Giant Hours with Poet Preachers Part 1

Giant Hours With Poet Preachers.

by William L. Stidger.

INTRODUCTION

In writing to the readers of Mr. Stidger's book I feel as though I were writing to old friends, friends who may have an interest in knowing some of the thoughts that I hold regarding questions of the hour and questions of the future.

The Christian as he looks out upon the battling and broken world sees much to sadden his heart. Thinkers are everywhere asking, "Is Christianity a failure?" I hasten to a.s.sure you that Christianity has not failed, for Christianity has nowhere been tried yet, nowhere been tried in a large social sense. Christianity has been tried by individuals, and it has been found to be comforting and transforming.

But it has never been tried by any large group of people in any one place--never by a whole city--never by a whole kingdom---never by a whole people. It is for this trial that the watching angels are waiting.

Our holy religion is not a saving power merely for individuals; it is also a saving power for society in its industrial order. We have applied it to the individual in the past, but we have never made any wholehearted effort to make religion the working principle of society.

Religion is always cooperative and brotherly, but we have not yet made any earnest effort to apply the cooperative and brotherly principle to business. We have tried to persuade the individual to express the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount, but we have made no earnest effort to urge society to express the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount.

Therefore, while it is true that we have individual Christians--men and women who make n.o.ble sacrifices in their effort to live the good life--it is also true that we have no Christian society anywhere on earth, no Christian civilization anywhere under the stars. Sometimes a careless talker will refer to our social order as "a Christian civilization." All such references, dear friends, disturb our hearts; for they prove that the speaker has no conception of what a Christian civilization would be, how n.o.ble and brotherly it would be. Five minutes' reading of the Sermon on the Mount will convince any alert mind that we are yet thousands of miles from a Christian civilization.

To speak of only one thing, it is certain that in a Christian civilization these cruel riches we see standing side by side with these cruel poverties could not exist; they would all crumble and vanish away in the fire of the social pa.s.sion of the Christ.

If we have not a Christian civilization, what have we? We have a civilization that is half barbaric; we have a social order with a light sprinkling of Christians in it. It is the hope of the future that this body of earnest Christian men and women will awaken to the call of the social Christ, awake determined to infuse his spirit into the industrial order, and thus extend the power of the cross down into the material ground of our existence. Men are not fully saved until tools are saved, till industries are saved. They must all be lit with the brother spirit of Christ the Artisan.

All of this transformation is implied in the Sermon on the Mount. For that sermon may be taken to be the first draft of the const.i.tution of the new social order that the Christ has in his heart for men. It was this new order that he had in mind when he uttered the great invitation, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." All the work-worn toilers of the world were to find rest in the new brotherly order about to be established on the earth. The Master has laid one great duty upon his followers--to embrother men and to emparadise the world.

This is a great labor, for it demands that the spirit of the brother Christ shall sing in all the wheels and sound in all the steps of our industrial life. It means that the Golden Rule shall become the working principle in our social order. This is the salvation that Christ came to bring to the world; this is the glad tidings; this the good news to men!

This is only a glimpse of the great social truth of the Lord that is beginning to break like a new morning upon the world. And what I have said in this letter I have tried a thousand times to say in my poems that have gone out into the world. And this new note I catch in the lines of the poets everywhere in modern poets, especially in the poets discussed in the following pages.

Yours in the Fellows.h.i.+p of the great hopes,

[Signature: Edwin Markham]

West New Brighton, N. Y.

FOREWORD

Vachel Lindsay, one of the modern Christian poets, whose writings are discussed in this book, has expressed the reason for the book itself in these four lines:

"I wish that I had learned by heart Some lyrics read that day; I knew not 'twas a giant hour That soon would pa.s.s away."

The author of this book makes no a.s.sumption that the "Giant Hours" are in the setting he has given these literary gems, but in the "lyrics"

themselves.

EDWIN MARKHAM

[Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission of the publishers, Doubleday, Page & Co., and are taken from the following works: The Shoes of Happiness and The Man with the Hoe.]

A STUDY OF HAPPINESS IN POVERTY, IN SERVICE, IN LOWLINESS; AND A BIT OF "SCRIPT" FOR THE JOURNEY OF LIFE

Edwin Markham is the David of modern poetry. He is biblical in the simplicity of his style. He, like the poet of old, tended sheep on "The Suisun Hills," and of it he speaks:

"Long, long ago I was a shepherd boy, My young heart touched with wonder and wild joy."

THE SHOES OF HAPPINESS.

None less than William Dean Howells has said of him, "Excepting always my dear Whitcomb Riley, Edwin Markham is the first of the Americans."

"The greatest poet of the century" is the estimate of Ella Wheeler Wilc.o.x; and Francis Grierson adds, "Edwin Markham is one of the greatest poets of the age, and the greatest poet of democracy." Dr.

David G. Downey makes his estimate of the poet, in his book, Modern Poets and Christian Teaching, a little broader and deeper in the two phrases: "He is not more poet than prophet," and, "He is the poet of humanity--of man in relations." And of them all I feel that the latter estimate is best put, for Edwin Markham is more than "the poet of democracy"; he is the poet of all humanity, down on the earth where humanity lives. And that Dr. Downey was right in calling him "prophet"

one needs but to read some lines from "The Man with the Hoe" in the light of the Russian revolution, and proof is made:

"O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, Is this the handiwork you give to G.o.d, This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?

How will you ever straighten up this shape?

How will it be with kingdoms and with kings-- When those who shaped him to the thing he is-- When this dumb Terror shall reply to G.o.d, After the silence of the centuries?"

THE MAN WITH THE HOE.

"How will it be with kingdoms and with kings?" the "Man with the Hoe"

is answering in Russia this star-lit night and sun-illumined day. Yes, Markham is prophet as well as poet. And to this humble writer's way of reading poetry there were never four lines for pure poetry more beautifully writ, neither across the seas, nor here at home, neither east nor west, than these four from "Virgilia":

"Forget it not till the crowns are crumbled And the swords of the kings are rent with rust; Forget it not till the hills lie humbled, And the springs of the seas run dust."

The Shoes of Happiness.

Prophetic? Yes! But ah, the music of it! Here rings and here sings David the shepherd; the sweet lute, the harp, the wind in the trees, the surge of the ocean-reef. It is music of a high and holy kind.

Which reminds me that I am to treat in this chapter on Markham only of what he has written since 1906, the preceding period, best known through his "Man with the Hoe," having been discussed by Dr. Downey in the book heretofore mentioned. I have the joy-task in these brief lines to bring to you Markham's "The Shoes of Happiness," which seems to me the strongest book he has written, not forgetting, either, "The Hoe"

book, as he himself calls it.

If you have the privilege of personal friends.h.i.+p with this "Father Poet," he will write for you somewhere, some time, some place, these four favorite lines, with a twinkle in his eyes that is half boy and half sage, but all love, which quatrain he calls "Outwitted":

"He drew a circle that shut me out-- Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But Love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in!"

The Shoes of Happiness.

And with these four lines he introduces the new book of poems, "The Shoes of Happiness."

THE HAPPINESS OF POVERTY