And in Haggerston he remained working early in the morning and late in the night until 1890, when the collapse, alike of nerve and physical strength, came, and he had to resign—to be appointed by the Lord Chancellor to the comparatively easy living of All Hallows, London Wall.
But Stone was not the man to spare himself in his new sphere of labour. What the wrench of parting and the strain necessitated by sweeping aside the cobwebs, and by trying to warm into life the dry bones, as he put it, of a long-neglected City church cost him, may be gathered from the one and only sad letter I ever had from him. It is written from the house of his sister, Mrs. Boyd.
Woodside Lodge,
South Norwood Hill, S.E.,
Nov. 28, 1891.My dear Kernahan,
I have, in a very busy life, never passed through such a time of depression as in the last nine or ten months. In the Spring I left the old Parish of 21 years’ work and 31 years’ memories—and how I got through the next couple of months I scarcely know. Only by Grace of God. I went to Southend for a fortnight, but it was simply a ghastly time, I was ill in body and mind. Except for the faith which Tennyson describes in the case of Enoch Arden’s coming home, through which a man (believing in the Incarnation, and therefore in the Perfect Human Sympathy of God) cannot be “all unhappy,” I don’t know what would have become of me. I left behind me, you know how much—how many is represented by 537 communicants, nearly all of them my spiritual children, and I had before me, not a “howling wilderness” but a silent wilderness of the worst of the City churches. A howling wilderness would have stirred up the soldier’s blood that is in me—but the desolation which I felt so ill was like a winding sheet. You must come and see me at All Hallows, and while I show you the beautiful present, I will show you in actual fact some of the dry bones.
I need not tell you that I have had a great deal to do Haggerstonwards. And oh! my correspondence with my old children!
I hope this does not sound to you like complaint or self-pity. I only mean it as explanation—which would not be given in these terms, except to one very much (I know) of my own temperament. Indeed, there is no cause for anything but thankfulness. My nerves were too worn out for Haggerston any longer. My successor is one almost entirely after my own heart—my new parish is exactly one (nearest to Haggerston in the City) I wished for. The task of renovation, though it makes me a poor man for a year or two, has been very good by way of distraction and for the delight of making a garden out of such a wilderness of dry bones, and after another six or nine months I may be able to afford a curate, and, having no further special financial or parochial anxieties, be able to settle to some final literary work. Indeed, I am as I ought to be, very thankful.
So far most egotistically.
I am interested with my whole heart in what you tell me of yourself. Do come and see me, to tell more. I will promise to send you what I write, if you will undertake to do the same.
God bless you, dear friend.
Ever your most affectionate,
S. J. Stone.
The depression passed, and Stone recovered sufficiently to throw himself, heart and soul, and for some years, into his now memorable work among the “hands” employed in City warehouses, shops and factories. Once again it was for the poor, or for the comparatively poor that he toiled, and once again he spared himself in nothing. His letters (I have enough almost for a book) tell of the joy and contentment he found in the work, and of his thankfulness to God for what had been done.
But he had made the change from the heavier work at Haggerston too late, and even in the easier charge, which, in order that he might husband his failing strength and outworn energies had been found for him, he would not, or could not spare himself—with the result that, in the autumn of 1899, he had another breakdown. Meeting him unexpectedly one day on the Embankment, after not seeing him for some little time, I was inexpressibly shocked at the change. He told me that he had been feeling very ill for some weeks, and was then on his way to meet the friend who was accompanying him to see a specialist, and that I should, without delay, know the result of the examination which was to be made. Not many hours had passed before I had a letter. The malady, Stone said, was cancer, it was feared in a malignant form, and there must be an operation, and soon.
With all the old and infinite thought and tenderness for others, he gave me gently to understand that the case was not too hopeful—he was terribly run down, his heart was weak: he had overstrained it while at Oxford—and even should he survive the operation, there was small likelihood of recovery. Here is the conclusion of his letter:
Keep a quiet mind about me, dear friend. I have not so learned Christ that I make any real difference between life and death, but remember me before God.
Ever yours most affectionately,
S. J. Stone.
Scarcely a day of the months which followed was free from pain. Yet he wrote, “I live in a kind of thankful wonder that I should be so encompassed by the goodness of God and the lovingkindness of men.” To the end he retained all his old interests. He continued, in the brief respites from terrible bouts of pain, to attend the church of All Hallows, of which he was still rector, and to minister to his people, and even to follow, with intense patriotic interest, every event in the South African War.
The day preceding his death, Sunday, he was at All Hallows; and the very day of his passing he wrote, “I am in such pain that I can neither write nor dictate. At others I am just able to write ‘with mine own hand.’ But whether at the worst or at the best in a bodily state, spiritually I am not only in patience, but in joy of heart and soul.” Soon after came a brief space of unconsciousness and—the end.
So died one who was liker Christ than any other man or woman I have known. His love for his fellows was so passionate and so unselfish that, could he have taken upon himself, to save them from sin, sorrow, and suffering, a similar burden to that which his Lord and Master bore, he would not have hesitated—he would gladly have hastened—to make the sacrifice.