Chapter 32

'My brother and myself were invited to dine in the company of these Friends, at Colonel Corsa's. There was a religious opportunity after dinner, in which several communications were made. I could hardly understand a word of what was said, but, as Deborah Darby began to address my brother and myself, it seemed as if the Lord opened my outward ear, and my heart. She seemed like one reading the pages of my heart, with clearness describing how it had been, and how it was with me. O what sweetness did I then feel! It was indeed a memorable day. I was like one introduced into a new world; the creation, and all things around me, bore a different aspect, my heart glowed with love to all.... O how can the extent of the Lord's love, mercy, pity, and tender compassion be fathomed!'

After the visit of the two Friends had made this change in his life Etienne decided to give up his French name and title, and to be no longer Etienne de Grellet, the French nobleman, but plain Stephen Grellet, the teacher of languages. Later on, he was to become Stephen Grellet the Quaker preacher; but the time for that had not yet come. After Deborah Darby's visit he went regularly to the Friends' Meetings in Long Island, but they were held for the most part in complete silence, and sad to say not one of the Friends ever spoke to him afterwards. He missed their friendliness all the more because the people he was lodging with could not bear his attending Quaker Meetings, and tried to make him give up going to such unfashionable assemblies. His brother, Joseph, also could not understand what had come to him, and both Joseph and the lodging-house people teased poor Stephen about his Quaker leanings, till he, who had been brave enough when his life was in danger, was a coward before their mockery. He did not want to give up going to his dear Meeting, but he hated to be ridiculed. At first he tried to give up Meeting, but this disobedience gave him, he says, 'a feeling of misery.' When the next Sunday came he tried another plan. He went to the Meeting-house by roundabout ways 'through fields and over fences, ashamed to be seen by any one on the road.' When he reached the Meeting-house by these by-lanes, the door was closed. No Meeting was to be held there that day. The Friends happened to have gone to another place. Stephen, therefore, sat down, 'in a retired place and in a very tried state,' to think the whole question over again, with much humility. He decided that henceforth, come what might, he would not be a coward; and he kept his resolution. The next Sunday he went to Meeting 'though it rained hard and I had about three miles to walk.' Henceforward he attended Meeting regularly, and at last his brother ceased reproaching him for his Quakerism, and one Sunday he actually came to Meeting too. This time Joseph also enjoyed the silence and followed the worship. 'From that time he attended meetings diligently, and was a great comfort to me. But, during all that period,' Stephen continues, 'we had no intercourse with any of the members of the religious Society of Friends.' These Friends still took no notice of the two strangers. They seem to have been Friends only in name.

About this time bad news came from France. 'My dear mother wrote to me that the granaries we had at our country seat had been secured by the revolutionary party, as well as every article of food in our town house. My mother and my younger brother were only allowed the scanty pittance of a peck of mouldy horse-beans per week. My dear father was shut up in prison, with an equally scanty allowance. But it was before I was acquainted with the sufferings of my beloved parents, that the consideration of the general scarcity prevailing in the country led me to think how wrong it was for me to wear powder on my head, the ground of which I knew to be pride.' He gave up powder from this time. It would not be much of a sacrifice nowadays, but it was a very real one then, when powder was supposed to be the distinguishing mark of a gentleman. The two brothers were now obliged to learn to support themselves. All their estates in France had been seized. 'Our means began to be low, and yet our feelings for the sufferings in which our beloved parents might be involved, caused us to forget ourselves, strangers in a strange country, and to forward them a few hundred dollars we had yet left.'

It was no easy matter to find employment. The brothers went on to New York, and there at last the Friends were kind: Friends in deed and not in name only. They found a situation for Joseph in New York itself, and arranged for Stephen to go to Philadelphia, where he was more likely to find work.

And at Philadelphia the Friends were, if possible, even kinder to him than the Friends at New York. They were spiritual fathers and mothers to him, he says, and seemed to know exactly what he was feeling. 'They had but little to say in words, but I often felt that my spirit was refreshed and strengthened in their company.' At Philadelphia, he had many offers of tempting employment, but he decided to continue as a teacher of languages in a school. He gave his whole mind to his school work while he was at it, and out of school hours wandered about entirely care free. But although he was a teacher of languages and although the English of his Journals is scrupulously careful, it has often a slight foreign stiffness and formality. He was often afraid in his early years of making mistakes and not speaking quite correctly. There is a story that long afterwards, when he was in England and was taking his leave of some schoolgirls, he wished to say to them that he hoped they might be preserved safely. But in the agitation of his departure he chose the wrong words. His parting injunction, therefore, never faded from the girls' memory: 'My dear young Friends, may the Lord _pickle_ you, His dear little _muttons_.'

If, even as an old man, Stephen was liable to fall into such pitfalls as this, it is easy to understand that in his earlier years the fear of making mistakes must have been a real terror to him, especially when he thought of speaking in Meeting. Very soon after he became a Friend he felt, with great dread, that the beautiful, comforting messages that refreshed his own soul were meant to be shared with others. Months, if not years, of struggle followed, before he could rise in his place in Meeting and obey this inward prompting. But directly he did so, his fears of making a mistake, or being laughed at, vanished utterly away. After agony, came joy. 'The Lord shewed me how He is mouth, wisdom and utterance to His true and faithful ministers; that it is from Him alone that they are to communicate to the people, and also the _when_ and the _how_.' At that first Meeting, after Stephen had given his message and sat down again, several Friends, whose blessing he specially valued, also spoke and said how thankful they were for his words. Among those present that day was that same William Savery, who, in the last story, had a bundle of valuable hides stolen from his tanyard, and punished the thief, when he came to return the hides, by loading him with kindness and giving him a good situation.

