The mistakes he made were many, though I remember none that was not made from high motive, generous impulse, misplaced zeal, or childlike singleness of purpose, which to the last led him to credit others with truth, loyalty, honour, and sincerity, like to his own. In the beautiful hymn which he so loved, and with which he so often ended evensong, we read:
And none, O Lord, have perfect rest,
For none are wholly free from sin,
but if sin there was in Stone, as in all that is human, I can truly say that, in our twenty-five years’ intimate friendship, I saw in him no sign of anything approaching sin, other than—if sins they be—a noble anger and a lofty pride. To have loved, and to have been loved and trusted by him, was no less a high privilege than it was a high responsibility, for if any of us, who at some time of our lives, shared Stone’s interests and ideals, and were brought under the compelling power and inspiration of his personality, should hereafter come to forget what manner of man he was—should play false with, or altogether fall away, from those ideals, or be content to strive after any less noble standard of conduct and character than he set and attained—then heavy indeed must be our reckoning, in the day when for these, to whom much has been given, much will be required.
For Stone had something of the talismanic personality of his Master. Just as, without one spoken word—without more than a look—from the Christ the unclean were convicted of sin by the talisman of His purity, so all that was noblest, divinest and knightliest in man, all that was white-souled, selfless, tender, true, lofty, and lovely in womanhood, recognised something of itself in Stone, and in his presence all were at their highest and their best.
Nor was this due merely to what has been called a “magnetic personality.” That there are men and women who for good or for evil (it is just as likely to be for the latter as for the former) possess some magnetic or mesmeric power over others, I am, and from personal knowledge, aware. But Stone’s influence was neither mesmeric nor magnetic. It was by the unconscious spiritual alchemy of a soul so rare (I repeat and purposely near the end of this article what I said in the beginning) as to make possible the courage of a Cœur de Lion, the honour of a King Arthur or Sir Galahad—as to make possible even in a sense the sinlessness of Christ. To have known, if only once in a lifetime—and in spite of bitter disillusionments, of repeated betrayals on the part of some others—such a man as S. J. Stone, is in itself enough to keep sweet one’s faith in humanity, in immortality, and in God.
Some time before Stone’s death I had been much thrown into the company of a gifted and brilliant thinker and man of Science, who had very little belief—I will not say in the existence of a God, but at least in the existence of a God who takes thought for the welfare of mortals, and no belief whatever in existence after death. In our walks and conversations he had adduced many arguments in support of annihilation, which it was difficult to answer; and I remember that, when on the morning that Stone died, I stooped to press my lips to the forehead of the friend I loved and revered as I have loved and revered none other since nor shall again, it seemed for a moment as if the man of whom I have spoken as disbelieving in personal immortality, were, in spirit, at my elbow and whispering in my ear. “Look well upon your friend’s face!” the Voice seemed to say, “and you shall see written there: ‘Nobly done, bravely done, greatly done, if you will,’ but you shall also see written there, ‘Done and ended! done and ended—and for evermore!’” I remember, too, that it seemed as if some evil power, outside myself, were trying, by means of what hypnotists call “suggestion,” to compel me to see, upon the dead face, what that evil power wished me to see there.
For one moment, after the whispering of the words “Done and ended! done and ended—and for evermore,” I thought I saw something in the dead face that seemed dumbly to acquiesce in, and to endorse the tempter’s words, until another and very different voice (I have wondered sometimes whether it were not my friend’s) whispered to me, “If the friend whom you loved be indeed annihilated and has ceased to be—then the Eternal and Omnipotent God whom he, a man and a mortal, ever remembered has forgotten him, for annihilation means no more and no less than utterly to be forgotten of God. If that be so, if God can forget, if He can forget those who never forgot Him, then is that God less loving, less faithful, and less remembering than the mortal whom He has made. Can you, dare you, think this awful and unthinkable thing of the Living and Loving God in whom your friend so wholly trusted?”
And, looking upon the face of my friend, I saw written there, not only the august dignity, the lone and awful majesty of death, but also the rapture, the peace, the serenity, the triumph of one who staggers spent and bleeding but victorious from the battle, to hear himself acclaimed God’s soldier and Christ’s knight, and to kneel in wondering awe, in worshipping ecstasy, at the feet of his Saviour and his God.
And remembering what I saw written on the dead face of my friend, remembering the life he led and the God in whom he trusted, I have no fear that my own faith will fail me again in life or in death.
And we also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear; beseeching thee to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom. Grant this, O Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.