IT REALLY HAPPENED

White Ribbon, Volume 33, Issue 402, 18 January 1929, Page 9

IT REALLY HAPPENED

(By Winifred Kirkland.)

It was Saturday evening in New York, and the rain was falling in sheets. The gleaming pavements were awash like a ship’s deck and little rivulets cascaded down the subway stairs. Behind the streaming downpour, the ruddy shop fronts seemed far distant. Beneath the blurry, endless street lights the procession of hurrying, drenched figures stretched interminable. In spite of the* packed crowds the downfall seemed to separate every man from his fellows, each hastening blindly somewhere in the pelting rain. But no one was too blind to see each for himself the strange signs that leaped out of the wet dark at every coiner, that threaded the network of the elevated, and glowed at every subway station recurrent, standing placards brilliantly illuminated from behind, so that the black letters stood out indelibly: “JeMii* of Nazaivtli, will preach in this city to-morrow morning at Eleven." The next day the black, drenched Saturday night was swept away by a golden Sunday morning. Earliest spring glistened on standing crocuses and softened tree branches with the hi it of Birds. Little clouds scudded ac oss the blue band of sky above Fifth Avenue. By ten o’clock the st .vet was an endless stream of cars a id pedestrians. Everybody went to church tiiat morning. There was not standing room left in any church. The headlines of the Monday papers, however, were hitter, and with reason. The press had had a reporter in every church in the city, and even in the east side synagogues, and in the socialist Sunday schools. Every reporter had brought hack word of crowds everywhere, but a few of the newspaper men who sometimes went to church on other Sundays than this one, had remarked an amazing state of affairs. Not one of the churches had had its usual congregation. The faces in all the pews w r ere strange in that particular edifice. ft appeared that, while all the city had gone to hear Jesus of Nazareth preach, there had been an amazing divergence of opinion as to where he might be found. So eager

Was everybody to hear, this once, the ITeacher of all the ages, that at the last moment each began to have misgivings whether Jesus would select llis own church to speak in. As the churchgoer now recollected, that actual long-ago Jesus was a little incalculable. When you really thought of Him as returning, how could you be sure where He would choose to preach? in the very act of plunging on to His own church, all confident in the spring sunshine, the churchgoer found himself pausing, wondering. Was lie quite sure Jesus would occupy that particular pulpit? I‘eople began to hesitate, began to move in unexpected directions, so as not to risk missing Jesus. The Episeopiiau qu< ried in his heart whether Jesus, that hot-blood Galilean, might not prefer the spontaneit.v of the Methodist pulpit. The Methodist began to doubt wheth .* Jesus, the majestic teacher of old. might not incline to the dignity of the Church of England. Some Catholics even went so far us to consider whether J<»suk would not embrace the opportunity of pleading with a Brotestant congregation for a return to the ancient fold, while some Protestants felt that Jesus, Who had once founded His Church on a rock, might now turn to an edifice built on the name of His own Peter. There were even a few Christians who trudged to the nearest synagogue as the place probably most home-like to Jesus, the Jew, while some Jews penetrated the nearest Christian sftnetuary in ihe hoi>e of hearing a great prophet.

So it came about that there w r ere only two facts that the reporters brought to their offices on that Sunday morning, and these tw r o facts were duly flamed in the headlines of Monday's papers. First, no one on that historic day appeared to have attended his own church. The second fact was that no one could be found in all the city wdio had heard Jesus of Nazareth preach. The newspapers protested savagely. Were the Saturday night placards merely a gigantic advertising hoax on the part of the churches? Whence had ihe signs so abruptly appeared? And whither had they so completely disappeared? Off went the reporters again to investigate the mystery, but

without success. Neither any church nor any advertising concern could be found that was responsible. It was a blind search, and by Thursday the whole incident was forgotten. But, one dreamy reporter had somehow wandered off on that Monday morning from his sleuthwork on the Saturday placards, enticed away by a little spring breeze with a whiff of salt in it. Down by tin* water-front he came upon a little group of sailors on slioreleave, seated on a pile of bales in the sunshine. They were talking too earnestly to notice an eavesdropper. Their voices shrilled and boomed, discussing the strange thing that had happened to them tin* morning before. They had been seated as now in Urn sun on the pier above the lapping water, vvh. n suddenly a young man joined them. They had neither seen nor heard his approach, but they were somehow’ glad when he genially shoved himself into a place among them. Even though it was Sunday, he was wearing a carpenter's blue jeans, and had a kit of tools slung across Ids shoulders. His face w'as a healthy brown, and the short curls under his cap were black ami crisp like a Jew’s. “We ll none of 11s ever forget his eyes, nor the laugh of him. never forget nor want to.’’

