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Faces in the fire.

A Strange place in which to see faces; but still a very photographic gallery of memory-pictures, and prophetic portraits. Which of us has not sat and mused before the fire and seen friends and foes in scores peeping at us between the bars? Each lunge of the poker at the burning coals only stirs up a host of fresh faces, and, like a magic wand, summonses a perfect phantasmagoria of familiars to the foreground. Every caprice and gambol of the glowing element shows an old flame, or a young spark, amongst the fuel; and each fresh log crumbles into well known faces as it burns away. Ideal groups come in amongst the real ones, and fairies, elves, and weird fantastic shapes glide into the kaleidoscope. It does not seem very complimentary to look for friends in logs of wood; but it is only when the logs grow brilliant that we see the faces. When the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's Cathedral were discussing the pros and cons regarding the pavement of St. Paul's Churchyard with wood, a minor canon bashfully suggested a doubt how all the quantity of wood required could be obtained; whereupon the witty Sidney Smith suggested that wood enough page 4 for the purpose might readily be procured if the Dean and Chapter would only lay their heads together. And so, inversely, it so happens that if imagination desires to create a picture gallery of faces in the fire, the effect may be readily obtained if we will only lay plenty of logs together.

I shall be charged with a fresh profanation by some amiable critic, if I mention the name of Charles Dickens on a Sunday afternoon: but having already been charged with more sins than the decalogue condemns, and having been turned into a penwiper for the gooes-quills of a large tribe of penny-a-liners, I will try to bear it as best I may, and will even venture to mention the name of one of the purest and noblest heart-teachers of the age, even though there is no "Reverend" before it. Charles Dickens, then, in his "Curiosity shop," draws an exquisite picture of a poor Wolverhampton or Black Country workman, who gives little Nell and her grandfather a rest and a meal before his furnace fire; and when the child wakes up from her sleep she sees the rough puddler leaning his chin upon his hand and peering at the glowing fire. When she asks him why he is so quiet and sits apart from all the rest, he points to the great furnace and says, "See yonder there, that's my friend." "The fire?" says the child, "Yes, if has been alive as long as I have; we talk and think together all night long. It's like a book to me, the only book I ever learned to read; and many an old story it tells me. It's music, for I should know its voice among a thousand, and there are other voices in its roar. It has its pictures too. You don't know how many strange faces, and different scenes I trace in the hot coals. It's my memory, that fire, and shows me all my life." And then he tells the wondering child how his mother worked herself to death, and how his father brought him years ago to sit beside him as he page 5 worked before that fire; how he loves the fire for the faces that it shows him, for the music that it sings to him, for the histories it reads to him; how his father died before it, and left the fire still flaming on; how the fire became his nurse till he grew up to tend it; and how he sits and talks with it, and communes with the figures which it marshals to his mind. There are not many workmen who find such company in a forge-fire, most of them prefer less fanciful communion; but there are few of us who have not in some musing mood done enough of this fire-reading to make us understand the meaning of such fancies. I'm sure I've sometimes sat looking at the fire in my study grate, and seen not only faces, but scenes and landscapes, which have called up hundreds of dear memories. Looking among the fantastic doublings and playings of the flame, one has met the frowns of sour detractors, and the smiles of kinder friends. Deep in the red-hot caves among the coals beautiful scenery has come into the view. Hills, valleys, pools of blue flame, and spaces of white ashes, have helped to carry fancy here and there to spots of beauty where the heart has been expanded and the soul inspired. Now it has been some Alpine view, where the ashes form the snow-wreath, and the falling flakes which char from the dark coal, suggest the avalanche slipping from the peaks above. Now, as the blue flame creeps among the crevices the fancy flies away to Grasmere, while Wordsworth's gentle numbers seem spoken in the voice of some dear companion of a byegone holiday. Now it is Loch Katrine with the poetry of Scot and Burns borne on the breeze from Ellen's Isle. And now it is Killarney, with memories of Innisfallen, of rambles through Arbutus groves, and echoes from Dunloe, winding among the gorges of the Purple Mountain. Such memories call up others, and we read the fire more deeply. page 6 We see the faces of the companions of these joyous trips, and seem to hear their voices. And we grow sad and pensive to remember that many of those faces have passed away, and many of those voices are now still. Oh, it is a fact that a man may not know his alphabet, and yet may read more in an hour's looking at the fire than a book-worm could read in the Bodleian library.

