Fletcher of Madeley | Page 2

of those who ought to lead men to the Father. Do not let us excuse ourselves for any lack of that communion which must be His continual delight. If we prjde ourselves upon our repudiation of forms of worship that men have invented, and glory in the manifestations of Christ at the street corner and in the public-house, to which we have become accustomed, let us take care that we do not grieve Him by contentment with the general action of The Army or of the Corps, or of the Brigade, in the absence of any close contact between our own souls and God or the lost.
This book will be useless unless it brings us continually right up to the personal questions which it is so eminently calculated to raise: Am I on such terms with God as this man was? Can He equally reckon upon my continual obedience and faithfulness? Is He sure to hear and answer me also? Do I share with Him that agony for souls, that inexhaustible pity and love which will never let one perish, for whom, by any extremity of sacrifice, I can do anything? Do I breathe out the breath of God upon those with whom I come in contact, making the world feel that I have no harmony with any of its aims or inclinations, but that I really belong to Heaven?
By inference, rather than directly, this life is a tremendous confirmation of the old faith. John Fletcher gained all he had because he believed the Bible just as it stands. He knew from his own experience and from daily intercourse with Him that the promises it contains come direct from the mouth of God, and not from the "sublime imagination" of some Jew poet, as the contemptible deceivers of our day would have us believe. If there were any delusion about that old Book, then John Fletcher was one of the most pitiful specimens of a degraded superstition this world ever contained. But where, amongst all the applauded doubt-preachers of our day, is there to be found a man of love and prayer and power approaching to this one?
Do not let us be discouraged as to the possibility of a life as holy as this amidst the circumstances of our rushing warfare. John Fletcher was, after all, only a thorough disciple of Him who had not where to lay His head. None of us are called to live amidst denser crowds, more hurry, worry, or contention of any sort than was the daily lot of our Heavenly Master. This book would draw us farther from Him, not nearer, if it only made us thirst for retirement and stillness, for hours of meditation or privacy. It is, not the imitation of Fletcher, but the imitation of Christ to which these pages are meant to call us. Most of us may never possess many of the charming traits of this most refined gentleman. We may perhaps suit God's purposes amidst the rough crowd all the better for that. But, depend upon it, close intercourse with the Nazarene is as possible amidst the throngs of London, or Glasgow, or New York, or Madras, as it was in the alleys of Jerusalem or Capernaum, and intimacy with Jesus is, after all, the one thing needful for every disciple.
But whoever is red-hot will ceaselessly be thinking and planning for the worst; that is to say, not only for those commonly called the worst, whose wild career of sin strikes all decent people with horror, but for the far more seriously in danger, who turn their very religion into a form or an amusement, and care nothing for any real intercourse with God. These are the people perhaps most difficult of all to get at, the people whom we shall never be likely to make any impression upon unless we combine with the greatest possible activity an intensity of spiritual heat and power of which we suppose Fletcher was one of the grandest specimens the world ever had. Do not let us resent or run away from any reproach as to our own comparative coldness and inefficiency which this story may bring to us. How much better to writhe and be aroused under any such reproofs now than only to awake to them when life is slipping away! Alas! for the readers who shall close this book without resolving to be as holy and useful as God commands us all to be!
LONDON, April, 1905.

THE LIFE OF JOHN FLETCHER.
CHAPTER I.
AT THE CASTLE

In the nursery of a fine old Swiss castle, on the shores of Lake Leman, stood a small boy of seven, confronted by his white-capped nurse.
"You are a naughty boy!" she exclaimed. "Do you not know that the devil is to take away all naughty children?"
The little