless 
 towards himself ; he becomes in his quiet and 
 restrained manner earnestly self -analytical ; he is 
 interested as an outsider in the commotion which 
 distracts him ; he asks advice, and discusses remedies. 
 
 The quiet of the man is astonishing. He reminds 
 me of Victor Hugo's description of Villemain — " he 
 was rather disordered - looking, but gentle and 
 earnest." In a man troubled, as I found him 
 to be troubled, one looks for excitabihty, self- 
 conscious nervousness, and that condition which 
 we describe as jumpiness. But he is like a man 
 under the influence of morphia. 
 
 He occupies a position of importance in a firm 
 of chartered accountants. He is not only a clever 
 and trustworthy clerk, but an able man. In the 
 City of London many people know him as an 
 excellent feUow. This position, as the story will 
 show, has been won entirely by his own efforts. 
 
 One of his greatest friends is a member of the 
 Young Men's Christian Association. It was this 
 friend who, having told me something, but only a 
 small part, of his story, brought us together. As 
 soon as we were alone, the man said to me, " You 
 have heard how I started hfe ? " 
 
 " So-and-so," I replied, " has told me that you 
 had a hard time in boyhood." 
 
 He looked at me for a time, and then said, 
 without any emotion or the least sign of feeling, "I 
 am what is caUed an illegitimate. I never saw my 
 father, and to this day I don't even know his name. 
 
A SOUL IN THE STREET 131 
 
 I should like now to hear something about him, 
 I am interested in heredity. It might explain things 
 which are difficult to understand. My mother, I 
 must tell you, was quite a poor woman. 
 
 " She Uved in Finchley, and just before I was 
 bom went to lodge at the house of a foreman printer 
 in Westminster Bridge Road. As soon after my 
 birth as possible she went back to her people, and 
 left me to the care of the printer and his wife. I 
 suppose she must have paid something down, or 
 perhaps she contributed a certain sum to the weekly 
 expenses. I never heard. She went away, and when 
 I was old enough to ask questions I wasn't suffi- 
 ciently interested to inquire. She came to see me 
 from time to time. I liked her, but never regarded 
 her as my mother. Since those days I have been 
 able to support her. But she lives far away ; we 
 do not see each other. 
 
 " For me, my parents were the foreman printer 
 and his wife. I called them * father' and ' mother,' 
 and they treated me almost as weU as they treated 
 their own son, who was a year or two my senior. 
 Their house in Westminster Bridge Road was my 
 home. Their son was my brother. 
 
 " How my Hfe would have gone but for that son 
 I do not dare to speculate. His father and mother 
 were kind to me — kind as one is kind to a dog or a 
 cat ; but they took no pains to discover my thoughts, 
 to guide my inclinations, or to shape my character. 
 They taught me morals by saying, ' Don't do that,' 
 or * You mustn't do this.' They never told me a 
 single word about God and the soul. They never 
 looked into my mind. 
 
132 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 " It is a great puzzle to me how their son got his 
 notion of reHgion. Perhaps he was born with it. 
 I can remember how he would say to me, when we 
 were talking about temptations, ' I never feel 
 anything Uke that ; I can't understand how anyone 
 can sin ; I was born good and always shall be good." 
 He used to laugh when he said it, just as if he were 
 some spirit or a fairy, flashing his eyes at me, putting 
 his arm round my neck, and drawing me close to his 
 side with what was almost a gay affection. There 
 was something strange about the boy. In some 
 ways he was much more Hke a girl. He was never 
 rough or boisterous. He never wanted any horse- 
 play. He was gentle and clinging, and had some- 
 thing in his nature which was positively maternal. 
 He used to take me on his knees when I was quite a 
 little chap, and tell me about God, the angels, 
 heaven, and the life of Christ. We would sit like that 
 on the doorstep, the traffic going by all the time, till 
 it was bedtime. . . . 
 
 " Later in my boyhood he encouraged me to 
 pray with great earnestness, and taught me the 
 urgent need of deciding to give my Hfe to rehgion. 
 I don't remember if he used the word conversion. 
 He used to speak about making up the mind, 
 deciding, w/xhing certain how one was going to Hve. 
 Perhaps he got these ideas from his Sunday-school. 
 What strikes me now in thinking about those days 
 is the motherliness of my foster-brother. He 
 was reaUy as tender as any woman. And there was 
 something radiant about him. 
 
 " He was certainly a very remarkable boy ; but 
 I dare say that if we knew all the facts of his ancestry, 
 
A SOUL IN THE STREET 133 
 
 and all the circumstances of his childhood, we should 
 see that there was nothing particular in his natural 
 rehgiousness. 
 
 " As soon as he was able to leave school his father 
 apprenticed him to a firm of electrical engineers. 
 Of course I could not expect such luck for myself, 
 and I went out soon afterwards to shift for myself 
 as an errand-boy. 
 
 " That's rather a strange life. I often look at 
 little chaps of twelve and thirteen, hurrying up 
 to the City with a packet of sandwiches under their 
 arms — Httle beggars beginning the great struggle 
 of fife in London. I wonder what they are thinking 
 about. I wonder if they are fighting temptations. 
 People often forget that a boy has a battle in his soul 
 as big as any man's. And they're pitchforked 
 straight out of school into the very middle of 
 London. . . . Well, they hear things and see things, 
 as well as feel the strange things that move about in 
 the human brain. A Httle boy thrown into the 
 midst of London is exposed to many serious risks — 
 big risks. 
 
 " I'll be quite frank with you. I should have gone 
 straight to the devil but for my foster-brother. As 
 it was I went some considerable way in that direc- 
 tion. I fought hard. I put up a real fight. But I 
 was beaten again and again. So passed my boyhood. 
 I grew into my youth without any enthusiasm 
 for life. I felt tired and fagged out before I was 
 twenty. 
 
 " There's no doubt at all that my salvation, so far 
 as a man in my case can ever dare to talk about 
 salvation, came from the Young Men's Christian 
 
134 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 Association. My foster-brother persuaded me to 
 become a member. He told me about the educa- 
 tional classes, encouraged me to be ambitious, and 
 assured me — for I used to tell him about my 
 temptations — that I should get strength from the 
 rehgious meetings of the Association. So I joined. 
 It proved a great blessing to me. First of aU, the 
 religious meetings reaUy did help me. I got from 
 them a decided bent towards religion, and set 
 myself to obtain, if possible, the miraculous change 
 of heart which follows conversion. I am one of those 
 men, I must teU you, who feel themselves converted 
 again and again. I have had moments in which 
 heU seemed to drop away from me, shrivelled up at 
 my feet, and left me free. For weeks and months 
 I have lived as if I was in communion with God, 
 quite happy, and quite untempted. Then — weU, 
 the darkness has returned. But I must teU you 
 about that later on, if you care to hear about it. 
 
 "I made great strides in the educational classes. 
 In a few months I was able to take a place as a clerk. 
 I learnt everything I possibly could. I was keen, 
 not only for the sake of getting on in the world, but 
 for the sake of getting away from myself. Rehgion, 
 education, physical culture, the games and meet- 
 ings and discussions of the Association — ^I welcomed 
 aU ahke, as distractions from my wretched self. 
 
 " I should hke you to know one thing about the 
 Association, which perhaps other people haven't told 
 you. Men of all classes, except the manual labourer, 
 are members, and some of the first people in the land 
 come to the meetings and mix freely with the rest. 
 You find aristocrats, prominent bankers, famous 
 
A SOUL IN THE STREET 135 
 
 merchants, and officers of the army mixing with 
 clerks and shop-assistants, with a real spirit of 
 friendship and brotherhood. Now, to a young 
 fellow placed as I was placed, born in dishonour and 
 starting Hfe as an errand-boy, those friendships, 
 those acts of kindness I received from great people, 
 had a most useful moral effect. When I was 
 tempted I used to feel guilty of disloyalty and 
 treason ; when I fell, it was with a sense of shame 
 and horror. I used to think, * If they only knew my 
 true character ! ' And I used to strive — God alone 
 knows how hard — ^to be worthy of those friendships. 
 I feel pretty certain that scores of young feUows 
 must have been helped in the same way. It's a 
 simple thing, but simple things in life often count 
 more than the big ones. 
 
 "WeU, through the kindness of a man in the 
 Association, I got a good appointment in a firm of 
 chartered accountants, and was soon earning a 
 decent salary. My foster-father was dead. For 
 some time I had been Uving in lodgings. It occurred 
 to me now that the best thing I could do for my 
 soul and body would be to get married. At this time 
 I experienced what seemed to me a definite con- 
 version. I became exceedingly happy. For a 
 quite considerable period I knew something of the 
 joy, the elation, which saints teU about. It was 
 like Hving in Paradise. 
 
 " During that happy speU in my life I got married. 
 My salary enabled me to take a smaU house in 
 Willesden. My wife was all I could wish. For a 
 year or two I w£is free from spiritual persecution, 
 A child came to us, and I experienced the full 
 
136 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 happiness of parentage. It seemed as if my con- 
 version had exorcised the demon. 
 
 " One day I discovered that the demon had only 
 been sleeping. It woke in a strange form. 
 
 " I will teU you about it, if you reaUy would care 
 to hear the story. It's strange and puzzling, as 
 weU as rather horrible. I had been working late 
 at the books of a big firm one day, and emerged, 
 tired and fagged, into the streets a Httle before 
 eight o'clock. A feeling came to me that it would 
 be duU to go home. I seemed to have no energy to 
 make for the railway station. I loitered in the 
 streets, tired, irresolute. Then I thought I would go 
 westwards, get something to eat, and look at the 
 people till it was time for bed. It did not definitely 
 occur to me at that moment, nor tiU an hour after- 
 wards, that I was contemplating a sin, that my 
 demon was awake, certainly not that my soul was 
 in peril. Yet, I was dimly conscious of something 
 that was ofi the fine. 
 
 " WHien I had eaten my dinner I walked about 
 the streets. I walked at a slow pace, almost a 
 crawl. I found it pleasant and interesting to look 
 at people. It was as if something of the world's 
 pleasure and enjoyment came to me from the crowd, 
 like the warmth of a fire. I was conscious of a 
 sense of satisfaction, of interest, almost of gratitude. 
 
 "As I loitered in this way I noticed a girl standing 
 alone at a street corner. She was a decent girl of 
 the lower-middle classes, quietly dressed, and 
 obviously respectable. No one in his senses would 
 have taken her for a bad woman. Directly I saw 
 her I wanted to speak to her. It was not a swift 
 
A SOUL IN THE STREET 137 
 
 and violent impulse ; it was sluggish, sly, circum- 
 spect ; but it was irresistible. I walked past her ; 
 looked in her face ; went by ; returned ; looked 
 at her again ; and then stood at a few paces from 
 her, watching. She saw me, and responded to my 
 look with a smile. I felt myself tremendously 
 tempted. I walked towards her, and as I went 
 I knew that I was on the edge of sin, that my 
 demon was awake. 
 
 " I made no resistance. I seemed to toss away 
 all the restraints of my life, all my ideals, all my 
 faith in God — everything. It was almost as if I 
 went to my fall mocking. And yet, no sooner did 
 I speak to the girl than I knew I should protect her 
 from ruin." 
 
 He looks at me, and says very slowly : " What I 
 am going to tell you is very difficult to put into 
 words. I have studied myself so closely, however 
 — just as if I were a doctor examining a patient — 
 that I can give you at least a notion of my strange 
 case. 
 
 " I have never committed, since my marriage, 
 what the world would describe as a sin. The irre- 
 sistible attraction which lonely women in the streets 
 at night have for my mind is that of curiosity. 
 There are times when I simply cannot pass without 
 speaking to a girl who is standing alone in the streets. 
 I feel I must speak to her. I feel I must talk with 
 her. And sometimes I feel that I must tempt her 
 to the edge of ruin. I want to know what she is 
 doing, how she earns her living, where she Hves, if 
 she is religious, how she spends her leisure, and 
 what things she thinks about in the privacy of her 
 
138 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 mind. If I become very friendly with such a girl, 
 and we meet often, and talk dangerously, and she 
 becomes careless of everything, I always have the 
 power to save her from ruin. I have told many 
 such girls that I would rather die than do them 
 harm. 
 
 " There's something, I can't tell you what, in 
 these night encounters on the London streets which 
 has for me just such a baleful fascination as the 
 dipsomaniac finds in alcohol. It is as difficult for 
 me sometimes to pass a soUtary woman as it is at 
 times for a dipsomaniac to pass a pubHc-house. 
 Many a time I go home, sit down with my wife and 
 children, take up a book or a newspaper — and 
 then the thought of women standing all alone in the 
 dark street comes upon me with a spring, and I 
 have to get up and go out. It's like a madness. 
 It's something that I can't resist. It seems as if 
 there are ghosts in aU the dark streets of London 
 beckoning and calling me. I see a woman in the 
 shadows long before I get to her, and I seem to 
 know instantly whether we shaU speak and become 
 friends. There seems to be some telepathic com- 
 munication of ideas between sohtary souls in 
 London. A woman will often look up at me before 
 I reach her. Many girls have said to me, ' I knew 
 you were going to speak before you came up.' 
 
 " It isn't only that I seem to want the sympathy 
 of these lonely women. That might be passed over 
 and forgiven. There's something else. I am 
 often visited by a really devilish desire to corrupt 
 their minds and poison their purity. That is what 
 depresses me, Wh«n I am out of these fits I see 
 
A SOUL IN THE STREET 139 
 
 how odious and abominable I have been. But at 
 the time I am untroubled ; I chuckle over it ; just 
 Hke a fiend. 
 
 " The fit seizes me in different ways. Sometimes 
 I will go up to a girl, ask what she is doing, tell her 
 that I am at a loose end, and suggest that we go to 
 a cinematograph show or a music-hall. Very often 
 I have done this, and parted from the girl outside 
 with scarcely another word. I can't explain why. 
 A cinematograph show or a music-hall would not 
 attract me in the least if I were by myself, but 
 sitting with a strange girl at my side, I enjoy such 
 things as much as anybody else. And afterwards 
 I just say good-bye to the girl, forget all about her, 
 and go home contented — to feel in an hour all the 
 anguish and contrition which follow a great sin. 
 
 " At other times I feel I must make a girl drink. 
 The younger and the more innocent, the stronger 
 is this feeling with me. Horrible and dreadful as 
 I know this to be, I am struck by the curiosity of 
 it. For I am to all intents and purposes a teetotaller. 
 In my wholesome moods I recognise that alcohol is 
 one of the most prolific sources of sin and crime. 
 I have argued for teetotaHsm as hotly as any 
 fanatic. It is part of the work I have undertaken 
 in connection with my church. But when the mood 
 is on me, I feel a savage pleasure in chaf&ng a girl 
 to come into a public-house and drink with me. 
 The more she hangs back, the more I persuade. 
 
 " Sometimes I am visited by a desire to find 
 in one of these lonely women a true affinity, one 
 with whom I can talk freely of everything in my 
 soul, knowing that she will understand. Two or 
 
140 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 three times this has happened to me. For weeks 
 and even months I have lost all sense of the casual 
 woman's attraction, and have been as constant as 
 any lover to one particular woman. We have met 
 as often as possible, gone for long sohtary walks, 
 met at luncheon in the middle of the day, gone into 
 the country on Saturday afternoons, prayed together 
 side by side in church on Sunday evenings. And with 
 these women I have shared the whole of my double 
 nature. At one moment I have been as low and vile 
 as sin can drag me, at the next as sincere in religious 
 aspiration as a saint. In one of these women I 
 think I really did find my twin soul. No one would 
 beheve me if I told him about that girl's mind. 
 She had nearly all the heights and nearly aU the 
 depths. At one moment she was saving my soul ; 
 at the next I was saving hers. We loved and struggled 
 together tiU I thought it was impossible to endure 
 the strain. I was, in fact, on the point of yielding 
 to my lower nature and lettmg all my responsibih- 
 ties go when I got one of those great checks which 
 at various times in my hfe have been hke a hand 
 grabbing my shoulder and puUing me with violence 
 away from utter ruin. In this case it was a 
 sermon. 
 
 " I must tell you that my home life has not been 
 happy. The discovery of my lower nature was soon 
 made. It has been impossible for me to make 
 amends. The fault is mine. No one can recognise 
 that more clearly than I do. But now, when I am 
 struggling hard, I could wish either that what is 
 past had never been discovered or that it could be 
 utterly forgiven and forgotten. 
 
A SOUL IN THE STREET 141 
 
 "However, that is an aspect of the case which I 
 would rather not pursue. The interesting point 
 is the recurrence in my Hfe of the miracle of con- 
 version. I have never felt myself absolutely aban- 
 doned by God. It is most curious to observe how 
 I am pursued by the invisible powers of mercy. You 
 would think I should be afraid of making you feel 
 that I am a hypocrite. But if I make myseK clear 
 you wiU not fall into that error. There is really no 
 element of hypocrisy. I long with a very deep and 
 sincere longing for purity of heart. I go to religion, 
 when I recognise my peril, with a perfectly sincere 
 eagerness for rescue. And again and again in my 
 life I have experienced such extraordinary changes 
 of heart that I cannot prevent myself from acknow- 
 ledging the miracle of conversion. Many men would 
 say that I delude myself, that these occasions are 
 not instances of conversion, because the effect is 
 transient. I can see that they are certainly not the 
 profound conversions which are experienced by other 
 men ; but just as certainly I know that they are 
 not delusions. I have felt myself quite swept away 
 towards God, and for weeks I have Hved in the most 
 complete assurance of His mercy and forgiveness. 
 Indeed, at all times in my life, I have had the feeling 
 that God alone knows my heart through and 
 through, and that because He does know it — black 
 and bad as it is — He continues His mercy. For 
 with the evil propensity there has always been the 
 reaction towards purity. 
 
 " My greatest human safeguard has been the 
 Association. My wife has implored me to be more 
 regular in my attendance, even to the point of 
 
142 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 urging me to spend the whole of my spare time 
 there, knowing that I get from the members a 
 strengthening and energising of my moral faculties. 
 Often has she said to me, 'You always come back 
 from the Association a better and a nicer man.' 
 But for the Association — through which I obtained 
 material prosperity — I think I should have gone 
 to spiritual shipwreck. And I will tell you why I 
 say that. Directly a man who is trying to be good 
 commits a sin, he is most powerfully tempted to 
 abandon all effort and go with the tide. He has the 
 feeling, first, that it is useless to contend against 
 his own nature, and, second, that he will be a 
 hypocrite if he associates himself with religious 
 men. It is difficult for a sensitive mind to support 
 the burden of this idea. It gives a man the feeling 
 of a whipped dog. He seems to be slinking through 
 hfe, not walking upright and squarely. I imagine 
 that thousands of young men in London, once pure 
 and religious, go to their everlasting ruin just through 
 this feeling. 
 
 "It's a tremendous help to have such an institu- 
 tion as the Association, where a man guilty of sin 
 can meet men, of his own age and circumstances, 
 who are aHve with moral energy and vigorous with 
 spiritual fervour. He gets something from them. 
 He is ashamed of himself, and feels reproached by 
 their kindness and cheerfulness. They give him 
 a new affection for straight Hving, an enthusiasm 
 for the spiritual conflict. And what I feel particu- 
 larly to be so helpful is this — a man who goes 
 regularly to the Association and makes friendships 
 and takes part in the general life of the brotherhood. 
 
A SOUL IN THE STREET 143 
 
 gets to know that spiritual warfare is the chief con- 
 cern of the universe ; he loses, I mean, the depress- 
 ing and ignominious sense that he is tainted, isolated, 
 unique ; he feels that every man in the world is en- 
 gaged in the universal fight, and that he, with his 
 particular trouble, is only one among the millions 
 of the human race. 
 
 " In church I have the feeling of isolation and 
 guilt. Everyone else is Peter and John, Martha 
 and Mary — ^I the solitary Judas. I don't say that 
 is altogether bad. Often I have got a powerful 
 impulse from a church service. But it's better in 
 the Association. There's a feeling of reahty and 
 comradeship about those gatherings. I get no end 
 of strength from them. They save me from despair. 
 I think if it had not been for this help I should, long 
 ago, have sunk to the bottom of London mud. 
 
 "It is very easy to give up the struggle. A 
 man's own conscience seems to urge him in the 
 direction of surrender. All the success in his daily 
 life — and I have risen to be head clerk in my ofi&ce 
 — seems nothing, seems useless and contemptible. 
 But the kind word and the true look of another 
 man who believes in God and who makes him feel 
 that the whole world is fighting for victory over 
 sin will very often give a poor wretch just the 
 necessary flick of courage which will make him 
 struggle on, and hope. At least, I have found 
 it so." 
 
 This man is now in a period of peace. Certain 
 words said to him have restored his sense of Christ 
 as a living, acting power for liberation. He has 
 emerged from the black night of self-contempt 
 
144 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 and pitiless self-examination. It may be tliat 
 once again, or many times, he will relapse ; but 
 for the present at least he feels himself on surer 
 ground than ever before. I do not think he will 
 ever become abandoned to an evil and degraded life, 
 though there is that in his nature which, without 
 religion, might drag him into the worst of crimes 
 and the most hideous of abominations. Only re- 
 ligion can hold such a man, and only religion lift him 
 up when he breaks free and faUs into sin. 
 
 He said to me at the end of our talk, " The 
 tyranny of the habit was worse than the love of it. 
 I never was happy ; I felt myself always to be a 
 victim. And now I have the feeling of deHverance, 
 the sensation that a monster has been knocked 
 from off my shoulders, as if I am at last truly my 
 real self." 
 
 If this story only depresses you I fear that you 
 are one of those who have never once stopped 
 on your road, reined in your mule, and dismounted 
 to bind up the wounds of a fallen feUow-creature. 
 There are those who cannot bear to look upon a 
 wound, for whom the sight of blood has a frightful 
 horror, and who turn away from the fallen man, 
 not that they grudge carrying him on their mules 
 to the nearest inn and discharging the landlord's 
 demands, but because their sense of refinement is 
 too sharp and poignant for contact with gaping 
 flesh and oozing blood. But there is something 
 infinitely greater than refinement, something with- 
 out which the f ulhiess of the nobihty of human nature 
 can never be attained ; and this thing is charity. 
 
A SOUL IN THE STREET 145 
 
 Many and great are the wounds of fallen humanity. 
 The professional physician, in the form of psy- 
 chologist and philosopher, stops to examine those 
 wounds, delivers to the crowd an interesting lecture 
 on the result of his examination, and, in the name of 
 science, reproaches those who accuse him of a mor- 
 bid interest in the unnatural and abnormal. But 
 it is only the great Physician Himself Who stops on 
 His way, bends over the fallen man, pours oil into 
 the wound, lifts him up from the ground, and 
 carries him away to a place of safety. 
 
