Sydney Watson

“ She paused abruptly, struck by Cohen’s quietude of manner, where she had expected a storm. Gazing up wonderingly into his face she cried:—
“Abraham, why are you thus quiet? Why have you not cursed me for a Meshumed, dear? Can it be that you, too, know aught of these glorious truths?”
There was sadness and kindness in his eyes as he returned her pleading glance. But there was no trace of anger.
“I wonder why, little sister,” he began, “I am not angry, as the men of Israel’s faith usually are with a Meshumed, even though the defaulter should be as beautiful as Zillah Robart?” ”

“ This was a grander joy, the second grand joy of life; and I tried to say some lines of a hymn but the words were choked in my throat. The ebb was sucking the sea down over the sand quite silently; and the cliffs were whiter, and more day-like. Then there came many more thoughts all in one thought, and I stood still without intending it.
“To be saved by such a Saviour! This was the grandest joy of all, the third grand joy of life; and it swallowed up the other joys; and after it there could be on earth no higher joy. ”

“ The memory of his passing fancy for Madge Finisterre crossed his mind, once, as he wrote. He paused with the pen poised in his fingers, and smiled that he should ever have thought it possible that he was beginning to love her. “I liked her, admired her,” he mused. “I enjoyed her frank, open friendship, but love her—no, no. The word cannot be named in the same breath as my feeling for Zillah.”
He put his pen to the paper again, and poured out all the wealth of the love of his heart to his beautiful betrothed. When he had finally finished the letter, he sent it by special messenger to Zillah. ”

“ All the Cohen household was there. Zillah, radiant with the glow of the new life in Christ that had come to her.
Rachel, her sister, was red-eyed and sullen. Zillah had been pleading with her to open her mind, and her heart to the Christian teaching of the Messiah who had come, and who had atoned for all the race, Jew and Gentile alike.
Angry and sullen, the wife had said hard things of Zillah. Her frivolous, irresponsible nature was more than satisfied with the barest form of the faith of her race. ”

“ Her eyes travelled straight to the face of the man she loved, whom she was shortly to marry. Her eyes danced with excitement, her cheeks were rosy with colour, her whole face was full of an indescribable rapture, as she cried:
“I am free!”
“True, sister, you are free!” the brother-in-law responded.
The rabbi moved swiftly to her side, and, looking into her face, said:
“O woman of Israel, you are free!”
With a shout that reminded Tom Hammond of the shout, “He is risen!” at the Easter service in the Greek churches of Russia, the excited, perspiring congregation cried: “Woman, you are free!” ”

“ AN INTERESTING TALK. “The Courier” was now an established fact. As a newspaper it was as much a revelation to the journalists as to the general public. London had taken to it from the first moment of its issue. The provinces, instead of following their usual course of waiting to see what London did, took their own initiative, and adopted the new paper at once. Every instinct about the ideal paper, felt and nursed during the waiting years by Tom Hammond, had been true instinct. He had always felt them to be true; now he realized the fact. He was a proud man, a happy man. ”

“ While Cohen talked on for a moment or two, and Zillah’s eyes were fixed upon her brother-in-law, Tom Hammond’s gaze was riveted upon the lovely girl.
Every feature of her beautiful face became photographed on his brain. Had he been a clever artist, he could have gone to his studio and have flung with burning, brilliant haste her face upon his canvas.
He thought of Zenobia as he looked upon her brow. He wondered if ever two such wide, black, lustrous [107] eyes had ever shone in the face of a woman before, or whether a female soul had ever before been mirrored in such eyes. ”

“ Tom Hammond seized the opportune offer, and whispered,
“Let us take a cab, Zillah. I have something to say to you which I must say to-night.”
Before scarcely she realized it, she was seated by his side in the cab.
There is a moment in every woman’s life when her heart warns her of the coming of the great event in that life, when love is to be offered to her by the only man who has ever loomed large enough in her consciousness to be able to affect her existence. ”

“ For when ‘the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven ... the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.’”
Tom Hammond gazed at the speaker in wonder. The glory that filled her face, the triumph and rapture that rang in her voice, were a strange revelation to him. ”

“ There was a moment’s pause, then Cohen spread his hands, bowed his head, and repeated “The Blessing:—”
“The Lord bless us and keep us; the Lord make His face shine upon us and be gracious unto us. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon us and give us peace.”
Under her breath, yet distinctly heard by Cohen, in the solemn hush that followed the Blessing, Zillah murmured:—
“But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were afar off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For He is our Peace.”
Cohen glanced quietly at her. She met the glance with one of intense yearning. ”

“ Before the girl could reply, the door opened and Sir Archibald entered the room.
One glance into his face would have been sufficient to have told Tom the type of man he had to deal with, even if he had not seen him before. A warm-hearted, unconventional, impulsive man, a perfect gentleman in appearance, but a merry, hail-fellow-well-met man in his dealings with his fellows.
With a bit of mock drama in the gesture, Madge Finisterre flourished her hand towards the newcomer, crying,
“Sir Archibald, George? Lo, he is here!” ”

“ Tom Hammond had seen female loveliness in many lands—East, North, West, South. He had gazed upon women who seemed too lovely for earth—women whose flesh was alabaster, whose glance would woo emperors; women whose skins glowed with the olive of southern lands, the glance of whose black, lustrous eyes intoxicated the beholder in the first instant: Inez of Spain, Mousmee of Japan, Katrina of Russia, Carlotta of Naples, Rosie of Paris, Maggie of the Scottish Highlands, Patty of Wales, Kate of Ireland, and a score of other typical beauties. ”

