The World's Greatest Books - Volume 6 Part 11

"Look here, sir," said Joshua, quite respectfully; "I deny your appointment as a G.o.d-given leader of souls. The Church is but the old priesthood as it existed in the days of our Lord. I see no sacrifice of the world, no brotherhood with the poor----"

"The poor!" interrupted Mr. Grand disdainfully. "What would you have, you young fool? The poor have the laws of their country to protect them, and the Gospel preached to them for their salvation."

"Why, sir, the poor of our day are the lepers of Christ's, and who among you Christian priests consorts with them? Who ranks the man above his station, or the soul above the man?"

"Now we have come to it!" cried Mr. Grand. "I thought I should touch the secret spring at last! And you would like us to a.s.sociate with you as equals--is that it, Joshua? Gentlemen and common men hob-and-n.o.b together, and no distinctions made? You to ride in our carriages, and perhaps marry our daughters?"

"That's just it, sir. You are gentlemen, as you say, but not the followers of Christ. If you were, you would have no carriages to ride in, and your daughters would be what Martha and Mary and Lydia and Dorcas were, and their t.i.tle to ladyhood founded on their degrees of goodness."

"Shall I tell you what would be the very thing for you," said Mr. Grand, quite quietly.

"Yes, sir; what?" asked Joshua eagerly.

"This whip across your shoulders! And, by George, if I were not a clergyman, I would lay it there with a will!" cried the parson.

No one had ever seen Joshua angry since he had grown up. His temper was proverbially sweet, and his self-control was a marvel. But this time he lost both.

"G.o.d shall smite thee, thou white wall!" he cried with vehemence. "You are the gentleman, sir, and I am only a poor carpenter's son; but I spurn you with a deeper and more solemn scorn than you have spurned me!"

He lifted his hand as he said this, with a strange and pa.s.sionate gesture, then turned himself about and went in, and Mr. Grand drove off more his ill-wisher than before. He also made old Davidson, Joshua's father, suffer for his son, for he took away his custom from him, and did him what harm in the neighbourhood a gentleman's ill word can do a working man.

_III.--Is Christ's Way Livable?_

In London a new view of life opened to Joshua. The first thing that struck him in our workshop was the avowed infidelity of the workmen.

Distrust had penetrated to their inmost souls. Christianity represents to the poor, not Christ tender to the sinful, visiting the leprous, the brother of publicans, at Whose feet sat the harlots and were comforted, but the gentleman taking sides with G.o.d against the poor and oppressed, an elder brother in the courts of heaven kicking the younger out of doors.

At this time Joshua's mind was like an unpiloted vessel. He was beset with doubts, in which the only thing that kept its shape or place was the character of Christ. For the rest, everything had failed him. During this time he did not neglect what I suppose may be called the secular life. He attended all such science cla.s.ses as he had time for, and being naturally quick in study, he picked up a vast deal of knowledge in a very short time; he interested himself in politics, in current social questions, specially those relating to labour and capital, and in the condition of the poor.

So his time pa.s.sed, till at last one evening, "Friends," he said, "I have at last cleared my mind and come to a belief. I have proved to myself the sole meaning of Christ: it is humanity. The modern Christ would be a politician. His aim would be to raise the whole platform of society. He would work at the destruction of caste, which is the vice at the root of all our creeds and inst.i.tutions. He would accept the truths of science, and He would teach that a man saves his own soul best by helping his neighbour. Friends, the doctrine I have chosen for myself is Christian Communism, and my aim will be, the life after Christ in the service of humanity."

It was this which made him begin his "night school," where he got together all who would come, and tried to interest them in a few homely truths in the way of cleanliness, health, good cooking, and the like, with interludes, so to speak, of lessons in morality.

We lodged in a stifling court, Church Court, where every room was filled as if cubic inches were gold, as indeed they are to London house-owners, if human life is but dross. Opposite us lived Mary Prinsep, who was what the world calls lost--a bad girl--a castaway--but I have reason to speak well of her, for to her we owe the life of Joshua. Joshua fell ill in our wretched lodgings, where we lived and did for ourselves, and I was obliged to leave him for twelve hours and more at a stretch; but Mary Prinsep came over and nursed him, and kept him alive. We helped her all we could, and she helped us. This got us the name of a.s.sociating with bad women.

Among the rest of the doubtful characters with which our court abounded was one Joe Traill, who had been in prison many a time for petty larceny and the like. He was one of those who stink in the nostrils of cleanly, civilised society, and who are its shame and secret sore. There was no place for Joe in this great world of ours. He said to Joshua one night in his blithe way that there was nothing for him but to make a running fight for it, now up, now down, as his luck went.

"Burglary's a bad trade," said Joshua.

"Only one I've got at my fingers' ends, governor," laughed the thief; "and starvation is a worse go than quod."

"Well, till you've learned a better, share with us," said Joshua. So now we had a reformed burglar and a reformed prost.i.tute in our little circle.

"It is what Christ would have done," said Joshua, when he was remonstrated with.

But the police did not see it. Wherefore, "from information received,"

Joshua and I were called up before the master, and had our dismissal from the shop, and we found ourselves penniless in the wilds of London.

But Joshua was undisturbed. He told both Joe and Mary that he would not forsake them, come what might.

It was a hard time, and, bit by bit, everything we possessed pa.s.sed over the p.a.w.nbroker's counter, even to our tools. But when we were at the worst Joshua received a letter enclosing a five-pound note, "from a friend." We never knew where it came from, and there was no clue by which we could guess. Immediately after both Joshua and I got a job, and Joe and Mary still bided with us.

