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THE KING’S BUSINESS
read the third chapter o f St. John, and as I read'it I thought to myself: 'This is a very curious thing: here are two men, my new friend Rains- ford and my old friend Lord Gar- vagh, both say the same thing that they are saved’ ; and as I read the chapter light came into my soul, and as I came to the words : ‘He that be- lieveth on the Son hath everlasting life,’ I realized that I, too, possessed the ‘eternal life.’ ” Charrington has since believed that he passed then from the death of nature to the eternal life in Christ, and this belief has not been belied by his work. I make no apology for laying stress on this conversion. There was a time when the fact of conversion was, treat ed very scornfully outside of religious circles. I remember long ago being laughed at as I maintained, in a com pany of Nonconformist ministers, that the books they ought chiefly to read were those which- recorded the au thentic experience of delivered souls. In despised periodicals like the “ Ar- minian Magazine,” the “ Gospel Stan dard,” and the “ Earthen Vessel” are to be found records which certify the reality of grace. The time came at last when a great writer and philoso pher, William James, of Boston, per ceived that this contention was true, and devoted himself to the study of the great change. Before that time, many solemn prigs who boasted cult ure would have laughed at the idea of reading such books as the Life of Billy Bray. It is to be hoped that they have learned wisdom. IL Meanwhile Mr. Charrington went on with his brewing. One night he passed a miserable little public-house known as the Rising Sun. He saw a poor woman, with two or three chil dren dragging at her skirts, go up to the swing doors. She called to her husband inside: “ Oh, Tom, do give me some money ; the children are Cry
ing for bread.” The man came through, looked at her for a moment, and then knocked her down into the gutter. Just‘ then the young man looked up and saw his own name, “ Charrington,” in huge gilt letters on thé top of the public-house. It sud denly flashed into his mind that that was only one case of dreadful misery and fiendish brutality in one of the several hundred public houses that his firm possessed. He realized in a flash the appalling, the crushing, the incal culable amount of wretchedness and degradation caused by that business. “ And then and there, without any hes itation, he said to himself—in refer ence to the sodden brute who had knocked his wife into the gutter— ‘Well, you have knocked your poor wife down, and with the same blow you have knocked me out of the brew ery business.’ I knew that I could never bear the awful responsibility o f so much guilt upon my soul. I could not possibly allow myself to be a contributory cause; and I deter mined that, whatever the result, I would never enter the brewery again.” He went straight to his father, and announced his intention of surrender ing all share in the brewery. The startling effect of such a reso lution can hardly be understood in these days. Mr. Charrington, senior, was a liberal, God-fearing Church man of the Evangelical school. The business was regarded as quite lawful for Christian men. Indeed, some of the most prominent members of the Evangelical party were brewers. Mr. Charrington, senior, like the brewer in Trollope’s “ Rachel Ray,” made it his business to brew as good beer as could be brewed. He was not in the least responsible for drunkenness. The drunkard was responsible. The whole family were naturally wounded; and took it as a blow to their pride. But old Mr. Charrington was a good man, and when he was dying he sent for
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