 Those who are disciples of the great Physician 
 must neither pass by on the other side nor stop 
 merely in the interests of experimental psychology. 
 They must bend down with love and pity, to com- 
 fort and to heal. 
 
 I do not think a man can ever understand the 
 meaning of that phrase "The love of God" — "God 
 BO loved the world " — ^until he has a deep acquaint- 
 ance with the horrors of sin and the depths of 
 degradation to which the human mind can sink. 
 We are apt to turn away with disgust from the 
 frightful, drunken harridan, reeling blasphemous 
 and filthy through the midnight streets, and to feel 
 a profound aversion from the hard and scoffing 
 man of sensual habits ; but not only are these 
 sad people included in the Universal Love of God, 
 but those who have sunk to sins more dreadful, 
 and those who have contracted the strangest and 
 the worst diseases of the soul. 
 
 We find it hard even to think kindly of such 
 people, we who are ourselves stained by I know 
 not how many sins and visited by temptations 
 
146 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 perhaps of a like nature ; but Christ, the Son of 
 God, the exquisite, innocent, and most holy Christ, 
 not only thought kiadly of such people, but wont 
 to them, embraced them, ministered to them, 
 and sought to heal them. 
 
 It is not in the definitions of theologians that I 
 come to a reahsation of Christ's Divinity, but by 
 a steadfast contemplation of His attitude towards 
 sinful men. That amazing title " Friend of 
 Sinners " has more of wonder and glory and divinity 
 for me than all the clauses of the Athanasian Creed. 
 The one vexes my intellect ; the other touches 
 my heart. The Son of God had hard and burning 
 words for the orthodox rehgious of His day ; He had 
 nothing but love and tenderness, entreaty and tears, 
 for those from whom we are too prone to turn with 
 horror or contempt. 
 
 No man, I suppose, who has not learned to what 
 depths the soul may sink, to what ruin and state 
 of putrefaction that soul may come in the mire of 
 the pit of iafamy, can either feel the fullness of the 
 wonder of Christ's love, or understand the meaning 
 of those words, " Joy shall be in heaven over one 
 sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and 
 nine just persons which need no repentance," 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE OPENING OF A DOOR 
 
 " A LIFE," writes William James, " is manly, 
 .^l\. stoical, moral, or philosophical, we say, in 
 proportion as it is Jess swayed by paltry personal 
 considerations and more by objective ends that call 
 for energy, even though that energy bring personal 
 loss and pain. This is the good side of war, in so 
 far as it caUs for ' volunteers.' And for morality 
 life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort 
 of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers." 
 Such a volunteer is the man with whom this story 
 is concerned. To him Mystery is a fact of Hfe, but 
 nothing of the mystic shows in the man's appearance. 
 He is tall, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, and 
 muscularly upright. He makes one think of a 
 soldier who has seen much service and won 
 great honour. One feels, looking at the healthful 
 face, which really burns with happiness, that for 
 him it has never been difficult to obey the injunction 
 of Joubert, " Finally, we must love life while we have 
 it : it is a duty.^^ He is one of those vigorous men 
 whose very voice is a rousing optimism. To have 
 him fighting at one's side in a tight corner, or 
 leading a forlorn hope, would inspire courage, I 
 think, in the most cowardly. Nothing, one imagines, 
 
 147 
 
148 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 could ever sink his joy or dash his fortitude with 
 misgiving. 
 
 Such is the man's appearance, such is the impres- 
 sion made upon one's imagination by his outward 
 form. But speak to him, and you find that he 
 shrinks from even a military metaphor, that he will 
 not allow you to call him a soldier of Christ, that 
 his nature is modest, sensitive, humble and retiring 
 almost to bashfulness. He told me that I might 
 call him a labourer, a peasant of Christianity, but 
 certainly not a soldier. The great strong vigorous 
 man is as kind and gentle as a child. 
 
 There is a foolish habit among certain writers to 
 speak of the religious type. From the most modern 
 novelist, who would sacrifice everything for his 
 conception of reahty, down to the dreariest comedian 
 of the music-hall stage who imitates the unctuous 
 curate of a bygone age, there is a disposition to 
 portray the religious man as a particular order of 
 the human species, easily recognisable by certain 
 distinct characteristics and swayed by a particular 
 temperament which is common to the refigious of 
 aU nations. This very ignorant and whoUy un- 
 philosophical attitude of mind misses the great 
 wonder of religion. Nothing is more obvious, 
 nothing is more striking, nothing is more interesting 
 to the true and honest philosopher, than the 
 universality of the rehgious spirit. Men of the most 
 various temperament and the most diverse cir- 
 cumstances in hfe are impelled by the pressure 
 of the soul, often along quite different roads, to the 
 many kingdoms of immortahty. From Pascal to 
 Bunyan, from Milton to Kelvin, from Newman to 
 
THE OPENING OF A DOOR 149 
 
 William Blake, from Bishop Gore to General Booth, 
 from yourseK to the man who lives next door to you, 
 are there not to be found in the multitudinous army 
 of God every order of individual and every type 
 of human character ? Consider the separation 
 which divides John Lawrence, of India, from 
 Brother Lawrence of The Practice of the Presence 
 of God. Think of the infinity of variation which 
 lies between Livingstone and Goethe. Reflect 
 upon the steUar space which stretches from the soul 
 of Tolstoy to the soul of Manning. And what Hkeness 
 can be found in the hfe of Kingsley to the life of 
 Swedenborg ? To look carefully upon the Church 
 of Christ is to look upon the world. " I will draw," 
 said the Saviour, " all men unto Me." 
 
 In this story the reader finds himself glancing at 
 the Hfe of a successful business man who is conscious 
 of the mystery of the universe, who has felt himself 
 definitely swayed by invisible agencies, and who is 
 ^ gay? bright-hearted, and most vahant labourer 
 for God. Strangely different is he from the type of 
 religious person in contemporary novels, and yet he 
 is but one of a vast host whom you pass every day 
 in the streets of a city, the ordinary man in the 
 ordinary world of commonplace, to whom the extra- 
 ordinary thing has happened and for whom ever- 
 more life is ennobled by a " cosmic patriotism." 
 
 He is a Welshman ; a man some fifty years of age ; 
 fine-looking, as I have suggested, with the spirit 
 of the soldier both in face and figure. His eyes 
 are extraordinarily bright, with sheer happiness ; 
 the skin has the glow of perfect health ; his deep 
 voice is melodious and good-humoured. He seems 
 
150 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 to rejoice in everything. He speaks with the 
 same ringing enthusiasm of physical exercise, 
 sleeping in the open air, and temperate eating as 
 characterises his references to the joy and glory of 
 the rehgious Ufe — the active religious life. He is 
 above everything else a man of action — one who 
 recognises that a true Christian must make himself 
 an instrument in the Hand of God, and for the 
 glory of God work hard and ever for the Kingdom 
 of righteousness. 
 
 There is no point in his Ufe at which he recognises 
 the mystery of a single yielding of his spirit — 
 a definite hour of the soul with God. He does not 
 speak of his conversion as a single moment of 
 sudden apprehension. Illumination was in his 
 soul from early childhood, a dim light at the 
 beginning, but one which has increased in bright- 
 ness with the development of his other faculties. 
 He has been without the sense of God, he 
 has suffered and questioned, but he has never 
 fallen into desperate sin nor surrendered himself to 
 the indifference of agnosticism. 
 
 " I owe everything," he says, with a charming 
 tenderness, " to my mother. Ah, her death ! — it 
 froze everj^hing. She taught herself geography 
 by writing to her sons. From the days when we lay 
 in her lap to the days when we were middle-aged 
 men scattered all over the world, she poured out a 
 great tide of love upon us aU, a love which was as 
 wise and inteUigent as it was deep and gentle. I 
 beheve her letters to her sons, in their manhood, 
 helped to preserve their purity and sense of 
 honour," 
 
THE OPENING OF A DOOR 151 
 
 He saw something of poverty and distress in the 
 town where his childhood was spent, and came 
 gradually and as it were unconsciously to know the 
 horror of hfe, the cruelty of circumstance, the 
 bitterness of sin and suffering. 
 
 " There was in our town a small branch of the 
 Young Men's Christian Association, and as soon as 
 we were old enough to join it some of us became 
 members. It was there that I first got a chance 
 of doing something for others." 
 
 At this time he was old enough to see what sin 
 did in the lives of men. He could not take a walk 
 through the streets or hsten to the gossip at the 
 supper-table without learning that sin is the enemy 
 of happiness, the great discordant element in 
 human hfe. At first he could not understand how 
 men — intelligent and sensible men — could drink 
 themselves into wretchedness and ill-health. That 
 a man should ever come to spend his money on 
 drink, while his children went in rags and actually 
 lacked food, staggered his mind. He saw that 
 bad men are lower than the meanest of animals. 
 He saw to what depths of unnatural infamy the soul 
 may come when it denies the laws of God. 
 
 ** I was impressed and perhaps influenced by 
 the Sunday afternoon services which the Asso- 
 ciation used to hold, during the summer months, 
 on the side of the mountains overlooking the town, 
 
 ** It was very beautiful and calm. The whole 
 earth seemed to lie at our feet. Above our heads 
 was the blue of heaven, Uke the blessing of God. 
 And looking down from the rock of the mountain, 
 over the grassy sides which were bright with little 
 
152 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 flowers and soft with the foliage of trees which 
 shone in the sunHght, I used to gaze into the city 
 under the haze which floated over the roofs, and, 
 while we were singing hymns or listening to the 
 words of Christ, think of all the sin and misery, 
 all the unhappiness and ugliness, which was hidden 
 in its crowded streets." 
 
 One is reminded of Carlyle. " Oh, under that 
 hideous coverlet of vapours, and putrefactions, and 
 unimaginable gases, what a fermenting - vat Hes 
 simmering and hid ! The joyful and the sorrowful 
 are there ; men are dying there, men are being born ; 
 men are praying — on the other side of a brick 
 partition men are cursing ; and around them all is 
 the vast, void Night. . . . All these heaped and 
 huddled together, with nothing but a Httle car- 
 pentry and masonry between them ; — crammed in, 
 like salted fish in their barrel ; — or weltering, shaU 
 I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers, 
 each struggling to get its head above the others : 
 such work goes on under that smoke counterpane ! " 
 
 The young Welshman on the mountain - side 
 realised that there was another remedy for aU 
 this misery than a flow of splendid, stimulating 
 rhetoric. He beHeved that each man suffering 
 and unhappy in that " Egyptian pitcher of tamed 
 vipers," before he could become glad of life and 
 profoundly happy in his spirit, must surrender his 
 heart to God, must accept Christ for his Saviour, 
 and live henceforth with the music of eternity in 
 his soul. He thought of political remedies. He 
 concerned himself occasionally with sociological 
 theories and the theses of philosophy. But 
 
THE OPENING OF A DOOR 153 
 
 more often, perhaps, he reahsed that then and 
 there — with all the existing laws and in all the 
 existing circumstances, without change of any kind 
 in the physical conditions of that daily Ufe — all 
 the misery and wretchedness, all the unhappiness and 
 conflict, all the desperation, ruin, and thousandfold 
 vexations of heart and brain, would cease instantly, 
 be as if they had never been, did the town but 
 kneel before their Father in heaven and acknowledge 
 the Love of Christ. 
 
 And it was not only that he saw through religion 
 this change in the lot of the wicked and unhappy, 
 but he saw through rehgion, true reHgion, a change 
 in the lives of the moral and prosperous. He 
 visualised those prosperous people active in the 
 service of Christ, ministering to the sick and sad, 
 helping the poor, strengthening the weak, teaching 
 the young, and comforting the old ; so that the 
 town became not a city divided against itself, but a 
 united family of the human race, of whom God was 
 the acknowledged Father. 
 
 " It was there," he told me, " that I began to long 
 for more active work, that I heard the caU of my 
 Master to serve with His labourers. And the call 
 was not to any work in the ministry, but to work 
 as a layman among laymen — ^which is the spirit of 
 the Young Men's Christian Association. I deter- 
 mined to fight against sin, to be ever on the side of 
 Christ, and at the same time to earn my bread by 
 honest work while I marched in the ranks of the 
 human army, a simple private." 
 
 From this point he comes to an extraordinary 
 thing in his Mfe. He has never told it to the world, 
 
154 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 only a few of his friends know about it, and he 
 told it to me before he quite realised what he had 
 done — carried away by his honesty as he sought to 
 go back thirty years in his life and trace the in- 
 fluences which had shaped it. 
 
 " I obtained," he told me, " an important ap- 
 pointment, the nature of which I do not wish to 
 disclose. But it was an appointment which pro- 
 vided me with something more than money and 
 something more than authority — ^it provided me 
 with the enthusiasm of ambition. 
 
 " For a long time I thought myself the most 
 fortunate man in the town. My mother was 
 dehghted. My brothers were proud of me. All my 
 friends said that I was an exceedingly lucky fellow. 
 Such was the state of things with me, when a change 
 in the organisation of this service introduced and 
 made necessary a certain duty which violated my 
 conscience. If I stayed in my appointment, I had 
 to do something which my conscience told me 
 was wrong. And if I refused to do this thing, 
 there was nothing for it but dismissal. 
 
 " I was conscious of a great depression. I went 
 about the world in a very wretched condition, 
 feeling that my career was now broken, that I 
 must inevitably resign, and not knowing in the 
 least what would become of me. 
 
 " I made it a matter of prayer, I read the Bible 
 for guidance. . . . 
 
 " The weight of depression gradually Hghtened, 
 leaving me uncertain, teased, perplexed, I was 
 unhappy in a tolerable way. 
 
 " During this time I was following my official 
 
THE OPENING OF A DOOR 155 
 
 career and spending my Sunday afternoons with 
 the class in a local Sunday-school to which I had 
 devoted myseK for some time. 
 
 " One Sunday afternoon I was teaching my 
 class when, at the sudden opening of the door, 
 I experienced a strange, indescribable feeling. I 
 cannot make you understand the sensation, which 
 seemed suddenly to run all through my body, 
 except by saying that I knew, just as if I had been 
 told, that something was going to happen. In a 
 moment my Hstlessness, my vexation, my sense of a 
 divided and uncertain consciousness, vanished clean 
 out of my mind. I was startled by a vivid appre- 
 hension of expectation. Something was going to 
 happen. Then. Immediately. To me. 
 
 *' That was the feeling as weU as I can describe 
 what is really indescribable. The door had opened, 
 a stranger had entered, and before he spoke a word 
 I felt that something was going to happen to me. 
 
 " And now I must tell you something more 
 strange and more difficult to explain. As the door 
 opened an intuition came to me which seemed to 
 say, * Speak to this man,^ 
 
 "The man who had entered the schoolroom 
 was, as I have said, a complete ' stranger. I sur- 
 mised from his appearance that he was an EngHsh- 
 man. Something apart from my intuition attracted 
 me to this man. I went towards him and spoke 
 to him. 
 
 " He told me that he was an EngUshman, and 
 explained that he was interested in children and 
 methods of education. I offered to show him the 
 Sunday-school. All the time I was explaining 
 
156 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 things to him I had the feeling that this man had 
 come to me by the mercy of God. I did not 
 know in what way he would afiect my hfe, but 
 I was sure, strangely, very strangely and absolutely 
 sure, that he would change the conditions which 
 were then afflicting me. ShaU I put it in the simplest 
 way ? I knew this man had come to me in answer 
 to my prayer. 
 
 " After he had Hstened to my lesson to the 
 children I inquired if he had yet seen the town, 
 placing myself entirely at his disposal if he should 
 care to go sight-seeing. 
 
 " We left the school, and went out into the 
 streets. 
 
 " We had not done very much sight-seeing when 
 I opened my heart and told him the whole story 
 of my difficulty. Now, this may seem a simple 
 thing to say, but in reahty it was as strange as the 
 first sensation of expectancy which had come to me 
 at the opening of the door. And I wiU tell you why. 
 In the first place, remember, this man was a 
 perfect stranger to me. In the second, he was not 
 Welsh, and could hardly be expected to understand 
 the local difficulties of the situation. And in the 
 third, the whole matter was of so private and 
 dehcate a character that even now, many years 
 afterwards, I cannot declare it without causing 
 unpleasantness and doing harm. 
 
 " Yet I opened my heart and explained everything 
 to that stranger ! I felt that this confidence, so 
 difficult for me to give, so difficult for him to 
 understand, was aU of a piece with the mystery 
 which seemed at that time to take my life out of 
 
THE OPENING OF A DOOK 157 
 
 my own keeping. I felt then, and I feel now, that 
 the invisible forces of God were active with my 
 soul. Nothing else of a Hke kind has ever happened 
 to me. I have never experienced any of those 
 mysterious things which happen to men in moments 
 of elation or at times of great abasement. My hfe 
 before that day was singularly normal, and ever 
 since it has been the hard and healthy life of an 
 ordinary business man. But on that day, as sure 
 as I am Hving now, something happened to me 
 that was not normal, not ordinary, and not a 
 delusion. 
 
 *' Well, the Enghshman heard me out, and then 
 turned to me with a smile and said, ' You are 
 perfectly right ; it would be a sin for you to go 
 against your conscience. I tell you what you must 
 do. You must resign at once, and come with me 
 to London.' 
 
 *' Of course I had never dreamed of such a thing ! 
 To leave Wales, the country that I loved, seemed 
 at the moment a hard, almost an impossible thing. 
 And yet, even with the shudder that came to me 
 at the thought of leaving home, I had the feeling 
 that God was leading me to England. 
 
 "And this feeling deepened, when I talked to the 
 Enghshman, as we walked through the streets of the 
 town. I discovered that he was a most earnest 
 Christian. He took me back to his hotel, and 
 I sat with him for a long time, talking of rehgion 
 and the problem of my own Hfe, which was inter- 
 woven with rehgion. 
 
 " I cannot tell you what occurred to me on my 
 arrival in London. You must be content with 
 
158 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 things as they are at this present time. Ever since 
 I came things have prospered with me in a most 
 amazing way. But, of course, I recognised from the 
 outset that God did not bring me to England 
 only to prosper me and give me easy circumstances. 
 And I can tell you how I came to see what work 
 was ready for my hand, work in His Name and to 
 His Glory. 
 
 " One of the first things I did on coming to London 
 was to join the Central Young Men's Christian 
 Association. I was very happy there. I made true 
 friends and learned the outlook of the Enghsh mind 
 on reUgion and social problems. I threw myself 
 into the missionary work, thinking that it was for 
 this God had brought me to England. Services 
 and Bible classes were held at that time with 
 something of the enthusiasm of a rehgious revival. 
 I gave up every hour of my spare time to this work, 
 helping to save people at the same time that I 
 myseK was learning. 
 
 " How it quite happened I cannot distinctly 
 remember, but I think this was the beginning. One 
 night a man was standing on the steps of our old 
 hall in the Strand, inviting people to come in and 
 join our meeting, when he saw two Frenchmen going 
 past, laughing and festive, certainly in no mood for 
 a religious meeting. They seemed to stand out from 
 all the other people crowding by. Something moved 
 him towards them. He went down the steps, took 
 the arm of the man nearest to me, and in his own 
 language invited him to come in and join our meeting. 
 They were both surprised. After a moment they 
 became self-conscious and awkward. They tried 
 
THE OPENING OF A DOOR 159 
 
 to laugh it off. Gently he persisted with his invita- 
 tion. Finally they yielded. 
 
 " Now, one of those men was converted at the 
 end of the meeting. He is at this time of day — 
 more than twenty years afterwards — a most ardent 
 supporter of the Association. And he told me that 
 at the moment of that invitation he was walking 
 with his friend in the Strand looking out for an 
 opportunity for vice — the usual thing for which 
 the Strand was even more infamous then than it 
 is at the present time. 
 
 " He had only just arrived in England. On 
 landing it had seemed that a new hfe was begun for 
 him. In London he was instantly aware of the 
 contagion of vice and felt the attraction of sin. 
 But, at the meeting, something that was said 
 about home-Hfe touched his heart with remembrance 
 of his mother. A thousand beautiful memories came 
 crowding back to his soul. The tears, he told me, 
 rushed to his eyes. He thought of the evil deed 
 he had just contemplated, and shrank in horror 
 from the man he had so suddenly become in a few 
 hours from leaving home. When the invitation 
 came at the end of the meeting for those who felt 
 the need of a Saviour to stand up and declare them- 
 selves soldiers of Christ, this Frenchman stood up 
 and gave himself for Hfe and for eternity to the 
 service of God." 
 
 Incidents of this nature influenced the young 
 Welshman to take up definite work in the foreign 
 section of the Young Men's Christian Association, a 
 branch of its work Httle known to the general pubHc. 
 
 He saw the peril of young foreigners in the London 
 
160 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 streets. They come, many of them, from good 
 homes, and straightway are thrown to the mercies 
 of the world in the great glaring streets of London. 
 Before they can get their feet, before they can get 
 estabhshed on a virtuous foundation, they are 
 seduced by the apparent friendliness and kindness 
 of vice. They are alone, soHtary, afraid. No one 
 is there to take their hand, to help them, to show 
 them kindness. The great, terrible city appals 
 and overwhelms them. And then they see what 
 looks hke kindness, what looks like friendship, 
 what certainly appears to be bright, gay, cheerful, 
 merry, and good-hearted. Is it wonderful that some 
 of these lonely men in London forget the home left 
 behind in France, in Switzerland, in Italy, in 
 Germany ? 
 
 The man in this story felt a compassion for 
 these young foreigners in London, and devoted his 
 spare time to working for them. He recognised in 
 this particular work a call from God. He assisted 
 in the building up of the foreign section of the 
 
 oung Men's Christian Association, and to-day he 
 is still one of the men who give up their leisure 
 to this branch of the Association's activity. He does 
 not boast of what he has done ; he rather seeks 
 to minimise his part of the work, and to ascribe to 
 others the measure of success which it has obtained, 
 but one learns from those who know the truth of 
 the matter how lavishly he has given both time and 
 money to the work. There must be many men 
 scattered all over the world who owe their salvation, 
 humanly speaking, to the devotion of this honest 
 labourer for God, 
 
THE OPENING OF A DOOR 161 
 
 In the new building of the Central Association 
 in Tottenham Court Road, provision is made on a 
 generous scale for the work of the foreign section. 
 It is greatly to be hoped that no effort wiU be spared 
 to make this work thoroughly successful. For it 
 requires no imagination to see how great may be 
 the benefit to humanity, to all nations and all 
 countries, from a rehgious brotherhood which 
 includes men of all languages and unites representa- 
 tives of all peoples in the common faith of an active 
 Christianity. There are branches of the Association 
 throughout the world, but a central brotherhood of 
 international character in London — where the 
 peoples of so many countries come into daily 
 collision — must have a useful influence among all 
 the nations. 
 
