Mr. Hardy began in a low, clear tone:

“Men and women of Barton, tonight I am not the man you have known me these twenty-five years I have been among you. I am, by the grace of God, a new creature. As I stand here I have no greater desire in my heart than to say what may prove to be a blessing to all my old townspeople and to my employees and to these strong young men and boys. Within a few short days God has shown me the selfishness of a human being’s heart, and that heart was my own. And it is with feelings none of you can ever know that I look into your faces and say these words.”

Robert paused a moment as if gathering himself up for the effort that followed, and the audience, startled with an unexpected emotion by the strange beginning, thrilled with excitement, as, lifting his arm and raising his voice, the once cold and proud man exclaimed, as his face and form glowed with the transfiguration of a new manhood,

“There is but one supreme law in this world, and it is this: Love God and your neighbor with heart, mind, soul, strength. And there are but two things worth living for: the glory of God, and the salvation of man. To-night, I who look into eternity in a sense which I will not stop to explain, feel the bitterness which comes from the knowledge that I have broken that law and have not lived for those things which alone are worth living for. But God sent me here to-night with a message to the people which my heart must deliver. It is a duty even more sacred in some ways than what I owe to my own kindred. I am aware that the hearts of the people are shocked into numbness by the recent horror. I know that more than one bleeding heart is in this house and the shadow of the last enemy has fallen over many thresholds in our town. What! Did I not enter into the valley of the shadow of death myself as I stumbled over the ghastly ruins of that wreck, my soul torn in twain for the love of three of my own dear children? Do I not sympathize in full with all those who bitterly weep and lament and sit in blackness of horror this night? Yea, but men of Barton, why is it that we are so moved, so stirred, so shocked by the event of death, when the far more awful event of life does not disturb us in the least? We shudder with terror, we lose our accustomed pride or indifference, we speak in whispers and we tread softly in the presence of the visitor who smites but once and then smites the body only; but in the awful presence of that living image of God we go our ways careless, indifferent, cold, passionless, selfish.

“I know whereof I speak, for I have walked through the world like that myself. And yet death cannot be compared for one moment with life for majesty, for solemnity, for meaning, for power. There were seventy-five persons killed in the accident. But in the papers this morning I read in the column next to that in which the accident was paraded, in small type, and in the briefest of paragraphs the statement that a certain young man in this very town or ours had been arrested for forging his father’s name on a check, and was a fugitive from the law, and everyday in this town, and in every town all over the world events like that and worse than that are of frequent occurrence. Nay, in this very town of ours, more than seventy-five souls are at this very moment going down into a far blacker hell of destruction than the one down there under that fated bridge, and the community is not horrified over it. How many mass meetings have been held in this town within the last twenty-five years over the losses of character, the death of purity, the destruction of honesty? And yet they have outnumbered the victims of this late physical disaster a thousand fold. And what does mere death do? It releases the spirit from its house of earth. But aside from that, death does nothing to the person. But what does life do? Life does everything. It prepares for heaven or for hell. It starts impulses, moulds character, fixed character. Death has no kingdom without end. Death is only the last enemy of the many enemies that life knows. Death is a second. Life is an eternity. O men, brothers, if, as I solemnly and truly believe, this is the last opportunity I shall have to speak to you in such large numbers, I desire you to remember when I have vanished from your sight that I spent nearly my last breath in an appeal to you to make the most of daily life, to glorify God and save men.

“The greatest enemy of man is not death, it is selfishness,. He sits on the throne of the entire world. This very disaster which has filled the town with sorrow was due to selfishness. Let us see if that is not so. It has been proved by investigation already made, that the drunkenness of a track inspector was the cause of the accident. What was the cause of that drunkenness? The drinking habits of that inspector! And how did he acquire them? In a saloon which we tax-payers allow to run on payment of a certain sum of money into our town treasury. So, then, it was the greed or selfishness of the men of this town which lies at the bottom of this dreadful disaster. Who was to blame the for the disaster? The track inspector? No! The saloonkeeper who sold him the liquor? No! Who then? We ourselves, my brothers; we who licensed the selling of the stuff which turned a man’s brain into liquid fire and smote his judgment and reason with a brand from out the burning pit. If I had stumbled upon the three corpses of my own children night before last, I could have exclaimed in justice before the face of God, ’I have murdered my own children, for I was one of the men of Barton to vote for the license which made possible the drunkenness of the man into whose care were place hundreds of lives.’

