in good company 39

in good company 39

WOODSIDE LODGE,

SOUTH NORWOOD HILL, S.E.,

_Nov. 28, 1891_.

 

MY DEAR KERNAHAN,

 

I have, in a very busy life, never passed through such a time of

depression as in the last nine or ten months. In the Spring I

left the old Parish of 21 years’ work and 31 years’ memories--and

how I got through the next couple of months I scarcely know. Only

by Grace of God. I went to Southend for a fortnight, but it was

simply a _ghastly_ time, I was ill in body and mind. Except for

the faith which Tennyson describes in the case of Enoch Arden’s

coming home, through which a man (believing in the Incarnation,

and therefore in the Perfect Human Sympathy of God) cannot be

“all unhappy,” I don’t know what would have become of me. I left

behind me, you know how much--how many is represented by 537

communicants, nearly all of them my spiritual children, and I had

before me, not a “howling wilderness” but a silent wilderness of

the worst of the City churches. A howling wilderness would have

stirred up the soldier’s blood that is in me--but the desolation

which I felt so ill was like a winding sheet. You must come

and see me at All Hallows, and while I show you the beautiful

present, I will show you in actual fact some of the dry bones.

 

I need not tell you that I have had a great deal to do

Haggerstonwards. And oh! my correspondence with my old children!

 

I hope this does not sound to you like complaint or self-pity. I

only mean it as explanation--which would not be given in these

terms, except to one very much (I know) of my own temperament.

Indeed, there is no cause for anything but thankfulness. My

nerves were too worn out for Haggerston any longer. My successor

is one almost entirely after my own heart--my new parish is

exactly one (nearest to Haggerston in the City) I wished for.

The task of renovation, though it makes me a poor man for a year

or two, has been very good by way of distraction and for the

delight of making a garden out of such a wilderness of dry bones,

and after another six or nine months I may be able to afford a

curate, and, having no further special financial or parochial

anxieties, be able to settle to some final literary work. Indeed,

I am as I ought to be, very thankful.

 

So far most egotistically.

 

I am interested with my whole heart in what you tell me of

yourself. Do come and see me, to tell more. I will promise to

send you what I write, if you will undertake to do the same.

 

God bless you, dear friend.

 

Ever your most affectionate,

S. J. STONE.

 

The depression passed, and Stone recovered sufficiently to throw

himself, heart and soul, and for some years, into his now memorable

work among the “hands” employed in City warehouses, shops and

factories. Once again it was for the poor, or for the comparatively

poor that he toiled, and once again he spared himself in nothing.

His letters (I have enough almost for a book) tell of the joy and

contentment he found in the work, and of his thankfulness to God for

what had been done.

 

But he had made the change from the heavier work at Haggerston too

late, and even in the easier charge, which, in order that he might

husband his failing strength and outworn energies had been found

for him, he would not, or could not spare himself--with the result

that, in the autumn of 1899, he had another breakdown. Meeting him

unexpectedly one day on the Embankment, after not seeing him for

some little time, I was inexpressibly shocked at the change. He told

me that he had been feeling very ill for some weeks, and was then

on his way to meet the friend who was accompanying him to see a

specialist, and that I should, without delay, know the result of the

examination which was to be made. Not many hours had passed before I

had a letter. The malady, Stone said, was cancer, it was feared in a

malignant form, and there must be an operation, and soon.

 

With all the old and infinite thought and tenderness for others, he

gave me gently to understand that the case was not too hopeful--he

was terribly run down, his heart was weak: he had overstrained it

while at Oxford--and even should he survive the operation, there was

small likelihood of recovery. Here is the conclusion of his letter:

 

Keep a quiet mind about me, dear friend. I have not so learned

Christ that I make any real difference between life and death,

but remember me before God.

 

Ever yours most affectionately,

S. J. STONE.

 

Scarcely a day of the months which followed was free from pain. Yet

he wrote, “I live in a kind of thankful wonder that I should be so

encompassed by the goodness of God and the lovingkindness of men.” To

the end he retained all his old interests. He continued, in the brief

respites from terrible bouts of pain, to attend the church of All

Hallows, of which he was still rector, and to minister to his people,

and even to follow, with intense patriotic interest, every event in

the South African War.