And if, like the poor puddler in Mr. Dickens's story, we can turn the fire into our memory, we may, in a sense, turn it into a kind of conscience. It helps one sometimes in deciding on the rights and wrongs of what we do. It sometimes creates and sometimes rebukes our fears. I have had a little talk with my fire before I have made up my mind on many things. Shall I undertake it? Won't it involve a good deal of trouble? Shall I go down to those Lambeth Baths and try to get a few folk together who are not often induced to come into churches and chapels? Two pictures start into the fire at the question. They are both uncommonly good likenesses of myself; but one is sitting comfortably in an arm-chair reading a book beside the fire; and the other is hurrying off for a three-mile walk just after dinner, and then standing up to talk to a few folk who don't care much to listen. And then a lot of other figures come into the fire, and I see a group of hungry scribblers nibbing their pens to do a little special correspondence at my expense by writing lampoons and lies to the local penny weeklies which they represent. But the fire shows me other figures besides these dirt-throwers. It shows me a crowd of thriftless, godless, Christless, drinking, Sabbath-breaking fellow creatures living and dying within a mile or two of my own dwelling; and as it flares up the chimney it seems to laugh at the paltry sneers of these traducers, and ask what matter if one page 7 fallen creature can be roused to honest manhood; what matter if one blow the less should fall upon a woman's breast, if one cry the less from frightened childhood should herald the staggering home of a drunken father? what matter if one footstep unaccustomed to the scene should cross the threshold of some place of Christian worship where the story of Christ crucified is told? what matter if your purpose is a pure one and your aim be true? For shame to hesitate for fear of what the crew of libellers may write or say about the work you try to do! They are but starvelings hungering for what they never had themselves, a fair fame, to feed upon. Nothing will fatten them, for they are but shadows, and are "nothing if not critical." Thanks to the fire for its good advice. I come here this afternoon personally careless whether I speak to a handful or a crowd; happy in the consciousness of a sterling purpose, and anxious only to reach many ears, because I would fain move many hearts with useful things.

I told you when I commenced these rough addresses that I expected more kicks than halfpence, and my prophetic soul forecast the truth. For ten years when in Manchester, I used to blurt out a few truths too plain and homely to please a few advanced young parties whose foibles, follies, and vices were rather faithfully exposed, and whose sweet conceit was ridiculed and unmasked. And so they used to pamphleteer me very profusely, and ease their spleen (I had almost fallen into the mistake of saying, their minds) by piling up the sweepings of Billingsgate upon my name. One of their ambassadors has traced me here, and has sent a flaming account of our meetings in these Baths to a little paper printed in Manchester called the Shadow. You can get it for a penny if you take a correct copy of the following address. "Editor of the Shadow, Guttenberg page 8 Works, Albert Street, Ellor Street, Pendleton, and 139, Church Street, Pendleton, Salford, Manchester." If you write for the number bearing date February 19th, 1870, you will find both yourselves and your humble servant duly done into three columns of closely printed blackguardism for the delectation of the readers of the Shadow. This paper takes its motto from the greatest scoundrel of Shakespearian fancy; and with Iago on its title-page, you will find Iscariot, and even Satan in the spirit of its letterpress. Such is the substance of the Shadow. Meanwhile the consolation I extract from its condescending notice of myself is that I have been the means of helping to pay some poor fellow's expenses up to town, and keeping him sober enough to wield a pen for a few hours longer than is probably his wont.

