When at length he drew near the clearing in the forest, he both trembled and rejoiced, at the thought of soon being able to deliver his message to the woodmen. Coming yet nearer, however, he no longer saw any blue smoke curling up in a thin spiral between the straight stems of the forest trees. Neither did he hear any sound of saws sawing timber, or the men shouting to their horses. The whole place was silent and deserted. When he reached the clearing, n.o.body was there. Even the huts had gone. He would have thought he had mistaken the place if the dining-shanty had not been there, by the edge of a little trickling stream, just as he remembered it.

Nowhere was there a living soul to be seen. Evidently all the woodmen had gone away deeper into the forest to find fresh timber, for the clearing was much larger and many more trees had been cut down than on Stephen's first visit. The neglected look of the one big wooden hut that remained showed that the men had not used it for many days. Weeks might pa.s.s before any of the woodcutters returned.

What was Stephen to do? He had no idea in which direction the woodmen had departed. It was hopeless to think of tracking them further through the lonely forest glades. Had the Voice made a mistake? Could he have misunderstood the command? Was the whole expedition a failure?

Must he return home with his message still undelivered? His heart burned within him at the thought, and he said, half aloud, 'No, no, no!'

There was only one way out of the difficulty, the same way that had helped him to learn his Latin lesson years ago when he was a little boy. But it was no tiny mossy track now, it was a broad, well-marked road travelled daily, hourly, through long years,--this Prayer way that led his soul to G.o.d. Tying up his horse to the nearest tree, Stephen knelt down on the carpet of red-brown pine-needles, and put up a wordless prayer for guidance and help. Then he began to listen.

Through the windless silence of the forest s.p.a.ces the Voice came again more clearly than ever, saying: 'GIVE YOUR MESSAGE. IT IS NOT YOURS BUT MINE.' Stephen hesitated no longer. He went straight into the dining-shanty. He strode past the bare empty tables, under which the long gra.s.s and flowers were already growing thick and tall. He went straight up to the end of the room, and there, standing on a form, as if the place had been filled with one or two hundred eager listeners, although no single human being was to be seen, he PREACHED, as he had never yet preached in his life. The Love of G.o.d, the 'Love that will not let us go,' seemed to him the most real thing in the whole world.

All his life he had longed to find an anchor for his soul. Now that he had found it, he must help others to find it too. Why doesn't everyone find it? Ah! there he began to speak of sin; how sin builds up a wall between our hearts and G.o.d; how, in Jesus Christ, that wall has been thrown down once for all, and now there is nothing to keep us apart except our own blindness and pride; and how if we will only turn round and open our hearts to Him, He is longing to come in and dwell with us.

As Stephen went on, he pleaded yet more earnestly. He thought of the absent woodcutters. He felt that he loved every single one of those wild, rough men; and if he loved them, he, a stranger, how much more dear must they be to their heavenly Father. 'Grant me to win each single soul for Thee, O Lord,' he pleaded, 'each single soul for Thee.'

Where were they all now, these men to whom he had come to speak? He could not find them. But G.o.d could. G.o.d was their shepherd. Even if His messenger failed, the Good Shepherd would seek on until He found each single wandering soul that He loved. 'And when the shepherd findeth the lost sheep, after leaving the ninety and nine in the wilderness, how does he bring it home? Does he whip it? Does he threaten it? No such thing! he carries it on his shoulder and deals most tenderly with the poor, weary, wandering one.'

While he was speaking he thought of the absent woodcutters with an evergrowing desire to help them. He thought of the hard lives they were forced to lead, of the temptations they must meet with daily, and of the lack of all outward help towards a better life. As he repeated the words again, 'Grant me, O Lord, to win these lost sheep of Thine back to Thee and to Thy service; help me to win each single soul for Thee,' he felt as if, somehow, his voice, his prayer, must reach the men he sought, even though hundreds of miles of desolate forest lay between. Towards the end of his sermon, the tears ran down his cheeks.

At last, utterly exhausted by the strength of his desire he sat down once more, and, throwing his arms on the rough board before him, he hid his face in his hands.

