‘What are you, dear friends?’ he began; ’that is our subject to-day.  What are you?  How many different answers I hear you make, as you answer my question in your hearts!’

‘What am I?’ you say.  ’I am a fisherman, a strong active man, accustomed to toil and danger.’  ’I am a mother, with a large family of little ones, working hard from morning till night.’  ’I am a schoolboy, learning the lessons which are to fit me to make my way in the world.’  ’I am a busy merchant, toiling hard to make money, and obliged to come to this quiet place to recruit my wearied energies.’  ’I am an artist, with great ambition of future success.’  ’I am an old man, who has weathered many a storm, but my work is done now; I am too old to fish, too tired to toil.’  ’I am a gentleman of no occupation, idling comfortably through a busy world.’  ’I’—­and here he glanced at his own little Jack in the stern of the old boat—­’I am a tiny child, with an unknown life all before me.’

’Dear friends, such are some of your answers to my question.  Can I find, do you think, one answer, one description, which will suit you all—­fishermen, mothers, boys and girls, artists, merchants, gentlemen, the old man and the little child?  Yes, I can.  If I could hand you each a piece of paper and a pencil this day, there is one description of yourself which each of you might write, one occupation which would include you all, the old, the young, the rich and the poor.  Each of you, without exception, might write this—­I am a servant.

’I, the speaker, am a servant; you who listen, all of you, are servants.’

‘Well, I don’t know how he is going to make that out,’ I said to myself.  ’I thought he was going to say we were all sinners, and that, I suppose, we are, but servants!  I do not believe I am anybody’s servant.’

‘All servants,’ he went on, ’but not all in the same service.  As God and the angels look down upon this green to-day they see gathering together a great company of servants, but they also see that we are not all servants of the same master.  They see what we do not see, a dividing line between us.  On one side of the line God sees, and the angels see, one company of servants—­and in God’s book He gives us the name of their master—­Servants of sin.

’On the other side of the line, God sees, and the angels see, another company of servants—­Servants of Christ.

’Which company do you belong to, dear friend?  You fishermen on the bank there, what are you?  Little child, what are you?—­a servant of sin, or a servant of Jesus Christ?

So I tried to turn it off from myself, and to forget the words which had been spoken.  And whenever the question came back to me, the question which the speaker had repeated so often, ‘What are you?’ I answered it by saying to myself, ’I am a poor artist, having a holiday in Runswick Bay, and I am not going to trouble my head with gloomy thoughts.’