 I can assure the reader, who may possibly be 
 dull and bored by his existence, that he would 
 find most interesting employment for his time in 
 this branch of the Association's work. Here, as 
 elsewhere, the scope is boundless. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 MASTER AND MAN 
 
 THE man tells the story, and it is his own story ; 
 but as he tells it one feels that the master 
 is there also, standing behind him, watching, 
 listening, and guilty, Uke a prisoner in the dock. 
 
 Let me say at the outset that since hearing the 
 man's story I have made independent inquiries 
 and found that certainly the central facts of what 
 he told me are perfectly true. Let me also say 
 that I know in my own experience at least three 
 cases similar to that of the master in this story. 
 
 He was born in London, the son of a small trades- 
 man in the City, and grew up to boyhood in the 
 shadow of tall warehouses that closed about him 
 like prison walls. He was quick and independent, 
 something of a humorist, and perfectly contented 
 with his Cockney fate. 
 
 Gradually he perceived that things were going 
 wrong between his father and mother. At the time 
 he did not realise the grounds of this divergence, but 
 learned afterwards that the father was unfaithful. 
 He saw that his mother was miserable, depressed, 
 and that she frequently gave way to weeping. He 
 noticed that his father's manner was increasingly 
 
 162 
 
MASTER AND MAN 163 
 
 hard and unkind. This was the child's earliest 
 contact with perplexity and confusion. 
 
 The lease of the shop fell in ; the father came to 
 loggerheads with his landlord ; there was a sudden 
 explosion in the domestic hfe, and that httle home 
 in the centre of London's trade ceased to exist. 
 
 The mother took her children to a village in 
 Surrey ; the father disappeared out of their life. 
 He had given himself to sin, and sin carried him 
 far away from the family circle. 
 
 At an early age it became necessary for the boy 
 to earn his living. Influence procured him a place 
 in one of the warehouses whose walls had over- 
 shadowed his childhood. He went to London and 
 became a wage-earner. 
 
 Up to this period his training had been that of an 
 ordinary boy in humble circumstances — ^the board 
 school, perfunctory religious observances in the 
 home, and the Sunday-school. He was moral, but 
 he had no rehgious feeling. 
 
 The immensity of the warehouse stunned and 
 overwhelmed him at first. He was homesick, and 
 miserable, and rather frightened. Two or three days 
 after his arrival, however, he received a letter. 
 It was addressed to him from a local branch of the 
 Young Men's Christian Association, and invited 
 him to tea. He was flattered by the invitation, 
 was conscious, he told me, of a sense of importance, 
 and felt relieved to find that he had friends in 
 London. The horror of the Hving-in system, which 
 at that time was stiU bad, had begun to affect his 
 nerves. 
 
 As he entered the premises of the Association he 
 
164 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 was greeted by name, and was at once introduced 
 to other young men of his own age. A feehng of 
 comfort and pleasantness destroyed his nervousness. 
 He felt happy and at ease. 
 
 He became a member, and spent most of his 
 leisure hours in the building. He formed friendships, 
 attended lectures, played games, read the papers, 
 and was present at some of the prayer meetings. 
 Religion did not at once exert an influence on his 
 character, but it was there in the atmosphere of that 
 social life, colouring the man's mind unconsciously, 
 if not consciously shaping his character. 
 
 And the next stage in his development brought it 
 nearer to his soul. 
 
 He became aware of human nature's strongest 
 passion. 
 
 Ordinarily he is the most quiet of men, a veritable 
 Cockney, drawling his words, smiling at his en- 
 thusiasms, and for ever seasoning his serious 
 speech with a quaint phrase, a telling piece of 
 slang, or an amusing story. But when he spoke of 
 those temptations in his early manhood, he became 
 almost fervent in his efforts to describe the furnace 
 through which he passed. 
 
 " I think I may fairly say," he began slowly, 
 " though it's a hard thing to say of one's own father, 
 but I think I may say I received from him an un- 
 naturally violent impetus to sin. In any case, some 
 men are more tempted in that way than others. 
 I've known a few men as badly tempted as myself, 
 others only shghtly tempted, and some surprised 
 that a man should feel any temptation at all in that 
 direction. But in my case it was something so 
 
MASTER AND MAN 165 
 
 frightful that I simply cannot describe it to you. 
 Why ! " he exclaimed, with sudden passion, " the 
 streets were Hke a burning fiery furnace to me ! 
 The sight of it aU ! The openness, the ease, the 
 glamour. . . . Well, all I can hope is that no other 
 young man may ever suffer as I did in those days. 
 I thought I should go mad ! " 
 
 The sense of danger became so overwhelming that 
 he looked to right and left of him for a way of 
 escape. He had tried everything he knew to 
 counteract the tendency in his blood, but it was 
 in vain. After all his laborious inventions to free 
 himself, he felt the driving force of this terrific 
 temptation pressing him out of purity and into 
 shame. He was on the very verge of the great 
 fall. 
 
 One day it occurred to him that religion was the 
 cure for his ill. He began to read the Bible, began to 
 pray, began to talk about rehgion with one or two 
 men in the warehouse who went to church. The 
 temptation remained. 
 
 He was almost in despair, felt himself on the 
 point of yielding, when an address deHvered at 
 the Association's premises dragged him clear of the 
 danger. It was not an address about fighting 
 against temptations, nothing in the nature of a local 
 suggestion, but was the whole and total life of 
 Christianity, the Hfe itself. 
 
 " I shaU never forget as long as I live," he told 
 me, " the awakening, the revelation, the sensation 
 of seeing everything clear at last, which seemed to 
 hght up my whole soul for me. It was as if a fog 
 had rolled away, all of a sudden. I saw everything 
 
166 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 about me, not only clear, but shining. And this was 
 what the man said — only in better language than I 
 can tell you, although, mind you, it was quite 
 simple and plain, no fireworks, nothing of that 
 kind, just common-sense words. He said that 
 Christianity was a life of service ; that a man might 
 read the Bible and pray and attend church and meet- 
 ings, and 3^et not be a Christian at all. Unless, said 
 he, a man is working for others, helping others to be 
 good, doing all that he possibly can to stop evil 
 and propagate good, he is not a true Christian. 
 It struck me hke a whip. I seemed to jump up. 
 ' "What ! ' I said to myself ; ' here have I been 
 calling myself a Christian all these months, and 
 reaUy and truly I'm not a Christian at aU ! And, 
 of course, I'm not. I'm selfish. I've been thinking 
 about my own soul, about my own temptations. 
 Why ! I've never hfted a single finger in my hfe 
 to help man, woman, or child.' I saw it as clear as 
 light. All my difiiculty had come from brooding on 
 m^^self. And to get clear I had to be a Christian. 
 And to be a Christian I had to be converted. It 
 seemed to me then that conversion was something 
 more than a word ; that it was a tremendous 
 change of a man's whole hfe. I could see what it 
 meant. It meant a right-about-face ; yes, and a 
 turning inside out of everything that had before 
 seemed natural and obvious and common-sense. 
 I looked at the thing, saw it quite clearly, and knew 
 how to get it. But for a moment or two I hung 
 back, as if I was afraid to trust myself to it. It was 
 so big, and I was so small. The world was so 
 enormous, and this thing was clean contrary to the 
 
MASTER AND MAN 167 
 
 world. However, I made up my mind to surrender. 
 That is the true word. It's a surrender of doubts, 
 and difficulties, and fears, and nervousness, and 
 misgivings. It's a surrender of argument and 
 seeking and looking about. It's a surrender of self. 
 I stood up in the meeting and declared for God. 
 Something happened to me. I can't describe it. 
 Something happened — as if a storm had stopped. 
 
 " I went back that night determmed that no 
 single day should ever go over my head without 
 some act of service towards my fellow-man, done 
 for the sake and in the Name of my Saviour. I 
 started to pray night and morning in the dormitory. 
 I arranged a Bible-readuig class once a week. I 
 went among the packers and carters and got them 
 to join our circle. Of course I had to stand a lot 
 of chaff. I was frightfully chipped ! But I'm a bit 
 of a funny chap myself, and I could see how it must 
 strike others at first, and I took it all in good part. 
 There was a looking-glass in the room where we had 
 our diimer, and I used to paste up a great big notice 
 on it, once a week, giving the subject of the next 
 address, generally a text. The other men used to 
 laugh at it and make jokes about it, but I generally 
 got the better of them on that score. Of course 
 there's a danger in exhibiting texts — by the by, I 
 must teU you a story about that — but I'm perfectly 
 certain it makes many a man think about religion. 
 I'm sure those texts on the looking-glass in our 
 dining-room began the work of conversion in the 
 hearts of many men. 
 
 " This is the story. I was once sending out 
 placards announcing a religious address at Exeter 
 
168 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 Hall. The text was a very solemn one. I wanted 
 sandwich-board men to parade Regent Street and 
 Oxford Street with these notices, but was anxious 
 about getting the right kind of men for such a job. 
 So I went to the local agency of the Salvation Army, 
 said I wanted to hire so many sandwich-men, and 
 then added, ' But I don't want drunken-looking 
 feUows to parade the streets with that text on their 
 backs, nor to see the boards left outside a pubhc- 
 house ; you must give me decent men.' ' Well,' said 
 the officer, considering, ' I could give you ordinary 
 men at two shillings, but I couldn't guarantee a 
 soundly converted man under three and sixpence.' 
 Isn't that good ? I couldn't help laughing ! The 
 price of a converted man — three-and-six ! " 
 
 I asked him if his temptations vanished at the 
 moment of conversion. 
 
 " They left me for a time," he said, " but they 
 came back — only without anjrthing like the same 
 strength ; it was quite easy for me to subdue them. 
 There was no fever in the brain, no feeling that I 
 should go mad. Nothing of that. I was never 
 tortured again, not once." 
 
 He had been three years in the warehouse when 
 an opportunity came to improve his fortunes. 
 He was offered the position of clerk in a merchant's 
 office, a quite different business from that in which 
 he had been engaged, but, as he told me with a 
 proud smile, " There isn't much a man can't 
 do who has been three years in a City of London 
 warehouse." The pay, of course, was better, 
 the hours were a trifle lighter, and there was no 
 living-in. AU these things were desirable, but what 
 
MASTER AND MAN 169 
 
 most commended the change to him was the 
 character of this new master. He was " a godly 
 man." 
 
 This gentleman was married, and lived with his 
 wife in Wimbledon. The business was a com- 
 fortable one. It not only provided a good profit, but 
 allowed the master plenty of leisure for less material 
 pursuits. He took the chair at reUgious meetings, 
 gave addresses, made prayers, and served on com- 
 mittees of religious societies. He came from the 
 North of England, and had that grip and practical 
 hard-headed common sense which makes men of 
 affairs so extremely useful in the machinery of 
 religion. Moreover, he was a comparatively rich 
 man, and subscribed liberally to the funds of 
 religious activity. 
 
 Nothing could have been more promising for our 
 young man. He went to this new life with a feeling 
 that Heaven had rewarded him far beyond his 
 hopes. Everything had come to his hand. He 
 was a free man, able to Uve where he wished, 
 employed by a rich master who would not only 
 admire his enthusiasms but share them, and in his 
 ampler spare time he would have the work of the 
 Young Men's Christian Association, the friendships 
 and social intercourse of that society, to keep him 
 happy and active. 
 
 But it was not quite what he expected, after 
 all. The master was hard, sometimes exacting, 
 and very often lacking in even an elementary 
 sympathy. Further, his religious activity took him 
 out of office so frequently, and for such long spells, 
 that the clerk often had to work late in the evening 
 
170 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 to make up for time thus lost in the day. He could 
 have supported this hardship but for the master's 
 roughness, which was sometimes cruel and un- 
 bearable. 
 
 In appearance the master was something of a 
 giant, a man with a shock of stubborn hair, a 
 bristling beard, eyes that flashed with energy and 
 vehemence, a massive forehead that was hke a wall. 
 He was an able merchant, a powerful character, a 
 masterful soul. There was something fine and 
 strong in his rugged appearance which suggested 
 the strength and force of a rigorous spirit. 
 
 " You will hardly beHeve what I am going to teU 
 you," said the man, " but it is true, and worse, 
 infinitely worse, is to follow. For six years I never 
 had more than a week's holiday. He worked me 
 like a slave, and he treated me like a dog. Not at 
 first, but even from the first he was coarse and brutal, 
 as unhke a Christian as anything you can imagine. 
 It came gradually, not until I was master of his 
 secret, had the business, practically speaking, 
 entirely in my own hands, and was tied to him, as 
 weU he knew, by loyalty and my sense of Christian 
 duty. Then he let himself go, and fairly trampled 
 on me. Outside he was everything noble, good, and 
 unselfish ; in the office he was like a devil. 
 
 " And now I must teU you his secret. He would 
 very often be absent for days, weeks, and at last 
 even for months. Sometimes he would tell me he 
 was going away ; but often it was only by telegram 
 a day or two later that I learned he would not be 
 back for some time. I had no suspicion at first, and 
 none of the junior clerks knew anything about the 
 
MASTER AND MAN 171 
 
 matter. It was not until I noticed certain un- 
 accountable items in his bank-account — for I 
 had now full control of everything — that I began to 
 have an inkling of the truth. Many of these strange 
 cheques were for large sums, and some of them 
 were made payable to second-rate hotels in London. 
 
 " One day it came out. He sent for me by tele- 
 gram to one of these hotels. Certain contracts had 
 to be signed, and I had written to his private address, 
 pointing out the extreme importance of not missing 
 the date. The answer to my letter was the telegram, 
 which told me to bring the papers to the hotel. 
 
 " I shall not easily forget what I saw. He was 
 drunk ! — as drunk as a practised drunkard ever 
 can be drunk. There he sat, this godly man, alone 
 in a httle dark room, his face the colour of violet, 
 his eyes fro^vning and half shut, his hair ruffled, his 
 clothes dirty — the living picture of a sot ! So 
 amazed was I, so horrified, that I could neither 
 plead nor reproach. I put the papers before him, 
 got pen and ink, showed him where he was to sign, 
 and went away as quickly as I could. 
 
 " That was the biggest shock I ever had in my 
 life. As I walked away, away through the crowded 
 streets of London, I was like a man who has been 
 stunned. I couldn't see anything clearly. The 
 noise of the traffic and the sound of voices were 
 muffled and dull. Everything seemed unreal. And 
 I was thinking, as I walked along, that perhaps 
 religion was unreal too ! 
 
 *' I was a young man, and perhaps rather 
 emotional. But think of it ! This employer of mine 
 was a leader of rehgion. He was one of the great 
 
172 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 fighters for righteousness, one of the captains in 
 Christ's army. Yes, and he made sacrifices for 
 rehgion. He gave his time, his talents, and his 
 money. He was no hypocrite using rehgion for 
 business purposes. Rehgion did not affect his 
 business at all. No ; he was perfectly genuine, and 
 the work he gave to religion entailed a very con- 
 siderable sacrifice. I knew that well, and I saw 
 it quite clearly. But, all the same, I had seen this 
 godly man in a Httle dark room of a httle shabby 
 hotel in a back street, drunk and horrible ! I tell 
 you that was a frightful shock. 
 
 " It seemed to me, thinking it over, that rehgion 
 was not the power I had imagined it to be. I almost 
 came to think that I had deceived myself in my own 
 conversion. I thought to myself that if rehgion 
 had no power to prevent my master from sinking 
 to such depths it could not be so great and saving a 
 power as I had imagined. For you must see that 
 this man's religion was not merely one of profession, 
 but one of active work and sincere service. It was a 
 hfe. And yet I had seen what I had seen ! 
 
 " For a long time I was dreadfully miserable. 
 My faith was not extinguished, but it was echpsed. 
 What would have become of me but for the Associa- 
 tion, I do not hke to think. It was the pure atmo- 
 sphere of that place, the affectionate friendships, 
 the interest and encouragement of the work, which 
 carried me through those dark days and at last 
 brought me to the hght. I cannot overestimate the 
 value of the Association to my spiritual hfe at that 
 period. It helped me. It encouraged me. It 
 gave me hope. At last I saw the truth, I saw 
 
MASTER AND MAN 173 
 
 that while service is the soul of the religious life, 
 the foundation is faith. I saw what I had never 
 sharply seen before, and never properly understood, 
 that a man may give his life to God's service and yet 
 be far from the Kingdom of Grod." 
 
 Our London clerk, one sees, had arrived at that 
 point where the mystery of faith seizes upon the soul 
 and illumines the whole field of appearance with 
 spiritual light, at that point where Maeterlinck 
 stood when he said : 
 
 " We may possibly be neither good, nor noble, 
 nor beautiful, even in the midst of the greatest 
 sacrifice ; and the sister of charity who dies 
 by the bedside of a typhoid patient may perchance 
 have a mean, rancorous, miserable soul." 
 
 In other, older, diviner, and more eternal words, 
 " Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy Name, 
 and in Thy Name have cast out devils, and in Thy 
 Name done many wonderful works ? Then will I 'pro- 
 fess unto them, I never knew you,^^ 
 
 Philanthropy pales before those words. 
 
 But for the Hfe he hved in the work of the Associa- 
 tion, our clerk would never have come to realise 
 the essential consecration of faith. He might have 
 kept to the narrow path, he might have overcome 
 the temptation to think that religion was a psy- 
 chological illusion, but he could hardly have come 
 to deepen and transform his whole spiritual life 
 by and through the very cause which threatened at 
 first to overwhelm him. 
 
 He told me that as soon as he saw the fundamental 
 essentiality of faith he set himself to live in that 
 
174 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 dependence on spiritual power, that utter trust in 
 the Person of Christ which is the only tranquillity 
 of soul a man may know on earth. 
 
 And aU that he went through never once weakened 
 his spiritual Mfe or disturbed its serenity. 
 
 The master would sometimes send for him in the 
 midst of a drinking bout, and the clerk would plead 
 with him and get him to go home. On many 
 occasions the man himself took the master home 
 and supported him into the house. 
 
 " It was terrible, those home-comings," he told 
 me. " There would be the wife, standing in the 
 haU, white as a ghost, horribly ashamed, and yet 
 so proud that she regarded me with hatred for being 
 the spectator of her tragedy. The master would 
 chng to me, insist that I should go with him into the 
 drawing-room, and make me play to him. There 
 we would sit — he collapsed in an arm-chair, I at the 
 piano, and the taU, white-haired wife, silent and 
 upright, on a straight-backed chair between us. 
 ' Play something ! ' he would command ; * you 
 know how to fiddle about with those notes ; play 
 something.' * What shall I play ? ' I asked him on 
 the first occasion. What do you think he said ? 
 He said to me, ' Play Just as I am, without one 
 plea.'* And I played him that hymn. Over and 
 over again when I took him home he made me 
 play him such hymns as that. 
 
 " He would come back to the office after one of 
 these debauches, and, sitting in his chair, I standing 
 before him, he would measure me with his eyes 
 contemplatively, and say, * None of you feUows in 
 the Young Men's Christian Association know how to 
 
MASTER AND MAN 175 
 
 deal with a penitent sinner — not one of you. You 
 don't understand anything about it.' And some- 
 times he would say to me — for by this time we used 
 to taUi quite freely on the subject — * Do you know 
 why I faU ? It is because the whole engine of 
 Satan's power is directed against me. And do you 
 know why the whole engine of Satan's power 
 is directed against me ? It is because he knows 
 I am in the forefront of the battle for Christ. Satan 
 knows, you may depend on it, who to go for. No 
 man could stand against such power.' And when 
 he said this, I beheve he was sincere. I beheve 
 his soul was in such a frightful state that he could 
 make himself believe any single thing that flattered 
 his spiritual pride or saved it from destruction. 
 
 " But wouldn't you have thought that my 
 knowledge of his secret sin, to say nothing of the 
 way in which I helped him and controDed his whole 
 business, would have led him to show me ex- 
 ceptional indulgence ? On the contrary, his tyranny 
 became worse with every day of our intimacy. 
 Really, his is the most extraordinary character 
 I have ever known. The worse his bout, the more 
 censorious his treatment of me. He used to come 
 back to the office in a flaming state of bitterness, 
 and speak to me as if / had been the cause of his 
 debauch. Let me give you a couple of instances 
 of what I mean. 
 
 " My mother was Hving with me in lodgings in the 
 suburbs. She had been very iU, and now it was 
 apparent that she must die. I was tenderly attached 
 to her, and I could not bear to think of her dying 
 alone in those dreary lodgings. Moreover, her 
 
176 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 disease was terrible. She was dying in the greatest 
 pain. 
 
 " Well, I used to take every opportunity I could 
 to run down and see her during the day, if only for 
 a few mmutes. I spent my dinner-time in this way, 
 and as the end came nearer I would sometimes go 
 and see her in the afternoon. Occasionally I arrived 
 late at the office, occasionally — if it were possible — 
 I went away before my usual time. I confess I 
 was irregular in my attendance. Remember, I had 
 only had six weeks' hoHdays for six whole years. 
 At last the end came. My mother was dead. I went 
 to my master, told him, and asked for a day's leave, 
 for the funeral. Now, what do you think that man 
 said to me ? He looked me full and accusing in the 
 face, as if I had committed a crime, and said, ' May 
 I ask if this is to be the last of these irregularities ? ' 
 Hitherto I had always restrained myself, I had 
 always tried to be a true Christian, but then my 
 blood boiled with indignation. However, I got a 
 grip of myseK, and only said to him, ' I beheve, sir, 
 that after death there is nothing left except the 
 burying.' And it was long before I could reaUy 
 forgive him. 
 
 " The other instance is not quite so bad. Thirteen 
 or fourteen months after my mother's death, I 
 was making arrangements to get married. I asked 
 for a week's hohday for the honeymoon. * Is it 
 really necessary for you to get married ? ' he 
 demanded. Think of that ! Then he went on to say 
 that it was most inconvenient for him to let me go 
 at that time, that certainly a week was quite out of 
 the question, and that if the marriage really must 
 
MASTER AND MAN 177 
 
 take place, could I not manage to do with just the 
 single day ? I was so bitter that I said to him, 
 ' So far as that goes, sir, a whole day is not necessary ; 
 I beHeve the rehgious ceremony only takes an hour. 
 Perhaps you would kindly grant me an hour, 
 and I would come back immediately afterwards.' 
 And that was what actually happened. I went 
 from the office to the church, got married, and was 
 at my desk again in an hour's time. 
 
