I, too, in my hour of deepest trial, with no silk hat, with no gloves,
with no gilt prayer-book, as I should, have flashed out my will upon my
God. I, too, have cried with Paul, with Job, across my sin--my sin that
very moment heaped up upon my lips--have broken wildly in upon that
still, white floor of Heaven!

And when the dockers break up through, fling themselves upon their God,
what is it, after all, but another way of saying, "I am persuaded that
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor
things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other
creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God...."

It may have been wicked in the dockers to address God in this way, but
it would have been more wicked in them not to think He could understand.

I believe, for one, that when Jacob wrestled with the angel, God looked
on and liked it.

The angel was a mere representative at best, and Jacob was really
wrestling with God.

And God knew it and liked it.

Praying to strike Lord Devonport dead was the dockers' way of saying to
God that there was something on their minds that simply could not be
said.

I can imagine that this would interest a God, a prayer like the dockers'
prayer, so spent, so desperate, so unreasonable, breaking through to
that still, white floor of Heaven!

And it does seem as if, in our more humble, homely, and useful capacity
as fellow human beings, it might interest us.

It seems as if, possibly, we might stop criticising people who pray
harder than we do, pointing out that wrestling with God is really rather
rude--as if we might stop and see what it means to God and what it means
to us, and what there is that we might do, you and I, oh, Gentle Reader,
to make it possible for the dockers on Tower Hill to be more polite,
perhaps, more polished, as it were, when they speak to God next time.

Perhaps nothing the dockers could do in the way of being violent could
be more stupid and wicked than having all these sleek, beautiful,
perfect people, twenty-six million of them, all expecting them not to be
violent.

In my own quiet, gentle, implacable beauty of spirit, in my own ruthless
wisdom on a full stomach, I do not deny that I do most sternly
disapprove of the dockers and their violence.

But it is better than nothing, thank God!

They want something.

It gives me something to hope for, and to have courage for, about
them--that they