A long time pa.s.sed; the silence grew ever more intense. At last Stephen lifted his head. He felt as tired as if he had gone a long journey since he entered the wooden building. Yet it was all exactly the same as when he had come in an hour before,--the rows of empty forms and the bare tables, with gra.s.s and flowers growing up between them. Stephen's eyes wandered out through the open door. He noticed a thick mug of earthenware lying beside the path outside, evidently left behind by the woodcutters as not worth taking with them. A common earthenware mug it was, of coa.r.s.e material and ugly shape; and cracked. As Stephen's eyes fell upon it, he felt as if he hated that mug more than he had ever before hated anything in his life. It seemed to have been left behind there, on purpose to mock him. Here he was with only an earthenware mug in sight, he who might have been surrounded by the exquisite and delicate porcelain that he remembered in his father's factory at Limoges. All that beauty and luxury belonged to him by right; they might still have been his, if only he had not listened for years to the Voice. And now the Voice had led him on this fool's errand. Here he was, preaching to n.o.body, and looking at a cracked mug. Was his whole life a mistake? a delusion? 'Am I a fool after all?' he asked himself bitterly.

He was in the sad, bitter mood that is called 'Reaction.' Strangely enough, it often seizes people just when they have done some particularly difficult piece of work for their Master. Perhaps it comes to keep them from thinking that they can finish anything in their own strength alone.

Stephen was in the grip of this mood now. Happily he had wrestled with the same sort of temptation many times before. He knew it of old; he knew, too, that the best way to meet it is to face this giant Reaction boldly, as Christian faced Apollyon, to wrestle with it and so to overcome. He went straight out of the door to where the mug was lying, and took up that mug, that cracked mug, in his hands, more reverently than if it had been a vase of the most precious and fragile porcelain.

He took it up, and accepted it, this thing he hated worst of all. If life had led him only to a cracked mug, at least he would accept that mug and use it as best he could. Carrying it in his hands, he walked to the little stream whose gentle murmur came through the tall gra.s.ses close at hand. There he knelt down, cleansed the mug carefully, filled it with water, and putting it to his lips, he drank a long refreshing draught. In his pocket he found a crust of bread. He took it out, broke it in two pieces, and then drank again. Only a piece of dry bread! Only a drink of cold water in a cracked cup! No meal could be simpler. Yet Stephen ate and drank with a kind of awe, enfolded in a sustaining, life-giving Presence. He knew that he was not alone; he knew that Another was with him, feeding and refreshing his inmost soul, as he drank of the clear, cold water and ate the broken bread.

A wonderful peace and gladness fell upon his spirit as he knelt in the sunny air. The silence of the great forest was itself a song of praise. He rode homewards like a man in a dream. Day after day as he journeyed, the brooding peace grew and deepened. Even the forest pathways looked different as he travelled through them on his homeward way. They had been full of trustful obedience before. They were filled with thankfulness now. But the deepest thankfulness was in Stephen's own heart.

Is that the end of the story? For many years that was the end. Stephen never forgot his mysterious journey into the backwoods. He often wondered why the Voice had sent him there. Nevertheless he knew, for certain and past all doubting, that he had done right to go. Perhaps gradually the memory faded a little and became dim....

Anyway nothing was further from his thoughts than the lonely backwoods of America one afternoon, years after, when on one of his journeys in Europe his business led him across London Bridge. The Bridge was crowded with traffic. Everyone was bustling to and fro, intent on his own business or pleasure. Not many people had leisure to notice one slight figure distinguished by a foreign air of courtliness and grace, in spite of the stiff, severe lines of its Quaker hat and coat. Not many people, even if they had noticed the earnest face under the broad-brimmed hat, would have stopped to gaze a second time upon it that busy afternoon. Not many people. But one man did.

As Stephen was hastening across the crowded Bridge, suddenly he felt himself seized roughly by the shoulders, and he heard a gruff voice exclaiming: 'There you are! I have found you at last, have I?'

Deep down inside Stephen Grellet, the Quaker preacher, there still remained a few traces of the fastidious French n.o.ble, Etienne de Grellet. The traces had been buried deep down by this time, but there they still were. They leapt suddenly to light, that busy afternoon on London Bridge. Neither French n.o.bleman nor Quaker preacher liked to be seized in such unceremonious fashion. 'Friend,' he remonstrated, drawing himself gently away, 'I think that thou art mistaken.'

'No, I am not,' rejoined the other, his grip tighter than ever. 'When you have sought a man over the face of the globe year after year, you don't make a mistake when you find him at last. Not you! Not me either! I'm not mistaken, and I don't let you go now I've found you after all these years, with your same little dapper, black, cut-away coat, that I thought so queer; and your broad-brimmed hat that I well remember. Never heard a man preach with his hat on before!'

'Hast thou heard me preach, Friend? Why then didst thou not speak to me afterwards if thou wished?'

'But I didn't wish!' answered the stranger, 'nothing I wished for less!'

'Where was it?' enquired Stephen.

'Why, I heard you preaching to n.o.body, years and years ago,' the man returned. 'At least you supposed you were preaching to n.o.body. Really, you were preaching to me. Cut me to the heart you did too, I can tell you.'

