In His Steps

by Charles M. Sheldon

"This is the first time I was ever in here, and may be it'll be the last. Fact is, I am about at the end of my string. I've tramped this city for work till I'm sick. I'm in plenty of company. Say! I'd like to ask a question of the minister, if it's fair. May I?"

"That's for Mr. Maxwell to say," said the Bishop.

"By all means," replied Mr. Maxwell quickly. "Of course, I will not promise to answer it to the gentleman's satisfaction."

"This is my question." The man leaned forward and stretched out a long arm with a certain dramatic force that grew naturally enough out of his condition as a human being. "I want to know what Jesus would do in my case. I haven't had a stroke of work for two months. I've got a wife and three children, and I love them as much as if I was worth a million dollars. I've been living off a little earnings I saved up during the World's Fair jobs I got. I'm a carpenter by trade, and I've tried every way I know to get a job. You say we ought to take for our motto, 'What would Jesus do?' What would He do if He was out of work like me? I can't be somebody else and ask the question. I want to work. I'd give anything to grow tired of working ten hours a day the way I used to. Am I to blame because I can't manufacture a job for myself? I've got to live, and my wife and my children have got to live. But how? What would Jesus do? You say that's the question we ought to ask."

Mr. Maxwell sat there staring at the great sea of faces all intent on his, and no answer to this man's question seemed for the time being to be possible. "O God!" his heart prayed; "this is a question that brings up the entire social problem in all its perplexing entanglement of human wrongs and its present condition contrary to every desire of God for a human being's welfare. Is there any condition more awful than for a man in good health, able and eager to work, with no means of honest livelihood unless he does work, actually unable to get anything to do, and driven to one of three things: begging or charity at the hands of friends or strangers, suicide or starvation? 'What would Jesus do?'" It was a fair question for the man to ask. It was the only question he could ask, supposing him to be a disciple of Jesus. But what a question for any man to be obliged to answer under such conditions?

All this and more did Henry Maxwell ponder. All the others were thinking in the same way. The Bishop sat there with a look so stern and sad that it was not hard to tell how the question moved him. Dr. Bruce had his head bowed. The human problem had never seemed to him so tragical as since he had taken the pledge and left his church to enter the Settlement. What would Jesus do? It was a terrible question. And still the man stood there, tall and gaunt and almost terrible, with his arm stretched out in an appeal which grew every second in meaning. At length Mr. Maxwell spoke.

"Is there any man in the room, who is a Christian disciple, who has been in this condition and has tried to do as Jesus would do? If so, such a man can answer this question better than I can."

There was a moment's hush over the room and then a man near the front of the hall slowly rose. He was an old man, and the hand he laid on the back of the bench in front of him trembled as he spoke.

"I think I can safely say that I have many times been in just such a condition, and I have always tried to be a Christian under all conditions. I don't know as I have always asked this question, 'What would Jesus do?' when I have been out of work, but I do know I have tried to be His disciple at all times. Yes," the man went on, with a sad smile that was more pathetic to the Bishop and Mr. Maxwell than the younger man's grim despair; "yes, I have begged, and I have been to charity institutions, and I have done everything when out of a job except steal and lie in order to get food and fuel. I don't know as Jesus would have done some of the things I have been obliged to do for a living, but I know I have never knowingly done wrong when out of work. Sometimes I think maybe He would have starved sooner than beg. I don't know."

The old man's voice trembled and he looked around the room timidly. A silence followed, broken by a fierce voice from a large, black-haired, heavily-bearded man who sat three seats from the Bishop. The minute he spoke nearly every man in the hall leaned forward eagerly. The man who had asked the question, "What would Jesus do in my case?" slowly sat down and whispered to the man next to him: "Who's that?"