Then came the meeting with the Board of Deacons, the preliminary visits to the field of work, where the streets were full of misery and the slum life rampant. A few short blocks away was another world—a world of palaces. Jim had never before seen massed misery; he had never before seen profligate luxury, and the shock of contrast brought to him the sudden, overwhelming thought: "These people don't want preaching, they want fair play. This is not a religious question, it is an economic question." And in a flash: "The religious questions are economic questions," and all the seemingly wild utterances of old Jack Shives came back, like a sudden overwhelming flood at the breaking of a dam. In an instant he was staggering among the ruins of all in religious thought that he had held holy.
When he reached their apartment that evening he was in a distraught condition. For some time he paced up and down. At last he said: "I must go out, Belle. I must walk alone." He spoke with intense emotion. He longed for his mountain; there was but one thing like it near—the mighty, moving lake. He put on his hat and strode away. Belle wanted to go with him, but he had not asked her; her instinct also said "no"; besides, there was the physical impossibility of walking with him when he went so striding. She sat down in the dusk to wonder—to wait.
He went to the lake shore. A heavy gale was blowing from the north and the lake was a wild waste. It touched him as the sage plains did; and the rough wind helped him by driving away all other folk afoot. Northward he went, feeling, but seeing nothing, of the rolling waters. Jack Shives with his caustic words came back to mind: "It's their 'fore-God duty to steal if their babies are hungry and they can't feed them any other way." Jim had never seen these things before; now they were the whole world; he had seen nothing else these slumming days. His spiritual ferment was such that, one by one, all the texts he had read came back as commentaries on this new world of terror. He recalled the words of the Master: "Your Heavenly Father knoweth ye have need of these things"; the fearful doom of those that "offend these little ones"; the strict injunction to divide with the needy and care for the helpless; and again, the words, "The Kingdom of heaven is within you"—not in a vague, unplaced world after death, but here, now—and those who thought that, by placating the custodians of costly edifices, they were laying up "treasure in heaven" were blindly going to destruction.
He strode in the night with his brain awhirl. The old texts held for him some new power: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added into you"; and again, "The kingdom of heaven is within you"; "Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor." In vain he sought for inspired words that would reestablish the happy land beyond the grave that his teachers had ever pictured in set phrase. Yet every word of the Master pointed the other way. "Here"; "now"; and "first within" was the kingdom. And the hollowness of all the rich man's preachment—that the poor must suffer patiently in hope of a reward beyond the grave—was more and more a hideous stratagem as in his mind arose together two portrait types: the pinched, sullen, suffering face of the slums and the bloated, evil face to be found on the boulevard.
The mockery of it horrified as the immensity of it all swamped him. He had no mind, no equipment, for the subtleties of theology, and his head was a whirl of maddening contradictions, till the memory of his mother's simple devotion came like a cooling drink in his fever: "Never mind trying to reason it all out; you can't do it; no one can. Only ask what would the Master have done?" Yes, that was easy. "Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick"; and turning, he wheeled homeward. The upheaval of all foundations seemed less dreadful. He could not expect to reason it all out. It was enough to do as the Master would have done; and, whether it was the feeding of the multitude, the healing of the lepers, the gentleness to the woman taken in adultery, or the helping of the man who fell among thieves, there was no doctrine, no preaching—only kindness shown as sympathy and physical help in their troubles, here and now. The words of another childhood friend came back to him—those of Fighting Bill Kenna. He used to say, "I don't care a dom what he is, if he's a good neighbour." Yet the neighbour in question was a papist and they were kind and friendly every day of the year, except on those two set apart by the devil to breed hate. Kenna was right where his heart led him and wrong where his creed was guide.
Hartigan could not have told why he went alone on that walk. He only knew that in this crisis something cried out in him to be alone with the simple big things. Why should the worldly-wise companion he had chosen be left out? He didn't know; he only felt that he wanted no worldly wisdom now. He wished to face the judgment day in his soul all alone. He would not have done so a year before; but the Angel of Destiny had led on an upward trail and now he was brought aside to the edge so that he might look over, and down, and know that he was climbing.
Belle met him at the door. Her face was anxious. But his look reassured her. He took her on his knees as one might lift a child and, sitting with his arm around her and gazing far away, he said: "I had a landslide, Belle. All my church thought and training were swept away in a moment. I was floundering, overwhelmed in the ruin, when I found a big, solid, immovable rock on which I could build again. It was not the Church, it was my mother gave it to me. She used to say: 'Don't try to reason it all out; no one can. Only try to do as the Master would do'; what that is we are not always sure; but one who followed Him has told us, 'Keep cool and kind and you won't go far astray.'"
She looked into his face and saw something that she had never seen there before. The thought that flashed through her mind was of Moses and how his countenance showed that a little while before he had talked with God. She was awed by this new something he had taken on; and her instinct hushed the query that arose within her. She only gripped his hand a little and looking far away, said slowly: "There are times when He comes to talk with His own. I think he wanted to walk with you alone by the lake and talk, as He one time walked with His men on the shore of Galilee."
"My mind is clear now, Belle," he continued, "if these people want me to begin here merely as orthodox pulpit preacher, I must give up the post. That is what I want to be, but this is not the time or place for it. If, on the other hand, they will let me try to help those who need help, and in the form in which they need it—well and good; I will do my best to understand and meet the problems. But we must at once have a clear understanding."
She put her arms about him and after a little silence said: "I am with you to the finish, Jim. I know you have received a message and have guidance as to how it should be delivered."
It was in the little flat, with sagebrush in the vases, that they thought it out, and reached a solution that was the middle of the road. The first presentation of his new understanding Jim made to the Board of Deacons two days later. He said:
"When a man is swimming for his life, he does not want to discuss politics. When a man's children are hungry, he can't be expected to respect the law that prevents him from feeding them. When a man has no property, you needn't look to him for a fine understanding of the laws of property. When a man has no chance for lawful pleasures in life, he cannot be blamed much for taking any kind that comes within reach. When a man's body is starved, cold, and tormented, he is not going to bother about creeds that are supposed to guide his soul."