Read Ebook: The Supply at Saint Agatha's by Phelps Elizabeth Stuart Smith E Boyd Elmer Boyd Illustrator Woodbury Marcia Oakes Illustrator

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art in the audience-room was compelled to respond.

The preacher began quietly. He reminded his hearers in a few words of the true nature of the Christian religion, whose interests he was there to represent. One felt that he spoke with tact, and with the kind of dignity belonging to the enthusiast of a great moral movement. It occurred to one, perhaps for the first time, that it was quite manly in a Christian preacher to plead his cause with as much ardor as the reformer, the philanthropist, the politician, or the devotee of a mystical and fashionable cult. One became really interested in the character and aims of the Christian faith; it did not fall below the dignity of a Browning society, or a study in theosophy or hypnotism. The attention of the audience--from the start definitely respectful--became reverent, and thus absorbed.

It was not until he had his hearers thoroughly in his power that the preacher's manner underwent the remarkable change of which Saint Agatha's talks in whispers to this day. He spoke entirely without manuscript or note, and he had not left the lectern. Suddenly folding his hands upon the great Bible, he paused, and, as if the audience had been one man, he looked it in the eye.

Then, like the voice of the living God, his words began to smite them. What was the chancel of Saint Agatha's? The great white throne? And who was he who dared to cry from it, like the command of the Eternal? Sin! Sinners! Shame! Guilt! Disgrace! Punishment! What words were these for the delicate ears of Saint Agatha's? What had these silken ladies and gilded men to do with such ugly phrases? Smiles stiffened upon refined, protesting faces. The haughty under lip of the vestryman's wife, and a hundred others like it, dropped. A moral dismay seized the exclusive people whom the preacher called to account like any vulgar audience. But the shabby woman in the "poor" seats humbly wept, and the young reporter who lost his position cast his eyes upon the ground, for the tears that sprang to them. From the delicate fingers of the vestryman's wife the smelling-salts fell upon the cushioned seat; she held her feathered fan against her face. Her husband did not even notice this. He sat with head bowed upon the rail before him, as a good man does when reconsecrating himself at the communion hour.

The choir rustled uneasily in their seats. The soprano covered her eyes with her well-gloved hand, and thought of the follies and regrets that beset the musical temperament. But the tenor turned his face away, and thought about his wife. Down the avenue, in the room of the "shut-in" woman, where the telephone carried the preacher's voice, a pathetic cry was heard:

"Forgive! Forgive! Oh, if suffering had but made me better!"

But now the preacher's manner of address had changed again. Always remembering that it is now impossible to quote his language with any accuracy, we may venture to say that it ran in some such way as this:

The Son of God, being of the Father, performed his Father's business. What do ye who bear his name? What holy errands are ye about? What miracles of consecration have ye wrought? What marvels of the soul's life have ye achieved upon the earth since he left it to your trust?

He came to the sinful and the unhappy; the despised and rejected were his friends; to the poor he preached the Gospel; the sick, and overlooked, and cast-out, the unloved and forgotten, the unfashionable and unpopular, he selected. These to his church on earth he left in charge. These he cherished. For such he had lived. For them he had suffered. For them he died. People of Saint Agatha's, where are they? What have ye done to his beloved? Thou ancient church, honored and privileged and blessed among men, where are those little ones whom thy Master chose? Up and down these godly aisles a man might look, he said, and see them not. Prosperity and complacency he saw before him; poverty and humility he did not see. In the day when habit cannot reply for duty, what account will ye give of your betrayed trust? Will ye say: "Lord, we had a mission chapel. The curate is responsible for the lower classes. And, Lord, we take up the usual collections; Saint Agatha's has always been called a generous church"?

In the startled hush that met these preposterous words the preacher drew himself to his full height, and raised his hand. He had worn the white gown throughout the day's services, and the garment folded itself about his figure majestically. In the name of Christ, then, he commanded them: Where were those whom their Lord did love? Go, seek them. Go, find the saddest, sickest souls in all the town. Hasten, for the time is short. Search, for the message is of God. Church of Christ, produce his people to me, for I speak no more words before their substitutes!

