not as changed and distorted by ignorance or evil design, but as it
existed in fact. They had a more powerful weapon than bullets or
bayonets, the power of truth and justice. His own people had been
preserved by Jehovah through the ages by the patience and fortitude He
had given them, and God's arm was not shortened that He could not save
nor His ear dulled that He could not hear. He used the same illustration
that John Marvel had used: the unexpected arousing of the law to defend
and save poor ignorant girls, who were being dragged down to the
bottomless pit by organized infamy under the protection of men who had
made themselves more powerful than the law. For these he had a few
scathing words. He told of John Marvel's going to find Elsa, and
referred to the aid he had received from others, those connected with
the railway line on which the strike existed; and he counselled them to
protect themselves, obey the law, keep the peace, and await with
patience the justice of God. Efforts were being made to furnish them
with fuel.
It may have been Wolffert's deep, flashing eyes, his earnest manner and
vibrant voice, which affected them, for, though he held himself under
strong restraint, he was deeply affected himself; but when John Marvel,
after a brief prayer, dismissed them with the benediction, the people,
men and women, passed out in almost silence and dispersed to their
homes, and their murmured talk was all in a new key of resignation and
even of distant hope. I felt as though I had shaken off the trammels of
selfishness that had hitherto bound me, and was getting a glimpse of
what the world might become in the future. This simple follower of
Christ among his poor, threadbare like them, like them fireless and
hungry and poor, illustrated his master's teaching in a way which I had
never seen before, and it gave me a new insight into his power. I should
have liked to go up to Eleanor Leigh and make peace with her; but while
I deliberated Wolffert joined her and I walked home alone and
thoughtful.
The press next morning had a fairly full notice of the meeting--the
first that had ever been given to the work done through the chapel and
its minister. The chief notices in it were the connection of the
minister with the case of Elsa Loewen and the attack on the system made
by a Jew. One paper had the heading:
"JEW AND CHRISTIAN."
Another's headline ran:
"PREACHER MARVEL VISITS A BAGNIO."
And it was only below that it was made plain that John Marvel had gone
thither to rescue a lost girl. This, Kalender once informed me, was the
true art of making headlines. "Half the world don't read anything but
the headlines," he asserted, "and the other half don't remember anything
else." The story made a sensation which Kalender himself might have
coveted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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