 " Some months afterwards — things going from 
 bad to worse in the office — my master sent for 
 me one day and had a long talk about the state of 
 the business. I knew how critical things were, and 
 spoke my mind with unusual frankness. I told him 
 plainly that no business could stand against these 
 continual absences of the head. I also mentioned 
 the matter of cheques drawn on the business for £30 
 in one week — cheques for drink and lodging. He 
 said to me, ' You don't understand these matters. 
 I am marked down by Satan. The power of evil 
 swoops down upon me, and carries me away before 
 I know where I am. I can't stand against it, 
 because I never know when it is coming. It springs 
 upon me, and I know nothing more till the fit has 
 passed.' This may have been true in the past, 
 true when I first came to the business ; but it was 
 true no longer. For I myself could now tell when 
 these fits would seize him. He used to make all 
 his plans for them — a day or two beforehand. Yes, 
 on days when he was quite rational, when he was 
 taking the chair at religious meetings or conducting 
 prayer meetings, he would come to the office, 
 inquire as to contracts for the next two or three 
 
 N 
 
178 THE ORDINARY IVIAN 
 
 weeks, draw sufficient cheques for the wages over 
 that period, give me the same instructions a man 
 would leave behind him on starting for a hoUday, 
 and then disappear into the back streets of London, 
 and remain drunk for twenty days. 
 
 " I grew more and more anxious about this state 
 of things. My master had begun to speculate. 
 One or two of these speculations were of the wildest 
 possible character. You can imagine my anxiety, 
 for I was soon to become a father, and the future 
 looked black indeed. One day my master consulted 
 with me. ' I want you,' he said, ' to take a week's 
 holiday ; you deserve it ; you've worked hard ; 
 you had better go to the sea and get fit ; after that 
 we must see what can be done about the business.' 
 Then he said to me, ' We want capital ; I suppose 
 you haven't got three or four hundred pounds ? — ^you 
 couldn't put your hands on such a sum, could you ? ' 
 I almost laughed at the idea. I told him I had not 
 even got enough money to go away with to the 
 coast, but should spend my hohday at home. He 
 nodded, looked reheved, which surprised me, and 
 took a casual farewell of me. This was on 
 Thursday. 
 
 " On Saturday I received a letter from him, dis- 
 missing me ! He told me to send back the duplicate 
 keys I possessed of the office and the safe, and 
 expressed the hope that I should not be long in 
 finding a fresh situation. In other words, he simply 
 flung me out on the street. I had a week-end, I can 
 tell you ! There was I, soon to become a father, 
 with only a few shillings in the family stocking, 
 flung out on the streets to starve, yes, and by a man 
 
MASTER AND MAN 179 
 
 I had served faithfully for eight years ! I told my 
 wife, and she took it splendidly, sure that we 
 should be helped. We did what all people do when 
 they are made to realise their utter helplessness. 
 We simply poured out our souls to God. On the 
 Sunday afternoon I took my class as usual, and got 
 through it somehow or another, but not, I am afraid, 
 with much energy of will. The fear of the future 
 weighed me down. My face must have shown the 
 mental strain. One of my associates came to me 
 after the school was over, and asked if I was in 
 trouble. I told him the whole story. He was a poor 
 man, just one of those simple and humble Christians 
 who work hard all the week and give their Sundays 
 in obscure service to God. But what do you think 
 he said to me ? He said : * Trust yourself entirely to 
 God ; He will never desert you ; this trial of your 
 faith will prove ultimately a blessing ; and in the 
 meantime I can let you have twenty pounds for 
 present needs.' At first I was only touched, 
 touched to the heart, by this splendid sympathy. 
 Then I saw how real and noble a thing religion is, 
 for this man was poor and had a struggle to Hve. 
 Finally I saw that it was an answer to prayer. 
 
 " Everything from that moment prospered with 
 me. It is too long a story to tell, but you may Hke 
 to know that I started in business for myself, that 
 another man employed by my former master joined 
 me later on, and that we are now busy from morning 
 till night. One thing I must tell you, the last thing 
 concerning my old master. When he asked if I had 
 three or four hundred pounds, or could put my hands 
 on such a sum, he was only trying to find out if 1 
 
180 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 could start in business for myself. He knew he 
 was going to dismiss me. He knew that such a sum 
 could not have saved him from ruin. The look 
 of rehef in his face, which had surprised me at 
 the time, meant that he was not afraid of losing 
 his customers in turning me out at a moment's 
 notice. He thought I should sink. 
 
 " I often think about him. He has no power now 
 to darken my faith, and I think I may say with 
 perfect honesty that I bear him no iU-wiU. I hope, 
 too, that I never judge him. But I am interested in 
 him as a man, and curious about him as a Christian. 
 You see, it wouldn't be true to say he is a hypocrite. 
 He has nothing whatever to get out of rehgion. 
 He might be an atheist without injuring his business. 
 But there he is, a saint in church and a drunkard in 
 secret. In pubHc hfe he is a hberal and virtuous 
 man, in private a tyrant. What can you make of 
 such a man ? It is one of the most baffling cases I 
 ever came across. 
 
 " There is something I should hke to say to you 
 about the Association. In my early days, alone in 
 London, and at a time when I was frightfully 
 tempted to go wrong, it provided me with the right 
 companionships, and led me to a Hfe of service, 
 which is the only safe way and the only true way 
 for a young man to go. And mixing with rehgious 
 men of various creeds and various ages teaches one 
 tact. I remember once going into a Lockhart's 
 coffee-shop in the Seven Dials, where I used to do 
 mission work. An old man was seated there, 
 ragged, wretched, and depressed. In front of him 
 was a piece of bread and a mug of cocoa, at which 
 
MASTER AND MAN 181 
 
 he looked lugubriously. I felt pity for the poor old 
 chap, and said to him, ' Dad, let me give you a 
 sausage to eat with that bread.' He looked up at 
 me and said, ' Thanks, I've ordered a beefsteak.' 
 That was a lesson for me ! And it's the same in 
 rehgion. The man to whom we go with our par- 
 ticular meat has often got better himself. Tact 
 is most essential in missionary work. The Associa- 
 tion teaches that. 
 
 " But it did something more for me, something 
 far greater. As it had saved my feet from sin, so 
 it opened my eyes to God. In the moment when 
 everything seemed false, and when my inexperienced 
 mind was staggered by what I took to be my 
 master's hypocrisy, the Association taught me, 
 by the Hves of its members, the self-sacrificing and 
 noble lives of its members, that faith is something 
 real and magnificent. Why I lay stress on this point 
 you can probably guess. Some people think that 
 any society formed Uke the Association, but for 
 social purposes alone, would be just as useful to the 
 young men of London. That is illusion. It must 
 have the religious basis. If I had only gone to the 
 Association for billiards or chess, or for Uterary and 
 political debates, I should never have witnessed 
 with my living eyes the beauty of faith. 
 
 " Men commit a great mistake when they take a 
 lighthouse for a haven. Think of a ship making 
 straight for the Eddy stone ! The Young Men's 
 Christian Association is not a harbour. It is a light- 
 house, and a very splendid hghthouse, set up in the 
 midst of Life's dangerous seas ; but not the haven 
 where there is security and calm water. It may 
 
182 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 save hundreds of men from dashing their hves to 
 pieces on the rocks, but it will never bring peace to 
 their souls unless they see that it lights the way 
 to the harbour, which is Christ Himself." 
 
 Does the master, with his double Hfe, remain a 
 mystery ? 
 
 Think well before you answer. Happy are you in 
 some ways if you can pronounce him, after reflection 
 and after very honest self-examination, a monster, 
 an ogre, and a most odious hjrpocrite ; for such a 
 judgment would declare you not only ignorant 
 of human Hfe, particularly of human life in great 
 cities, but innocent of secret sins in your own 
 existence. A close observer, and one acquainted 
 with psychology, will perhaps pronounce a more 
 indulgent judgment. The saddest women in London 
 have strange tales to tell of those who seek them 
 in the shadows. The stockbroker and banker are 
 very often cynical with good reason about religious 
 people. The doctor in his consulting-room comes 
 to beheve that the double hfe is not an exception 
 but the actual rule. And most men, I think, most 
 men who are tremendously honest with themselves, 
 know of secret doors in their souls which they 
 themselves keep rigidly closed even against those 
 nearest and dearest to them. 
 
 But the psychological interest of this story, 
 profoundly reflected on, has the most saving 
 illumination for the soul. It shows how great a gulf 
 separates the man who is absolutely converted 
 from the man who is simply struggling to be good. 
 One knows for certain that this particular master, 
 
MASTER AND MAN 183 
 
 in spite of his prayers and subscriptions, had never 
 taken the great Decision which transforms char- 
 acter and literally saves the soul. You may hate 
 the word conversion, you may regard all talk 
 about a man being saved as so much odious cant, 
 but you must confess that until that extraordinary 
 thing called conversion happens in the hfe of an 
 ordinary man he is exposed to danger, and may 
 become as evil as the very worst of his fellow- 
 creatures. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 AN ORIGINAL CHARACTER 
 
 THERE must be, of course, among the London 
 members of such a body as the Young Men's 
 Christian Association a certain sameness of experi- 
 ence, a certain identity in character, a certain re- 
 semblance in manner and opinion ; one does not 
 easily discover in the ordinary man of sophisticated 
 society, who has given himself early in Hfe to the 
 discipline of religion, that obvious and impressive 
 emphasis of individuality, that clear, definite, and 
 rough-hewn sense of reality, which strike one in the 
 broken earthenware of humbler classes. 
 
 I was speaking on this matter one evening to a 
 member of the Association who possesses in a rather 
 remarkable degree the spirit of sympathy and the 
 gift of humour. " Would you Hke," he asked me, 
 " to see a real character, a real original ? " The 
 twinkle in his eyes and the laughter in his voice 
 promised something worth a journey. It was seven 
 o'clock ; I had eaten nothing since one ; the 
 afternoon had been spent in Hoxton Market among 
 the most tragic and distressing sights in London, 
 I was rather tired ; nevertheless, such assurance 
 was in the invitation that I accepted it with alacrity. 
 We set off then and there, and made our way to 
 
 ld4 
 
AN ORIGINAL CHARACTER 185 
 
 the murky streets which surround Old Drury. 
 It was nearly eleven o'clock before I got back to 
 my hotel. 
 
 In a dark and quiet street my guide paused before 
 the one bright window in a row of gloomy houses. 
 It was a theatrical laundry. The big uncurtained 
 window threw a haze of yellow light upon the damp 
 street. Women were busily employed there, wash- 
 ing, wringing, ironing, and hanging to ropes sus- 
 pended across the room the festive garments of 
 theatrical ladies. Instead of the perfume of pat- 
 chouli, a healthy smeU of honest yeUow soap, 
 mingled with the damp and stifling atmosphere of 
 steam, came from these garish garments, which 
 hung Mke strangled ghosts in the moist air. No 
 sound of singing or talking issued from this bright 
 interior. The laundresses in their neat print dresses, 
 sleeves rolled to the elbow, worked under the gas- 
 jets in a hurrying silence. A couple of dreary 
 children pressed their dirty faces against the window 
 and watched the proceedings. The forlorn figure 
 of a man in rags slouched by the open doorway, 
 as if hoping for some job by which he might earn 
 a night's lodging. He was shuffling his feet for 
 warmth, and rubbing his hands together over his 
 stomach. The road, the pavement, the walls and 
 windows of this dark street, were wet with rain and 
 fog. 
 
 We passed through the doorway, followed a 
 passage to the back of the house, and entered a yard, 
 so dark that it was impossible to see anything 
 distinctly. A flight of wooden steps, such steps as 
 might lead to a loft, rose abruptly in front of us 
 
186 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 with a hand-rail none too steady at the side. I 
 raised my eyes and saw in the air a little wooden 
 house, Hke a cabman's shelter. Through the half- 
 open door of this hut in the air shone the white 
 light of incandescent gas. My guide mounted the 
 steps, warning me to be careful ; I followed him 
 through the darkness, with some anxiety as to 
 the descent. It was Hke cUmbing to a pigeon loft. 
 
 He pushed open the door and entered. A cheerful 
 voice greeted him from the interior. His laughter 
 and the laughter of another reached my ears as 
 I passed through the doorway. 
 
 The interior of this tiny Uttered shed is such a 
 place as Dickens or Balzac would have loved to 
 discover, would have spent their fuUest powers to 
 describe. And the man who works there is such a 
 person as Turgenev would have loved to know and 
 loved to write about. 
 
 He is a man of medium height, spare of flesh, 
 grey-faced, grey-headed, and grey-eyed, with some- 
 thing of a hkeness to Lord Roberts, but with a 
 sparkle of light in his shrewd eyes which is too 
 human and tolerant and humorous for a soldier. 
 He wore a cloth cap towards the back of his head, 
 the peak puUed a little to one side. He was in shirt 
 sleeves, with an apron over his clothes. At the 
 opening of his waistcoat one saw a shirt-front and 
 a black tie. 
 
 When I extended my hand to him, he examined 
 the palm of his own for a moment with a rather 
 lugubrious expression on his face, and then sHpping 
 it under his apron, and thus raising it to shake my 
 hand, he said, with a very pleasant ripple of laughter. 
 
AN ORIGINAL CHARACTER 187 
 
 " You'll excuse my glove, won't you ? " Then, 
 glancing about the workshop, " Where will you sit ?" 
 he asked, and laughed again. There was only one 
 chair, and the back was broken. 
 
 The workshop was hung with the metal accoutre- 
 ments of horse harness. The man is a coach- 
 plater, and for a hundred years the name he bears 
 has been famous for this particular work. His 
 father made the brass harness for Queen Victoria's 
 Coronation ; Lord Mayors of London for many 
 years have gone their triumphal progress in Novem- 
 ber with his brass harness on their horses' backs ; 
 the aristocracy have been his customers for the 
 glory of their family coaches. The introduction of 
 the motor-car and the disappearance of splendour 
 from human equipages, have dealt hard blows to 
 the coach-plater. His big shops have closed their 
 shutters. The shed in the air is all that is now left 
 to him. In this shed he does some of the finest work 
 in plated harness to be found in all the world. 
 
 One side of the shed is occupied by a bench 
 with two heavy iron vices clamped to the edge. 
 A window overlooks this rough bench, which is 
 strewed with tools and pieces of metal. At the end 
 farthest from the door is a smaU forge ; beside the 
 forge, in a dark corner, stands a tall desk littered with 
 dusty papers, a penny bottle of ink, and a bundle of 
 broken pens. The red tiles of the roof are not 
 obscured by plaster ; from the rafters hang horse 
 collars and two or three pairs of hames. There is 
 a skylight in the centre of these cobwebbed tiles. 
 A gas-jet projects from the wall. The wooden floor 
 is shaky and uneven. 
 
188 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 At first the coach-plater talked about his business, 
 about the changes which had overtaken it, but not 
 with bitterness, always with a ripple of amused 
 laughter running through his words, an incurable 
 cheerfulness of character saving him from bitterness 
 or complaint. *' I'm happy enough," he teUs you ; 
 " happier than most, and a deal happier than I 
 deserve to be. What are you laughing at ? " he 
 demands of my guide, laughing himself. " Why, 
 you're always laughing ; what's the matter with 
 you ? " 
 
 He leaned against the office-desk, his arms 
 folded over his chest, one leg crossed over the other, 
 only the toe of the boot on the ground. His hands 
 rubbed the sides of his arms as he spoke ; every now 
 and then he raised the right hand, pushed back his 
 cap, scratched his head, and then with a quick jerk 
 puUed the peak of the cap forward over his eyes. 
 After this the two hands resumed their incessant 
 rubbings of the arms. He has the habit of sniffing 
 through his nose now and then, as though the nos- 
 trils were obstructed. His eyebrows lift and twitch 
 in sympathy with the sparkle of his eyes. 
 
 It was not long before we got him to talk about 
 his rehgious experiences. 
 
 " When I was a young man," he said, " I lived 
 for one thing, and one thing only — Sport. I dearly 
 loved a bit of sport. I couldn't think that anything 
 in the world compared with Sport ; and certainly 
 I didn't give anything else a single thought. I was 
 a sinner, a real sinner — ^no getting away from that, 
 mind you — but I was not vicious. Sport kept me 
 from it. I didn't drink much, I didn't gamble at 
 
AN ORIGINAL CHARACTER 189 
 
 aU — once I had a shilling in a sweepstake, and lost 
 every penny of it ! — and I didn't lark about the 
 streets at night. No, aU the time I was at work 
 I was thinking of boxing, rowing, and racing ; and 
 as soon as I could get away, I used to go down to 
 Hungerford Stairs and scull on the Thames till it 
 was dark. Then I would go where I could see a 
 bit of fighting, or where I could get a sparring 
 match for myself ; and after that I went home, 
 tumbled into bed — no prayers, of course — and fell 
 asleep dreaming of Sport. 
 
 " Then a strange thing happened to me. I began 
 to feel — I can't tell you how, for I don't know 
 myself what began it — but I began to feel uneasy, 
 unhappy, anxious, worried, as if things were going 
 wrong with me. At this time I was a young man 
 with plenty of money and a pretty tall opinion of 
 myself. A friend of mine asked me if I wouldn't 
 join the Young Men's Christian Association. I 
 said I'd consider it. He asked me again ; I con- 
 sented. I joined the Association. After I had been 
 a member for some time I began to see what was 
 wrong with me. ' Hullo ! ' I said to myself, ' you've 
 been Uving all this time without a reason, without 
 a purpose ; you don't know where you're going,' 
 I said, * you haven't a definite object in Hfe. If 
 you were to die,' I said, * you'd be in a nice fix. 
 What have you ever done ? What are you doing 
 now ? Who made you ? Why were you made ? 
 What are you here for ? Where are you going 
 when you die ? ' Well, I saw at once that I was living 
 without religion. It seemed to me a sensible thing 
 to do to get hold of religion. So I set about it. 
 
190 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 " That's not an easy job, is it ? especially when 
 you're young, when you're thickheaded, when you 
 think you know something. No, it's not easy ! 
 Anyway, I didn't find it easy. I listened to sermons, 
 I read the Bible, I said prayers, I talked about 
 religion with people I met, but the Hght didn't come ; 
 I was just about as wretched and miserable as any 
 man can be. Well, if I knew a man or a dog who was 
 suffering as I was suffering then, I should want to 
 shoot the poor brute — just to put an end to that 
 misery. I should — honest. It was something 
 frightful. One day as I was crossing over Black- 
 friars Bridge I very nearly pitched myself over, 
 very nearly — in fact, I was as near to it as any man 
 could possibly go ; for I had lost the wish to live, 
 and I hadn't the strength to support the weight 
 on my brain which was pressing me out of life. 
 The gloom was something awful. The wretchedness 
 — ^no words can describe it. How shall I tell you ? 
 It was a terrible loneliness in my soul. I couldn't 
 get into contact with anything that gave me the 
 feeling of companionship. I was alone, all alone by 
 myself ; not only, mark you, alone in the world 
 of men, but alone in the whole universe. I hadn't 
 a friend ; I hadn't a single friend in aU the great 
 wide universe of Man and God. And I couldn't 
 stand the solitude ; it drove me to the verge of 
 despair. 
 
 " How I came to the light was very simple. 
 It was one evening as I was reading the Bible. 
 I was following the words of John Fourteen : 
 * Let not your heart he troubled : ye believe in God^ 
 believe also in Me.'' Well, that didn't help me. 
 
AN ORIGINAL CHARACTER 191 
 
 My heart was troubled. I could not keep it from 
 being troubled. All my misery rose from that fact. 
 Believe in God ? But I wanted to believe ; I did 
 believe ; at least, I thought I did. Believe also in 
 Me, Well, that was what I was struggling to do, 
 that was what I had been praying for, that was what 
 my life had become — a struggle to make myself 
 beUeve in Christ. I read on. I came to Verse Six. 
 At that moment, at the very first sight of the words, 
 ' / am the way,"* darkness went clean out of my 
 soul. It was all done in a second. Done for me. 
 Done without my doing anything at all. The 
 darkness went, the misery and wretchedness fell 
 right away from me, and I was happy. I was so 
 happy that I just sat perfectly still, feeling that 
 wonderful happiness in my soul. And as I sat there 
 I saw the truth of it. Christ had done everything ; 
 nothing that I could do was of any use. It was for 
 me to accept, to follow, and to love. That was all. 
 To accept, to follow, and to love. 
 
 " From that moment — it's over fifty years ago 
 now — ^the sense of peace, the certainty of Christ, 
 the conviction of my salvation through Him, have 
 never left me. And I'll tell you something that may 
 seem strange to you, but which is as true and real 
 as the rest. Not once or twice, but often, very often, 
 as I am working in this shop, I look up, raise my 
 head, turn round, and see Christ — see Him standing 
 here in this shop. I see Him as plainly as I see you 
 now. It may be, I don't say it isn't — it may be 
 that the vision comes from my own thoughts, for 
 I am always thinking of Him ; it may be, as you 
 might say, I make the vision myself ; there's no 
 
192 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 knowing ; but all the same, it's a real vision to 
 me. I love to see it, I am happier for seeing it, 
 and I hope it will last to my dying day. It doesn't 
 excite me ; it doesn't give me a single strange 
 feeling or one wild, fanciful thought ; it is just 
 beautiful, and it makes me happy. I look up, see 
 the vision, watch it steadily till it fades away, 
 and then go on with my work — with fresh happiness 
 in my heart. I hope you understand my meaning. 
 I don't lay claim to anything particular. I don't 
 set up for a mystic. All I say is this, that as I work 
 in this shop I very often look up to see a vision of 
 Christ regarding me, a vision which is as real to 
 me as you are now, and the sight of that vision 
 seems to me natural and beautiful ; and I am 
 happier for seeing it." 
 
 The written words can convey no idea of the 
 impressiveness, the profound honesty, and con- 
 vincing sanity of this utterance. The old coach- 
 plater's face became very solemn. He kept his eyes 
 fixed upon me, the head bent a httle, the nervous 
 mobile eyebrows low over the eyes, and still, the rest- 
 less hands steady at the sides of the arms. The 
 cheerfulness and willing humour of the voice quite 
 departed, yet there was nothing artificial or 
 theatrical in the solemn tones of the measured 
 words. A certain hoarseness crept into his voice ; 
 there was a touch of tears in the grey eyes. 
 
 While he was speaking, I thought of the laun- 
 dresses busy by gaslight in the house which hid this 
 aerial hut from the street ; and I wondered what 
 they would think if they heard that the old coach- 
 plater had seen this great vision in his workshop, 
 
AN ORIGINAL CHARACTER 193 
 
 over their muddy backyard, in the midst of Old 
 Drury. Would they believe ? Would they under- 
 stand ? 
 
 I had heard that this man was a teacher of 
 religion, and that ever since his conversion he had 
 done a humble but remarkable work for Christianity 
 in the neighbourhood of Old Drury. I asked him 
 to tell me about this work. 
 
 He smiled, tilted back his cap, rubbed his head 
 rather violently, and pulling the cap back over 
 his eyes and shifting his feet, he made answer, 
 " WeU, you can't expect much from me. I needn't 
 teU you, you can see it for yourself, that I'm an 
 ignorant man ; at any rate, not an educated man. 
 You can tell that from my speech. I've had no 
 learning to speak of, except what I've picked up, 
 going along. But I've got a certain amount of 
 sense, and I have certainly had some very mar- 
 vellous answers to my prayers, helping me ; and so, 
 putting this and that together, I have done what 
 I could to help others. 
 
