This column originally appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Oct. 11, 1941.
Canadians will keep Thanksgiving Day this year with a catch in their throats. Every pumpkin and apple will make them think of the scorched earth of Russia.
George Bruce started at these words written on his writing pad, as he sat down at his desk to prepare his sermon for Thanksgiving Day. Then he suddenly realized that his mind was as dry as a covered bridge. He had just had a row with Mrs. Knox, the most influential women in the church, and all he could think of were the things he wished he had said to her. The nerve of her! To tell him that he should not have used a linen tablecloth for his Boys’ Supper! “Oilcloth was quite good enough for them and probably all they had been used to.”
He had told her that he considered his boys the most promising group in the church even if they did live on the wrong side of the tracks and had no monographs on their sweaters. And the best in the church was none too good for them, and more than that, he was going to have them every week instead of every two weeks.
This was just one of the little irritations which had dulled his enthusiasm ever since he had come to the big church. Sometimes he had seriously thought of resigning and going back to the Mission Field. That is where he belonged. He had better get out before he got caught in the machinery of this big plant where everything was so well organized and documented, and nothing could be done without six months’ notice. The whole church was run by three or four wealthy families, and Mrs. Knox was the Supreme High Commander to whom all heads bowed.
George Bruce looked around his well-furnished study with a sudden distaste for its luxury. The tiled fireplace where the push of a button brought a glow of warmth, the radio, reading lamps, dictaphone and the electric clock on the mantel, one of those faceless clocks of grey steel where the figures changed and the correct time to the second is always before you. Now each new number challenged him.
“Time is passing,” it seemed to say, “and you are not doing anything. Get along with your Thanksgiving talk. Look at all these books waiting on their shelves to help you. The church has provided everything for you. So what is the matter with you? Books, and books about books, books of quotations and sermons, reports of conferences and commissions. You do not have to be original. Throw in some good poetry and be careful not to disturb anyone and it will go over well. Thanksgiving is a comfortable, abundant time, given over to roast turkey and pumpkin pie.”
“I am all wrong,” said George Bruce miserably, “the fault is in me someplace. I am not going to blame anyone else for the stagnation of my own heart. That is too cheap and easy. If I had the real glow in my own soul I could have done something in this church. Here it is, a so-called Christian community and there are factions and feuds, old scores and antagonism, trouble in the choir and trouble in the board; just a little Europe of undeclared wars, only we do not shoot. What message have we to send out to a world at war.”
Just at this point in the minister’s gloomy reverie the phone rang. Mrs. Bruce was speaking. “George, I am sorry to disturb you but there is serious trouble over at the Knox home. A cable came yesterday that Gilbert had been shot down over Germany and it is thought he was taken prisoner. Mrs. Knox is taking it very badly and would not see anyone yesterday. She is bitterly rebellious and has nothing to lean on.”
She says God has forsaken her and she will never pray again. I think you should go over. She did not tell anyone yesterday but it came on the radio just now and I phoned her sister, who is very worried about her. She says this is the first blow Mrs. Knox has ever had and she just can’t take it. She always thought nothing could happen to Gilbert.”
A tearful maid answered his ring and took him to the door of Mrs. Knox’s sitting-room. There she sat looking at a letter and her face had the pallor which comes with a long illness.
She motioned to him to sit down and then reached out her hand. “There is something strange in all this,” she said. “I have come through a horror of a great darkness like Abraham. I never knew what that meant, but I do now. It has been a blow to my faith and to my pride, my spiritual pride, and that is the worst kind of blow. But I am in my right mind again. Last night, all night, I called on God to send me some sort of sign if He had not entirely forsaken me, something to cheer my desolate heart, some reassurance, some tiny spar to float me.”
“Strangely enough I never thought of the possibility of a letter. I had had one from Gilbert this week, but in this afternoon’s mail I got another letter, a different letter from anything he had ever written and if it had been written in fire across the sky it could not be anymore the answer to my prayer … When I read it, I suddenly though of you and before I had taken time to phone you to come, you walked in. I will give you the letter and you will see what I mean.”
“Dear mother,” he said, “I have been thinking of you, and wishing I could talk to you. This thing of facing death every day makes a fellow serious. You and I have never spoken to each other about religion though I know you always took it for granted that I was ‘in the company.’ I am certainly grateful for having had a Christian training and been given a sense of right and wrong. I think of the hymns we sang in Sunday School, and they are beautiful and full of mean to me now.”
“Christianity is the only hope of this torn world, Mother, but people will have to be far more in earnest about it or it will perish with all the other beautiful things. You have sent me the church calendars and I see you are busy with bazaars and hikes and supers and conventions and it all sounds a bit odd to me. It sounds like children playing house behind the hedge when their real home is burning … I have seen quite a bit of a Nazi airman whom we brought in one day; one of the ones who will talk. His people are Christians and his father is in a concentration camp, which he thinks is all right.
“His ideas of life are all upside down. But he did say it was a hard thing for him to inform on his father, but he was under oath to his Fuhrer.
“Hitler is his god. I tried to talk to him and show him that Christianity is the only way of life that promises the good of all men, but I was not successful. They had caught him too young, and besides, I am not any good at explaining. The Germans have a wrong idea, a terrible wrong idea, but they have the right method and plenty of enthusiasm.
“And that is why I am writing to you now. I hope you will do something, Mother. Our churches should be training young people now, both men and women, to teach Christianity. We must send missionaries to Europe, real missionaries like Livingstone and Albert Sweitzer, people who feel that God is at their elbow and so are not afraid of anything. And there will have to be more religion at home.
“I have no fear of dying, Mother, but I am afraid of losing this fight. You see, Mother, there was never a war like this. It is not a war between countries, or races. It is a war of ideas, a war affecting the whole human race, and it will only be won at the last by ideas. …
“Whatever happens, do not worry about me, for my mind is at rest now, since I have written to you. You know I have always thought my Mother could do anything.”
They sat in silence. Then she spoke.
“I have been one of the 30 per cent Christians,” she said sadly, “but God has been good to me to let me have this letter, and I believe He will be with my boy wherever he is. I have been a poor stick, and now I know it. I have read stories of the ‘hard, good woman’ and never saw myself until now. I could have done more for Gilbert and more for you — and more for God — and I will … It will take some humbling, but I am ready for that.”
Before he knew what he was doing, George Bruce was telling her about the low ebb of his own religious experience, his barren mind, his feeling of frustration.
She laid her hand on his arm.
“Don’t let us waste any time regretting the past. It is gone, but the present and the future are ours. Let us all start afresh.”
At the Thanksgiving Day service Gilbert’s letter was read and there was plain speaking from the pulpit, and because there was love in the speaker’s heart, conviction fell upon his listeners and up and down the aisle and in the naive and galleries came the “sound of a rushing wind.”
Some of McClung’s columns from the 1930s and 1940s have been collected in a book, The Valiant Nellie McClung: Selected Writings by Canada’s Most Famous Suffragist, by Barbara Smith.
