CHAPTER XIII
EXPERIENCE
Winifred's heart did not break. Or, if it broke, it was quickly healed, for there dwelt in the house One whose office it is to bind up the broken-hearted. It was not that she did not grieve, or that no void cried out again and again to be filled. But she learned a paradox as the days went on: of an inexplicable peace beneath the sharpest pain, and of a buoyant joy that would not be held down by sorrow. Hubert looked on, making mental notes as to what had happened, but asking no questions.
Our trio of young people who had entered a life of worship found their hearts impelling them toward fields of service also. Winifred sought in many quiet ways to make known to others Him whom she had come to know with such delight, and a casual visit from Adèle one day threw light upon the occupation of the others.
"By the way, Winifred," Miss Forrester said, apropos of some topic discussed, "your brother gave a splendid talk at the Cleary Street Mission last night. Oh, you ought to have heard him! It was fine!"
Winifred opened her eyes widely. "Hubert at the Mission last night?
He never told me."
"I suspect he doesn't let his left hand know what his right hand is doing," suggested Adèle. "But he certainly was there. And when Mr. McBride asked him to speak he promptly did so. It was splendid! Not simply what he said, you know, but the fact that he said it—a business man talking in a matter-of-fact, business way to other men of something he evidently thought the most important matter in the world. Of course most of the people were of a far different class from his, but you would never guess it from his words. He didn't patronize them a bit. I liked that so much. And you should have seen how those men fastened their eyes on him and listened to what he said."
"How lovely!" cried Winifred. "I wish I had been there. But pray tell me, Adèle, how happens it that you were there?"
"Oh, I am a regular attendant in Cleary Street," said Adèle laughing. "At least I go regularly on certain nights in the week and play the organ—a wretched, squeaky, little thing—and raise my voice on Sankey hymns also."
"You do!" cried Winifred with a mixture of amusement, dismay and admiration in her voice. "Well, I declare!"
"I don't see why you should be so shocked," said Adèle, enjoying her friend's astonishment. "Pray, why shouldn't I go? Do you doubt my qualifications? I am not the musician you are, dear, but my skill is quite up to those tunes, I assure you."
"I hope you don't wear that red hat of yours and your usual stunning costumes, Adèle?"
"It occurred to me after I had gone a few times," said Adèle quietly, "that it might be well to modify my gear. I think you would approve of my revised toilet. It is very simple."
"Adèle, I know you can't help looking well, whatever you wear," said
Winifred, who suddenly observed a somewhat altered "gear" in evidence.
"If you should put on a Salvation Army bonnet it would look stylish.
It couldn't help itself. But please tell me more about the Mission.
How happened you to go at all?"
"I heard Mr. McBride speak at a meeting. He told of the work of the Mission, and of the need of helpers—especially of somebody to help in the music. It occurred to me that that was the kind of assistance I might give, and that it would be very nice to contribute in some small way, at least, to the work of the Mission. And," she continued very gravely, "I volunteered and was gladly accepted."
"That is very noble, I think," said Winifred. "But what did your friends think?"
"I did not ask them," Adèle answered coolly. "I have fallen from caste, anyhow, and it doesn't matter much. You know since I have seen the Lord"—it was Adèle's way of putting it—"I have tried to—to witness to Him in some way or other to my old friends; and the result has been a pretty liberal letting alone from them. His name does not seem a very welcome one—outside of a church!" Then she went on with a gleam of indignant sorrow in her bright eyes: "That is what breaks one's heart! That these very people may kneel beside you in church and recite His holy name as glibly as possible; but outside—it is unwelcome! Winifred, can it be a Christian life at all into any avenue of which Christ is an intrusion? Oh, if they loved Him—if they had ever seen Him at all!—they would be so glad of any mention of Him!"
After a moment a gleam of amused memory succeeded Adèle's pained outburst. She went on:
"The other night I think I reached the climax of my fall into disfavor. You know these summer evenings at the Mission we take the organ and hymn books and go out before the door and have a street meeting. Well, on this occasion our open-air meeting was in full swing and our usual score of auditors were lined up in the gutters and everywhere to hear. Mr. McBride had announced 'The best Friend to have is Jesus,' and was himself swinging his arms and singing lustily, while I played and pumped the panting little instrument and sang as loudly as I could, too. Suddenly there turned down the street a handsome automobile (I don't know why, for they never go down that street) and in it the Misses Steele and Miss Proudfeather from Baltimore. To crown it all, with them was seated my precious Cousin Dick! Our poor little crowd huddled aside to let them pass. They all saw me and Dick took off his hat with great ceremony; but the ladies evidently thought they would spare me the mortification of a recognition under the circumstances. I couldn't help laughing within myself, though it was a bit embarrassing. Dick was hilarious over it. He evidently sees nothing improper in it, but a very good joke. He says he expects to hear me preaching there yet. I told him it might be to his benefit if he did."