“For what is the history of this case? Who was this wretched track inspector? A man who, to my own knowledge, trembled before temptation, who on the testimony of the foreman at the shops was, and always had been, a sober man up to the time when we as a municipality voted to replace the system of no license with the saloon, for the sake of what we thought was a necessary revenue. This man had no great temptation to drink while the saloon was out of the way. Its very absence was his salvation. But its public open return confronted his appetite once more, and he yielded and fell. Who says he was to blame? Who are the real criminals in the case? We ourselves, citizens, we who for the greed of gain, for the saving of that which has destroyed more souls in hell that any other one thing, made possible the causes which led to the grief and trouble of this hour. Would we not shrink in terror from the thought of lying in wait to kill a man? Would we not repel with holy horror the idea of murdering and maiming seventy-five people? We would say ’impossible!’ And yet, when I am ushered at last into the majestic presence of Almighty God, I feel convinced I shall see in His righteous countenance the sentence of our condemnation just as certain as if we had gone out in a body and by wicked craft had torn up the supporting timbers of that bridge just before the train thundered upon it. For did we not sanction by law a business which we know tempts men to break all the laws, which fills our jails and poor houses, our reformatories and asylums, which breaks women’s hearts, and beggars blessed homes, and sends innocent children to tread the paths of shame and vagrancy, which brings pallor into the face of the wife and tosses with the devil’s own glee a thousand victims into perdition with every revolution of this great planet about its greater sun?

“Men of Barton, say what we will. We are the authors of this dreadful disaster. And if we sorrow as a community, we sorrow in reality for our own selfish act. And oh, the selfishness of it! That clamoring greed for money! That burning thirst for more, and more, and more, at the expense of every God-like quality, at the ruin of all that our mothers once prayed might belong to us as men and women. What is it, ye merchants, ye business men, here to-night, that ye struggle most over? The one great aim of your lives is to buy for as little as possible and sell for as much as possible. What care have ye for the poor who work at worse than starvation wages, so long as ye can buy cheap and sell at large profits? What is the great aim of us railroad men in the great whirl of commercial competition which seethes and boils and surges about this earth like another atmosphere, plainly visible to the devils of other worlds? What is our aim but to make money our god, and power our throne? How much care or love is there for flesh and blood at times when there is danger of losing almighty dollars? But O Almighty Savior! It was not for this that we were made! We know it was not.

“To whom am I speaking? To myself. God forbid that I should stand here to condemn you, being myself the chief of simmers for these twenty-five years. What have I done to bless this community? How much have I cared for the men in my employ? What difference did it make that my example drove men away form the church of Christ and caused anguish to those few souls who were trying to redeem humanity? To my just shame I make answer that no one thing has driven the engine of my existence over the track of its destiny except self. And oh, for that church of Christ that I professed to believe in! How much have I done for that? How much, O fellow-members (and I see many of you here to-night), how much have we done in the best cause ever known, and the greatest organization ever founded for the purpose of redeeming the earth? We go to church after reading the Sunday morning paper, saturated through and through with the same things we have had poured into us every day of the week, as if we begrudged the whole of one day out of seven, and we criticize prayer and hymn and sermon and think we have done our duty as Christians, dropping into the contribution box half the amount we paid during the week for a theatre or concert ticket, and then when anything goes wrong in the community, or our children fall into vice, scoring the church for weakness and the preacher for lack of ability. Shame on us, men of Barton, members of the church of Christ, that we have so neglected our own church prayer meeting, that out of a resident membership of more than four hundred, living in easy distance of the church, only sixty have attended regularly and over two hundred have been to that service only occasionally. And yet, we call ourselves disciples of Christ. We say we believe in His blessed teachings. We say we believe in prayer. And in the face of all these professions we turn our backs with indifference on the very means of spiritual growth and power which the church places with in our reach. If Christ were to come to the earth today he would say unto us, ‘Woe unto you, church members, hypocrites!’ He would say unto us. “Woe unto you, young disciples in name, who have promised to love and serve me and then, ashamed of testifying before men, have broken promise and prayer, and ridicule those who have kept their vows sacredly!” He would say to us men who have made money and kept it to ourselves, “Woe unto you, ye rich men who dress softly and dine luxuriously and live in palaces while the poor cry aloud for judgment and the laborer sweats for the luxury of the idle. Woe unto you who speculate in flesh and blood, and call no man brother unless he lives in as fine a house and has as much money in the bank. Therefore ye shall receive the greater condemnation!’

