The service lasted perhaps twenty minutes, and Mary was not much moved by it. The young man’s voice was weak, the man himself looked under-fed. She noticed, however, that as the service went on the number in the room grew, and when it closed she found that all the seats were filled, and that there were even a few men—some of them colliers fresh from the pit—standing at the back. Remembering the odd text that the clergyman had given out the week before, she wondered what he would choose to-day, and, faintly amused, she stole a glance at her companion. But Etruria’s rapt face was a reproach to her levity.
The young clergyman pushed back the hair from his forehead. His posture was ungainly, he did not know what to do with his hands, he opened his mouth and shut it again. Then with an effort he began. “My text, my friends,” he said, “is but one word, ‘Love.’ Where will you find it in the Scriptures? In every chapter and in every verse. In the dark days of old the order was ‘Thou shalt live!’ The new order in these days is ‘Thou shalt love!’” He began by describing the battle of life in the animal and vegetable world, where all things lived at the cost of others; and he admitted that the struggle for life, for bread, for work, as they saw it around them, resembled that struggle. In moving terms he enlarged on the distress, on the vast numbers lately living on the rates, on the thousands living, where even the rates fell short, on Government aid. He described the fireless homes, the foodless children, the strong men hopeless. And he showed them that others were stricken, that masters suffered, tradesmen were ruined, the country languished. “The worst may be past,” he said. “You are working half-time, you are living on half-wages, you are thankful that things are better.” Then he told them that for his part he did not presume to say what was at the root of these unhappy conditions, but that of one thing he felt sure—and this was his message to them—that if the law of love, if the golden rule of preferring another to one’s self, if the precept of that charity,
Which seeketh not itself to please
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
if that were followed by all, then all
Might build a heaven in hell’s despair.
And in words more eloquent than he had yet compassed he begged them to set that example of brotherhood, in the certainty that the worst social evils, nay, all evils save pain and death, would be cured by the love that thought for others, that in the master preferred the servant’s welfare and in the servant put first his master’s interests. Finally he quoted his old text, “Let two work together, for if they fall, one will lift up his fellow!”
It seemed as if he had done. He was silent; his hearers waited. Then with an effort he continued:
“I have a word to say about something which fell from me in this place last week. While I did not venture, unskilled as I am, to say where lies the cause of our distress, I did say that I found it hard to believe that the system which taxes the bread you earn in the sweat of your brow, which takes a disproportionate part from the scanty crust of the widow and from the food of the child, was in accordance with the law of love. I repeat that now; and because I have been told that I dare not say in the pulpit of Riddsley church what I say here, I shall on the first opportunity state my belief there. You may ask why I have not done so; my answer is, that I am there the representative of another, whereas in this voluntary work I am myself more responsible. In saying that I ask you to judge me, as we should judge all, with that charity which believeth no evil.”
A moment later Mary, deeply moved, was passing out with the crowd. As she stood, caught in the press by the door, an old man in horn-rimmed glasses, who was waiting there, held out his hand. She was going to take it, when she saw that it was not meant for her, but for the young clergyman who was following at her heels.
“Master, dunno you do it,” the old fellow growled. “You’ll break your pick, and naught gotten. Naught gotten, that’ll serve. Your gaffer’ll not abide it, and you’ll lose your job!”