The Zeit-Geist | Page 7

in the right course, with a good
hope of the port, rowing and steering, however toilsome, is a cheerful
thing; but when the track is so far lost that the sailor scarcely hopes to
regain it--then perhaps (God only knows) it requires more virtue to row
and steer at all, even though it be done fitfully.
This belief that he could never come to any desired haven was the one
force above all others that went to the ruining of Toyner's life.
CHAPTER III.
Bart Toyner was more than thirty years old when the period of his
reformation came. His father had grown old and foolish. It was the
breaking down of his father's clear mind that first started and shocked
Bart into some strong emotion of filial respect and love; then came
another agonising struggle on his part to free himself from his evil
habits. In this fit of sobriety he went a journey to the nearest city upon
his father's business, and there, after a few days, he took to drinking
harder than ever, ceased to write home, lost all the possessions that he
had taken with him, and sank deep down into the mire of the place.
The first thing that he remembered in the awakening that followed was
the face of another man. It stood out in the nebulous gathering of his
returning self-consciousness like the face of an angel; there was the
flame of enthusiasm in the eyes, a force of will had chiselled handsome
features into tense lines; but in spite of that, or rather perhaps because
of it, it was a gentle, happy face.
It is happiness that is the culmination of sainthood. You may look
through the pictures of the saints of all ages and find enthusiasm and
righteousness in many and the degree of faith that these imply; but
where you find joy too, there has been the greatest faith, the greatest
saintliness.

Bart found himself clothed and fed; he felt the warm clasp of a human
hand in his, and some self-respect came back to him by the contact. The
face and the hand belonged to a mission preacher, and Bart arose and
followed his friend to a place where there was the sound of many feet
hurrying and a great concourse of people was gathered in a wood
without the town.
It was only with curiosity that Bart looked about him at the high trees
that stretched their green canopy above, at the people who ranged
themselves in a hollow of the wood--one of nature's theatres. Curiosity
passed into strong emotion of maudlin sentiment when the great
congregation sang a hymn. He sat upon a bench at the back and wept
tears that even to himself had neither sense nor truth. Yet there was in
them the stirring of something inarticulate, incomprehensible, like the
stirring that comes at spring-time in the heart of the seed that lies below
the ground. After that the voice of the preacher began to make its way
slowly through the dull, dark mind of the drunkard.
The preacher spoke of the wonderful love of God manifested in a
certain definite offer of salvation, a certain bargain, which, if closed
with, would bring heaven to the soul of every man.
The preacher belonged to that period of this century when the religious
world first threw off its contempt for the present earthly life and began
to preach, not a salvation from sin's punishment so much as a salvation
from sin.
It was the old cry: "Repent, believe; for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand." The doctrine that was set forth had not only the vital growth of
ages in it, but it had accreted the misunderstanding of the ages also; yet
this doctrine did not hide, it only limited, the saving power of God.
"Believe," cried the preacher, "in a just God and a Saviour." So he
preached Christ unto them, just as he supposed St. Paul to have done,
wotting nothing of the fact that every word and every symbol stand for
a different thought in the minds of men with every revolution of that
glass by which Time marks centuries.
It mattered nothing to Bart just now all this about the centuries and the

doctrines; the heart of the preaching was the eternal truth that has been
growing brighter and brighter since the world began--God, a living
Power, the Power of Salvation. The salvation was conditioned, truly;
but what did conditions matter to Bart! He would have cast himself into
sea or fire to obtain the strength that he coveted. He eagerly cast aside
the unbelief he had imbibed from books. He accepted all that he was
told to accept, with the eager swallowing of a man who is dying for the
strength of