“Tommy, I’m glad to see you. Won’t you get up and sing ‘My Lord and I’? I know there isn’t any one here who wouldn’t rather hear you sing than me preach any time. Will you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Up in the gallery, three rows back, there arose a shabby little man, his dusty suit showing the well-worn marks of age. He was clean and docile, however, and seemed to be some one whom the mission had reclaimed in times past. In fact, the speaker made it clear that Tommy was a great card, for out of the gutter he had come to contribute a beautiful voice to the mission, a voice that was now missing because he had a job in a faraway part of the city.
Tommy sang. He put his hands in his coat pockets, stood perfectly erect, and with his head thrown back gave vent to such a sweet, clear melody that it moved every heart. It was not a strong voice, not showy, but pure and lovely, like a limpid stream. The song he sang was this:
I have a Friend so precious,
So very dear to me;
He loves me with such tender love,
He loves me faithfully.
I could not live apart from Him,
I love to feel Him nigh;
And so we dwell together,
My Lord and I.
Sometimes I’m faint and weary,
He knows that I am weak,
And as He bids me lean on Him
His help I gladly seek;
He leads me in the paths of light,
Beneath a sunny sky;
And so we walk together,
My Lord and I.
I tell Him all my sorrows,
I tell Him all my joys,
I tell Him all that pleases me,
I tell Him what annoys;
He tells me what I ought to do,
He tells me how to try;
And so we walk together,
My Lord and I.
He knows how I’m longing
Some weary soul to win,
And so He bids me go and speak
The loving word for Him;
He bids me tell His wondrous love,
And why He came to die;
And so we work together
My Lord and I.
As he sang I could not help thinking of this imaginatively personified Lord of the Universe in all His power and wisdom taking note of this singing, shabby ant—of the faith that it required to believe that He would. Then I thought of the vast forces that shift and turn in their mighty inscrutability. I thought of suns and planets that die, not knowing why they are born. Of the vast machinery, the vast chemistry, of things dark, ruthless, brutal, and then of love, and mercy and tenderness that is somehow present along with cruelty and savagery. And then I thought of this little, shabby reclaimed water-rat, this scraping of the mud crawled to the bank, who yet could stand there in his shabby coat and sing! What if, after all, as the Christian Scientists believe, the Lord was not distant from things but here, now, everywhere, divine goodness speaking in and through matter and man. What if evil and weakness and failure were dreams only, evil dreams, from which we wake to something different, better—Omnipotence, to essential unity with life and love? For a moment, so mysterious a thing is emotion and romance, the thought carried me with the singer, and I sang with him:
“And so we walk together,
My Lord and I.”