The dreamy young reporter, who knew' his Ezra Bound, remembered: “ Vye, lover he was o’ brawny men, O’ ships and the open sea.” “Did he preach?” lie asked. They guffawed. "Him! No! He wasn’t a preacher, just a friendly sort of chap. Didn’t talk more than he listened. What he did talk was all about building, about building ships so strong, that they could stand any weather.” The reporter drifted away, giving himself up to the spring, pulsing victorious through the teeming city streets. He yielded himself to his thoughts, trusting where they might lead, for he felt it faintly possible he might meet Someone worth talking to. He pulled up sharply before the stately entrance of a skyscraper office building he knew w r ell. He knew it as a structure, proud of its secure foundations, its soaring steel framework, but lie did not enter by the glittering front. He knew*

another way, at the back, down an evil-smelling alley, in at a dark door, leading down steps into the basement, then down other blacker steps into the cellar. In the lurid light from an open furnace, a group of stokers, lounging on a coal pile in the murk, were talking. Their blackened faces were only half lit by the red glow’. And their growled talk was as ominous as their fac«*s. They were strong men, suffering under ground. They desired to rise in shattering power and make others suffer. It was said to be a fire-proof building, but the reporter wondered what would happen if ever the flame of their red torches should go roaring tip the elevator shaft. But, listening, he caught odd words this morning on the stokers’ lips. Something had happened the morning before. “An outdoor man, by his looks! How did he come down here?” “It seemed light in the door, him standing there.” “Was he just some fool wandering in? There was country-colour in his cheeks.” The reporter broke in, “Did he preach?” Their eyes narrowed on him, red as tigers’ eyes in the dark. “Preach! Here, in heU! We’d 1 ave tossed him into the furnace.” “Did he stay long?” “ ’Bout as long as a whiff of air from up yonder, long enough for one stretch of our lungs full of coal dust.” “Did he talk?” “A little. All about building—not tearing down, not burning building. He was a carpenter. He showed us tools.” The reporter stumbusi back up the stairs. “Where else,” he thought, “Where else did he go yesterday morning?” Once more he let himself wander at the will of the spring that danced ulong the soiled pavements. At length the chattering of foreign yoiees recalled him to himself. Pushcarts jostled for way over the cobbles. Mothers and children flow’ed from the dark interiors out over the sunw’armed door-steps. Faces were olive, black-eyed, with jetty curls at the temples. A tall, old man in a high fur cap and a long overcoat, slowly paced towards the reporter.

“You too? he asked. “Did you see him yesterday?” “No.” Tlie old man the English words. “Suddenly, right here, looking at me and smiling. Straight like a cedar. Like new life he spoke to me, like new life!” He passed on, muttering, “A prophet, a prophet come from God.” j From the nearest step, a fat, blackwigged madonna beckoned, smiling, to the reporter. “We too. We saw him. He talked to us.” The reporter remembered the reason for the search on which, hours before, he had set out. “Did he preach?” he asked. “O no, not that! He was just a carpenter passing along the street. He stopped to speak to old Nicodemus, then he sat down here on the stejKs awhile and played with the children. He took a hammer out of his kit and let my little Jotdiua hold it. He told him to he a carpenter when he grew up, and to build straight houses. It was a good trade,” lie said.

’The reporter rose and went on. thinking haid, while the swarming children darted and shrilled about him in the March sunshine He thought of the city full of churches where Jesus of Nazareth had not preached. He remembered that, in liis own day, J< i eus hail never preached in the temple, hut only on its dusty outer porch. He wondered just how rumours of Jesus’ presence in New York on the day before might float uncertainly down into history, for the young reporter half believed that Jesus of Nazareth, on that spring Sunday, had actually chatted with a group of sailors beside the lapping water, had actually till'd to envisage for a grim band of plotters a commonwealth not built of blood, had actually paused to put new life into a doddering old rabbi, and Actually played with gheto children on the steps in the sun. The reporter was quite aware that, out of his own surmises and the facts he had unearthed, he might have woven a splendid story. But yet he kept the story to himself, and never gave it to the tabloid newspaper lie served, nor yet to any advertising firm for 1 roadcasting.- From “The Christian Century,” March 22nd. 1928.