 " I fancy I must have got the momentum in 
 that direction from the Association. There were 
 some very nice young feUows in the branch I 
 attended, clever, weU-educated, and gentlemanly 
 young fellows, aU doing something to help other 
 people. The Association taught me a great deal in 
 that way. It gave me the feeling that I must work, 
 do something, give myself for others. I don't 
 think I can ever speak too well of the Association, 
 of what it has done for me, and of what I know it 
 has done for many others. It's a fine thing, one of 
 the greatest of our age. 
 o 
 
194 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 " Well, I started a little Bible class of my own. 
 It was rather successful, and some of the members 
 began to look upon me — in spite of the fact of my 
 being an ignorant man — as a kind of an inspired 
 preacher, a sort of a born prophet ! Well, one day 
 somebody or other said to me, ' I wish you'd speak 
 to a young friend of mine ; he's in a difficulty ; 
 can't see his way clear.' * Certainly,' I said ; * you 
 send him up to me.' Well, he came. And, bless 
 my soul, he was a young gentleman from Oxford ! 
 I thought to myself, ' Now you have gone and done 
 it.' I seemed to see that this young man had been 
 sent to me on purpose to take my conceit down. 
 Why, he had got whole libraries in his head ; and 
 what I knew would have gone on a postage-stamp. 
 
 " However, I suggested a walk, and one Saturday 
 afternoon we started off. He was interested in 
 my class, and talked about it very nicely. Presently 
 we sUpped, quite naturally, into an argument ; we 
 began on the Bible, and before we had been at it 
 five minutes I knew I was out of mj?" depth. I 
 didn't know Greek, I didn't know anything about 
 dates and translations, and all the rest of it ; in 
 fact, it doesn't need me to tell you that the young 
 gentleman very soon made mincemeat of Me. 
 * Well,' I told myself, ' you've taken on rather more 
 this time, old cocky, than you can deal with ! ' 
 If Bradlaugh himself had been walking at my 
 side I couldn't have cut a poorer figure. I was 
 very nearly throwing up the sponge. 
 
 " Then it came to me, aU of a sudden, that I was 
 trying to do then, just what I had been trying to do 
 before my conversion — trying to do what had 
 
AN ORIGINAL CHARACTER 195 
 
 already been done for me and for everybody else 
 many years before — shoving myself forward, as 
 you might say. With this thought in my mind 
 I turned and gave the young gentleman a straight 
 talk clean out of my heart, not one word of it from 
 the brain. I asked him if he didn't want to be at 
 peace ; if he didn't want to have rest of soul ; and 
 I asked him if he thought Bradlaugh or Tom 
 Paine or any other atheist could ever give him that. 
 They might trouble his mind about the Bible, 
 but could they give him peace, joy, love, holiness ? 
 And I told him from my own experience that he 
 himself could never get those things, not one of 
 them. I told him that they were things neither 
 to be learned nor earned — that they were gifts, 
 gifts of God, gifts to the human heart through 
 Christ Who had redeemed the human race. 
 
 " And do you know, something I said must have 
 touched that young scholar's heart ; for although he 
 could double me up in argument, he gave in one 
 day, and told me that what I knew by experience 
 was worth aU he had ever learned from books. He 
 became a Christian, a good Christian ! " 
 
 Many other stories, some of them encounters 
 with atheists, the old coach-plater told me in his 
 shed that night. He has won numbers of men from 
 evil to goodness, has converted many, and has long 
 been a centre of faith in a neighbourhood which 
 seems dark and hideous with a vulgar materiahsm. 
 
 The following story is particularly interesting 
 because of its strange ending. 
 
 Some years ago the coach-plater was asked to 
 call upon a man who had no faith, and was ill and 
 
196 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 was unhappy. This man in a small way was notori- 
 ous for atheistical ideas. 
 
 " Have you spoken to him yourself ? " asked the 
 coach-plater. " Yes." " What did you say to 
 him ? " "I gave him Ephesians." " What ? " 
 said the coach-plater ; " Ephesians I That's a bit 
 stiff, isn't it ? Is the man a Christian, then ? I 
 thought you told me he was an atheist ? " "So 
 he is." " Well, don't you think," asked the coach- 
 plater, " that you're expecting a bit too much of 
 him ? Ephesians is good, very good ; but Christ 
 is better. You want to prepare the heart first with 
 Christ before you get introducing Ephesians to 
 the head." After that he promised to go and see 
 the sick man. A certain clergyman, a great friend 
 of the coach-plater, had already been there several 
 times ; but in vain. The coach-plater prayed for 
 guidance, and set out to pay his first visit. The 
 atheist he found was a hard man. 
 
 " I didn't talk to him about reHgion for some 
 days," said the coach-plater. " I just used to drop 
 in of an evening, go up to his bedroom, sit beside 
 his pillow talking of anything that I thought might 
 cheer him up, and then take my leave with the hope 
 that he would pass a comfortable night. Very few 
 of his friends came near him, so he was rather touched 
 by these visits. WeU, one evening he started the 
 subject himself. He asked me what I beheved and 
 why I believed. I told him. He said he couldn't 
 beheve anything like that. He said he thought 
 the Bible was a forgery. I said to him, * Look here, 
 just oblige me by telling me what year it is.' He 
 seemed surprised. I pressed him. * Come on,' 
 
AN ORIGINAL CHARACTER 197 
 
 I said ; ' what year is it ? ' He told me. ' What ! ' 
 I exclaimed, ' I thought the world was millions of 
 years old ? ' ' So it is,' he said ; ' many millions.' 
 ' But,' I answered, ' the date doesn't make it even 
 two thousand — that's a rum go, that is ! You said 
 millions, didn't you ? ' Then, as he was staring at 
 me, I asked him if he didn't think it a strange thing 
 that a forgery — something that had never happened 
 — should have given the date to all civilised nations. 
 The year of our Lord ; Anno Domini. Everything 
 starting from the birth of someone who had never 
 existed. What an extraordinary thing ! Certainly 
 the calendar would never be altered to start from 
 the birth of Tom Paine or Charles Bradlaugh. 
 No one could imagine that. They had certainly 
 lived ; but who would think of dating human 
 experience from the year of their births ? Why from 
 Christ ? A carpenter's son, a crucified man in a httle 
 obscure country that wasn't even free ! Surely, 
 there must have been something very strange, 
 and very wonderful, and very important, in this 
 Christ. He must have done something nobody else 
 had done. 
 
 " Well, from that I went on to the heart of things. 
 I told him that salvation was a gift from God, 
 that he had nothing to do but accept it, that God 
 didn't give him anything hard or difficult to do, but 
 on the contrary, wouldn't let him do anything at 
 aU. It was done for him. Christ had done it. 
 All he had to do was to believe that Christ 
 had done it. All he had to do was to let himself 
 think of Christ having done it for him tiU gratitude 
 came into his heart, and until gratitude changed to 
 
198 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 love. He saw it. He came round in a few days. 
 He became a happy man. 
 
 " One day a stranger came running up these 
 stairs, calling for me. The poor sick fellow was 
 dying and wanted to see me. He had told the 
 messenger to look for me in * the shop behind the 
 house.' There wasn't time to wash or put on a coat 
 even. I started off and ran round to the dying man 
 just as I was, just as I am now — shirt-sleeves and 
 apron. 
 
 " The wife and children were gathered round the 
 bed. They were all weeping. A nurse was standing 
 by the pillows. The man looked at me — he was 
 perfectly conscious — and greeted me with his eyes. 
 I took his hand and spoke to him. He said to me, 
 ' What are they crying for ? Why do they cry ? ' 
 Then he smiled, and said to me, ' Why don't they 
 sing ? ' After a moment he repeated it, ' Why don't 
 they sing ? ' — as if he were conscious of a coming 
 glory. It was a difficult thing to do, but I and the 
 nurse started a hymn, one of his favourites, and we 
 sang it very softly round his bed. He lay there, 
 smiling, with his eyes shut. 
 
 " Presently the end came quite near. I never 
 saw anything like it before, and I don't expect to 
 see anything like it again. The man said, calmly 
 and happily, ' I'm going now.' And then he lifted 
 his hand to say good-bye to his wife, just as if he 
 was merely setting out on a journey. He bade her 
 good-bye, thanked her for all her goodness and 
 love ; and then turned to the children. One by one 
 he said good-bye to them. He told the girls always 
 to mind what their mother said to them, and he 
 
AN ORIGINAL CHARACTER 199 
 
 bade the boys be good and take care of their mother 
 and help her. His voice seemed to be strong, his 
 eyes seemed to be bright with hfe. It was just hke 
 a man going away on a journey. Finally he turned 
 
 to me. ' Good-bye, Mr. ,' he said, giving me his 
 
 hand ; and holding it, looking into my eyes with 
 great meaning, he said, ' / shall see you again.'* At 
 that very moment he died ; without a struggle, 
 without a gasp, without any visible coUapse, the 
 man lay suddenly and quietly dead. When I came 
 to take my hand away, I found that I couldn't. 
 The nurse had to unfasten the dead fingers. It 
 was a wonderful death-bed ! " 
 
 It will give some idea of the affection which this 
 charming man, so original, and sensible, and 
 whimsical, and tender-hearted, inspires in his 
 friends, to teU the following incident. A member 
 of his Bible class came round to the workshop 
 one evening, and asked him if he would come and 
 dine with a few friends in a restaurant. He said 
 that such things were not in his way. The other 
 persisted, said it was important, and finally per- 
 suaded the coach-plater to comply with the request. 
 When he entered the room in which the dinner was 
 served, he found it filled entirely with old members 
 of his Bible class, gathered from aU parts of London, 
 some of them from the country. There were middle- 
 aged men there whom he had not seen since their 
 boyhood ; men who said that they owed everything 
 to his teaching and influence. At the end of the 
 dinner a presentation was made to the coach-plater 
 of a purse containing many pounds. 
 
 The dinner was given to show the love of his 
 
200 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 friends, and the purse was subscribed because a 
 few of those friends had heard how his business had 
 suffered in recent years. 
 
 " I was once a bit of a swell, had plenty of money," 
 he told me ; " used to reckon myself one of the great 
 merchants of the City of London ! " He laughed, 
 and scratched his head. " Well, most of that has 
 gone. I'm rather a humble kind of person now ; 
 and I don't know that I'm sorry. I don't know that 
 it has made very much difference to me. For one 
 thing, I've let a good part of it go myself. I mean, 
 I haven't pushed for orders. I was never one to 
 eat up my neighbours. Live and let Hve ! So long 
 as I have got enough to keep me pleasantly busy, 
 and can earn enough to pay my way honestly, 
 I don't complain. This Hfe isn't only a scramble for 
 money. Oh no ; it's something better than that ! " 
 
 A really lovable, good man. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 A LITTLE PUBLICAN 
 
 IN this strange story of a very ordinary life the 
 reader will make acquaintance with one of 
 those London interiors which, unknown to the 
 majority of respectable people, are the radiant centre 
 of I know not how many crowding Uves. 
 
 " To begin with," says the handsome boy, 
 laughing amusedly — and he nurses one of his knees, 
 leans back on the table where he has perched 
 himself, and regards me with a shy but calculating 
 scrutiny — " to begin with I was born in a pub." 
 
 He is six-and-twenty, but looks not more than 
 eighteen or nineteen. Nevertheless, his manner has 
 aU the ease, brightness, and assurance of a middle- 
 aged flaneur. I am perplexed for a long time by 
 the contradiction which exists between his appear- 
 ance and his mind. The face suggests an angel — 
 rather a well-bred and effeminate angel ; the manner 
 is cjniical, mocking, hard. It is difficult to beheve 
 that a youth so pretty and pleasing can have hved 
 at close quarters with the squalor of depravity : 
 more difficult to reaUse that a mind so apparently 
 gay, cheerful, and almost flippant can ever have 
 suffered the revolution of a great spiritual experience. 
 But, the wind bloweth where it listeth. 
 
 201 
 
202 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 As I look at him I see a handsome boy ; as I 
 listen to him, I hear a man of the world who knows 
 everything. It is difficult for a long time to know 
 what to make of him. 
 
 " It wasn't a very hopeful beginning," he says, 
 with a smile which half closes the grey eyes and 
 depresses the corners of the smaU mouth. He is 
 evidently averse from tragedy or sentimentaHsm, 
 is something of a humorist, deprecates anything in 
 the nature of exaggeration. He continues : "A 
 pub. in the middle of the City isn't exactly the place 
 you'd choose for a kid's start in life. It sharpens 
 the wits, I've no doubt ; but it plays hanky-panky 
 with the rest of one. I knew pretty well everything 
 there is to know before I was nine ; but what 
 people caU ' everything there is to know ' is just 
 that kind of thing which it is better not to know at 
 all. My father owned the pub. It was a Httle place, 
 and we did all the work ourselves. No barmen or 
 barmaids — a family affair. It was one of those 
 taverns which are in the nature of clubs ; it had its 
 regular customers ; the stranger dropping in for a 
 drink and then flying away was a rare bird. The 
 same men came every night, and sat there, as a rule, 
 tiU closing time. Everybody knew everybody else. 
 They were small tradesmen, smaU business men, 
 with a few salesmen from the markets. It was 
 rather a jolly place in a way. Fellows played games 
 there of various kinds — cards and dominoes. Games 
 weren't allowed by law, but at the side of the place, 
 up a little court, there was a door ; we called it the 
 ' Bobby's Door.' My father was never worried by 
 the police ! 
 
A LITTLE PUBLICAN 203 
 
 " One of the features of the pub. was a Sunday 
 excursion. My father used to get cheap tickets from 
 the railway companies, sell them during the week 
 at a smaU profit, and on Sunday he would take 
 charge of the excursion, organise the catering, and 
 run the whole show, there and back. They generally 
 ended up with a carouse at home ! I've heard some 
 stories — you bet ! Sometimes we would go to 
 Brighton or Margate ; sometimes inland to places 
 like Wolverhampton. It meant hard work for my 
 brother and myself. But it paid, and we always 
 enjoyed the outing when we got it. Saturday 
 nights, of course, were always our hardest times ; 
 but we had to be up at five next morning to prepare 
 for the Sunday excursion. My brother and I worked 
 like niggers. We had to be nippy, as you can 
 imagine. Little sharp beggars we were ! — ^not much 
 idle time for getting into mischief. I've often 
 worked in the bar, as a Httle kid, from eight in the 
 morning till half -past twelve at night. Pretty long 
 hours for a nipper ! I understood before I was in 
 my teens all about breaking-down spirits and fining- 
 down beer. We used to fine down the beer with 
 skate's-skin — stuff Hke London mud ! I tell you, 
 I don't want to drink any more beer. Water's 
 good enough for this chicken ! 
 
 " I began to drink when I was quite a kid. I got 
 toothache one day ; my face was swoUen ; and I 
 looked generally dicky. Some fathead in the bar 
 told me that stout was a certain cure. I tried it, 
 and that was the beginning. Kids are challenged 
 to drink in bars. FeUows seem to think it funny 
 to see a little beggar roUing about drunk. I used to 
 
204 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 be proud of my capacity. I'd drink great glasses 
 of port, one after another. Sometimes I was sick. 
 I used to run outside, making for the door with all 
 my might. The fatheads used to laugh as if they 
 would spHt. And then I'd come back and begin 
 again. 
 
 " My father sent us to school in the neighbour- 
 hood. We were potboys and scholars all in one. 
 I rather Uked school. We were Hvely boys, and 
 made friends. One of my friends was a tip-top 
 decent sort of boy. He asked me once to meet him 
 on Sunday and go to Sunday-school. From his 
 description it sounded jolly. I regarded it as an 
 excuse for getting away from home. Curious idea, 
 wasn't it ? — Sunday-school seemed to me a bit of 
 an adventure, a new gHmpse into the world outside 
 our pub. I wanted to go very much. But when I 
 asked my father's leave he fairly exploded at me. 
 ' You dare to go to Sunday-school ! ' he shouted at 
 me ; ' you dare — ^that's all ! ' I felt as if I had 
 proposed something wicked ! " 
 
 He swings himself from the table to a taU office 
 stool. He is becoming interested in his own story. 
 
 " Most extraordinary thing that — my father's 
 point of view. He seemed to regard anything in the 
 nature of rehgion with a positive aversion. And yet 
 I never remember hearing him argue about rehgion. 
 He wasn't an active enemy or an embittered critic. 
 He never mentioned the subject himself. But you 
 only had to suggest it to get him at boiling point. 
 He swore at it, grew purple in the face, and 
 then dropped it, like a hot coal. He was a big man, 
 and tremendously fat. When I look back now I 
 
A LITTLE PUBLICAN 205 
 
 can't imagine how he Hved. He never took five 
 minutes' exercise in the open air. From Monday 
 morning to Saturday night he was in the pub. He 
 used to sit in the bar, drinking with the customers. 
 My mother and we two boys did most of the work 
 of the house. On Sundays, in summer-time, he 
 would go on our excursions ; but aU the rest of his 
 life he was seated on a stool in the bar, drinking and 
 talking. I was not sufficiently interested in rehgion 
 to be curious about his point of view ; I only knew 
 that it was a subject which roused the Hon's wrath. 
 It's true to say that I grew up, in the very centre 
 of London, without the smallest notion of Chris- 
 tianity. My mother ? — ^weU, she was always so 
 occupied. As far as I know she never once mentioned 
 rehgion. It was with her as with thousands of 
 others — she never gave it a thought. It didn't 
 come into her Hfe. At any rate my brother and I 
 got no notion of rehgion from our parents. We grew 
 up in absolute ignorance of the whole subject. In 
 the very heart of the City ! I often think now what 
 a jolly rum place London is. I dare say if you were 
 to count all the children who don't even know the 
 story of Christianity it would make a pretty con- 
 siderable army. As I walk along the streets I often 
 look into houses and wonder. . . . 
 
 " But I must teU you my story. I was — ^let me 
 see — ^yes, I suppose I must have been over thirteen, 
 thirteen and a half perhaps, when I began to get 
 other notions of things. I ran up against one of 
 my schoolfellows. It was in the streets. We had 
 a chat, just about anything ; and then he intro- 
 duced me to a friend of his. This friend belonged to 
 
206 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 the Youths' Section of the Young Men's Christian 
 
 Association in Street — a pretty lively crowd 
 
 at that time ! He told me about it — the games, 
 sports, lectures, and Bible classes. It sounded 
 aU right. I told him I should Hke to join. And 
 then he asked me to his house. 
 
 " To show you the state I was in, I found that this 
 fellow's people had family worship, and after my 
 first experience of such a thing, I took the chap 
 on one side and asked him — ' Is it serious ? ' I 
 simply couldn't make it out. Reading the Bible 
 out loud, and then kneeling down at a chair and 
 praying to God ! — it seemed to me a sort of 
 game, something that couldn't possibly be real 
 and serious. 
 
 " All the same, I was tremendously struck. For 
 days afterwards I thought about that family wor- 
 ship. It haunted me. I was something hke a 
 fellow with a bee in his bonnet. I couldn't think 
 of anything else. AU day long in the pub., and 
 afterwards, upstairs in my bed as I lay waiting for 
 sleep, I thought of that httle family, gathered 
 together in a room, kneeling at chairs, and praying 
 to God, praying to be good. The thing had photo- 
 graphed itself on my brain. I saw it as a picture. 
 It kept jumping up in the dark, real as Mfe. I 
 thought about it. 
 
 " My father died about this time. I don't think it 
 made much difference to me. My brother and I 
 knew that there would be certain money to come 
 to us when we were twenty-one, and that is about 
 aU we thought of the matter. We had to work 
 harder than ever. My mother kept on the business, 
 
A LITTLE PUBLICAN 207 
 
 and we boys were her only helpers. Mind you, 
 I wasn't fifteen at the time. My brother was a 
 year older. And we two youngsters practically ran 
 that London pub. It's rather a queer experience, 
 isn't it ? 
 
 " I joined the Youths' Section of the Young 
 Men's Christian Association. As often as I could 
 I ran round there in the evening and attended all 
 the classes. I did it at first simply for something to 
 do. My friend was a member. It was a case of 
 wanting to keep up a friendship, and having some- 
 thing to do that was different from the day's 
 work. 
 
 " To look back on that time is rather curious. 
 I'm not sure if I quite knew what was happening 
 to me. AU day long I was among the bottles and 
 barrels, surrounded by jovial drinkers, working like 
 a galley-slave, and yet hking it all in some strange 
 way which I can't define. Then in the evening I 
 would spend an hour or two in the Association, at 
 Bible classes and prayer meetings. Quite a different 
 sort of thing ; and yet I Mked that too. I got to 
 know about God. Religion was no longer a strange 
 idea to my mind. But nothing else, apparently — 
 it's so difficult to say — occurred to me. The only 
 definite effect of twelve months in the Youths' 
 Section of the Young Men's Christian Association 
 was to unsettle me. I felt myself unsettled. At the 
 end of that twelve months I was unhappy and 
 confused. I didn't know what to make of fife. 
 The things which had seemed to me normal, 
 ordinary, inevitable, and quite respectable, now 
 seemed somehow wrong, somehow false, somehow 
 
208 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 dangerous. But, at the same time, the new things 
 I had learned in the Association did not seem to 
 me practical and real. I was troubled and bothered. 
 It was Hke a fellow trjdng to find his way in a 
 fog. 
 
 " One feeling began to emerge. I wanted to be 
 good. I had a strong conviction in my soul that 
 I could be better. That's really the first definite 
 thing I can remember. Before I knew whether I 
 beHeved or didn't believe what I was taught at the 
 Association, I wanted to be good. I saw good as 
 something desirable. And, as I say, I was quite 
 certain — ^I didn't know how — ^that I could be better, 
 happier. Drink gave me a momentary happiness, 
 but I knew that it was a false kind of happiness. It 
 was not merely that the happiness from drink ended 
 in reaction, and that next morning I felt foul in the 
 mouth, fuzzy in the head, and generally cheap and 
 chippy. No ; it wasn't only that. I had a quite 
 clear notion that the happiness itself was not true 
 happiness. I seemed to know for an absolute truth 
 that real happiness was something altogether 
 different. But what it was I could not have told 
 anyone. 
 
 " I connected this happiness with the idea of being 
 good. I suppose that something I had heard at a 
 meeting in the Association must have stuck that 
 idea in my mind. But it was vague and uncertain. 
 I only felt that goodness had something to do with 
 happiness. I didn't know it for a dead fact of 
 Hfe." 
 
