These words were spoken with no less conviction than those which had gone before, but the change of voice, of expression, of attitude and gesture, were those which only a master of oratory could have so swiftly effected. The audience, now wholly under his control, felt a new thrill of comfort, of hope, even of exultation.
“The Spirit of God is brooding in the bosom of all this chaos, and a new day dawns. Fear not, but look within. Your own heart confesses the bond of brotherhood which unites you to all the race. Let your heart speak.
“Men everywhere see the new light, and confess and deny not that it is the true light, the light which lighteth every man coming into the world, until sin and selfishness quench it.
“The day is come when men shall no longer greedily seek their own salvation; the straitened individualism of the fathers has had its day; even the passion for personal perfection is refined selfishness from the new point of view. Many Christian souls have been misled in the past by the mistaken idea of self-sacrifice and renunciation, not for their results to humanity, but for the perfecting of self, a fruitless, joyless, Christless thing. The continual seeking for the safety here and hereafter of the individual—the man’s own advantage, what if spiritual?—held up always as his chief and noblest aim, have resulted in Christianity becoming a symbol for sublimated selfishness.
“A greater, nobler motive is ours to-day—no new gospel, but a right reading of the old, a deeper insight into his purpose who said, ‘If any man serve me, let him follow me.’
“Here may we, at last, and perhaps for the first time in long years of blind and baffled longing for the fellowship of Christ our Sacrifice, learn the awful joy of dying in our own lives that so we may not live alone.
“Your soul cannot rise toward God, my brother, while you are treading down other souls beneath your feet. Cease the hopeless effort. Take the world’s burden on your heart, and you shall know Christ. Refuse the joys which can only be for the few and the rich. Take nothing but what you can share. Learn poverty and simplicity and hardihood; unlearn luxury, exclusiveness, epicureanism. Be pioneers in the new state, apostles of the new-old gospel—the Gospel of Brotherhood, of Fellowship, of Sacrifice.”
As Anna Mallison, in her early girlhood, had responded with swift, unquestioning response to the simple appeal of the missionary, and had offered herself unreservedly to the work of seeking lost souls in the heathen world, so now, in the maturity of her womanhood, her inmost soul confessed that her hour had come. The message of John Gregory, heard vaguely and partially before, had now reached her fully, and she found its claim upon her irresistible.
“Where this leads, I follow,” a voice said in her heart; “I follow though I die! It is for this I have waited.”
Turning, she looked into her husband’s face, and their eyes met. Keith Burgess read what he intuitively expected in the deep awe of Anna’s eyes; while she read in his a sympathy and response, real, and yet strangely sad.