TALE OF TOC H

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 October 1939, Page 9

TALE OF TOC H

HOUSE OF THE CARPENTER. Is not this the carpenter’s son? the wondering multitude asked when they listened to the words of the Prince of Peace. The carpenter’s bench, the emblem of the boyhood of Christ, was the inspiration of Toe H, the brotherhood that now lights lamps of faith, hope, and charity throughout the world. “Tubby” Clayton told the story of its foundation to some of the Legion of Frontiersmen at a service held at St Lawrence Jewry recently. When the Germans enclosed the Ypres salient, he was a junior chaplain and was sent to Poporinghe. then being shelled night and day. He commandeered the biggest house owned by the biggest brewer, who had no further use for it in the circumstances. The furniture had all gone, but in the garden had been left a carpenter’s bench. He saw it, and into his mind stole the thought that on such a bench the Redeemer had worked while a boy. The carpenter’s bench, he thought, should become the emblem of the abode of fellowship which Talbot House should be. It is still the emblem of all that Toe H has become, and the homely piece of wood is now one of the sacred things of the world, gazed on with shy reverence by the thousands who visit the house of the brewer still.