Certainly William Savery would not tell the story of 'the man who was not John Smith' to Stephen Grellet on that particular day; for Stephen was so filled with the thankful wonder that follows obedience, that he had no thought for outside things. 'For some days after this act of dedication,' he says, 'my peace flowed as a river.' In the autumn of this year (1796), Stephen Grellet, the French nobleman, became a Friend. About two years later, he was acknowledged as a Minister by the Society.

'In those days,' he writes, 'my mind dwelt much on the nature of the hope of redemption through Jesus Christ.... I felt that the best testimony I could bear was to evince by my life what He had actually done for me.'

Henceforth Stephen's life was spent in trying to make known to others the joy that had overflowed his own soul. He did indeed 'put the things that he had learned in practice,' as he journeyed over both Europe and America, time after time, visiting high and low. His life is one long record of adventures, of perils surmounted, of hairbreadth escapes, of constant toil and of much plodding, humdrum service too. His message brought him into the strangest situations, as he gave it fearlessly. He sought an interview with the Pope at Rome in order to remonstrate with him about the state of the prisons in the Papal States. Stephen gave his message with perfect candour, and afterwards entered into conversation with the Pope. Finally, he says, 'As I felt the love of Christ flowing in my heart towards him, I particularly addressed him.... The Pope ... kept his head inclined and appeared tender, while I thus addressed him; then rising from his seat, in a kind and respectful manner, he expressed his desire that "the Lord would bless and protect me wherever I went," on which I left him.'

Not satisfied with that, though it seems wonderful enough, Stephen another time induced the Czar of all the Russias, Alexander I., to attend Westminster Meeting. Both these stories are well worth telling. But there is one story about Stephen, better worth telling still, and that is how the Voice that guided him all over the world sent him one day 'preaching to nobody' in a lonely forest clearing in the far backwoods of America.

FOOTNOTES:

[41] 'From my earliest days,' he writes, 'there was that in me that would not allow me implicitly to believe the various doctrines I was taught.'

XXXII. PREACHING TO NOBODY

_'All the artillery in the world, were they all discharged together at one clap, could not more deaf the ears of our bodies than the clamourings of desires in the soul deaf its ears, so you see a man must go into silence or else he cannot hear God speak.'_--JOHN EVERARD. 1650.

_'God forces none, for love cannot compel, and God's service is therefore a thing of complete freedom.... The thing which hinders and has always hindered is that our wills are different from God's will. God never seeks Himself, in His willing--we do. There is no other way to blessedness than to lose one's self will'_--HANS DENCK. 1526.

_'The inward command is never wanting in the due season to any duty.'_--R. BARCLAY. 1678.

_'I think I can reverently say that I very much doubt whether, since the Lord by His grace brought me into the faith of His dear Son, I have ever broken bread or drunk wine, even in the ordinary course of life, without the remembrance of, and some devout feeling regarding the broken body and the blood-shedding of my dear Lord and Saviour.'_--STEPHEN GRELLET.

_'One loving spirit sets another on fire.'_--AUGUSTINE.

XXXII. PREACHING TO NOBODY

Stephen Grellet, after much waiting on the Lord to shew him His will, was directed by the Spirit to take a long journey into the backwoods of America, and preach the Gospel to some woodcutters who were felling forest timber.'[42]

At first Stephen did not know which was the wood he was meant to visit, having travelled through hundreds of miles of forests on his journey. So he waited very quietly, his heart as still as a clear lake, ready to reflect anything God might show him.

Suddenly a picture came. He remembered a lonely forest clearing, far away. Workmen's huts were dotted about here and there, and a big wooden building rose in the midst of the clearing. All around were woodcutters, some busy sawing timber, some marking the tall forest trees, others carting huge logs and piling them at a little distance. Stephen now remembered the place well. He remembered, too, the workmen's rough faces, and the wild shouts that filled the air as he had passed by on horseback. He had noticed a faint film of blue smoke curling up from the large building, and he had supposed that that must be the dining-shanty where the workmen's food was prepared and where they had their meals. He remembered having thought to himself, 'A lonely life and a wild one!' But the place had not made a deep impression on his mind, and he had forgotten it as he journeyed, in the joy of getting nearer home. Now, suddenly, that forest clearing, with the huts and the dining-shanty and the busy woodmen all round, came back to him as vividly as a picture in a magic-lantern view, while a Voice said, distinctly but very gently in his own heart, so that only he could hear, 'GO BACK THERE AND PREACH TO THOSE LONELY MEN.'

Stephen knew quite well Whose Voice it was that was speaking to him, for he had loved and followed that Voice for many years. Obedience was easy now. He said at once, 'Yes, I will go;' and saying good-bye to his wife, he left his home, and set forth again into the forest. As he journeyed, a flood of happiness came over his soul. The long ride through the lonely woods, day after day, no longer seemed tedious. He was absolutely alone, but he never felt the least bit lonely. It was as if Someone were journeying with him all the way, the invisible Friend whose Voice he knew and loved and obeyed.

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, nobody 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 pass 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 God. 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 spaces 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 grass 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 God, 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 God; 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 God could. God 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 passed; 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 grass 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 coarse 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 nobody, 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 grasses 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 noble, 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 nobleman nor Quaker preacher liked to be seized in such unceremonious fashion. 'Friend,' he remonstrated, drawing himself gently away, 'I think that thou art mistaken.'