ANONYMOUS VOICES.
IN the course of reading one is often struck by the important part played by anonymous voices throughout history. The Scriptures are full of instances in which the words of nameless speakers have become historic. " Who made thee a prince and a judge over us ? intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian ? "—words few, and their speaker unknown ; but they drove Moses into the desert, an exile for forty years. " Saul bath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands," sang the Hebrew maidens in their rejoicing over the death of Goliath, and we know what fateful words they proved to the hero they were meant to honour. We remember the breathless arrival of Job's servants in sad fourfold succession, each with his tale of woe no sooner delivered than outdone by that of the next comer, and bow each ended with the piercing refrain : "And I only am escaped alone to tell thee." Job's wife, that Eastern Lady Macbeth, hisses out her diabolical instigation : "Dost thou still retain thine integrity ? Curse God, and die." Certain Chaldeans pillory themselves and glorify three Jews for all time by their sycophantic tale-telling: " These men, 0 king, have not regarded thee: they serve not thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou bast set up." And others perform the same office for "that Daniel " which was "of the children of the captivity of Judah," to his great honour and their own undoing. Returning with slow steps and with awed and wondering looks come the men set to catch Jesus in his words, framing as they pass their more than sufficient excuse: "Never man spake like this man." The " young ruler " runs with his eager inquiry to the Master, and goes away sorrowful, making the great refusal. The woman of Samaria, with her
keen questioning, draws from Christ the glorious truth that " God is a Spirit : and they that worship him must worship him
in spirit and in truth." As speaker of an all too memorable sentence, there is the pert servant-maid who with a word cowed Peter and made him sin the sin of his life. The Roman centurion and the repentant dying thief soften the horror of the Crucifixion by their words of compassion verging to adora- tion; and the two that journeyed to Emmaus touch us strangely as they say to their new companion : "Abide with us : for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent"; and again, later, with their wistful "Did not our heart burn within us, while be talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures ?" Coming down the line of Church history, we catch the cry from the crowded amphitheatres, "The Christians to the lions !" Or if it is the gladiatorial combats, all eyes watch and ears listen as the gladiators enter the arena, take their stand before the Emperor's chair, and cry: "Hail! Caesar. We about to die salute thee ! " And we need no further comment ou the pitiless spirit of old Rome.
But the change came ; and perhaps there is no more characteristic scene to be found in the newer age than that of Augustine cast down in the bitterness of his repentance under a certain fig-tree in his garden at Milan, and crying : " How long, Lord, wilt thou be angry, for ever ?" And lo ! from a neighbouring house there comes a voice, as of a boy or girl singing and oft repeating : " Take, read : take, read." Instantly he interprets this to be no other than a divine command to him to open the book he had just laid down—the Epistle to the Romans—and to read the first chapter he should find. He opens and reads in silence the words : "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof." He reads no further, for already the words have driven away his doubt, and his restless heart is at peace. And Rome, no longer the pitiless, will give us the transition to our own land ; for was it not in her market-place that the sight of some poor little lads offered for sale as slaves drew Gregory, a humane Christian priest, into the well-known dialogue with the slave-dealer ? The talk came to an end, and priest and slave- dealer each went his way ; but England to-day has her Christian Church, and Canterbury its Primate, as a result of that dialogue.
A succession of London mobs shouting the cry of the moment would give in main the course of our rough island story. "God save the King!" bespeaks the happy Coronation crowd. King Charles could not go down to the House at the head of his Guards to seize the Five Members without a running accompaniment of "Privilege ! Privilege !" from the apprentices of Loudon,—a cry which might have told him he had more than a Parliament to reckon with. Nor could that Parliament itself forget that its power was delegated without being brought to book by "Down with the Rump !" So the cries of " God bless your Graces !" following the Seven Bishops to the Tower—of " Give us our eleven days!" (upon the alteration of the calendar)—of " No Popery ! "—of " Wilkes and Liberty !"—of " The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill ! "—each gives a period in brief, almost down to the dawn of our own day.
Vox populi, vox Dei? It may be so, on the whole; but we would exclude such a shout as that Jedburgh one of "Burke Sir Walter !"—perhaps the meanest cry ever raised as a good grey head went past. The battlecries of soldiers tell us much, --from the "St. George for Merry England!" of the days of Cressy and Agincourt to the "Hurrahs!" and " Vive l'Empereurs!" of Waterloo, or the Confederate yell of the American Civil War. But not less impressive, on occasion, is a solitary voice. Say Sir Thomas More is on the scaffold, the fatal blow is struck, and the executioner, showing the severed member, cries: "This is the bead of a traitor!"