But let these shadows pass, and let us to our fire again. We can see better things than this in it, or we had better quench it. The easiest task in the world that a man can set himself is to write scandal and abuse : and it is as safe as it is easy, when done anonymously. We will at least attempt a harder and a nobler one, namely, to spur on manhood which has been crippled by heedlessness or vice to the appreciation or achievement of worthier aims. So we will thrust the poker into the fire again, and stir out the vision of impersonal revilers, and look for something else. I should like to try to look with other eyes than my own at the pictures in the fire. If I look with my own eyes, they will sometimes grow bright as kind and living faces smile at me, and sometimes dim as faces of the loved ones passed away start into memory's mirror. And surely if I try to look for you, it will be much the same. Your coals will glow with the faces of living comrades, and sometimes, deeper down, you will meet the glances of the eyes page 9 which you have closed and left in the long sleep. There are some poor men, and, I fear, more poor women, whose retrospects must be taken without the help of the fire mirror. Some have to sit amidst the winter draughts, and look only at spent ashes and cold bars; and the friendliest face that looks at them out of the gaunt grate is that of death. They read such words as "Parish," "Vestry," "Guardians," "Union," "Wards," Indoor Relief;" but there is not nearly so much balm in those words as in the single syllable "Death;" he is the guardian of the poor to whom parochial sympathy has made our poor grow partial. Dare we venture to the workhouse fire-side, and try to guess what the pauper-circle are deciphering there? Perhaps we are taking too much for granted in imagining a fire in such a place at all. But if the flight be not too daring, let us conceive that the poor-rates have carried the price of a shovelful of coals for the infirm women's ward at least; and, though the use of a poker would be treason punishable with "skilly" for a month, we may grin with that shivering circle of old crones through the high-barred fender, at the attempt of that two-pennyworth of parish cinders to look cheerful. I wonder what they see there. They can't feel much, for there's little enough of warmth to stir their stagnant blood. But even there, in that dim gleam, there are faces in the fire. That old woman there, whose stray white hairs are tufting out beneath the parish cap, and whose puckered face is pressed against the fender, she sees scores of faces coming and going in the fire. She sees herself a child, as memory limps back over a waste of well-nigh fourscore years. A child, blythe, fair, bright-eyed, and light of heart. A child with a head "sunning over with curls;" a mind untainted with suspicion; and a breast uncrushed by care. And round the vision of this childhood, the pictures of kind page 10 home-life group themselves. Parents and playmates crowd upon the scene, and while memory is intent upon the faces, echo seems jocund with the voices. Then faces more sinister come crowding to the fire. Far back in the deep hollow of the coals, there is something like a procession; it is moving slowly, and a sable load is borne along amongst its ranks. It is a mother's funeral; and the heart is quivering with the beat of the passing bell. There are many more such groups coming into the fire; now the load they bear is a father, now a sister, now a cherished friend; and as the fire smoulders into spent flakes upon the hearth, the fancy seems to see the mould dropping on the buried bier, and to hear the monotone "ashes to ashes, dust to dust." And as the heart gets lonely, the ear seems to grow incautious, for one of the sinister faces draws near, and pours out oaths of love, and pledges of protection; the eye does not see the knave or the deceiver underneath the mask, it only sees the wooing smile, and the ear insensible to the hoarse and lying grate which contradicts the tone, drinks in the perjury as truth. And then the vision of the altar where the lie was acted out, and the oath was sworn in God's great name. Then visions of a gradually darkening home. Of new faces, baby faces pressed against her breast bruised by a miscreant hand, faces which it had been well had they turned stark and marble by the fountains of their life. Of the growth and ripening of one of those faces into budding girlhood, and of another into the stalwartness of manly youth. Of one of those faces taking its last look at an accursed home where an unnatural father had brought ruin, to take the vile and fearful chances of the streets; and of the other, with scorn and vengeance on its brow stalking forth to desperate and unknown adventure. All this, and more, comes into that workhouse fire; till blood and suicide redden page 11 in the coals, and remind the gazer of the path which led her old age to the union.