 

The day preceding his death, Sunday, he was at All Hallows; and the

very day of his passing he wrote, “I am in such pain that I can

neither write nor dictate. At others I am just able to write ‘with

mine own hand.’ But whether at the worst or at the best in a _bodily_

state, spiritually I am not only in patience, but in joy of heart and

soul.” Soon after came a brief space of unconsciousness and--the end.

 

So died one who was liker Christ than any other man or woman I have

known. His love for his fellows was so passionate and so unselfish

that, could he have taken upon himself, to save them from sin,

sorrow, and suffering, a similar burden to that which his Lord

and Master bore, he would not have hesitated--he would gladly have

hastened--to make the sacrifice.

 

The mistakes he made were many, though I remember none that was not

made from high motive, generous impulse, misplaced zeal, or childlike

singleness of purpose, which to the last led him to credit others

with truth, loyalty, honour, and sincerity, like to his own. In the

beautiful hymn which he so loved, and with which he so often ended

evensong, we read:

 

And none, O Lord, have perfect rest,

For none are wholly free from sin,

 

but if sin there was in Stone, as in all that is human, I can truly

say that, in our twenty-five years’ intimate friendship, I saw in him

no sign of anything approaching sin, other than--if sins they be--a

noble anger and a lofty pride. To have loved, and to have been loved

and trusted by him, was no less a high privilege than it was a high

responsibility, for if any of us, who at some time of our lives,

shared Stone’s interests and ideals, and were brought under the

compelling power and inspiration of his personality, should hereafter

come to forget what manner of man he was--should play false with,

or altogether fall away, from those ideals, or be content to strive

after any less noble standard of conduct and character than he set

and attained--then heavy indeed must be our reckoning, in the day

when for these, to whom much has been given, much will be required.

 

For Stone had something of the talismanic personality of his Master.

Just as, without one spoken word--without more than a look--from

the Christ the unclean were convicted of sin by the talisman of His

purity, so all that was noblest, divinest and knightliest in man,

all that was white-souled, selfless, tender, true, lofty, and lovely

in womanhood, recognised something of itself in Stone, and in his

presence all were at their highest and their best.

 

Nor was this due merely to what has been called a “magnetic

personality.” That there are men and women who for good or for evil

(it is just as likely to be for the latter as for the former) possess

some magnetic or mesmeric power over others, I am, and from personal

knowledge, aware. But Stone’s influence was neither mesmeric nor

magnetic. It was by the unconscious spiritual alchemy of a soul so

rare (I repeat and purposely near the end of this article what I

said in the beginning) as to make possible the courage of a Cœur de

Lion, the honour of a King Arthur or Sir Galahad--as to make possible

even in a sense the sinlessness of Christ. To have known, if only

once in a lifetime--and in spite of bitter disillusionments, of

repeated betrayals on the part of some others--such a man as S. J.

Stone, is in itself enough to keep sweet one’s faith in humanity, in

immortality, and in God.

 

Some time before Stone’s death I had been much thrown into the

company of a gifted and brilliant thinker and man of Science, who had

very little belief--I will not say in the existence of a God, but at

least in the existence of a God who takes thought for the welfare

of mortals, and no belief whatever in existence after death. In our

walks and conversations he had adduced many arguments in support of

annihilation, which it was difficult to answer; and I remember that,

when on the morning that Stone died, I stooped to press my lips to

the forehead of the friend I loved and revered as I have loved and

revered none other since nor shall again, it seemed for a moment

as if the man of whom I have spoken as disbelieving in personal

immortality, were, in spirit, at my elbow and whispering in my ear.

“Look well upon your friend’s face!” the Voice seemed to say, “and

you shall see written there: ‘Nobly done, bravely done, greatly done,

if you will,’ but you shall also see written there, ‘_Done and ended!

done and ended--and for evermore!_’” I remember, too, that it seemed

as if some evil power, outside myself, were trying, by means of what

hypnotists call “suggestion,” to compel me to see, upon the dead

face, what that evil power wished me to see there.