Thus and there, abruptly, the preacher cast his audience from him, and disappeared from the chancel. The service broke in consternation. The celebrated choir was not called upon to close the morning's worship. The soprano and the tenor exchanged glances of neglected dismay. The prayer-book remained unopened on the sacred desk. The desk itself was empty. The audience was, in fact, authoritatively dismissed--dismissed without a benediction, like some obscure or erring thing that did not deserve it.

The people stared in one another's faces for an astounded moment, and then, without words, with hanging heads, they moved to the open air and melted out of the church.

The sexton rushed up to the vestryman, pale with fear.

"Sir," he whispered, "he is not in the vestry-room. He has taken himself away--God knows whither. What are we to do?"

"Trust him," replied the church officer, with a face of peace, "and God who sent him. Who he may be, I know no more than you; but that he is a man of God I know. He is about his Father's business. Do not meddle with it."

"Lord forbid!" cried the sexton. "I'd sooner meddle with something I can understand."

Upon the afternoon of that long-remembered Sunday there was seen in Saint Agatha's the strangest sight that those ancient walls had witnessed since the corner-stone was laid with a silver trowel in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost "whom we, this people, worship."

Before the chimes rang for the vesper service, the house was filled. Before the bronze lips of the bells were mute, the pews were packed. Before the stranger reappeared, the nave and the transept overflowed. The startled sexton was a leaf before the wind of the surging crowd. He could not even enforce the fire-laws, and the very aisles were jammed. Who carried the story? How do such wraiths of rumors fly?

Every member of that church not absent from town or known to be ill in his bed sought his pew that afternoon. Many indeed left their sick-rooms to be present at that long-remembered service. But no man or woman of these came alone. Each brought a chosen companion; many, two or three; some came accompanied by half a dozen worshipers: and upon these invited guests Saint Agatha's looked with an astonishment that seemed to be half shame; for up those velvet aisles there moved an array of human faces at which the very angels and virtues in the painted windows seemed to turn their heads and stare.

Such wretchedness, such pallor, hunger, cold, envy, sickness, sin, and shame were as unknown to those dedicated and decorated walls as the inmates of hell. Rags and disease, uncleanliness and woe and want, trod the house of God as if they had the right there. Every pew in the church was thrown open. Tattered blanket shawls jostled velvet cloaks, and worn little tan-colored reefers, half concealing the shivering cotton blouses of last summer, rubbed against sealskin furs that swept from throat to foot. Wretched men, called in by the throb of repentance that follows a debauch, lifted their haggard eyes to the chancel from the pews of the wardens, and women of the town sat gently beside the "first ladies" of the parish and of the city. There were a few ragged children in the audience, wan and shrewd, sitting drearily beside mothers to whom they did not cling. The pew of our friend, the vestryman, was filled to overflowing. The wife with the under lip sat beside him, and did not protest. She had herself gone with him to the hospital to select their guests. For their pew was filled with the crippled and other sick who could neither walk nor afford to ride, and whom their own carriage had brought to Saint Agatha's. One of these, a woman, came on crutches, and the lady helped her, not knowing in the least how to do it; and a man who had not used his feet for six years was lifted in by the pew-owner and his coachman and butler, and carried the length of the broad aisle.

The church, as we say, was packed long before the preacher appeared. He came punctually to his appointment, like any ordinary man. It was mid-afternoon, and the sun was declining when he glided across the chancel. Already shadows were lying heavily in the corners of the church and under the galleries on the darker side. A few lights were glimmering about the chancel, but these served only to illuminate the stranger's form and face; they did not lighten the mass of hushed and appealing humanity before him.

The choir, with bowed heads, just above the breath, began to chant:

Who shall lay anything to the charge Of God's Elect? It is God that justifieth, It is Christ that died.

While they sang the preacher stood quite still and looked at the people, that strange and motley mass, the rich and the poor, the sick and the well, the disgraced and the reputable, the pampered and the starving, the shameful and the clean of life, the happy and the wretched together. When the singing ceased, he spoke as if he talked right on; he read no prayers; he turned to no ritual; he did not even use the great Bible of Saint Agatha's--but only spoke in a quiet way, like a man who continues a thought begun:

"For the Lord," he said, "is the maker of you all."

