PARSON AND MAN.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3380, 27 June 1927, Page 8

PARSON AND MAN.

Once more the British Broadcasting Company has been putting the sermons or the Bov. H. B. L. Sheppard on the air, and they have been arousing all the old enthusiasm. This article, by a friend of his, explains what the peculiar attraction of Ur Sheppard’s personality is.

At- night, in a church half-lit, a girl sat quietly crying. She was not hysterical, her grief was not dramatic. She just sat, huddled up in at pew, and cried, and cried, and cried. Into the church came the vicar, a young man, boyish-looking, not in clergyman’s dress. He saw the'girl. He asked her if he could help in any way. At first she shook her head and went on crying. But she glanced up and caught sight of his face, and that changed her mind. She told him her story. She came from a north country town. She had ‘‘gone wrong.” Her father had turned her out. She had come to London to look for the man. Now her monc* was all gone, she was •hungry, she lufcl nowhere to sleep. If she could only die ! * ‘‘.Die?’’ said the viefa-r. ‘‘Cm, no, that would he a. great mistake at your age. Come along with me. I live next door. Aly wife is there. We- can give you some supper and a bed.” The girl went, bewildered. Suddenly her trouble was taken off her shoulders. She had found a man who followed literally the injunction, “Bear ye one another's burdens.” Her burden was .shouldered by the hoyi-b-looking vicar. Not as a luty with a long, solemn face. With a smile and a gay word, as i.he most natural tiling in the world.

Next day lie went with her to her home. He tallied to her people. He argued with them, appealed to them, stormed at them. At last lie prevailed on them to take her back.

That is one of the stories they tell at St. Martin’s about Dick Sheppard. No one who knows him will have any doubt that he has to Ids (|edit many such good deeds. To talk to him, even to sec him, is to he convinced that he not merely professes Christianity —he lives it. He could have had the easiest, most prosperous of careers in the Church. Through ids father, a Court chaplain, he had acquaintances in the highest places. With their support and with ids own outstanding ability, he might have chosen what preferment he liked. He chose instead the hard work, the incessant calls on sympathy and counsel, which are the lot of a parish parson. He would not spare himself; he was at the service of all; he wore his health away.

At last lie found that he must either give it a chance to return by resting—or say good-bye to life. So he left St. Martin's, after making it a centre of genuine, warm, human religion'Audi l as London had not known, lor many years, lie had drawn to the big, ugly church by Trafalgar Square a congregation which found there just what it wanted —and could not find it anywhere else.

“The reason J go to his church,” a business man said, who had never been regularly to any other, “is that lie isn’t only a good man —he’s such a jo!ly_ loilow.” Nothing forced about his jollity. He is natural always, genuine. He sees through humbug very quickly, as all simple folks do. He drops heavily upon it. He-is marvellously fair in his judgments. A street hawker who had been turned by the police out of one “pitch” alter another took refuge on the steps of St. Martin’s. The police told him he couldn’t stay there. Ho appealed to the vicar, who wrote him a letter giving him leave to stay, and saying he was “only too happy” to think the man was able to earn a living there. Rut he would not join in denunciation of the “harshness” of the police. “They were doing their job,” he said. “Dare say they were as sorry lor the poor chap as you or I.”

! once heard someone ask him why he refused offers of bishoprics. The questioner was not an understanding person. He replied gravely, “I don’t like those hats they have to wear.” Il is Hie mixture in him of charm and character, of kindliness, with humor it is Ids tremendous earnestness, with no self-consciousness whatever, that have won him the affectionate devotion of so many, given him his power over hearts and minds. No other preacher of the day has so great an attraction. One reason is that you never know what he will say. He has an outlook of Ids own. He is fearlessly frank. People wait for many hours to hear him. Hundreds are turned away.

He would he the first to deprecate people “running after him.” He dislikes sensational devotion. He is indifferent to the publicity it brings. Yet he ' s ghid that his words should travel lar. He feels that a message has been given to him. He is now doing his best to recover health so that he

can accept the direction of the ’s religious activities, because that will enable him to deliver his message in a voice which will penetrate In millions of homes.