 His face grows serious. He averts his gaze. Still 
 nursing his knee, and leaning far back on the taU 
 
A LITTLE PUBLICAN 209 
 
 stool, he looks up at the ceiling, wrinkles up his eyes, 
 and reflects within himself. Then he says : 
 
 " And yet it was not only moral unrest. It 
 was spiritual. I am sure it was my soul — seeking 
 unity with God." 
 
 " You were working all this time in the pubUc- 
 house ? " I inquire. 
 
 He nods his head. " Yes, it was there, more than 
 at the Association, that my soul was clamouring, 
 clamouring and struggling, for that unity. I was 
 only a kid ; I didn't understand ; but I was 
 awfully unhappy. I was a child crying for some- 
 thing, and no one understanding. I had a dark 
 time. In a way, it was a fight. Two worlds seemed 
 to be tearing me between them. I couldn't quite 
 decide which to choose. But I fought against what 
 I felt to be bad, and I half fought against the 
 influence that was drawing me away from what I 
 felt to be bad. 
 
 " Something happened in the family at this time. 
 My mother married again. It turned out to be a 
 disastrous step. I don't want to say much about 
 what followed. We were aU pretty miserable, 
 my poor mother most of all. The feUow turned out 
 a real bad 'un. He had simply married my mother 
 for her money, and made Hfe a hell for all of us. 
 Perhaps it had been a hell before ; but now it was a 
 conscious heU. We knew aU about it ! 
 
 " Soon after her second marriage there was a 
 special mission at the Young Men's Christian 
 Association. A splendid fellow came down and 
 delivered a series of addresses. He was the kind of 
 man who makes a great impression on boys, and 
 r 
 
210 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 his addresses were of the order that go straight 
 to the heart, open all the secret doors of the inward 
 life, and make a chap really look hard at his own 
 face in God's mirror. I don't know if I explain 
 what I mean. They weren't moral addresses, and 
 they weren't expositions of Bible texts. They 
 brought all the stirrings of the soul to the surface, 
 and set the truth of one's own struggling spirit, the 
 truth of one's own troubled and secret heart, clear 
 before the gaze. Well, they simply lifted me clean 
 out of my doubt and uncertainty. They made me 
 see what I had never seen till that time — the 
 necessity for a definite and resolute decision. I 
 understood then that aU this time I had been 
 drifting. I knew that my mind had not taken a 
 definite straight course one way or the other. 
 
 " At one of these meetings he called on aU the 
 youths present whose hearts were determined to 
 decide for Christ, to stand up. I had the kind of 
 feeling that I ought to stand up. I felt it would 
 be like telling the truth, owning up, doing the 
 straight thing. I don't think there was much more 
 in it, except that I reaUy did want to get settled 
 and happy. Well, anyhow, I stood up. What 
 happened I can't say. But I'm absolutely certain of 
 this, the mere fact of standing up had a real spiritual 
 effect. It's not easy to explain ; some people may 
 even ridicule the idea ; but the fact remains aU the 
 same. Until I stood up, my mind was troubled 
 and wretched and dark ; as soon as I stood up the 
 trouble vanished, the wretchedness disappeared, 
 I was conscious of fight. That's what happened to 
 me as near as I can explain it. I don't pretend for 
 
A LITTLE PUBLICAN 211 
 
 a moment that it was a case of instant illumination. 
 I didn't at that moment see the whole truth of re- 
 ligion, nor realise the whole spirit of the Christian 
 hfe. Whatever happened to me, it was not a 
 blinding, a dazzling, or even a quiet illumination. 
 It was rather a cessation of struggle, an end of 
 perplexit}^ just a peaceful, satisfied feeHng that I 
 had done a wise and right thing." 
 
 He seeks to get rid of anything mystic in this 
 experience so far as he himself is concerned. He 
 seems as if he wishes to convince one that the thing 
 was normal and natural, something that any man 
 may experience at any time if he makes up a 
 definite mind to choose a direct course. But it was 
 aU the same the moment of his conversion. After- 
 wards he saw greater fight, experienced a deeper 
 joy, and is one of those men who will continue to 
 grow in enlightenment ; but at the moment when 
 he stood up and felt his struggle suddenly collapse 
 in his soul he was what men caU converted. The 
 decision was made. The change of soul was 
 efl'ected. 
 
 The serious look goes from his face, as if he is 
 glad to get rid of the necessity for careful speaking. 
 The smile comes back, the pleasing man-of-the- 
 world smile so odd on the boyish face, the smile 
 which wrinkles up the eyes and depresses the corners 
 of the mouth. 
 
 " I'U tell you a fittle thing that had a help in 
 shaping me," he says eagerly. " I noticed for the 
 first time the — what shaU I call it ? — well, the extra- 
 ordinary placidity — I think that's the word — of the 
 men in charge of the Youths' Section at our branch 
 
212 THE OHDINARY MAN 
 
 of the Association. We were rather a lively crowd. 
 At times we were real beasts. From horse-play 
 and cheek, we often went to something that was 
 joUy near a riot. And yet, never once did the men 
 lose their heads or go for us in any way. As soon as 
 I began to notice this, it struck me as something 
 worth thinking about. It occurred to me that if a 
 similar rumpus was taking place in the pub. / should 
 certainly not be placid ! And then I began to think 
 about the secret which kept those men cahn and 
 kind. They were not paid to teach us ; they got 
 nothing out of us ; whether we were good or bad 
 made no difference to their worldly fortune. And 
 besides, they came to teach us in their spare time, 
 when most men are thinking of themselves ; and I 
 guessed that it must sometimes be a bore for them, 
 sometimes a frightful fag. And yet they were 
 always placid. I was awfuUy struck by that. 
 
 " I began to be serious in my Hfe. I wanted to get 
 the secret of those men." He laughs softly, with 
 great amusement at himself, tucking in his chin, as 
 he adds : "To show you the funny little beggar I 
 was, I used to take a candle upstairs, Ught it, and 
 sit up half the night reading the Book of Genesis ! 
 I don't think it did me any good. But Hfe wasn't 
 at aU easy just then. My stepfather was making 
 things hum. Our home-Ufe in the pub. was absolutely 
 wretched. And then I felt unhappy about the drink 
 trade. I didn't reHsh my share in a trade which 
 did so much harm. It got on my conscience. Things 
 went from bad to worse. While I was struggling 
 with Genesis my stepfather was making ducks and 
 drakes of the business. At last there was a general 
 
A LITTLE PUBLICAN 213 
 
 shindy. The place was sold. We moved into the 
 suburbs, and took a private house. Although I was 
 glad to be out of the Trade, I don't mind telling you 
 that I felt jolly unhappy when I went out of the pub. 
 for the last time. I was between fifteen and sixteen, 
 and the dirty httle place was aU I had ever known 
 of home. Honestly, it hurt me to go. 
 
 " Well, to cut a long story short, things got so 
 hot in the suburbs that it was quite impossible for 
 my brother and myself to stay. We seemed to 
 enrage our stepfather, which only made things 
 worse for my poor mother. It was she who begged 
 us to go. If I could have done any good I would 
 have stayed ; but it was a hopeless case, quite hope- 
 less. In fact, to tell you the truth, our stepfather 
 kicked us out of doors. Well, I went to Hve with 
 an aunt, and through the Young Men's Christian 
 Association got a decent job in an office. I worked 
 hard, liked it aU right, and after work usually turned 
 into the Association for an hour or two. I made it 
 my club. 
 
 "It's rather curious, this, by the way. All the 
 time I was using the Association Hke a club some- 
 thing was happening to me. An unconscious effect, 
 I suppose you'd call it. The kindness I received, 
 the atmosphere of friendship and goodwill, the 
 rehgious tone of everjrthing were giving me a twist 
 towards the right direction. I was as moral as the 
 rest of them, I suppose ; rehgion was a pretty real 
 thing to me ; but I was stiU in the stage of reading 
 Genesis by candlehght. Then it came to me 
 from the Association, gradually, that the secret 
 was Work. 
 
214 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 " I don't know if that is the moment of illumina- 
 tion for other people. It was certainly mine. When 
 the gradual process was completed I saw quite 
 clearly that I must do something for other people. 
 And then life seemed reaUy a straight road. I saw 
 that reading Genesis by candlehght wouldn't help me 
 so much as spending half an hour in getting some 
 other fellow over a stile, or trying to get another 
 chap, who had fallen down, on to his feet. And it's 
 perfectly true. Work has a most splendid and tonic 
 effect on the soul. It gets a man out of himself. 
 It's the real thing. You catch the enthusiasm of 
 religion by working for other people. 
 
 *' So I became a worker in the Association. And 
 that's the end of my story. I'm doing very weU in 
 business, and aU my spare time I give to working 
 for the Association. I don't drink beer ! I never 
 take stout if I've got the toothache ! And I find 
 something better to do on Sunday than go on 
 excursions ! In short, I'm occupied and happy." 
 
 It seemed an absurd question to ask such a boy, 
 but remembering that he is six-and-twenty I did 
 ask if he was married. 
 
 " No ; my brother and I have to keep my mother. 
 Our beautiful stepfather got every penny of her 
 money, and ours as well. He's dead now. And she 
 Uves in the country. We both contribute." 
 
 *' And do you stiU Hve with your aunt ? " 
 
 " No ; in rooms." 
 
 " That's rather dull, isn't it ? " 
 
 " Some rooms are awful, simply awful ! But I've 
 been lucky. For the last twelve months I've been 
 in clover. The family I'm with are the best Chris- 
 
A LITTLE PUBLICAN 215 
 
 tians I've ever known. The home-life is perfectly 
 charming. I was converted ten years ago, about ; 
 but this last twelve months, simply from hving with 
 these people, have been twelve months of spiritual 
 growth for me ; I seem to have changed completely 
 in the last year. I can't tell you what these people 
 are to me. They're perfectly delightful. And it 
 wasn't till I went to live with them that I had any 
 idea at aU what home-hfe could be. I learnt the 
 beauty of a home in lodgings ! It was the first 
 Christian home I had ever struck. 
 
 " Yes, that's rather interesting. After ten years 
 of Decision, I have experienced twelve months of 
 spiritual growth. And it seems to me that I shall 
 go on learning something fresh every day, go on 
 growing, spiritually, tiU the end ; which is better, 
 at any rate it seems more interesting to me, than 
 one tremendous moment setthng everything and 
 illuminating ever3rthing for evermore. Some men 
 one way, and some another. Conversion isn't 
 always a magic carpet that Hfts one up and in a 
 jiffy takes one to the goal. My experience is that 
 Conversion means a turning about and a Decision 
 for Christ. After that, growth and progress all the 
 time. Something happens to one at the moment 
 of Conversion, but it isn't the end, and it doesn't 
 appear to me to be in the least unnatural." 
 
 Simple as this story is, a thoughtful man will not 
 be able to read it, I think, without a feeHng of its 
 inner wonder. The question must occur. What 
 would have been the course of this life if religion 
 had not come to consecrate and direct it ? Imagine 
 the boy, kicked out of doors by his stepfather, left 
 
216 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 to shift for himself in the streets of London. What 
 would have been his fate ? Think of him as the 
 boy who spent all the beautiful and most innocent 
 years of existence in a pubhc-house. Turned like 
 a dog into the streets, what course could his Ufe 
 have run but one of depravity and ruin ? 
 
 Was it a chance too, only blind accident, that he 
 made a friendship at school which introduced him 
 to the idea of prayer, of family prayer, and after- 
 wards brought him into touch with a reHgious 
 society ? Was there nothing but a boy's whim in 
 the impulse which led him to become — ^this poor 
 little potboy — a member of that reUgious society ? 
 If it is a question of temperament, from where did he 
 get the rehgious inclination ? In his house he learned 
 nothing of religion ; his Ufe was calculated in every 
 way to keep all notion of rehgion out of his soul ; 
 and his environment was one which makes for sin, 
 vulgarity, carelessness, and a sort of coarse, sodden, 
 and torpid brutality. Yet there was something 
 in the boy's soul which opened to rehgion. An 
 invisible Hand led him into a religious atmosphere ; 
 in that atmosphere he responded to rehgion. Is it 
 easier to explain by an abrupt and dismissing use of 
 the word Coincidence ? — or by holding the faith 
 of the best and noblest of humanity that the 
 angels of God fight for us in the midst of the 
 battle ? 
 
 As I walked away from my meeting with this 
 strange youth I wondered if George Williams 
 dreamed, when he planned his pious society for 
 drapers' assistants, that he was stretching out a 
 hand through time which would one day lift a little 
 
A LITTLE PUBLICAN 217 
 
 boy out of a public-house and bring him to the 
 Cross of Christ. 
 
 Think what you wiU of this story, does it not 
 convince you that in the midst of London there 
 goes on aU about us a great invisible struggle of 
 the soul, and that the real drama of the City's 
 life is with this spiritual conflict? 
 
CHAPTER Xn 
 THE BIG SCALE 
 
 I STATED in my Foreword that the reader 
 would learn in the course of the narratives 
 something about the great work of the Young 
 Men's Christian Association in North America. The 
 man of whom I give some account in this chapter is 
 one of the Association's chief organisers in the 
 United States and Canada, and he is perhaps 
 better acquainted with the operations of the 
 Brotherhood all over that vast continent than 
 any other American. 
 
 " My own story won't interest you a bit," he 
 protested. " There's nothing in it. I just came 
 along, same as hundreds of other young fellows, 
 got caught in the cogs of the Association, gave up 
 everything else, and then went round with the 
 wheels. I Hke going round with the wheels ; it's all 
 right. But I guess I can tell you other things that 
 are really interesting. If you'll allow me. The 
 Association in America is big. There's a lot to say 
 about it. You don't get men Hke Mr. Roosevelt 
 taking up things that are not big, and he's just dead 
 keen on the Association. I tell you, people in Eng- 
 land don't realise what the Association is in the 
 United States and Canada. On the other side of 
 
 218 
 
THE BIG SCALE 219 
 
 the Atlantic it's part of the national life. It's one 
 of the great national forces. But here, why, seems 
 to me, you're missing something that's worth while. 
 You've got some splendid men at the head of the 
 Association, some of the finest I've ever struck, 
 but as a nation, as a government, you don't seem 
 to catch on to a good thing even when you've 
 got it. 
 
 " Now, I'll just teU you what the American 
 branch sets out to do. Begin right here with what 
 Mr. Roosevelt says. These are his very words : 
 
 '' ' All of us will make this twentieth century 
 better, and not worse, than any century that has 
 gone before in proportion as we approach the 
 problems that face us, as the Young Men's Christian 
 Association has approached them, with a firm reso- 
 lution that it will neglect no one side of the develop- 
 ment of the man, but will strive to make him decent, 
 God-fearing, law-abiding, honour-loving, fearless 
 and strong, able to hold his own in the hurly-burly 
 of the world^s work, able also to strive mightily that 
 the forces of right may be in the end triumphant,* 
 
 " Nothing of the milksop about that ! No, sir, 
 we don't manufacture milksops in the Association. 
 And here's the secret. We don't organise ourselves 
 on the lines that we're engaged in making men 
 Christians, but on the lines that we're engaged in 
 making Christian men. You'U admit that a man 
 can be a Christian and awful poor stuff. There 
 are some Christians you wouldn't care to employ to 
 look after a yellow dog. Phj^sically and mentally 
 they're not up to standard. But make a Christian 
 
220 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 man, and you've got the finest article of the 
 human race, mentally and physically. Isn't that 
 so ? You can't beat the clean, straight fellow who 
 follows the Ideal. He's top-notch. Whether it is 
 as soldier or sailor, clerk or hand, merchant or 
 lawyer, minister or doctor, the Christian man stands 
 right out. 
 
 " Well, we say in America that every feature 
 contributes to a Christian man. We say he has 
 not only got to be moral but intellectual, not only 
 good, but fit right through. And so we make every 
 branch of the Association a manufactory for the 
 highest type of civilised human — the Christian man. 
 We get the best men to teach him the history and 
 spirit of Christianity, so that he can hold his own 
 in any argument as well as know how to five the 
 life ; and we get the best men to educate him in aU 
 secular subjects, so that he may be able to enjoy 
 existence like a rational creature as well as fit him- 
 self for good employment ; and we get the best 
 physical directors to educate him in the develop- 
 ment of his body, so that he may be able to appre- 
 ciate the joy of health as weU as save money on the 
 doctor and prove himself a strong citizen, worthy of 
 a great country. 
 
 " That reminds me. Here's a story might in- 
 terest you. Two widows came one day to a branch 
 of the Association in one of our largest manufacturing 
 towns. They were ladies, but come down. I don't 
 know whether you've got any of the sort over here ; 
 we've hundreds of them in the States. Rich one 
 day, poor the next. Oh, they're common. Well, 
 these two women were the widows of rich men. 
 
THE BIG SCALE 221 
 
 And they'd both come right down. One was living 
 by a httle needlework ; the other, if I remember 
 right, did a bit of washing. Anyway, these two 
 widows came to the Association and asked to see 
 the secretary. They told him that they each had 
 a son, and that these boys were just running wild 
 on the streets, growing anyhow. They wanted 
 to know how much it would cost to buy a ticket for 
 the boys ; each of them having made up her mind 
 that if the scamps could only get into the Associa- 
 tion it would be all right. Well, we took them in. 
 Some rich man, if I remember, paid for the tickets. 
 Those boys, sir, were wild. They were fair raga- 
 muffins. But they took to the gjrmnasium Uke 
 birds ; after the gymnasium we got them into the 
 educational classes — we teach everything ; and 
 after a little bit we moved them on to the Bible 
 class, which was taken by the physical director. 
 They cottoned right away. It was wonderful to 
 see how those boys changed. Their souls were just 
 waiting for that touch ! Instead of devils they 
 became angels. Sweeter, better boys never chose 
 the straight road. They were Httle men, heroes, 
 chivalrous and noble-minded heroes. And they 
 grew up to be first-rate citizens. One of them is with 
 us still. We sent him to Chicago to study medicine, 
 to fit himself for the work of physical director — all 
 our physical directors have to pass proper medical 
 examinations ; and do you know, that boy, who 
 was earning thirty dollars a month at the time, sent 
 ten dollars every month to his mother ! He told me 
 that his one square table d'hote meal used to cost 
 him fifteen cents a day. At night he ate a bit of 
 
222 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 bread. He was a man. And to-day he's one of our 
 best physical directors — keen as fire. 
 
 " Just take hold of these words — President 
 Taft's words — they'U help to show you how the 
 Association is recognised in the United States as a 
 force in the national life. Oh, why isn't it like that 
 in England ? It ought to be ; my, wouldn't it puU 
 us all together ! England, America, Canada, Aus- 
 tralia — say, that's a big concern ! Well, it wiU 
 come. But here's what President Taft has to 
 say: 
 
 " ' There is possibly nothing needed worse in 
 aU our cities and towns than well-organised 
 Young Men's Christian Associations which shall 
 stand for character - building in the threefold 
 way in which the Association endeavours to do 
 its work. 
 
 " ' The railroad companies find it to their pe- 
 cuniary interest to erect and fit up expensive 
 structures for the rational, physical, intellectual, and 
 moral amusement and entertainment of their em- 
 ployees on each division, and to put them under the 
 control of the Young Men's Christian Association. 
 So Congress directed that permission he granted to 
 the Association to establish its work at the various 
 posts of the army, and officers were enjoined to 
 facilitate the efforts of the Association to provide 
 healthful, physical, intellectual, and nonsectarian 
 religious influences. 
 
 " ' President Roosevelt was directed by law 
 to build the Panama Canal and as a business 
 proposition one of the first things he did was to 
 have erected four buildings for the Young Men's 
 
THE BIG SCALE 223 
 
 Christian Association. When you want a capital 
 operation performed you go to a good surgeon ; 
 when you want a lawsuit carried on as it ought to 
 be carried on you go to a good lawyer ; and when 
 you want a means of keeping a population occu- 
 pied during their leisure hours with rational 
 amusement of a high moral and rehgious tone 
 you go to those gentlemen who have had ex- 
 perience in carrying on such a work and such an 
 institution. It cannot be learned over-night. It 
 is just as illogical to say that you can learn it over- 
 night as it is to say you can learn self-government 
 over-night. You cannot do it. Therefore, what 
 we did was to apply to the Young Men's 
 Christian Association.' 
 
 " Perhaps that's news to you — about the railway 
 companies and the army ? But it ought to be the 
 same over here. In America business men recognise 
 that the moral character and the intellectual effi- 
 ciency of the men they employ are matters of pretty 
 well first-rate importance to the success of their 
 undertakings. And so they build the great clubs, 
 provide the equipment, and then come along to 
 the Association for the men to run them. Why ? 
 Simply because we are recognised as experts in the 
 making of men. There's no one else doing the same 
 job. If a better institution came along we should 
 have to shift. They're not in love with us simply 
 because we call ourselves the Young Men's Christian 
 Association, but because we do what we set out to 
 do — which is to manufacture the best type of man 
 known to civilisation. Our feUows would make 
 
224 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 about as useful an army as you'd find in the world ; 
 pretty near every man is an athlete, pretty near 
 every man is a marksman, pretty near every man 
 is a teetotaller, and every man Jack of them is a 
 Christian at least in the making. Cromwell's men 
 were stiff stuff; I believe. our fellows are as good. 
 Cromwell hadn't got our gymnasiums ! 
 
 *' In Association work Canada and the United 
 States are one, united in their organisation into one 
 International Convention, supervised by an Inter- 
 national Committee whose head-quarters are at 
 New York with an office also at Montreal for special 
 supervision of the Canadian work. 
 
 " The Canadians are every bit as keen as the 
 ' Yankees,' and their work is going ahead at a 
 tremendous pace. 
 
 " One of your own statesmen. Earl Grey, during 
 the years he spent in Canada as Governor-General, 
 observed and aided this movement. Note what he 
 has to say about it. 
 
 " Here is an extract from the Toronto World : 
 
 " * A happy incident of the day was the cordial 
 interest in the campaign evinced by His Excellency 
 Earl Grey, who arrived at head-quarters at 1.15 p.m., 
 being received with tumultuous applause. He said, 
 in part : 
 
 *' ' " I happen to be here as an accident. Like every- 
 body else, I was reading in the morning newspaper, 
 and I was enthused by the account of your proceed- 
 ings, and thought I would like to come and have a 
 look at the Clock to see what it would indicate 
 to-day." 
 
 " * His Excellency recalled the occasion of a few 
 
THE BIG SCALE 225 
 
 years ago when the Y.M.C.A. in Ottawa made a 
 similar canvass. It was just at the time of the great 
 financial stringency, and although it seemed im- 
 possible to accomplish the object which they had 
 aimed at, they succeeded in raising the splendid sum 
 of $200,000. By comparison, His Excellency felt 
 quite certain that Toronto would raise the $600,000. 
 He said : 
 
 " * " I find myself in the midst of this great company 
 of eager enthusiasts, who are all very anxious that 
 within the allotted time you will gain the goal which 
 you are aiming at. I have every confidence that you 
 will succeed, and I hope you will succeed, becaiise 
 I know of no undertaking which is fulfilling to greater 
 satisfaction one of the most pressing needs of our great 
 cities. 
 
