THREE months
had gone by since the Sunday morning when Dr. Bruce came
into his pulpit with the message of the new discipleship.
They were three months of great excitement in Nazareth
Avenue Church. Never before had Rev. Calvin Bruce realized
how deep the feeling of his members flowed. He humbly
confessed that the appeal he had made met with an unexpected
response from men and women who, like Felicia, were hungry
for something in their lives that the conventional type of
church membership and fellowship had failed to give them.
But Dr. Bruce
was not yet satisfied for himself. He cannot tell what his
feeling was or what led to the movement he finally made, to
the great astonishment of all who knew him, better than by
relating a conversation between him and the Bishop at this
time in the history of the pledge in Nazareth Avenue Church.
The two friends were as before in Dr. Bruce's house, seated
in his study.
"You
know what I have come in this evening for?" the Bishop
was saying after the friends had been talking some time
about the results of the pledge with the Nazareth Avenue
people.
Dr. Bruce
looked over at the Bishop and shook his head.
"I have
come to confess that I have not yet kept my promise to walk
in His steps in the way that I believe I shall be obliged to
if I satisfy my thought of what it means to walk in His
steps."
Dr. Bruce had
risen and was pacing his study. The Bishop remained in the
deep easy chair with his hands clasped, but his eye burned
with the blow that belonged to him before he made some great
resolve.
"Edward,"
Dr. Bruce spoke abruptly, "I have not yet been able to
satisfy myself, either, in obeying my promise. But I have at
last decided on my course. In order to follow it I shall be
obliged to resign from Nazareth Avenue Church."
"I knew
you would," replied the Bishop quietly. "And I
came in this evening to say that I shall be obliged to do
the same thing with my charge."
Dr. Bruce
turned and walked up to his friend. They were both laboring
under a repressed excitement.
"Is it
necessary in your case?" asked Bruce.
"Yes.
Let me state my reasons. Probably they are the same as
yours. In fact, I am sure they are." The Bishop paused
a moment, then went on with increasing feeling:
"Calvin,
you know how many years I have been doing the work of my
position, and you know something of the responsibility and
care of it. I do not mean to say that my life has been free
from burden-bearing or sorrow. But I have certainly led what
the poor and desperate of this sinful city would call a very
comfortable, yes, a very luxurious life. I have had a
beautiful house to live in, the most expensive food,
clothing and physical pleasures. I have been able to go
abroad at least a dozen times, and have enjoyed for years
the beautiful companionship of art and letters and music and
all the rest, of the very best. I have never known what it
meant to be without money or its equivalent. And I have been
unable to silence the question of late: 'What have I
suffered for the sake of Christ?' Paul was told what great
things he must suffer for the sake of his Lord. Maxwell's
position at Raymond is well taken when he insists that to
walk in the steps of Christ means to suffer. Where has my
suffering come in? The petty trials and annoyances of my
clerical life are not worth mentioning as sorrows or
sufferings. Compared with Paul or any of the Christian
martyrs or early disciples I have lived a luxurious, sinful
life, full of ease and pleasure. I cannot endure this any
longer. I have that within me which of late rises in
overwhelming condemnation of such a following of Jesus. I
have not been walking in His steps. Under the present system
of church and social life I see no escape from this
condemnation except to give the most of my life personally
to the actual physical and soul needs of the wretched people
in the worst part of this city."
The Bishop
had risen now and walked over to the window. The street in
front of the house was as light as day, and he looked out at
the crowds passing, then turned and with a passionate
utterance that showed how deep the volcanic fire in him
burned, he exclaimed:
"Calvin,
this is a terrible city in which we live! Its misery, its
sin, its selfishness, appall my heart. And I have struggled
for years with the sickening dread of the time when I should
be forced to leave the pleasant luxury of my official
position to put my life into contact with the modern
paganism of this century. The awful condition of the girls
in some great business places, the brutal selfishness of the
insolent society fashion and wealth that ignores all the
sorrow of the city, the fearful curse of the drink and
gambling hell, the wail of the unemployed, the hatred of the
church by countless men who see in it only great piles of
costly stone and upholstered furniture and the minister as a
luxurious idler, all the vast tumult of this vast torrent of
humanity with its false and its true ideas, its exaggeration
of evils in the church and its bitterness and shame that are
the result of many complex causes, all this as a total fact
in its contrast with the easy, comfortable life I have
lived, fills me more and more with a sense of mingled terror
and self accusation. I have heard the words of Jesus many
times lately: 'Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these
least My brethren, ye did it not unto Me.' And when have I
personally visited the prisoner or the desperate or the
sinful in any way that has actually caused me suffering?