Away at the other side the city, not near the union, or any such low haunt of poverty, but out at the West End in those genteeler suburbs where cushioned carriages bowl briskly on, and my lord's sleek palfry rattles his tattoo, and beats time to the tune of "proputty, proputty," on the pavement; away at the West End there is another fire, and another figure looking at the faces in it. The fire burns brightly, and flings it glow over the furniture of a handsome room. It flickers in the polish of rich rosewood panels, and repeats itself upon the disc of pier-glasses and mirrors, and the scene which it warms up is a scene of ease, and wealth, and comfort. And there before the fire, sits a woman, sumptuous in dress, and bright with jewelry. Gems of price sparkle amongst her hair, upon her bosom, on her hands. Folds of choice silk hang gracefully about her form, and in her loneliness and beauty, there she sits and broods over the fire. Attendants come to minister to each languid wish she may express. Appliances of ease and luxury are all around her. Everything seems bright and sumptuous. The little spaniel at her feet curls up into a contented ball. The parrot and the love-birds call and coquet in their trellised cages, and the cat purrs in feline aristocracy upon the hearth. But there is one scene of tempest and disquietude even amongst all this comfort; and that tempest and disquietude are in the bosom of the lonely human inmate. For though the surroundings tell of wealth, and ease, and luxury, the faces in the fire seem to bode far different associations. There are some of the same faces in this fire as looked out of the embers of the Union grate. This beautiful Formosa sees the same figures as the old pauper in 'the house' has seen. There is the dark page 12 cottage with the fast-thinning stock of furniture. The glowing coals glow into three golden balls, and she sees herself carrying this home-trinket and that to raise the crust which a sottish father has drunk selfishly away. She sees a worse than funeral procession as she watches her own flight from home and the corpse of her own virtue borne along London streets. Her beauty was her capital in trade, and she sees the face of the vile procuress who laid out that capital for her ruin. The dandy libertine with noble titles to his name, under whose professed "protection" she is living, starts into the picture, and the fire becomes a very hell as it reveals her life of shame. Visions of what might have been had virtue, temperance, and religion smiled upon her way, float past: but only to bring heart-break to her bosom as they vanish and cry, "Never more!' She does not know that her old mother is rotting in the East-end Union; she thinks that years ago have borne her to a rest beyond her sorrows here. But could she see her in the parish gaberdine, pining on parish charity, with memory waning with the expiring fire-light in the parish grate, the daughter would fain turn her face towards the East, preferring the heaven of a Shoreditch ward to the hell of a Belgravian brothel.

Alas! alas! how easy and insidious are the stages by which vice draws its net about us, and leads us on; and yet how suddenly does that fire of remorse heap up in which we see the haunting faces, and hear the taunting voices when the retribution comes!

It is not to make those visions sadder, or to make those voices harsher that we have reviewed them now, But rather to point to other and more hopeful sights, and to ring out more welcome and assuring sounds. Down in a deeper fire-depth than any we have scrutinised, is the face of One whose fiery page 13 ordeal was one of sacrifice, and who trod the red-hot ploughshares that the retributive remorse of erring men and women might not deepen to despair. And this face looks out upon each heavy-hearted muser who reads the chronicles of fancy there. The old astrologers used to scrape out their crucibles, and find little lodes and ores adhering when the incantation had been performed, and when they found these, they would look hopefully into the heavens for the horoscope. And so may the saddest heart on which sin and sorrow ever hung their weights look with hope into the fire. When memory has boiled like a Phlegethon, and troublous visions have been seething in the glow, you may still look fixedly; and when all the faces which reproach you have melted away, there will be one face remaining if you will but look upon it, which will bear no reproach. Having seen that face, you can look to heaven and hope. It will speak as well as look; and the language both of eye and tongue will be of love. The voice will tell you that Christ understands your temptations, and will bear your heaviest burden if you will cast it on Him. It will remind you that beneath your deepest depth of agony there is a deeper still, which He alone has searched. The overture of the voice shall be accompanied by the outstretching of the one strong hand which can lift up the lowest fallen into the dignity of a new creature in Christ Jesus. Armed with the authority of this name, we can go through the wildest moral wastes in this great Babylon and bid them blossom as the rose. We can carry heart's-ease to the desolate, and comfort to the heavy-laden. We can offer purity to the fallen, liberty to the slave, home to the outcast, life to the dead. We can take freedom to the prison; cure to the hospital; wealth to the poor-house; light where it is dark; order where there is chaos; peace where page 14 there is storm; and heaven where there is hell. We set before you now, life and death, blessing and cursing. If you would live, live to Christ. Oh, if I have done you a wrong in supposing that it was little use to sound a note so high and sacred, forgive me, and with the assurance of the love and willingness of Christ to save the greatest sinner in this sinful world, let me take the place of an ambassador for Him, and as though God did beseech you by me, let me pray you in His stead, be ye reconciled to God. For He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that ours might be the righteousness of God through Him.

Whatever else you may feel or not feel among the experiences of your history, may you at least feel the arm of Jesus leading you in life and supporting you in death. Whatever voices you may or may not hear sounding through memory's chambers, may the voice of Jesus be heard speaking peace to your terror and pardon for your sin. And whatever faces may cluster into the portraitures of dreamland, may it be no dream, but a glad reality, that you were plucked as a brand out of the burning, because the reconciled face of Jesus Christ was first, last, and chiefest of the faces in the fire.