 (t t (( There is no man for whom I have greater 
 sympathy than the young man of business who is 
 unable to afford the luxury of one of those expensive 
 clubs where he can obtain recreation in his leisure 
 hours. Unless there is such an institution as the 
 Y.M.C.A. with all its wealth of equipment to meet his 
 social and recreative requirements, society is asking 
 him to live his fife in conditions which are not fair to 
 him. You are trying to give him opportunities for 
 hving a healthy, happy, wholesome and delightful 
 fife in the city of Toronto, and I heartily wish you, 
 from the bottom of my heart, the full measure of 
 success for all your endeavours, and wish the Y.M.C.A. 
 of Toronto, and the new buildings for which you are 
 about to provide, God-speed." ' 
 
 " And here is a letter I have only just received 
 from Lord Grey, which will show you how he feels 
 about our present move over here : 
 
226 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 " * HowiCK, Lesbury, 
 
 i 
 
 " ' Northumberland, 
 " ' 20th December, 1911. 
 " ' Dear Mr. Ward, 
 
 " ' I hear you are endeavouring to raise £100,000 
 for a new Y.M.C.A. building in Tottenham Court 
 Road, and that it is the hope of the members of the 
 Y.M.CA. of London to make the Tottenham Court 
 Road building worthy in all respects of the parent 
 institution of the countless branches which have been 
 estabhshed all over the world, to the great advantage 
 of all concerned. 
 
 " ' My experience in Canada leads me to beheve 
 that if you can succeed in bringing before the people 
 of London the great advantages resulting from the 
 estabhshment in its midst of Y.M.CA.'s adequately 
 equipped, as they are in the United States and in 
 Canada, you will have no difficulty in raising the sum 
 of £100,000 or more than that sum. 
 
 " ' In Ottawa, with a population of less than 80,000, 
 the people raised, if I remember rightly, under your 
 guidance, $200,000 in a two weeks' campaign, at a 
 time in 1907 when there was a greater financial 
 stringency in the money market than had ever been 
 known before in our time ; and in Toronto, with a 
 population of under 400,000, the sum of $800,000 
 was obtained in a similar fortnight's campaign during 
 the following year. 
 
 "'Although the institution of the Y.M.C.A. was 
 originally started in England, my impression is that the 
 people of Canada can offer to the people of England an 
 example in the Y.M.CA.'s, which are now estabhshed 
 in all their principal cities, which the people of England 
 would do well to follow. I have no hesitation in 
 saying that the effect of the Y.M.CA.'s in Canada 
 
THE BIG SCALE 227 
 
 has been to save thousands of young men from going 
 to the devil. 
 
 " * The methods you used in Canada were original, 
 but most effective. They should produce equally 
 good results in London. 
 
 " ' Yours sincerely, 
 
 *' (Sgd.) ' Grey.' 
 
 " I should like you to see some of our buildings. 
 We don't go in for much beauty on the outside, and 
 it's not only the size of them we buck about. It's 
 the insides. They're bully ! We take as much care 
 with the insides of these huge blocks as a manufac- 
 turer with his factory. The rooms for the classes are 
 aU built with a purpose, and fitted up just perfectly. 
 Our gymnasiums would make the mouths water 
 of London clerks. Then we have running- tracks, 
 swimming-baths, rifle-ranges, billiard-rooms, smok- 
 ing - rooms, libraries, auditoriums for lectures — 
 everything, in fact, for education, physical culture, 
 mental improvement, and spiritual development. 
 
 *' One of our secretaries is Fred B. Smith, and he's 
 a genius. I dare say you know that he is the leader 
 of the Men and Religion Forward Movement — a 
 movement which is spreading right through the 
 whole continent of America. America is more keen 
 on that movement than anything else. It's the 
 biggest thing we've got. That movement has five 
 branches : (1) Evangehstic, (2) Bible Study, (3) 
 Social Service, (4) Work for Boys, and (5) Industrial. 
 There are specialists, real experts, for every one of 
 these branches in ninety principal cities at the 
 present moment — ^real experts, mind you ; and 
 arrangements are now being made for a thousand 
 
228 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 cities to be touched in one season. It's as big a 
 movement as we've ever had in the States ; aU the 
 churches are in it, and it's puUing the whole nation 
 together. That's what rehgion does, when it's 
 real. 
 
 " The type of evangelism has changed. The 
 froth is off. The new evangelism teaches steady 
 work and sacrifice. Revivalism is good as a tonic, 
 but you couldn't live on tonic alone. It was the 
 same with us as with you ; a revival came — and 
 went. Plain water saw it out. The reaction 
 didn't do good to anybody. But now we've got 
 something different. We've got the idea of an 
 Awakening, that's like a man quietly getting up 
 to do a long day's work. You can't keep kicking 
 a man out of bed without hurting him. And 
 there's the window — ^he might chuck you out ! 
 This movement of ours is organised revivaHsm with 
 the water off the boil. It's a nation waking up 
 to make itself Christian. We believe that you've 
 got to take just as much trouble to make a 
 Christian man as to make anything else, whether 
 it's a prize-fighter or an automobile. We think 
 you shouldn't leave the making of a Christian man 
 to chance. We think it should be the first concern. 
 And that's what the Men and Religion Forward 
 Movement is doing — feeding the Church and the 
 Association right through the country. No more 
 boiling revivaUsm, but steady work, regular work, 
 persistent and organised work — aU the time. What 
 for ? To make men. To make men by educating 
 them along the three great lines — physical, mental, 
 and spiritual. We think we can do it. And when 
 
THE BIG SCALE 229 
 
 we have done it we think we shall be a pretty 
 good nation." 
 
 Although these words, when written, have some- 
 thing rather hard and self-confident about them, 
 I can assure the reader that they were entirely with- 
 out offence when uttered. One must always 
 remember Sainte-Beuve's lament over the trans- 
 formation from uttered to printed speech. Paper 
 cannot smile. " The objection," he says, " has 
 been urged against Collections of Thoughts^ that 
 when they are not commonplace they often appear 
 pretentious ; yet the same things would have 
 struck us far otherwise, if we had heard them said. 
 The smile and accent of the speaker would have 
 won them acceptance ; but fix them upon paper 
 and it is quite another thing. Paper is brutish." 
 
 The speaker in this case is a man of middle 
 age — quiet, modest, and both in appearance and 
 manner entirely without the vigour of strenuosity. 
 He has a peculiarly low voice, so that it is often 
 hard to catch the end of his sentences. He speaks 
 with an engaging smile, as gentle as a woman's. 
 When he makes what may seem a boast, he looks 
 at one with a pleasant apology in his eyes, as if to 
 say, " Of course you understand ; we're not talking 
 algebra, are we ? " 
 
 But in spite of his subdued manner and quiet 
 voice, it is impossible to be long in his company 
 before reahsing that he is a man of power. His 
 position in America has been earned by sohd 
 achievement. He impresses one with the force of 
 a resolute character perfectly in hand and subdued 
 because it is enduring. 
 
230 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 And penetrate beyond the faculty for organisa- 
 tion, and the grasp and power and vision which 
 make him so great an energy in the Young Men's 
 Christian Association of America, and you find that 
 he has in his heart the steady faith of a convinced 
 and reahstic Christian. He knows hfe. 
 
 With him, as with the Founder of the Association 
 in England, " first things come first." He has 
 but one foundation for his hfe. To him, mercifully 
 early in his experience, it came home that without 
 the Ideal of Christ he could do nothing, and in 
 all his work it is for the victory and unchallenged 
 supremacy of Christ that he is striving, heart, 
 brain, and soul. 
 
 But there are men who, insisting that first things 
 should come first, take no steps to perfect second 
 and third things. They rest with the first. " Make 
 a man a Christian," they say, " and you have done 
 aU that can be done for him." It sounds true, and 
 it is true. But their definition of a Christian, how- 
 ever completely it may square with all the doctrines 
 of all the theologians, would not perhaps find favour 
 with nature. The laws of God, which are of more 
 importance than the laws of churches, demand in 
 men strength of body and power of mind. Nature 
 is pitiless to the weak, whether they be Christians, 
 pagans, or materiafists. And civiUsation is more 
 merciless than nature. 
 
 The man of whom I write smiles sadly at the 
 notion that a Bible class and a bagatelle-table provide 
 aU the essentials for Christian manhood. The Bible 
 is the first thing, and he places it first ; but for the 
 Bible's sake as well as the man's whom he essays 
 
THE BIG SCALE 231 
 
 to teach the beauty and the power and the glory of 
 that book, he would make the student strong in 
 body and vigorous in mind. He says that nature 
 is apt to flatten out the man with no muscles, and 
 that civilisation jumps on him when he's down. 
 He thinks that man is in the making, and the perfect 
 man he holds to be the Christian man who is truly 
 a Christian and as truly a man. 
 
 And his vision sees the Anglo-Saxon race, whom 
 God — if any man believes in God — has so mani- 
 festly blessed and prospered in spite of many sins 
 and innumerable follies ; his vision sees the Anglo- 
 Saxon race united in the common Ideal of Christ, 
 one in the sacred bonds of a religious brotherhood, 
 working throughout the whole world for peace and 
 knowledge and kindness — ^and leading aU the 
 nations of the earth to the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 " I don't want to interfere," he says, " with your 
 own way of doing things ; but I should Hke England 
 to realise that in the Young Men's Christian Associa- 
 tion there exists the finest channel ever invented 
 for a real brotherhood with America, if that is one 
 of her ambitions. And the way, if I may suggest 
 it, for the Association over here to take its proper 
 place in the national life of England is the same 
 way that we have gone in America. First the 
 aU-round development of men — body, soul, and 
 spirit ; second, the multiplication all over the 
 country of such buildings as you now have in 
 Tottenham Court Road ; and third, the active, 
 enthusiastic, and lavish support of your great 
 merchants and men of business. There's Puritan 
 blood on both sides of the Atlantic, and it ought 
 
232 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 to have pretty much the same pulse-beats. Our 
 rich men, yes, and our Government, are workers 
 for the Association ; you ought to have it Uke that 
 over here. If we could only puU together ! I want 
 to see your railway companies, and your army and 
 navy, and your great trading-houses working with 
 the Association for Christian manhood. And I 
 want to hear your King say what President Taft has 
 said : ' The Young Meri's Christian Association has 
 come to he recognised as a powerful and necessary 
 factor f both in business and government matters,^ WiU 
 it ever come to that over here, do you think ? Well, 
 it will be as big as Waterloo when it does — for that 
 means the Anglo-Saxon Brotherhood of God." 
 
 He placed his hand in his pocket and drew out 
 a letter. " You might care," he said, " to read 
 what President Taft says on the subject. I received 
 this letter only the other day, written just after I 
 had left America." He handed me the following 
 document : 
 
 " The White House, Washington, 
 
 ''November 13th, 1911. 
 "My dear Mr. Ward, 
 
 " I regret that I was unable, before your depar- 
 ture for London, to assist in dedicating the Young 
 Men's Christian Association Memorial Building at 
 that city, to express to you the interest which I take 
 in the work of this efficient organisation. The value 
 of its instrumentality in the promotion of good morals 
 and in furnishing wholesome associations and health- 
 ful occupation for young men during their leisure 
 hours has been practically demonstrated in the Canal 
 Zone, where great benefit has been derived by the 
 
THE BIG SCALE 233 
 
 Government from the maintenance of club-houses 
 placed under the management of the Association. 
 
 " No less valuable in the direction of morality, 
 health and efficiency has proved its work among the 
 enlisted men of the Army and Navy of the United 
 States. It is a potent factor in the preservation of 
 the peace of the world, and it deserves the approval 
 of everyone having the best good of the world at 
 heart. 
 
 "The prosperity of the parent association at the 
 capital of the British Empire is thus a matter of 
 world interest, and my best wishes go with all who 
 work to promote that prosperity. 
 
 "Sincerely yours, 
 
 "Wm. H. Tapt." 
 
 He smiled as I looked up from my reading. 
 " President Taft and ex-President Roosevelt have 
 spoken," he said quietly ; " I guess it's now the 
 turn of King George and his ministers. Wasn't it, 
 by the way. King George who said Wake up, 
 England ? Ah, I thought so. Well, let's hope ! " 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 RANK AND FILE 
 
 A YOUNG man entered the room in which I 
 -^^ was sitting one night at the Aldersgate Street 
 branch of the Association. He was in a hurry, and 
 could spare me only two minutes. He entered with a 
 billycock hat on his head, which he did not remove ; 
 he wore a brown mackintosh buttoned to the chin. 
 In height he was nearly six feet. His shoulders were 
 broad, his chest deep, and he held himself soldier- 
 fashion — the head thrown back, the neck rigid, 
 the body straight and oppugnant. I imagined his 
 age to be three- or four-and-twenty. 
 
 He was black-haired, with one of those rosy faces 
 which sometimes give to dark people a fresher and 
 cleanher appearance than belcfngs to the fair. 
 His eyebrows were clearly defined ; the lashes 
 thick, but short ; the upper Hp was marked by a 
 small moustache. 
 
 He had a curious trick of speaking. The teeth 
 appeared to be tight - closed, the lips moved im- 
 willingly, as it were, and with a threat, the chin 
 projected a httle ; he regarded one with the look of a 
 boxer weU on his guard and ready to let in a sudden 
 and crashing blow. His words issued with the note 
 of challenge. 
 
 234 
 
RANK AND FILE 235 
 
 That such a man might have derived benefit from 
 the sports and games of the Association was palpable 
 enough, but that he had felt in his soul the magic 
 of religion, even obscurely, seemed to me at the 
 first glance extremely problematical. And yet this 
 young Achilles said something which haunts me 
 yet, the impression of which will probably never 
 fade from my mind. 
 
 He explained that he was going to take the chair 
 at a religious meeting some distance away, and was 
 already late. He could not possibly delay more than 
 two minutes. I think he remained for five. 
 
 His work, he told me, was in one of the large 
 warehouses of London. The majority of his fellow- 
 clerks were absolutely indifferent to religion. There 
 was no more immorality or looseness among them 
 than is common in a great city, but they appeared 
 to be wholly dead to the appeal of religion. " They 
 don't think about it ; they leave it alone," he said 
 through his closed teeth, bitterly, and with a 
 movement of his head which implied an equal 
 amount of contempt and pity. 
 
 I inquired if he was chaffed or ragged by these 
 men. " Not more than I can endure ; they know 
 when to stop," he said rather grimly, a fight 
 flashing into his dark eyes. 
 
 " You go in for athletics ? " 
 
 " I scull every Saturday afternoon on the 
 Thames." 
 
 " You don't find it hard to bear — the chafiing and 
 ragging ? " 
 
 " There's good in all of them, even the worst ; I 
 try to get at that. Three or four of us hold prayer 
 
236 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 meetings and classes for the study of the Bible, 
 We try to persuade the others to join us." 
 
 " And you don't despair ? " 
 
 " No, I don't despair," he said. And then the 
 colour in his cheeks seemed to deepen, he looked at 
 me with an added defiance, and through his closed 
 teeth he said, with an increased challenge in the 
 voice — " Pve been wonderfully strengthened of late — 
 feeding on the Word of Gody He stood before me, 
 with all the sense of restrained movement which one 
 feels in a man anxious to be gone, and added, with a 
 jerk of his head, " Yes, Fve been feeding on the Word 
 of God:' 
 
 Such words have often been addressed to me 
 by old people, by dear old cottage women, and by 
 grey-haired patriarchs of the fields ; I have heard 
 them and hked them, and looked at the old people 
 who uttered them with a tenderness and an appre- 
 ciation which in reality, perhaps, were nothing 
 less pitiable than a mere intellectual indulgence — 
 such as a father may show towards the first poems 
 of his children or their earhest crude drawings of 
 Christ and the Crucifixion. But when this young 
 man uttered the words, " I've been feeding on the 
 Word of God," something in them jarred upon my 
 mind ; I was distressed ; I wished he had expressed 
 the same thought as I myself might have expressed 
 it. They seemed to me to ring false, unreal, artificial. 
 
 But they remained in my mind. They haunted 
 me. The young man rose up again and again 
 before my mental vision, tall, straight, powerful, 
 the very picture of a formidable athlete ; and again 
 and again, through his clenched teeth, with that 
 
RANK AND FILE 237 
 
 strange ringing note of an almost angry defiance 
 came the words, '' Fve been wonderfully strengthened 
 of late — feeding on the Word of God. Yes^ Fve been 
 feeding on the Word of God,^^ 
 
 They haunted me, till they grew famihar. It 
 seemed to me that I had heard them before, many 
 years ago, and uttered by some similar man in the 
 midst of London. Then it came home to me that I 
 associated this young warehouseman with Matthew 
 Arnold. I thought. In a moment there flashed back 
 to my remembrance a certain sonnet. When I 
 returned to my home I took down from the shelves 
 the green book of Matthew Arnold's poems, and 
 turned to the sonnet (not by any means a good 
 or memorable sonnet) called East London. Almost 
 the identical thought was there : 
 
 'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead 
 Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green, 
 And the pale weaver, through his windows seen 
 In Spitalfields, look'd thrice dispirited. 
 
 I met a preacher there I knew, and said : 
 
 " 111 and o'erwork'd how fare you in this scene ? " — 
 
 " Bravely ! " said he ; for I of late have been 
 
 Much cheer'd with thoughts of Christ, the living bread.'' 
 
 This faith Matthew Arnold caUed " a mark of ever- 
 lasting light " set up " above the howling senses' 
 ebb and flow." 
 
 The wonder of the words came home to me, the 
 wonder and the romance. The young and vigorous 
 warehouseman finds in the midst of a difficult and 
 disheartening life strength sufficient for his needs 
 from the Word of God ; and the refined and educated 
 clergyman in Bethnal Green, ill and overworked, 
 found sufficient strength in Christ the living bread 
 
238 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 for his hard and heart-breaking life. And in each 
 case, when we penetrate below the form of words — 
 always reminding ourselves that words are but the 
 human invention of symbolism to express other 
 things — we find that the mystery conducts us 
 through the travail of the soul to the Presence 
 and Companionship of Christ. Does not that 
 thought strike on the mind arrestingly ? Think 
 for a moment what it really means — the fact of 
 Christ's Presence in the hearts of toihng men. 
 
 In a London warehouse, a young man, strong and 
 hardy above the average — who sculls every Saturday 
 afternoon upon the Thames — finds in reading a book 
 which relates the most important chapters in the 
 rise of humanity from superstition and magic to a 
 pure belief in One God, and which further declares 
 the revelation made to a risen humanity by this 
 One God in the Person of Jesus Christ, Light of the 
 World and Saviour of Mankind — a strength for 
 his soul which nothing else can give. For years he 
 has been active in religious work, for years he has 
 prayed night and morning with a complete faith ; 
 but the real strength has come to him recently 
 from reading this single book, this Bible, this Word 
 of God. And he tells you so, with a defiance which 
 endeavours to express the immense certainty of his 
 soul. Christ is real to this man. He could not 
 imagine his drab life without Christ. The Bible is 
 his strength. It is a thought, if you reflect upon it, 
 which helps the mind to realise something of the 
 romance of London, something of the unique power 
 of the Bible, and something of the great mystery 
 which overshadows human Hfe. 
 
RANK AND FILE 239 
 
 I do not think I shall ever forget the impression 
 made upon my mind by these words, and when I 
 hear them on the lips of almost inarticulate peasants 
 I shall understand their significance. 
 
 When the young athlete had gone, another and 
 a quite different man entered the room. He was 
 shy, timid, strange. Three or four years older 
 than the athlete, he yet appeared, because of his 
 extraordinary gentleness, much younger, and almost 
 childlike. Few faces have I seen more strangely 
 beautiful, few voices have I heard more low and 
 mysterious. He brought into the room with him 
 the sanctity and hoHness of a mystic's cell. 
 
 He was of middle height, with a weak body on 
 which the thin clothes hung loosely and as it were 
 pathetically. The long narrow hands were held 
 in front of him, the fingers slowly fidgeting with the 
 ends of the sleeves, which were worn and frayed. 
 The head was large, too large for the body, but 
 perfectly shaped. Thick and shining dark brown 
 hair framed a fair face that was flushed and almost 
 feverish. The nostrils expressed the utmost sensi- 
 bility ; the mouth was gentle and refined — a Httle 
 weak and yielding, perhaps ; the very large and 
 briUiant dark eyes possessed beneath their surface 
 light of almost startled timidity, unfathomable 
 depths of serenity. The whole character of the 
 man's soul showed itself in a general air of shrinking 
 and affrighted modesty. 
 
 In a voice very low and musical, speaking with 
 long pauses between each sentence, and with the 
 deep ring and subdued gentleness of the Welsh 
 
240 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 in his intonation, never once raising his voice, he 
 talked to me of his experience in London. He said : 
 " I was somewhat prepared for what I had to 
 undergo by my experience at home. When I left 
 school I was apprenticed to a draper in my native 
 town. It was terrible to me at first. I think it was 
 the first shock I had ever suffered. Before that time 
 Hfe had seemed to me very beautiful. I loved my 
 home — my father, my mother, my brothers and 
 sisters. Then the fields and the mountains and the 
 rivers were very beautiful. I used to go out alone. 
 I love the country. In the country you can be quite 
 alone. And where I Hved it is very beautiful — 
 mountains, rivers, and wild flowers in the field. 
 
 " I did not Hke school very much. I am not clever. 
 I did not get on as quickly as the others. But I 
 did not mind school. I was Uving at home, and there 
 were hours of freedom ; I could go out into the 
 country alone. But when I went to business, and 
 was kept in aU day, and had to hve with other 
 people who were strangers to me — I was terribly 
 unhappy. It seemed to me that life had altogether 
 changed ; that the beautiful part was over and 
 would never return. 
 
 " So I was prepared for London. I did not expect 
 to be happy. I knew it would be worse, worse even 
 than the shop in my native town. And I was so sorry 
 to leave my father and mother, and my sisters, and 
 the country. But it was necessary for me to get on. 
 My brothers had gone to AustraHa. They are doing 
 very well there ; they want me to join them ; and 
 I think it would be happier there ; perhaps I shall go ; 
 I am thinking about it." 
 
RANK AND FILE 241 
 
 I asked him if Christianity had made any real 
 entrance into his Hfe during his youth. He told me 
 that rehgion had been real to him from childhood. 
 The beginning of his illumination came while he 
 was at Sunday-school. He felt in his soul the im- 
 mense mystery and the overwhelming truth of the 
 Christ's experience on earth. It was tremendously 
 real to him. In youth he joined the Christian 
 Endeavour and sought to make others feel what 
 was so intensely real to him. 
 