“O self! God of the earth yet! With two thousand years of the Son of God written into its history, still goes up the cry of those who perish with hunger, who break into the sanctuary of their souls, because they cannot get work to do and are weary of the struggle of existence. Self! Thou art king. Not Jesus Christ yet. But oh, for the shame of it! The shame of it! Were it not for belief in the mighty forgiveness of sins I would stand here to-night with no hope of ever seeing the paradise of God. But resting in that hope I wish to say to you who have beheld the example of my selfish life, I repudiate it all. In the world I have passed as a moral citizen and a good business men. In society there has been no objection to my presence, on account of my wealth and position. In the church I have been tolerated because I gave it financial support. But in the sigh of that perfect Crucified Lamb of God I have broken the two greatest laws which He ever announced, I have been everything except a disciple of Jesus Christ. I have prayed for mercy. I believe my prayer has been answered. I am conscious the some here present may think that what I have said has been in poor taste, or that it has been an affront to the object of the meeting or an insult to the feelings of those who have called the audience together.

“In order that the people may know that I am sincere in all I have said, I will say that I have placed in the bank the sum of $10,000 to be used as the committee may deem wisest and best in the education of children in bereaved homes or in any way that shall be for the best good of those in need. This money is God’s. I have robbed Him and my brother man all these years. Whatever restitution I can make in the next few days I desire to make. But the great question with us all, my friends, is not this particular disaster. That will in time take its place as one event out of thousands in the daily life of this world. The great event of existence is not death, it is life. And the great question of the world is not the tariff, not the silver question, not the labor question, not temperance, nor this and that and the other. The great question of the whole world is Selfishness in the heart of man. The great command is, ’Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.’ If we had done that in this town I believe such a physical disaster as the one we lament would never have happened. That is our great need. If we go home from this meeting resolved to rebuke our selfishness in whatever form it is displeasing to God, and if we begin tomorrow to act out that resolution in word and deed, we shall revolutionize this town in its business, its politics, its church, its schools, its homes. If we simply allow our emotions to be stirred, our sympathies to be excited to the giving of a little money on this occasion, it will do us and the community little permanent good. God wants a complete transformation in the people of this nation. Nothing less that a complete regeneration can save us from destruction. Unconsecrated, selfish money, and selfish education, and selfish political power, and selfish genius in art, letters and diplomacy will sink us as a people into a gulf of annihilation. There is no salvation for us except in Jesus Christ. Let us believe in Him and live in Him.

“I have said my message. I trust you have understood it. I would not say otherwise if I know that I would step off this platform now and stand before the judgment seat of Christ. God help us all to do our duty. Time is short, eternity is long. Death is nothing. Life is everything.”

Five years after this speech of Robert Hardy to the people of Barton in the Town Hall, one who was present in the audience described the sensation that passed through it when the speaker sat down, to be like a distinct electric shock which passed from seat to seat, and held the people fixed and breathless there as if they had been smitten into images of stone. The effect on the chairman of the meeting was the same. He sat motionless. Then a wave of emotion gradually stirred the audience, and without a word of dismission they poured out of the building and scattered to their homes. Robert found George waiting for him. The father was almost faint with the reaction from his address. George gave him arm and the two walked home in silence.

We must pass over hastily the events of the next day in Robert Hardy’s life. The whole town was talking about his surprising address of the night before. Some thought he was crazy. Others regarded him as sincere, but after the first effect of his speech had worn off they criticized him severely for presuming to preach on an occasion. Still others were puzzled to account for the change in the man, for that a change had taken place could not be denied. How slow men are to acknowledge the power of God in the human heart! Mr. Hardy went about his business, very little moved by all this discussion. He realized that only two more days remained. He spent the afternoon and evening at home but was interrupted by several calls. After tea the entire family gathered in the room where Clara lay. She still remained unconscious, but living. As Mrs. Hardy was saying something to her husband about his dream and the events of the day before, Clara suddenly opened her eyes, and distinctly called out the words,

“Father! What day is it?”

It was like a voice out of the long dead past. Mr. Hardy, sitting by the side of the bed, replied quietly, while his heart beat quick,

“This is Friday night, dear child.”

Another question came, uttered in the same strange voice,

“Father, how many more days are left for you?”

“To-morrow and Sunday.”

“I shall go with you then.”

The eyes closed and the form became motionless as before. It was very quite in the room at the close of Robert Hardy’s Fifth Day.

~ end of chapter 10 ~