A dawning light of comprehension came into Stephen's face as the other went on: 'Didn't you preach in a deserted dining-shanty in the backwoods of America near----' (and he named the place), 'on such a day and in such a year?'

He asked these questions in a loud voice, regardless of the astonished looks of the pa.s.sers-by, still holding tight to the edge of Stephen's coat with one hand, and shaking the forefinger of the other in Stephen's face as he spoke, to emphasize each word.

By this time all traces of Etienne, the fastidious French n.o.bleman, had utterly disappeared. Stephen Grellet, the minister of Christ, was alive now to the tips of his fingers. His whole soul was in his eyes as he gazed at his questioner. Was that old, old riddle going to find its answer at last?

'Wast thou there?' he enquired breathlessly. 'Impossible! I must have seen thee!'

'I was there, right enough,' answered the man. 'But you did not see me, because I took very good care that you should not. At first I thought you were a lunatic, preaching to a lot of forms and tables like that, and better left alone. Then, afterwards, I wouldn't let you see me, for fear you should see also that your words had gone in deeper than I cared to show. I was the ganger of the woodmen,' he continued, taking Stephen's arm in his and compelling the little Quaker to walk beside him as he talked. 'It all happened in this way.

We had moved forth into the forest, and were putting up more shanties to live in, when I discovered that I had left my lever at the old settlement. So, after setting my men to work, I came back alone for my instrument. As I approached the old place, I heard a voice. Trembling and agitated, I drew near, I saw you through the c.h.i.n.ks of the timber walls of our dining-shanty, I listened to you; and as I listened, your words went through a c.h.i.n.k in my heart too, though its walls were thicker than those of any dining-shanty. I was determined you should not see me. I crept away and went back to my men. The arrow stuck fast. I was miserable for many weeks. I had no Bible, no book of any kind, not a creature to ask about better things.'

'Poor sheep! Poor lost sheep!' Stephen murmured gently; 'I knew it; I knew it! The Good Shepherd knew it too!'

'We were a rough lot in those days,' continued the other, 'worse than rough, bad; worse than bad, wicked. There wasn't much about sin that we didn't know among us, didn't enjoy too, after a fashion. That was why your sermon made me so miserable. Seemed to know just all about the lot of us, you did. After it, for weeks I went on getting more and more wretched. There seemed nothing to do, me not being able to find you, but to try and get hold of the book that had put you up to it.

None of us had such a thing, of course. It was a long time before I could lay hands on one. Me and a Bible! How the men laughed! But they stopped laughing before I had done with them. I read and read till I found what you had said about the Good Shepherd and the lost sheep--'and G.o.d so loved the world,' and at last--eternal life. And then I wasn't going to keep that to myself. It's share and share alike out in the backwoods, I can tell you. I told my men all about it, just like you. I never let 'em alone, I gave them no peace till they were one and all brought home to G.o.d--every single one! I heard you asking Him: "Every single soul for Thy service, every single soul for Thee, O Lord." That was what you asked Him for,--that, and more than that, He gave. It's always the way! When the Lord begins to answer, He does answer! Every single one of those men was brought home to Him. But it didn't stop there. Three of them became missionaries, to go and bring others back to the fold in their turn. I tell you the solemn truth.

Already one thousand lost sheep, if not more, have been brought home to the Good Shepherd through that sermon of yours, that day in the backwoods, when you thought you were

PREACHING TO n.o.bODY!'

FOOTNOTES:

[42] _The American Friend_, 28th November 1895.

COME-TO-GOOD

_'Flowers are the little faces of G.o.d.'--(A saying of some little children.)_

_'To the soul that feeds on the bread of life the outward conventions of religion are no longer needful. Hid with Christ in G.o.d there is for him small place for outward rites, for all experience is a holy baptism, a perpetual supper with the Lord, and all life a sacrifice holy and acceptable unto G.o.d._

_'This hidden life, this inward vision, this immediate and intimate union between the soul and G.o.d, this, as revealed in Jesus Christ, is the basis of the Quaker faith.'_--J.W. ROWNTREE.

_'Here the pure mind is known, and the pure G.o.d is waited upon for wisdom from above; and the peace, which hath no end, is enjoyed....

And the Light of G.o.d that calls your minds out of the creatures, turns them to G.o.d, to an endless being, joy and peace: here is a seeing G.o.d always present.... So fare you well! And G.o.d Almighty bless, guide and keep you all in His wisdom.'_--GEORGE FOX.

COME-TO-GOOD