Christian fiction; Clergy -- Fiction; Jesus Christ -- Influence -- Fiction
BUT more than any other feeling at this meeting rose the tide of
fellowship for one another. Maxwell watched it, trembling for its
climax which he knew was not yet reached. When it was, where would
it lead them? He did not know, but he was not unduly alarmed about
it. Only he watched with growing wonder the results of that simple
promise as it was being obeyed in these various lives. Those results
were already being felt all over the city. Who could measure their
influence at the end of a year?
One practical form of this fellowship showed itself in the
assurances which Edward Norman received of support for his paper.
There was a general flocking toward him when the meeting closed, and
the response to his appeal for help from the Christian disciples in
Raymond was fully understood by this little company. The value of
such a paper in the homes and in behalf of good citizenship,
especially at the present crisis in the city, could not be measured.
It remained to be seen what could be done now that the paper was
endowed so liberally. But it still was true, as Norman insisted,
that money alone could not make the paper a power. It must receive
the support and sympathy of the Christians in Raymond before it
could be counted as one of the great forces of the city.
The week that followed this Sunday meeting was one of great
excitement in Raymond. It was the week of the election. President
Marsh, true to his promise, took up his cross and bore it manfully,
but with shuddering, with groans and even tears, for his deepest
conviction was touched, and he tore himself out of the scholarly
seclusion of years with a pain and anguish that cost him more than
anything he had ever done as a follower of Christ. With him were a
few of the college professors who had made the pledge in the First
Church. Their experience and suffering were the same as his; for
their isolation from all the duties of citizenship had been the
same. The same was also true of Henry Maxwell, who plunged into the
horror of this fight against whiskey and its allies with a sickening
dread of each day's new encounter with it. For never before had he
borne such a cross. He staggered under it, and in the brief
intervals when he came in from the work and sought the quiet of his
study for rest, the sweat broke out on his forehead, and he felt the
actual terror of one who marches into unseen, unknown horrors.
Looking back on it afterwards he was amazed at his experience. He
was not a coward, but he felt the dread that any man of his habits
feels when confronted suddenly with a duty which carries with it the
doing of certain things so unfamiliar that the actual details
connected with it betray his ignorance and fill him with the shame
of humiliation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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