Chapter 14: The Builders of the Empire

THE PRAYER

Lover of souls, indeed,
But Lover of bodies too,
Seeing in human flesh
The God shine through;
Hallowed be Thy name,
And, for the sake of Thee,
Hallowed be all men,
For Thine they be.
Doer of deeds divine,
Thou, the Father’s Son,
In all Thy children may
Thy will be done,
Till each works miracles
On poor and sick and blind,
Learning from Thee the art
Of being kind.
For Thine is the glory of love,
And Thine the tender power,
Touching the barren heart
To leaf and flower,
Till not the lilies alone,
Beneath Thy gentle feet,
But human lives for Thee
Grow white and sweet.
And Thine shall the Kingdom be,
Thou Lord of Love and Pain,
Conqueror over death
By being slain.
And we, with the lives like Thine
Shall cry in the great day when
Thou earnest to claim Thine own,
“All Hail! Amen.”

It may be long before the world recognizes this leadership of the loving, and accepts their judgment, but nevertheless the world is debtor to them for all that sweetens life, and makes society tolerable. Such men and women move unrecognized, doing their kindly work without praise, and not so much as asking praise from men; but theirs is a securer triumph than earth can give, and on their brows rests a rarer crown than earthly monarchs wear. I know many of these men and women, and I never meet them without the sense that the seamless robe of Christ has touched me. I meet them in unlikely places; I overtake them on the road of life, oftenest in the places where the shadows lie most thickly; but on each brow is the white stone which is the sign of peace, and in each voice is that deep note of harmony that belongs alone to those who walk through tribulations which they overcome, griefs of which they know the meaning, sorrows which they have the skill to heal. Their very footsteps move more evenly than other men’s, as though guided by the rhythm of a music others do not hear; their very hands have a softness only known to hands that bind up wounds and wipe men’s tears away; and in all their movements and their aspect is a stillness and a sweet composure, as of hearts at rest. Whence are these, and why are they arrayed in white robes? And we know the answer, though no angel-voice may speak to us; these are they on whose bowed heads the starlight of Gethsemane has fallen, in whose hands are the wounds of service, in whose breasts is the heart that breaks with love for men.

One such man I met some months ago, fresh from the forests of Wisconsin. Through a long spring day he told me his story, or rather let me draw it from him episode by episode, for he was much too modest to suppose anything that he had done remarkable. After wild and careless years of wasted youth, Christ had found him, and from the day of his regeneration he gave himself to the redemption of his fellow men. He became a “lumber-jack,” a preacher to the rough sons of the Wisconsin forests. He told me how he first won their respect by sharing their toil—he, a fragile slip of a man, and they giants in thew and muscle: how by tact and kindness he got a hearing for his Master; how he travelled scores of miles through the winter snows to nurse dying men, wrecked by wild excesses; how he had sat for hours together with the heads of drunken men, on whom the terror had fallen, resting on his knees, performing for them offices of help which no other would attempt; how he had heard the confessions of thieves and murderers, who had fled from justice to the refuge of the forest; how he had stood pale, and apprehensive of violence in an angry drunken mob, and had quelled their rage by singing to them “Anywhere with Jesus”; how, finally, he had fallen ill, and had hoped in his extreme weariness for the great release, but had come back from the gates of death with a new hope for the success of his work; and as he spoke, that light which fell upon the face of the dying Stephen rested also on his face; for he also saw, and made me see, the heavens opened, and Jesus standing at the right hand of the throne of God. He was only a lumber-jack, but to these men he was a Christ. He was poor, so poor, that I marvelled how he lived; but he had adopted into his home the forsaken child of a drunken lumberman, whose wife was dead. His life was full of hardship, but never have I met a happier man. For he had found the one secret of all noble and tranquil living, the life of service; and as I grasped his hand at parting and remembered how often it had rested in healing sympathy upon the evil and the weary, I thought of the words of the blessed Master, “He laid His hands upon her, and the fever left her, and she rose and ministered unto Him.”