Joshua's life of work and endeavour brought with it no reward of praise or popularity. It suffered the fate of all unsectarianism, and made him to be as one man in the midst of foes. He soon began to see that the utmost he could do was only palliative and temporary. So he turned to cla.s.s organisation as something more hopeful than private charity. When the International Workingmen's a.s.sociation was formed, he joined it as one of its first members; indeed, he mainly helped to establish it. And though he never got the ear of the International, because he was so truly liberal, he had some little influence, and what influence he had enn.o.bled their councils as they have never been enn.o.bled since.

One evening Joe Traill, who had been given a situation, came into the night school staggering drunk, and made a commotion, and though Joshua quieted him, after being struck by him, the police, attracted by the tumult, came up into the room and marched Joshua and myself off to the police station, where we were locked up for the night. As we had to be punished, reason or none, we were both sent to prison for a couple of weeks next morning.

Well, Christ was the criminal of his day!

Such backslidings and failures at that of Joe Traill were among the greatest difficulties of Joshua's work. Men and women whom he had thought he had cleansed and set on a wholesome way of living, turned back again to the drink and the deviltry of their lives, and the various sectarians who came along all agreed that the cause of his failures was--Joshua was not a Christian!

Next a spasmodic philanthropist, Lord X., struck up a friends.h.i.+p with Joshua, who, he said, wanted, as a background, a man of position. This led to Joshua's first introduction into a wealthy house of the upper cla.s.ses, and the luxury and lavishness almost stupefied him. Lady X.

liked Joshua, and felt he was a master-spirit, but when she came to Church Court, and found out what Mary had been, she went away offended, and we saw her no more.

_IV.--The Pathway of Martyrdom_

Sometimes Joshua went as a lecturer to various towns, for his political a.s.sociates were willing to use his political zeal, though they did not go in for his religious views. He insisted on the need of the working cla.s.ses raising themselves to a higher level in mind and circ.u.mstance, and on the right of each man to a fair share of the primary essentials for good living. His discourses roused immense antagonism, and he was sometimes set upon and severely handled by the men to whom he spoke. I have known swindlers and murderers more gently entreated. When, after the war between France and Prussia the Commune declared itself in Paris, Joshua went over to help, as far as he could, in the cause of humanity.

I went with him, and poor, loving, faithful Mary followed us. But there, notwithstanding all that we and others of like mind could do, blood was shed which covered liberty with shame, and in the confusion that followed Mary was shot as a petroleuse while she was succouring the wounded. We buried her tenderly, and I laid part of my life in her grave.

On our return Joshua was regarded as the representative of social destruction and G.o.dless licence, for the very name of the Commune was a red rag to English thought.

At last we came to a place called Lowbridge, where Joshua was announced to lecture on Communism in the town hall. Grave as he always was, that night he was grave to sadness, like a martyr going to his death. He shook hands with me before going on the platform, and said, "G.o.d bless you, John; you have been a true friend to me."

In the first row in front of him was the former clergyman of Trevalga, Mr. Grand, who had lately been given the rich living of Lowbridge and one or two stately cathedral appointments. At the first word Joshua spoke there broke out such a tumult as I had never heard in any public meeting. The yells, hisses, cat-calls, whoopings, were indescribable. It only ceased when Mr. Grand rose, and standing on a chair, appealed to the audience to "Give him your minds, my men, and let him understand that Lowbridge is no place for a G.o.dless rascal like him."

I will do Mr. Grand the justice to say I do not think he intended his words to have the effect they did have. A dozen men leaped on the platform, and in a moment I saw Joshua under their feet. They had it all their own way, and while he lay on the ground, pale and senseless, one, with a fearful oath, kicked him twice on the head. Suddenly a whisper went round, they all drew a little, way off, the gas was turned down, and the place cleared as if by magic. When the lights were up again, I went to lift him--and he was dead.

The man who had lived the life after Christ more exactly than any human being ever known to me was killed by the Christian party of order. So the world has ever disowned its best when they came.

The death of my friend has left me not only desolate but uncertain. Like Joshua in earlier days, my mind is unpiloted and unanch.o.r.ed. Everywhere I see the sifting of compet.i.tion, and nowhere Christian protection of weakness; everywhere dogma adored, and nowhere Christ realised. And again I ask, Which is true--modern society in its cla.s.s strife and consequent elimination of its weaker elements, or the brotherhood and communism taught by the Jewish Carpenter of Nazareth? Who will answer me? Who will make the dark thing clear?

SAMUEL LOVER

Handy Andy

Samuel Lover, born at Dublin on February 24, 1797, was the most versatile man of his age. He was a song-writer, a novelist, a painter, a dramatist, and an entertainer; and in each of these parts he was remarkably successful. In 1835 he came to London, and set up as a miniature painter; then he turned to literature, and in "Rory O'More," published in 1837, and "Handy Andy, a Tale of Irish Life," which appeared in 1842, he took the town. Lover was a typical Irishman of the old school--high-spirited, witty, and jovially humorous; and his work is informed with a genuine Irish raciness that gives it a perennial freshness. He is a man gaily in love with life, and with a quick eye for all the varied humours of it. "Handy Andy" is one of the most amusing books ever written; a roaring farce, written by a man who combined the liveliest sense of fun with a painter's gift of portraying real character in a few vivid touches. Samuel Lover died on July 6, 1868.

_I.--The Squire Gets a Surprise_