“ Murmurs of dissent and protest ran through the mass of people, like the low sullen roar, at sea, of a coming storm.
The Bishop thought of his Translated wife. He knew, too, that God not only indwelt himself, now, but that He had guided him in speaking to the people. He rose in the pulpit to protest against the words of the Romanist. ”

“ His face was a strange study, while he read, reflecting a score of different, ever-changing emotions, but amid them all never losing a constant deepening amaze.
As he finished the last sheet, he looked Tom Hammond hard and searchingly in the face.
“My dear Tom,” he began. His voice was very grave, very serious. “You’ll ruin The Courier! You will ruin yourself! The world will call you mad——!”
“They called my Lord mad, Ralph, and they have called His servants mad, over and over again, ever since.” ”

“ The winds are dropt—the air is stagnant—a muttering rumble growls underneath their feet, and some of the miserable crowd begin to fly down the hill. The horses sniff the coming terror, and become unmanageable through fear. The moment rapidly approaches, when, nearly torn asunder by His own weight, fainting with loss of blood, which now runs in narrower rivulets from His slit veins, His temples and breast drowned in sweat, and His black [119] tongue parched with the fiery death-fever, Jesus cried, ‘I thirst.’ The deadly vinegar is elevated to Him. ”

“ With real prayer there is always a certain degree of communion, but real, deep, soul-filling communion is more often found in seasons when the communing one asks for nothing, but, silent before his or her God, the sense of the Divine fills all the being, and if the lips utter any sound it is the cry, “My Lord and my God!”
Tom Hammond, reviewing all that God had revealed to him, learned in those first hours of his new birth the secret of adoring communion with God. ”

“ As he sat back and regarded it where it hung, Tom Hammond mused on all that he had heard that afternoon, of the effects upon the lives of those who possessed a real heart apprehension of the truth of the near Return of the Lord.
“One can scarcely conceive,” he murmured, “what London, what all the civilized, and so-called Christian world, would be like, if every man and woman, who professes to be a christian, lived in the light of the truth that the Lord’s return was near, was imminent. ”

“ Cohen said quietly.
She noticed that he said race, and not faith, and she unconsciously took courage from the fact.
She was silent for a moment. Her lips moved slightly, but no sound came from her. Watching her, he wondered. She was praying!
Suddenly she lifted her head, proudly almost. She [178] suffered her great lustrous eyes,—liquid in their love-light—to meet his, as she said, with a ringing frankness:——
“Abraham! I have found the Messiah! He whom the Gentiles call the Christ; The man-God, Jesus, is the Messiah!” ”

“ At this Tom Hammond hurried away.
“Kinder than God!” he murmured. “Oh, God, that we should have it in our power to buy such happiness for so small a sum!”
“Kinder than God” he repeated to himself. He was now mounting the granite steps to the bridge. “Of course, one knows better; yet how difficult of proof it [25] would become, if one had to explain it to that poor soul, and to the thousands like her in this great city!”
For the first time since leaving Sir Archibald his own joy was forgotten. The awful problem of London’s destitution had supplanted London’s beauty in his thoughts. ”

“ Every Evangelical denomination would be inter-denominational in the truest sense, and be one wholly in their Crucified, Risen, coming Lord. A love for the poor fallen world, such as has never been since our Lord spent Himself in service, would be the order of the day, and not the vision of a few. Every missionary society would have more men and women and money than they actually needed.
“But, even as I pen this millennium-like picture, I know, from the Word of God, that it cannot be before Christ comes. But I seek to arouse every Christian to God’s call to them on this matter. ”

“ May I say, too, in all gentleness and love, that it has seemed to me, for years, that the missing link in nearly all ‘holiness’ preaching (so called) is this much-neglected expectancy of our Lord’s return. Paul connects holiness and the second coming of Christ, in his first epistle to the Thessalonians, saying, ‘The God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your spirit, soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.’
“The scoff of the world, dear friends, against us, as Christians, is that the professed bond of love is absent from our life. ”

“ Tom Hammond looked up from the little booklet,—a look of bewilderment was in his eyes, a sense of blankness, almost of stupefaction, in his mind. Like one who, half stunned, passes through some strange and wondrous experience, and slowly recalls every item of that experience as fuller consciousness returns, he went, mentally, slowly over the story of the little book. ”

“ Hell was a merry jest to them, a synonym for warmth and rest,—a combination which had been all too rare with them on earth. Besides, Hell had no shadow of terror to people who, for years, had suffered the torments of a life in a literal hell in London. ”

“ James taught that the real cure for impatience was this dwelling in the hope and expectancy of our Lord’s coming again. ‘Be ye also patient,’ he wrote; ‘stablish your hearts; for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh!’ We live in an age which is cursed with impatience—children, young men and women, parents, business people, domestic people, pastors, Christian workers, Sunday-school teachers, all alike have their spiritual lives and their work marred by impatience. ”

“ Cohen, watching her, thought of Deborah, for all her beautiful form seemed suddenly ennobled under the power of the theme that fired her.
“Now I know, dear Abraham,” she presently cried, “How it is that Jehovah is allowing our Rabbis—you told me, you know, the other day, of the one at Safed—to be led to dates that prove that Messiah is coming soon? Now I know why God has allowed our nation to be stirred up,—the Zionist movement, the colonization of Jerusalem and its neighbourhood, and all else of this like—yes, it is because the Christ is coming. ”