Robert Elsmere

For two hours a continuous stream of human beings surrounded the little table beside which Elsmere stood, inscribing their names, and receiving from him the silver badge, bearing the head of Christ, which was to be the outward and conspicuous sign of members.h.i.+p. Men came of all sorts: the intelligent well-paid artisan, the pallid clerk or small accountant, stalwart warehous.e.m.e.n, huge carters and draymen, the boy attached to each by the laws of the profession often straggling lumpishly behind his master. Women were there: wives who came because their lords came, or because Mr. Elsmere had been 'that good' to them that anything they could do to oblige him 'they would, and welcome'; prim pupil-teachers, holding themselves with straight superior shoulders; children, who came trooping in, grinned up into Robert's face and retreated again with red cheeks, the silver badge tight clasped in hands which not even much scrubbing could make pa.s.sable.

Flaxman stood and watched it from the side. It was an extraordinary scene: the crowd, the slight figure on the platform, the two great inscriptions, which represented the only 'articles' of the new faith, gleaming from the freshly coloured walls--

_'In Thee, O Eternal, have I put my trust;'_

_'This do in remembrance of Me;'_

--the recesses on either side of the hall lined with white marble, and destined, the one to hold the names of the living members of the Brotherhood, the other to commemorate those who had pa.s.sed away (empty this last save for the one poor name of 'Charles Richards'); the copies of Giotto's Paduan Virtues--faith, fort.i.tude, charity, and the like--which broke the long wall at intervals. The cynic in the onlooker tried to a.s.sert itself against the feeling with which the air seemed overcharged. In vain.

'Whatever comes of it,' Flaxman said to himself with strong involuntary conviction, 'whether he fails or no, the spirit that is moving here is the same spirit that spread the Church, the spirit that sent out Benedictine and Franciscan into the world, that fired the children of Luther, or Calvin, or George Fox; the spirit of devotion, through a man, to an idea; through one much-loved, much-trusted soul to some eternal verity, newly caught, newly conceived, behind it. There is no approaching the idea for the ma.s.ses except through the human life; there is no lasting power for the man except as the slave of the idea!'

A week later he wrote to his aunt as follows. He could not write to her of Rose, he did not care to write of himself, and he knew that Elsmere's club address had left a mark even on her restless and overcrowded mind.

Moreover, he himself was absorbed.

'We are in the full stream of religion-making. I watch it with a fascination you at a distance cannot possibly understand, even when my judgment demurs, and my intelligence protests that the thing cannot live without Elsmere, and that Elsmere's life is a frail one. After the ceremony of enrolment which I described to you yesterday the Council of the New Brotherhood was chosen by popular election, and Elsmere gave an address. Two-thirds of the council, I should think, are working-men, the rest of the upper cla.s.s; Elsmere, of course, president.

'Since then the first religious service under the new const.i.tution has been held. The service is extremely simple, and the basis of the whole is "new bottles for the new wine." The opening prayer is recited by everybody present standing. It is rather an act of adoration and faith than a prayer, properly so called. It represents, in fact, the placing of the soul in the presence of G.o.d. The mortal turns to the eternal; the ignorant and imperfect look away from themselves to the knowledge and perfection of the All-Holy. It is Elsmere's drawing up, I imagine--at any rate it is essentially modern, expressing the modern spirit, answering to modern need, as I imagine the first Christian prayers expressed the spirit and answered to the need of an earlier day.

'Then follows some pa.s.sage from the life of Christ. Elsmere reads it and expounds it, in the first place, as a lecturer might expound a pa.s.sage of Tacitus, historically and critically. His explanation of miracle, his efforts to make his audience realise the germs of miraculous belief which each man carries with him in the const.i.tution and inherited furniture of his mind, are some of the most ingenious--perhaps the most convincing--I have ever heard. My heart and my head have never been very much at one, as you know, on this matter of the marvellous element in religion.

'But then when the critic has done, the poet and the believer begins.

Whether he has got hold of the true Christ is another matter; but that the Christ he preaches moves the human heart as much as--and in the case of the London artisan, more than--the current orthodox presentation of him, I begin to have ocular demonstration.

'I was present, for instance, at his children's Sunday cla.s.s the other day. He had brought them up to the story of the Crucifixion, reading from the Revised Version, and amplifying wherever the sense required it.

Suddenly a little girl laid her head on the desk before her, and with choking sobs implored him not to go on. The whole cla.s.s

'He took one of them upon his knee and tried to console them. But there is something piercingly penetrating and austere even in the consolations of this new faith. He did but remind the children of the burden of grat.i.tude laid upon them. "Would you let him suffer so much in vain? His suffering has made you and me happier and better to-day, at this moment, than we could have been without Jesus. You will understand how, and why, more clearly when you grow up. Let us in return keep him in our hearts always, and obey his words! It is all you can do for his sake, just as all you could do for a mother who died would be to follow her wishes and sacredly keep her memory."

'That was about the gist of it. It was a strange little scene, wonderfully suggestive and pathetic.

'But a few more words about the Sunday service. After the address came a hymn. There are only seven hymns in the little service book, gathered out of the finest we have. It is supposed that in a short time they will become so familiar to the members of the Brotherhood that they will be sung readily by heart. The singing of them in the public service alternates with an equal number of psalms. And both psalms and hymns are meant to be recited or sung constantly in the homes of the members, and to become part of the everyday life of the Brotherhood. They have been most carefully chosen, and a sort of ritual importance has been attached to them from the beginning. Each day in the week has its particular hymn or psalm.