Both laughed. "But just think, Adèle," said Winifred, "how infinitely better to be in that little street crowd with the Lord, than driving about in the finest motor car without Him!"
"Yes!" cried Adèle, "I wouldn't trade places for worlds!"
"I should think not," said Winifred, with scorn of the idea.
Adèle was finding out, like her friend, that the way of the cross brings separation, and she had her own peculiar tests as to faithful witnessing. Her merry-hearted cousin drew her out in words more frequently than any other, and plied her with questions concerning this new type of religion.
"It's no new sort of religion at all," she insisted. "It's just the old sort you read of in the New Testament—and the prayer-book! Only I am afraid I never really had it before—or it had not really got me. If people would only be sincere, Dick, you would find it is the same sort."
"I do not think the ordinary sort is much good," said Dick, with the air of a connoisseur in religions.
It was to be lamented that the present incumbent at St. John's had not met with the young man's very hearty favor. The freshly introduced intoning struck him humorously. He imitated it in ordinary remarks about the house.
"Where's—my—hat?" he inquired in a whining chant, after the manner of the unfortunate rector's plaintively intoned "Let us pray."
Adèle, always alive to the ridiculous, laughed; but still she wished he would not be irreverent.
"The way we go through the service," said Dick, "is so as to relieve it of as much sense as possible. No wonder some of us turn out hypocrites. But you don't, Adèle. However, I'll reserve my estimate of your case till we see how you hold out at your new gait."
So Dick watched the "new gait," and Adèle prayed that it might be a walk worthy of the Lord.
Meantime Hubert was pursuing his study of divinity in a normal way—with an open Bible and the Spirit of the Author to interpret. He sought also the fellowship of His people and deep was his perplexity as he found into how many countless sects the "one body" had been divided. Very contrary to the Bible it seemed, but very helplessly he stood before the fact that seemed as hopeless of remedy as of denial. What ought he, one unit among the whole, to do about it? Kindly people sought to draw him into their various fellowships, and he peered into their folds and sought to find the place where his Lord was most honored and His presence most manifest. He found old churches, great and cold, whose service moved with slumbrous calm, and his ardent soul was chilled. He found others where activity bristled and cheerfulness prevailed, but where the world held court as obvious as in the market square; and from these he turned away with a still sharper grief. He found other congregations built in strife and schism, but with some fragrance still of the name of Jesus Christ, and rejoiced that He was preached.
"'They feared the Lord and served their own gods,'" he said to himself, as almost everywhere he saw the strange mingling of worship of the true God with the too patent service of the gods of pleasure and of wealth.
He found little companies, gathered in protest from shameless worldliness or infidel denial of the Lord, and with them he had sympathy, but still looked hungrily for a fuller expression of the truth than they offered. He found himself in companies where correct, punctilious statements of the truth abounded, and where the most careful zeal sought to restore an apostolic order of worship. But he found that the statements grew dry and juiceless in their formal exactness, and that prescribed form could not insure the animating Spirit without which it was as useless as the phylacteries of the Pharisees. He concluded that truth was deeper and fresher than any definitions of it, as the fountain excels the cistern; and that life was sovereign over form, though in form it embody itself.
He found perfection nowhere. After a disappointing meeting, the climax of a series of experiences in which arguments from various schools of doctrine had jostled against each other, and the varying phases of practice, emotional, anti-emotional, informal and ritualistic, with the intervening shades of difference, had presented themselves, he stood in the veranda at home with Winifred and described to her the procession of rival claims which a divided church presents to a Christian man's adherence, and ended with the question:
"Where shall we find the truth, Winifred?"
"In Christ," she answered simply.
"You are right, wise little sister," he said admiringly. "And there we will look for it."
He turned from his quest for perfection in any detachment of the church and sought the place where God would have him, not alone for the green pasture to be found but for the testimony to be given. Deeper lessons were learned as time advanced—lessons of "grace" as well as "truth." Keen discrimination was tempered by love toward that Body which, though distorted and maimed, was still beloved by her Lord, and though besieged by error was still "the pillar and ground of the truth."