A Gamble with Life

by Silas K. Hocking

He raised his eyes at length, and the illusion partially vanished; but not altogether. There was the same organ—how often he had counted its gilt dummy pipes; new brass book-rests had been placed in the gallery front for the convenience of the choir—that was an innovation, and brought him down to more modern days. The iron pillars that supported the galleries were festooned with evergreens, and over the arch of the organ loft was a text of Scripture, conspicuous in white against a scarlet background:—"On earth peace and good will toward men."

The text set Rufus thinking again. He rather wondered that anyone had the courage to put it up. Perhaps the young people had done it, unthinkingly, for no sentiment could be more incongruous or out of place. The air was full of the clash of arms, the newspapers contained little else than records of battle and slaughter. Ministers all over the country were preaching sermons on patriotism and Imperialism. Churches and Sunday-schools were organising boys' brigades, and children were being taught how to shoot. Here and there a solitary voice protested against all war as unchristian, but the voice in the main was unheeded. How could war be unchristian? How could killing on a large scale be anything but an ennobling occupation? How could defending homes that were not attacked and destroying homes that were not defended, be anything less than heroic? How could stealing your neighbour's birthright and possessing his inheritance be anything but righteous?

"There's evidently a screw loose somewhere," he said to himself, with a smile. "If that text sets forth the objective of Christ's mission, then a good deal that passes muster as Christianity to-day is loathsome hypocrisy."

Then his attention was arrested by the entrance of the minister into the pulpit. A young man with a frank, boyish face, large, square forehead, a wide mouth, strong chin and jaw—all this he took in at a glance. A moment later he noticed that his dress was unclerical, his hands small and brown, his eyes deep-set and dark.

Rufus felt interested in the man. Accustomed as he had been during all the years of his boyhood and youth to seeing the tall, stiff, clerical figure of his grandfather in the pulpit, there seemed something delightfully free and unconventional about this young man. The pulpit "tone" was absent from his voice, the pulpit manner he had evidently not yet learnt, the pulpit expression had to be acquired.

Rufus got far back in his childhood days again during the singing and prayers. But directly the text was announced and the minister began to preach he felt wide awake and interested. To begin with, all his early notions about preaching were rudely upset. Taking his grandfather as a model this young man did not preach at all. He just talked and talked in a most delightfully easy and quickening way.

The farther he advanced the more interested Rufus became. There were no attempts at oratory, no flights of rhetoric, no simulated passion, no declamation, but just earnest, lucid talk. He forgot that he was in a chapel and this man in a pulpit. They might be anywhere—in a workshop or by the fireside—and the man was talking to them on a subject of deep and perennial interest. He did not dogmatise; he did not ignore objections and difficulties. He faced every problem fairly and fearlessly, and gave his reason for the faith that was in him.

"The desire of all nations shall come," was the text. What was the desire of all nations? What was the deep, passionate longing of all thoughtful, serious people of all ages and of all countries? And how was that longing met in Jesus of Nazareth?

On the first point he touched Rufus to the quick. He described every mental emotion through which he had passed, and showed how every merely human philosophy had failed to satisfy the need of the human heart. Every word of this part of the discourse was absolutely true to Rufus's own experience.