There was no sermon in Saint Agatha's that afternoon. Ecclesiastically speaking, there was no service. But the preacher spoke to the people; and their hearts hung upon his words. But what those words were no man may tell us at this day.

It has been whispered, indeed, that what he said took different meanings to the members of that strange audience. Each heart received its own message. Wide as the earth were the gulfs between those hearers. But the preacher's message bridged them all. From his quivering lip and melting voice each soul drank the water of life. Afterwards each kept its own secret, and told not of that thirst, or of its assuaging.

"He speaks to me," sighed the patrician, with bowed head. "How happens this, for I thought no man did know that inner history? I have never told"--

"To me! To me!" sobbed the pauper and the castaway--"the preacher speaks to me. My misery, my shame--the whole world knows, but no man ever understood before."

The afternoon waned. The shadows deepened under the galleries. The great house clung like one child to the voice of the preacher. It was as still as the courts of Heaven when a soul is pardoned. The stranger spoke in a low but penetrating voice. Not a word was lost by the remotest. He spoke of the love of God the Father, and of the life of Christ the Son. He spoke of sin and of forgiveness, of sorrow, of shame, and of peace. He spoke of sacrifice, of patience, of purity, and of hope, and of the eternal life.

Not once did he allude to the petty differences among the people who sat bowed and breathless before him. Such paltry things as riches or poverty, or position, or obscurity, he did not recognize. He spoke to men and women, the children of God. He spoke to sinners and to sufferers, and to patient saints; he said nothing about "classes;" he talked of human beings; he rebuked them for their sins; he comforted them for their miseries; he smote their hearts; he shook their souls; he passed over their lives as conflagration passes, burning to ashes, purifying to new growth.

As he spoke, the manner of his countenance changed before them, like that of any great and holy man who is charged with the burden of souls, and who persuadeth them. A fine, inner light glowed through his features, as a sacred lamp glows through alabaster or some exquisite shell. His plaintive lip trembled. His deep eyes burned and retreated, as if they veiled themselves. An expression dazzling to behold settled upon his face. His white garment gathered light, and shone. Suddenly pausing, he stretched forth his hands. What delicate arrangement of the chancel lamps illuminated them? It was noticed by many, and spoken of afterwards below the breath. For, as he raised them in benediction upon the people, there scintillated from the palms a light. Some said that it was reflected from the radiance of the man's face. Some said that it had another cause. Only this is sure: when he did uplift his hands to bless them, all the people fell upon their knees before him.

It was now almost dark in the church, and no man could see his neighbor's face. The choir, on their knees, began to sing, "Holy, holy, holy"-- When their voices fell, the preacher's rose:

"And now may the grace of God the Father, and the love of Jesus Christ his Son, your Lord, and the peace of the Holy Spirit, be upon you; for there is Life Eternal; and God is the Light thereof; whose children ye are forever. Amen, and Amen."

His voice ceased. The hush that followed it was broken only by sobs.

The electric lights sprang out all over the church. In the sudden brilliance the kneeling people lifted their wet faces to the stranger's, thinking to catch a last sight of him for life-long treasure.

But the chancel was empty. As silently, as strangely, as he had come, the preacher had gone. It was the fashion of the man. Such was his will. He was never seen at Saint Agatha's again; nor, though his name and fame were widely sought, were they ever learned by any.

The great, strange crowd of worshipers melted mutely away. No man spoke to his neighbor; each was busy with the secret of his own soul. The sick returned to their sufferings; the bereaved to their loneliness; the poor to their struggles; the rich to their pleasures; the erring to their temptations; and God went with them.

Down the avenue, in the room of the life-long invalid, the receiver fell from a woman's shaking hand. All these--all they, the saddest, the sorest, of them all--had been preferred before her.

"Oh, to have seen his face!" she cried. She held her thin hands before her eyes. Then, flashing by that inner light which burns in the brain of the sensitive sick, the face of the stranger swam before her for an instant--and was not; for she had recognized it.

In the Monday morning's paper, the vestryman of Saint Agatha's observed a line or two of obituary notice tucked away in one of the spaces reserved for the obscure. It set forth the fact that the old clergyman who had failed to meet his appointment died on Sunday morning, of pneumonia, after a brief illness, aged seventy-two.

Books by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

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