 " And in London," I said, " what were your first 
 feehngs ? " 
 
 *' I was stunned," he said quietly, with a sad 
 smile. " It was not a shock, Uke the experience in 
 my native town ; but it was bewildering. I felt lost. 
 Oh, it was dreadful ! The bedroom in the warehouse 
 was horrible. It was Hke a stable. There was no 
 carpet ; and so dark ; with the beds aU close to- 
 gether, and they were grimy. There was no sitting- 
 room. We slept in the dark cold bedroom, and that 
 was all the place we had for our leisure. The con- 
 versation was dreadful. The men seemed to wish to 
 make themselves out worse and more horrible than 
 they were. It was an atmosphere of moral degenera- 
 tion. They talked of dreadful things. They mocked 
 at rehgion. And it is Uke that stiU. They do not 
 seem as if they can understand what is beautiful." 
 
 I asked what they talk about. 
 
 " Of betting and drink " — ^he paused, and in a 
 lower voice he added — "and women." Something 
 more than the exquisite sensibihty of a refined 
 mind sounded in that last word ; it was the chastity 
 and the chivalry of a perfectly pure soul. 
 
242 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 " Tell me," I asked, " do you say your prayers 
 in the dormitory ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Do the others molest you ? " 
 
 " I am a httle bit scoffed at," he said slowly, 
 " but I think I am admired for my consistency. 
 If I did not Hve the Christian hfe, as well as I can, 
 they would be cruel to me. But they know it is real 
 to me. They cannot understand it, but they seem 
 to know it is real to me. And I never answer when 
 they mock me. I do not reproach them. I only 
 speak about religion when they ask me." 
 
 " How many men share your hfe in the ware- 
 house ? " 
 
 " There are two or three Christians out of a 
 hundred." For the first time he hurried in his 
 speech. " But," he added eagerly, "all of them 
 have good traits. There is not one who is altogether 
 bad. I have learned to know how much goodness 
 there is in men, even those who seem bad. There is 
 always something good in their hearts, though they 
 may seem to hide it. Not aU who go to church are 
 Christians, and not all who stay away from church 
 are not Christian. I noticed this about them : 
 when I first came they held aloof from me for some 
 months ; I thought it was cruelty ; I thought they 
 would have nothing to do with me because I read 
 my Bible and said my prayers ; but I see now they 
 were watching my hfe to see if I was genuine. And 
 now they do not hold aloof. They are never cruel. 
 Even the worst of chaps admire genuineness." 
 
 " Those first months must have been hard for you." 
 
 " I don't know what would have happened to me 
 
RANK AND FILE 243 
 
 in London but for the Young Men's Christian 
 Association. At first, before I knew my way about, 
 I used to go to the churches on Sunday. Oh, but I 
 felt myself so lost, so friendless in those big London 
 churches ! They are so cold. Nobody speaks to 
 3^ou. Nobody seems kind. I think I was terribly 
 miserable in those churches. But when I was 
 introduced to the Association, I found people who 
 were warm-hearted and kind, and seemed glad to 
 see me. And they gave me chances to work. I was 
 happy when I could do something to help other 
 people. 
 
 "Another thing about the Association — you can 
 get solitude there. In rooms, which are set apart 
 for study, you can go and be alone with yourself. 
 I think my first feeling when I came to London 
 was the fear that I should never have solitude. It 
 seemed to me that in London you couldn't get 
 alone with yourself. That was terrible. In the 
 dormitory and in the warehouse there were always 
 many people ; and when you went out into the 
 streets there were crowds and crowds. Oh, how 
 often I longed for the mountains and the rivers ! 
 I wanted the country. I wanted to get away and 
 be alone with myself, so that I might think." 
 
 He told me that next to the pleasure he derived 
 from working actively for religion through the 
 Association, he most appreciated this great blessing 
 of solitude which the Association made possible 
 for his soul. He impressed upon me the idea of a 
 veritable hunger after lonehness which eats away 
 the heart of certain men condenoned to five a 
 barrack fife in London. Hitherto I had regarded the 
 
244 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 Association as a great central escape from solitude 
 and isolation ; now it was revealed to me as an 
 oasis of silence and retreat in the midst of mul- 
 titudinous obsession. 
 
 As I took leave of this remarkable man I asked 
 him : " Is it difficult to Hve a mystic's life in 
 London ? " 
 
 He smiled. " It is not always easy," he said softly. 
 
 " Have you ever seen visions or heard voices ? " 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 '* Not even in the country ? " 
 
 " They are nearer there, I think. If I could live 
 always in the country I should be happy. But 
 one has to work. My brothers teU me that in 
 Austraha it is very beautiful." 
 
 So we parted. As we shook hands, and he looked 
 at me with his large and timid eyes, I thought of 
 Gray who suffered so frightfully at school and at 
 Cambridge, of SheUey who shrank with horror 
 from the coarse contact of the world, and of all 
 other dehcate and tender natures for whom the 
 pressure of the multitude is a torment. How dread- 
 ful for such a man 'to live his life in a London 
 warehouse ! 
 
 A third man with whom I made acquaintance 
 was as different from the other two as they were 
 different from each other. He was a Uttle fellow, 
 wearing spectacles, and pale with the paUor of 
 London's second or third generation. I should say 
 he was typical of the suburbs. 
 
 There are many young men in London, physically 
 feeble and inteUectuaUy poor, who yet convey to 
 
RANK AND FILE 245 
 
 one, and quite quietly, a sense of self-assurance and 
 a resourcefulness of self-dependence which convince 
 one of complete efficiency. They seem as if they 
 too — ^these pale-faced, thin-bodied, and stunted 
 weakhngs — could go anywhere and do anything. 
 
 Such was the man who told me the following 
 story. 
 
 " My home was perfectly moral, but there was no 
 rehgion. My parents never went to church and never 
 showed any interest in religion. But my mother 
 appeared to think it was among the respectabiHties 
 for her children to go to church services, and so we 
 were sent every Sunday, and in the afternoon we 
 attended Sunday-school. If I got any good from all 
 this it must have been subconscious. I was not 
 aware that it made the sHghtest difference to my 
 life. When I grew up and went out as a clerk 
 I soon dropped going to church. To put it in a 
 common phrase, I was sick of the whole business. 
 I don't mean that I was sick of religion. I really 
 hadn't thought about that ; it didn't live in my Hfe. 
 All I was sick of was going to church. 
 
 " I lived a pretty ordinary life for a few years. 
 
 " Then, one summer, I went for my hoHdays to 
 Broadstairs. I stayed at a boarding-house which 
 a feUow-clerk had recommended. It was there that 
 the change began in my life. Among the guests 
 was a lady who was deeply rehgious. One day the 
 guests organised a picnic, and at this picnic, some- 
 how or another, conversation turned on atheism. 
 Several of the people said they didn't beheve in 
 anything, and nearly everybody seemed to agree 
 that going to church was only a farce. The lady 
 
246 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 did not make a remark, so far as I remember, during 
 this discussion ; but afterwards, as we were standing 
 about ready to go home, she came to me and said, 
 * I hope you don't share the views we have just 
 heard.' I was taken aback. I think I smiled. 
 I said, ' I don't know.' 
 
 " From that time we became friends. She gave 
 me quite a different attitude towards rehgion, 
 but I don't think she gave me rehgion itself. I saw 
 that it was something much more real than I had 
 thought it to be ; and I also felt deeply that it was 
 ever so much more interesting than I had imagined. 
 Although I feel that I owe everything to that lady, 
 who is now one of my closest and most honoured 
 friends, I cannot say that she herself gave me the 
 new birth of the religious life. 
 
 " When I got back to London I began going to 
 church. I joined the church club — but that did me 
 more harm than good. I don't want to say anything 
 unkind about those particular clergymen, for it was 
 really not their fault, but that club was really a very 
 low place. Gambling was general, men drank 
 just as much as if they were in a pubhc-house, and 
 the language was about as low as anyone can 
 imagine. Of course, when one of the clergy came in, 
 all was in due order ; but no sooner was his back 
 turned than things became as bad as before, rather 
 worse, as if to show that the members didn't care ! 
 I was tremendously fond of chess, and used to play 
 every night from seven till eleven. It exhausted me 
 mentally, and did me harm spiritually, by absorbing 
 all my attention. 
 
 " Then I began to read the Bible. I started at the 
 
RANK AND FILE 247 
 
 beginning and determined to read it right through, 
 in the hope of finding out what I really did believe 
 and, if possible, what I ought to believe. It took 
 me a whole year, and I was no wiser at the end. 
 
 " One day a friend of mine suggested that I should 
 join the Young Men's Christian Association. He 
 spoke about the opportunities it gave one for work. 
 I wasn't very keen, and said I would think about it. 
 He said that a man couldn't understand religion 
 till he began to Hve the life. 
 
 " I saw a book one day that attracted my atten- 
 tion. It was called Conversations with Christ, 
 I got hold of it and took it home to read. I was 
 reading it in my lodgings one evening when the 
 application form for membership in the Association 
 arrived by post. When I had glanced through it, 
 I went on reading the book, holding the form in my 
 hand. 
 
 " I came to the conversation with the lawyer 
 who asked Christ, ' Master, what shall I do to inherit 
 eternal life ? ' When I got to the words, ' This do, 
 and thou shall live,'' I felt, aU of a sudden, just as if 
 they were spoken to me. It was an unmistakable 
 feehng. It was something I had never experienced 
 before. And the feehng came with the words This 
 do before I finished the sentence. It was as if they 
 were spoken to me, with an extraordinary emphasis. 
 This Do ! And I can't teU you why, but I instantly 
 connected the injunction, which I felt to be un- 
 mistakably real and unmistakably personal, with 
 the application form which I was holding in my 
 hand. There and then I filled it up, signed my 
 name, and sent it off by the midnight post. 
 
248 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 " I felt that the command This Do did not refer 
 simply to the Young Men's Christian Association, 
 but to the work which I had been told was waiting 
 there for me to do. I took it at once to be a message 
 to work. 
 
 " I do not call this experience my conversion. 
 I joined the Association, I took up work, and I en- 
 joyed doing it ; but my conversion came later. 
 It really came to me through the reading of a book 
 called Spiritiuil Blessings. I forget the author's 
 name, but I remember it was pubhshed in one of 
 MacmiUan's series. I do not remember any par- 
 ticular words which had a marked or sudden effect 
 upon me ; but while I was reading the book the 
 knowledge came home to my soul, neither gradually 
 nor yet suddenly, that justification is not by our 
 tears, our prayers, or our work, but by God. I 
 reaHsed that everything was done and given by 
 God, and that a man has nothing to do but bow with 
 gratitude before his Maker, and accept the gift of 
 His mercy and His love. And when I was made 
 aware of this truth, for it seemed to come from 
 outside me, I felt conscious of some mysterious 
 relief. It was as if a weight had been hfted from 
 my shoulders, as if a load I had long been carrying, 
 and had even got used to, had aU of a sudden 
 dropped to the ground. I felt that aU anxiety was 
 gone. I was not excited or carried away, but I 
 was aware of a sort of deep joy." 
 
 He told me some interesting stories of his work. 
 
 " The first experience I ever had of Hstening to a 
 man's trouble and trpng to help him," he said, 
 •' occurred very soon after my illumination. A 
 
RANK AND FILE 249 
 
 young foreigner arrived at one of the evening 
 meetings of the Association. He appeared to be 
 in very deep trouble. When the meeting closed 
 I went to him and asked if I could be of any help to 
 him. He told me that he was a Pole, and that he 
 had been in Austraha, where he had been converted ; 
 but on his return home he found that his wife 
 had gone away, abandoned the home ; he now knew, 
 he told me, that she was living as a governess in 
 Berlin. Then he said to me, ' But I know she will 
 come back to me ; I have prayed, and God will hear 
 my prayer ; I am sure she will come back.' I 
 became friendly with him ; he was a fine fellow, 
 and a real Christian. Some months after his wife 
 came back. She had no idea of the change in his life, 
 and had returned only because she felt a vague 
 conviction that it was her duty. Soon after her 
 return, however, she became a Christian. Their 
 home is happy ; he simply adores her ; and you 
 could not meet nicer people. 
 
 " That was my first experience of trying to help 
 a fellow-creature. 
 
 "It is reaUy wonderful how many opportunities 
 the Association puts in a man's way for doing 
 simple but lasting work. I'm sure if people recog- 
 nised how it adds to the interest of life, and how it 
 satisfies one's own mind to be a worker for the help 
 and comfort of others, we should have a very much 
 larger membership on these lines alone. There must 
 be thousands of people in London wanting friend- 
 ship, kindness, and advice ; and of course there are 
 thousands who find fife dull because they have got 
 no enthusiasm for anything. 
 
250 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 "I was once speaking to a few fellows in the 
 Association about my own doubts and difficulties, 
 teUing them how I had come to find light and peace 
 of soul. Another man, not in the group, came up to 
 me afterwards, told me that he had overheard what 
 I said, and added that he had a friend who was 
 then in much the same difficulty as I had been ; and 
 he would be very glad if I would meet this man 
 and speak to him. Merely from that little incident 
 I made a great friend, and was able to help a fellow- 
 creature to real happiness. 
 
 " It's very helpful, too, to get into relationship with 
 foreigners ; that is one of the great pulls of the 
 Association. We meet men of all nations, and 
 learn to understand their point of view. I was once 
 struck by the loneliness of a young Frenchman who 
 had lately joined, and seemed to be rather diffident 
 about making friends. I chummed up with him, 
 suggested that we should go for a country walk 
 together on the following Saturday afternoon, 
 and found that he was not only a very nice fellow 
 indeed, but that he wanted to talk about reUgiont 
 I made friends with him simply out of a feeling of 
 Christian fellowship, and with no thought of playing 
 the missionary ; but it turned out that I could help 
 him. That is one of the reasons why I am so keen 
 about the Association. It gives the ordinary man, 
 who has his living to get, intelligent occupation 
 for his leisure, broadens his sympathies by acquaint- 
 ance with men of aU nations, and gives him endless 
 opportunities for deepenmg his own spiritual life 
 by simply chatting with the friends he makes there. 
 I don't believe anything helps a man so much to 
 
RANK AND FILE 251 
 
 realise the truth of the Christian hfe as talking 
 things over with other people of his own age, 
 and trying to help them in their troubles." 
 
 His face brightened, and he beamed at me 
 through his glasses as he said, " I'm going out 
 this week for a Saturday ramble with two young 
 Japanese. They're very clever fellows, and very 
 nice ; and they want me to talk to them about 
 Christianity. So this Saturday we shall take train, 
 get out of London, and then walk through the 
 fields, talking about the religion of Christ. I'm 
 looking forward to it with great interest. You can 
 imagine that it will be a fine opportunity. I believe 
 Japan is more interested in Christianity than any 
 other nation in the East." 
 
 From these brief conversations the reader will 
 surely gather that the Young Men's Christian 
 Association provides intelligent and thoughtful 
 men with an almost unique opportunity for the 
 work which alone can render life beautiful and 
 strong and pure. 
 
 In sudden and too transitory moments of illumina- 
 tion most men perceive that rehgion is fundamental 
 to the security of civilisation and the endurance of 
 the moral quahties in man. It may be but the 
 slightest occurrence that provokes this realisation, 
 that flashes for a moment before the apprehension 
 this tremendous and far-reaching truth ; such a 
 little thing as a party of hoarse-voiced and guffawing 
 hoohgans bawling a banal song through the midnight 
 streets, careless if they wake the feverish sick or 
 disturb the pillow of the dying ; such a little thing 
 
252 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 as a newspaper placard screaming from one end of 
 the metropolis of a great empire to the other 
 that some chorus-girl is married, some negro prize- 
 fighter arrived in England, or the results of a horse 
 race ; such a Httle thing as a play produced in a 
 London theatre in which indelicacies which would 
 offend almost every home in the land are the cause 
 of dehghted laughter in men and women of all 
 classes night after night for a long season ; such 
 a Httle thing as one young drunken woman stagger- 
 ing through the streets to her children, hungry and 
 afraid in their slum home as the young of no other 
 species in creation are hungry and afraid ; such a 
 little thing as the violence, which actively denies 
 God and His Christ, practised by a mob of strikers 
 or a mob of pohtical women in moments of hateful 
 anarchy ; such a httle thing as the success and 
 popularity of newspapers which make their appeal 
 to the basest and most sordid instincts of human 
 nature ; such a httle thing as the unchallenged 
 presence in the House of Commons and the House 
 of Lords of men whose names are a byword for 
 iniquity and crime ; such a httle thing as the 
 sudden feeling, due perhaps to some quite trivial 
 event, that a really vital pubHc opinion on all 
 great moral issues has ceased to exist throughout 
 the length and breadth of a materialistic England. 
 
 But the reahsation that rehgion is fundamental 
 both to national greatness and to the moral 
 progress of human nature should be a permanent 
 conviction of the mind, the deepest and the most 
 earnest — a conviction entirely independent of chance 
 occurrence for its emphasis. From the beginning 
 
RANK AND FILE 253 
 
 of time there have been no morals without religion ; 
 and every period in the world's history of a great 
 moral decadence, and the downfall of mighty 
 empires, has been preceded by the triumphs of 
 scepticism. Never has a god fallen, perhaps, without 
 crushing some of his devotees. Certainly never has 
 nation, race, or tribe produced a code of ethics with- 
 out the sanction of some faith in powers greater 
 than mankind. It is as huge a folly to think that 
 grammar preceded language as to imagine that 
 there was morality before there was reHgion. 
 
 Does ever any thoughtful man walk through the 
 streets of London, or Manchester, or Liverpool, or 
 Glasgow, or Dublin, without feeling in his soul that 
 the denial of God — which means among other things 
 the denial of those laws of God which are in operation 
 for our welfare — ^is fatal to human progress ? Not 
 merely the presence of striking and abominable 
 things forces this conviction upon the soul — 
 such things as public-houses packed with women, 
 or the frightful juxtaposition of enormous luxury 
 and appalling beggary — but the look in the faces of 
 the ordinary people, rich or poor, who pass one in the 
 streets. How much coldness, hardness, aloofness, 
 and self-satisfaction in the faces of the well-to-do ; 
 how Httle benevolence, modesty, sweetness, and 
 refinement of spirit ! — and in the faces of the 
 struggling workers, how much savagery, brutality, 
 bitterness, and sorrow dumb as death but watchful 
 as hate ! 
 
 Is it not as if one walked among a people who 
 had a loathing for life and a contempt for 
 beauty, to whom the glory of aspiration had never 
 
254 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 once come, nor the sanctifying humility which 
 inspires the soul of those who reaUse their depend- 
 ence on God ? One feels that the world is peopled 
 by a disillusioned and disenchanted humanity. It is 
 as if aU joy and aU tragedy were crushed out of 
 existence by a universal weariness and fatigue. 
 Here and there one hears laughter — it is from a 
 public-house. Here and there one sees vivacity — 
 it is in the face of a courtesan. But for the most 
 part the crowds go by, grey, silent, and oppressed. 
 Stand at the corner of London Bridge or Black- 
 friars Bridge, or in the streets of Oldham, when the 
 workers are going home. Look in their faces. It is 
 not poverty or coarseness or vulgarity or wickedness 
 which appals you : but hardness and absence of joy. 
 Can a people so hard and dispirited, so joyless 
 and divided, so Uttle conscious either of immortality 
 or brotherhood, support the strain of its own godless 
 materiahsm ? can they even work out those high and 
 splendid destinies of empire for which enthusiasm 
 and faith are the first essentials ? 
 
 It is my hope, as I bring this book to an end, 
 that those of my readers who are either in despair 
 about the future, or careless as to the fate of 
 humanity, may realise that there exists among the 
 multitudes of their feUow-creatures a great hope 
 and a great call to personal service in that " pressure 
 of the soul " which is one of the strange signs of 
 this troubled age, and to guide which is one of the 
 first duties of those who very reaUy and very 
 earnestly have their affiance in Christ. Everywhere, 
 when we penetrate beneath the surface of society, 
 there is this disquiet of the spirit, this pressure of 
 
RANK AND FILE 256 
 
 the soul, this dissatisfaction with earthly things, this 
 hunger after satisfaction and peace. The ordinary 
 man is conscious, dimly enough it may be, of the 
 extraordinary thing. No man alone with his inward 
 being is really an atheist, save those who are really 
 devils. The whole nation, one may say, is tormented 
 by a division of the soul which lacks the decisive 
 choice. Not yet do they give themselves to God ; 
 but not yet, God be thanked, do they give them- 
 selves wholly to the devil. One way or the other 
 will the choice be made. Democracy growing 
 articulate, aristocracy growing afraid, will soon 
 end the pestering unrest which disturbs their 
 happiness by deciding either for God or the devil. 
 
 To make that decision ring true for God is the 
 work of the present time. And that there is strong 
 ground for hope that England will decide for God, 
 no man who is acquainted with the clamour of the 
 soul of even the most ordinary and vulgar for 
 deeper satisfaction, and with the work of those 
 who labour for religion in every quarter of the land, 
 can really doubt. 
 
 Take but one case. Is it not manifest, even 
 from what has been told in this book, that if 
 the merchants and the civic powers of England 
 devoted themselves, as men of their own blood have 
 done in America, to the development of the Young 
 Men's Christian Association throughout the country, 
 we should possess in less than a generation such a 
 manhood in our cities as would be a strength to the 
 empire, a glory to the race, and a power for the 
 things of God ? Here is, at our hand, this As- 
 sociation — long-founded and already flourishing — 
 
256 THE ORDINARY MAN 
 
 which could literally save to manhood and reUgion 
 hundreds of thousands of young men now drifting 
 into indifference and decadence, if the reUgious 
 conscience of England reahsed the opportunity 
 and gave itself with enthusiasm to the work. 
 
 And all over England there are good men in equally 
 worthy societies waiting to do a tremendous work 
 for humanity in the name of God, but who are 
 paralysed by want of sympathy and enthusiasm 
 from the whole nation. And this lack of sympathy 
 and this want of enthusiasm are due to the pessimism 
 that religion is exhausted and the miracle exposed. 
 Progress has been handed over to the pohticians. 
 Enlightenment is looked for only from the men of 
 science. As if poUtics or science could touch the 
 soul of humanity ! And in the meantime, all round 
 us and about us, through the humble labours of 
 obscure but holy men and women, Christ is feeding 
 the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick, 
 casting out devils, and raising the dead. 
 
 If England, as some think, is now faUing through 
 materialism into anarchy and ruin, may one not 
 suppose that there is a sigh in heaven, and that 
 once more those words are breathed with sorrowful 
 compassion, " Ye will not come to Me, that ye might 
 have life " ? 
 
 Before England abandons herself to the poHtician, 
 it would be weU for her once more to make her 
 appeal, earnestly and universally, to the Christ 
 Who called Himself Son of God and Light of the 
 World. 
 
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