Charles M. Sheldon,

Topeka, Kansas.

Minister-at-large, Central Congregational Church.

1914.

Chapter One

It was fifteen years after the First Church in Raymond had adopted the motto, “What Would Jesus Do?”

The pledge, as carried out by the members who had taken it, had revolutionized the church. Henry Maxwell still continued as the pastor. Many of the members of the church had been much disturbed by the rule which Mr. Maxwell had introduced into the lives of the members, but a majority had agreed, and he had continued to grow in the respect and affection of his large and growing congregation and in the respect of the business people and citizens of Raymond.

Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell were talking early one Friday evening about a gathering of old friends who were coming to the parsonage that night. It was the anniversary of the day when the First Church had taken the pledge to try to do as Jesus would do, and following a custom of several years, a dozen or more of the original company that had taken the pledge then were coming in after supper to talk over the old and new phases of their discipleship.

This evening Mr. Maxwell seemed strangely restless. He had gone over the list of those who were expected and had commented on different ones as his wife was asking questions. All the time he was talking, Mr. Maxwell paced back and forth between the large west window of the sitting room and the library, several times pausing to look with deepening curiosity out of the window into the waning twilight.

“Will Rollin be able to come tonight?” Mrs. Maxwell had asked.

“I’m afraid not. He has been asked to go to Chicago and consult with the Commercial Club in regard to social evils, and to take part in the eugenics congress. I think he planned to start this afternoon. But Rachel will come with Virginia.”

“Doesn’t it seem like a miracle to think of Rollin Page becoming an authority on these great social service questions?” Mrs. Maxwell said after another pause, during which Mr. Maxwell had again stopped to gaze with a look of intensity through the big west window.

“It is a miracle, Mary. Why should we take for granted that miracles are unnatural or uncommon? Or that they belong to any special age of the world? Why should we not expect miracles in our time? We need them. And Rollin is such a miracle. Nothing but a miraculous influence changed Rollin Page from a careless, selfish, worldly club man into a devout, earnest lover of men, a new man all over, no more like the old Rollin than white compares to black.”

“Of course, if a change in a life like that is really a miracle, we have plenty of evidence that miracles still occur. But we don’t generally call that a miracle, do we?”