'Then the whole wound up with another short prayer, also repeated standing, a commendation of the individual, the Brotherhood, the nation, the world, to G.o.d. The phrases of it are terse and grand. One can see at once that it has laid hold of the popular sense, the popular memory. The Lord's Prayer followed. Then, after a silent pause of "recollection,"

Elsmere dismissed them.

'"_Go in peace, in the love of G.o.d, and in the memory of His servant, Jesus._"

'I looked carefully at the men as they were tramping out. Some of them were among the Secularist speakers you and I heard at the club in April.

In my wonder, I thought of a saying of Vinet's: "_C'est pour la religion que le peuple a le plus de talent; c'est en religion qu'il montre le plus d'esprit._"'

In a later letter he wrote--

'I have not yet described to you what is perhaps the most characteristic, the most binding practice of the New Brotherhood. It is that which has raised most angry comment, cries of "profanity," "wanton insult," and what not. I came upon it yesterday in an interesting way. I was working with Elsmere at the arrangement of the library, which is now becoming a most fascinating place, under the management of a librarian chosen from the neighbourhood, when he asked me to go and take a message to a carpenter who has been giving us voluntary help in the evenings after his day's work. He thought that as it was the dinner hour, and the man worked in the dock close by, I might find him at home. I went off to the model lodging-house where I was told to look for him, mounted the common stairs, and knocked at his door. n.o.body seemed to hear me, and as the door was ajar I pushed it open.

'Inside was a curious sight.

'The table was spread with the midday meal. Round the table stood four children, the eldest about fourteen, and the youngest six or seven. At one end of it stood the carpenter himself in his working ap.r.o.n, a brawny Saxon, bowed a little by his trade. Before him was a plate of bread, and his h.o.r.n.y hands were resting on it. The street was noisy; they had not heard my knock; and as I pushed open the door there was an old coat hanging over the corner of it which concealed me.

'Something in the att.i.tudes of all concerned reminded me, kept me where I was, silent.

'The father lifted his right hand.

'"The Master said, '_This do in remembrance of Me!_'"

'The children stooped for a moment in silence, then the youngest said slowly, in a little softened c.o.c.kney voice that touched me extraordinarily,--

'"_Jesus, we remember Thee always!_"

'It was the appointed response. As she spoke I recollected the child perfectly at Elsmere's cla.s.s. I also remembered that she had no mother; that her mother had died of cancer in June, visited and comforted to the end by Elsmere and his wife.

'Well, the great question of course remains--is there a sufficient strength of _feeling_ and _conviction_ behind these things? If so, after all, everything was new once, and Christianity was but modified Judaism.'

'December 22.

'I believe I shall soon be as deep in this matter as Elsmere. In Elgood Street great preparations are going on for Christmas. But it will be a new sort of Christmas. We shall hear very little, it seems, of angels and shepherds, and a great deal of the humble childhood of a little Jewish boy whose genius grown to maturity transformed the Western world.

To see Elsmere, with his boys and girls about him, trying to make them feel themselves the heirs and fellows of the Nazarene child, to make them understand something of the lessons that child must have learnt, the sights he must have seen, and the thoughts that must have come to him, is a spectacle of which I will not miss more than I can help. Don't imagine, however, that I am converted exactly!--but only that I am more interested and stimulated than I have been for years. And don't expect me for Christmas. I shall stay here.'

'New Year's Day.

'I am writing from the library of the New Brotherhood. The amount of activity, social, educational, religious, of which this great building promises to be the centre is already astonis.h.i.+ng. Everything, of course including the const.i.tution of the infant society, is as yet purely tentative and experimental. But for a scheme so young, things are falling into working order with wonderful rapidity. Each department is worked by committees under the central council. Elsmere, of course, is _ex-officio_ chairman of a large proportion; Wardlaw, Mackay, I, and a few other fellows "run" the rest for the present. But each committee contains working-men; and it is the object of everybody concerned to make the workman element more and more real and efficient. What with the "tax" on the members which was fixed by a general meeting, and the contributions from outside, the society already commands a fair income.

But Elsmere is anxious not to attempt too much at once, and will go slowly and train his workers.

'Music, it seems, is to be a great feature in the future. I have my own projects as to this part of the business, which, however, I forbid you to guess at.

'By the rules of the Brotherhood, every member is bound to some work in connection with it during the year, but little or much, as he or she is able. And every meeting, every undertaking of whatever kind, opens with the special "word" or formula of the society, "This do in remembrance of Me."'

'January 6.

'Besides the Sunday lectures, Elsmere is pegging away on Sat.u.r.day evenings at "The History of the Moral Life in Man." It is a remarkable course, and very largely attended by people of all sorts. He tries to make it an exposition of the leading principles of the new movement, of "that continuous and only revelation of G.o.d in life and nature," which is in reality the basis of his whole thought. By the way, the letters that are pouring in upon him from all parts are extraordinary. They show an amount and degree of interest in ideas of the kind which are surprising to a Laodicean like me. But he is not surprised--says he always expected it--and that there are thousands who only want a rallying-point.

'His personal effect, the love that is felt for him, the pa.s.sion and energy of the nature--never has our generation seen anything to equal it. As you perceive, I am reduced to taking it all seriously, and don't know what to make of him or myself.

'_She_, poor soul! is now always with him, comes down with him day after day, and works away. She no more believes in his _ideas_, I think, than she ever did; but all her antagonism is gone. In the midst of the stir about him her face often haunts me. It has changed lately; she is no longer a young woman, but so refined, so spiritual!

'But he is ailing and fragile. _There_ is the one cloud on a scene that fills me with increasing wonder and reverence.'

CHAPTER L