And does not the whole chaotic spirit of the French nation at the time of the Revolution shriek out in the hour-long cry of an unknown Frenchman amid the hubbub and horror of a sitting of the Convention in the Reign of Terror : "I demand the arrest of the rogues and dastards!" The spirit of con- querors speaks in the jests of the British sailors at the siege of Quebec, when, grappling with the French fireships that bore down on them at night, they shouted to each other in their rough fun : " Hang me, Jack ! Didst ever take hell iu tow before ? " Few men have had greater issues banging upon their words than had the unknown French sentry who watched on the Heights of Abraham above Quebec on the night of September 12th, 1759, as the thirty British boats stole down the river on their fateful errand. " Qui vive ? " rang out through the darkness. "La France !" replied a quick- witted Highland officer on board. " A quel regiment ? " asked the suspicious sentry. "De In Reine," answered the High- lander. A convoy of provisions was expected, and the sentry was satisfied. Wolfe and many another man was free to pass on, to victory and to death. But what if the sentry had not been satisfied?
Sometimes an anonymous word is a loophole into personal character, as when a chance stranger, passing through West- minster Abbey while Ben Jonson's monument was being erected, gave the mason a trifle to cut on the medallion the words: " 0 rare Ben Jonson ! " Sometimes they make a bit
of bygone social life vocal to us, as when the watchman passing
at night with his bell and lantern under Pepys's window cries : " Past one of the clock, and a cold, frosty, windy morning !"
Such voices reach us in words like Christian, Lollard, Round- head, Whig, Tory, Methodist, Ranter,—for some one once used these terms for the first time. And so with country- side sayings, old ballads, world-wide proverbs, nursery ditties, tales of folic-lore, ancient litanies—indeed, languages them- selves—they are all echoes of past anonymous voices. We think of the Breton fisherman's prayer as he puts out to sea,- " 0 God, do Thou help and guard me. Thy ocean is so great, and my poor boat so small!" And that of the French soldier going into battle,—" 0 God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul!" Nor must we forget those poor women of Bedford whose talk together at their doors, overheard by Bunyan, led to his conversion, with all that followed upon that. Nor the old woman who said to Bishop Burnet, holding up her dry crust: "I have all this and Christ." Nor the touching human kindness of those two untaught negro women —mother and daughter—who, finding Mungo Park fainting and ready to die, out in the West African wilds, succoured him and brought him back to life, singing the while, in a low chant : " Let us pity the white man ; no mother has he to bring him milk ; no wife to grind his corn." Sir Walter Scott cherished a saying of an old Irish- woman whom he met on his tour in Ireland, and who spoke of herself as " an ould struggler." And who does not know that anonymous and delightful old lady who, in her attendance at sermon, received so much benefit from " that blessed word Mesopotamia" ? Wordsworth's poem, "Stepping Westward," read along with the note to it, is a striking proof of the occasional power of the anonymous voice. He says :—" While my Fellow-traveller and I were walking by the side of Loch Ketterine, one fine evening after sunset, in our road to a Hut where, in the course of our Tour, we had been hospitably entertained some weeks before, we met, in one of the loneliest parts of that solitary region, two well-dressed Women, one of whom said to us, by way of greeting, ' What, you are stepping westward ? ' " That this passing word should fall upon just the right ears, and so give to the world a joy and an illumina- tion for ever, is one of those rare events that awe and uplift the mind. We suddenly know and feel that not only is the commonest bit of earth holy ground, but that heaven lies about us now as much as ever it did in our infancy, and that, although the vision may fade, we are permanently in higher hands.
At a critical time in the life of John Wesley, when, to save his soul, be was about to retire into a remote privacy and give himself up to prayer and self-discipline, an unknown adviser, a " serious man," gave him back to England and humanity by saying to him :—" Sir, you wish to serve God and go to heaven. Remember, you cannot serve Him alone. You must find companions or make them. The Bible knows nothing of a solitary religion." A few words spoken by a servant-maid to Charles Wesley led him to step, before his long-struggling brother, into life and liberty of soul. And when Whitefield was setting out for America some wise friend said to him : " If you have a mind to convert Indians, there are colliers enough in Kingswood." He went to the Kingswood colliers, and in his so'doing the great Evangelical Revival in England was begun.
It is not to be expected that anonymous words will always be meeting such high issues. Their more natural leVel is
that of social intercourse; and .happy hits and encounters innumerable have been preserved showing the prowess or otherwise of an anonymous speaker. Even schoolboys have left sayings behind them that will live perhaps as long as the language. Take these from two Rugby boys : "It would be a shame to tell Arnold a lie; he always believes us" ; and " Temple's a beast, but he's a just beast." And we must not omit that little ragged Londoner who, when asked what the country was like, said : "It's the big yard where the gemmen live." Fortunately it is not giVen to every chance word to be handed down the ages. But this saying of Carlyle's still bolds good : " No idlest word thou speakest but is a seed cast into Eternity. And the Recording Angel (consider it well) is no fable, but the truest of truths."
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