Rather, I have followed the conventional soft habits of my
position and have lived in the society of the rich, refined,
aristocratic members of my congregations. Where has the
suffering come in? What have I suffered for Jesus' sake? Do
you know, Calvin," he turned abruptly toward his
friend, "I have been tempted of late to lash myself
with a scourge. If I had lived in Martin Luther's time I
should have bared my back to a self-inflicted torture."
Dr. Bruce
was very pale. Never had he seen the Bishop or heard him
when under the influence of such a passion. There was a
sudden silence in the room. The Bishop sat down again and
bowed his head.
Dr. Bruce
spoke at last: "Edward, I do not need to say that you
have expressed my feelings also. I have been in a similar
position for years. My life has been one of comparative
luxury. I do not, of course, mean to say that I have not had
trials and discouragements and burdens in my church
ministry. But I cannot say that I have suffered any for
Jesus. That verse in Peter constantly haunts me: 'Christ
also suffered for you, leaving you an example that ye should
follow His steps.' I have lived in luxury. I do not know
what it means to want. I also have had my leisure for travel
and beautiful companionship. I have been surrounded by the
soft, easy comforts of civilization. The sin and misery of
this great city have beaten like waves against the stone
walls of my church and of this house in which I live, and I
have hardly heeded them, the walls have been so thick. I
have reached a point where I cannot endure this any longer.
I am not condemning the Church. I love her. I am not
forsaking the Church. I believe in her mission and have no
desire to destroy. Least of all, in the step I am about to
take do I desire to be charged with abandoning the Christian
fellowship. But I feel that I must resign my place as pastor
of Nazareth Church in order to satisfy myself that I am
walking as I ought to walk in His steps. In this action I
judge no other minister and pass no criticism on others'
discipleship. But I feel as you do. Into a close contact
with the sin and shame and degradation of this great city I
must come personally. And I know that to do that I must
sever my immediate connection with Nazareth Avenue Church. I
do not see any other way for myself to suffer for His sake
as I feel that I ought to suffer."
Again that
sudden silence fell over those two men. It was no ordinary
action they were deciding. They had both reached the same
conclusion by the same reasoning, and they were too
thoughtful, too well accustomed to the measuring of conduct,
to underestimate the seriousness of their position.
"What
is your plan?" The Bishop at last spoke gently, looking
with the smile that always beautified his face. The Bishop's
face grew in glory now every day.
"My
plan," replied Dr. Bruce slowly, "is, in brief,
the putting of myself into the centre of the greatest human
need I can find in this city and living there. My wife is
fully in accord with me. We have already decided to find a
residence in that part of the city where we can make our
personal lives count for the most."
"Let me
suggest a place." The Bishop was on fire now. His fine
face actually glowed with the enthusiasm of the movement in
which he and his friend were inevitably embarked. He went on
and unfolded a plan of such far-reaching power and
possibility that Dr. Bruce, capable and experienced as he
was, felt amazed at the vision of a greater soul than his
own.
They sat up
late, and were as eager and even glad as if they were
planning for a trip together to some rare land of unexplored
travel. Indeed, the Bishop said many times afterward that
the moment his decision was reached to live the life of
personal sacrifice he had chosen he suddenly felt an
uplifting as if a great burden were taken from him. He was
exultant. So was Dr. Bruce from the same cause.
Their plan
as it finally grew into a workable fact was in reality
nothing more than the renting of a large building formerly
used as a warehouse for a brewery, reconstructing it and
living in it themselves in the very heart of a territory
where the saloon ruled with power, where the tenement was
its filthiest, where vice and ignorance and shame and
poverty were congested into hideous forms. It was not a new
idea. It was an idea started by Jesus Christ when He left
His Father's House and forsook the riches that were His in
order to get nearer humanity and, by becoming a part of its
sin, helping to draw humanity apart from its sin. The
University Settlement idea is not modern. It is as old as
Bethlehem and Nazareth. And in this particular case it was
the nearest approach to anything that would satisfy the
hunger of these two men to suffer for Christ.
There had
sprung up in them at the same time a longing that amounted
to a passion, to get nearer the great physical poverty and
spiritual destitution of the mighty city that throbbed
around them. How could they do this except as they became a
part of it as nearly as one man can become a part of
another's misery? Where was the suffering to come in unless
there was an actual self-denial of some sort? And what was
to make that self-denial apparent to themselves or any one
else, unless it took this concrete, actual, personal form of
trying to share the deepest suffering and sin of the city?
So they
reasoned for themselves, not judging others. They were
simply keeping their own pledge to do as Jesus would do, as
they honestly judged He would do. That was what they had
promised. How could they quarrel with the result if they
were irresistibly compelled to do what they were planning to
do?
