CHAPTER III.
ONE NIGHT'S WORK.
On a cold, stormy day, six months later, Mr. Carleton sat at his study table, his head bowed upon his hands his whole attitude that of dejectedness, if not of grief. What was the matter?
Has it ever occurred to you, dear reader, that ministers are human, just as other men, and that when the visible results of their labors are not as great as they have hoped for and looked for and prayed for, they sometimes lose faith in themselves and their people, and, alas! too often in God? When this time comes, to whom shall the pastor turn for consolation? His people must never see the despondency of his heart, his poor wife has more than her share of burdens already; and so there is but one thing he can do: shut himself in his study and lay his burdens upon God.
Things he would readily see were he trying to comfort others are hid from his eyes; promises so rich and full and sure when recalled to console others have an empty sound to his ears; faith strong and steadfast when he has been striving to cheer other hearts has grown feeble in his own soul. This, too, many times when there is not the slightest need of it. God is really leading and blessing the work done for him; but it is in his way, and not in man's way—and there is where the trouble lies.
This was the only trouble with Mr. Carleton now. He had arranged for so much and expected so much, along certain lines and in certain ways, that, now it had not come, he at once jumped to the conclusion that God was not honoring his ministry at all. Through his lack of faith he failed to see that the Lord in his own way was accomplishing a work infinitely beyond that whichhehad expected.
First of all, there was the Black Forge Mission, for that had really been established. Some months before Mr. Bacon had called on him, announcing in his off-hand way the good news:
"Well, pastor, our directors have decided to fit up a room down at the mills for a chapel, and offer it, rent free, to the First Church people as long as they care to sustain a Sunday-school and religious services on that field."
It was a nice room, too, large and well adapted to its purpose. One-half of a large storehouse on the main street had been partitioned off, making a room forty by sixty feet. This had been plastered and frescoed, a belfry put on the roof with its bell, and a library room arranged beside the entrance, while four large windows on each side gave ample light.
Then the First Church people had furnished the room tastefully and comfortably. There were four rows of nice settees, a platform and desk with its large Bible, Scripture mottoes on the walls, books to fill the library shelves, and a Bible and singing book for each scholar. When the fall months came, two good stoves were added, and thus the room was made warm and attractive for all.
The school had been successful, too, from the outset; for there were nearly two hundred scholars on the roll, with an average attendance of an hundred and fifty. The preaching services and prayer meetings had not been as well attended, it is true, nor had there been any indication that souls were anxious to find Jesus. But there was nothing strange in this. How long have some of our missionaries toiled on their fields before there was any indication of the Spirit's convicting power? Not months, but years. The conditions we are considering were little different. Black Forge Mills, when the mission was first established, was morally as dark as were some of those heathen lands. Still, had Mr. Carleton taken the trouble to have questioned Mr. Bacon even, he would have learned that there was less drunkenness and brawling and Sabbath-breaking among that people now than six months before, and had he only watched the children as he went among them, he would have noticed that they were less rude; and he knew, had he only taken the trouble to recall the fact, that he was much more welcome than at first in those Black Forge homes. God's work was surely being accomplished among that people: the faithful seed-sowing in the Sunday-school and from the pulpit was not to return unto the Master void.
Then there was Ray Branford. How Mr. Carleton and Miss Squire had labored and prayed for his conversion! He had kept his promise. Each Sunday had seen him in his place. He had each week reported to his teacher his readings, and had astonished her with both his questions and his answers. Sometimes she had been obliged to confess her own ignorance, as his thoughtful and far-reaching interrogations were propounded, and had been obliged to refer him to Mr. Carleton himself. They all noticed, too, the boy's improvement in appearance and morals. Less complaint came to them now than formerly of his mischievous pranks and petty pilferings. He came and went among them as one whose place was assured. He had in many ways been a help to them at the mission chapel, and his influence had been heartily given for the suppression of all disorder in their services whenever it seemed likely to occur. But more than this could not be said of him. His conversion seemed as far off as ever, and while attached to Mr. Carleton and his teacher, he in no way indicated a desire to know more intimately their Master and their Lord.
Still, had not the changes in the lad been very great—as great perhaps as they could reasonably expect? There were many scholars in the First Church school better favored than this poor lad, and with the best of home influences, and yet there had not been so marked changes in them as in him. Why be discouraged? Rather, why not be profoundly encouraged at the sure manifestations of God's presence with that boy? Now, Mr. Carleton, sensible fellow that he was, knew all this, and had it been any one but himself who was so dejected, he would have thought of it, and with triumph manifest in his tones, he would have called their attention to it, and with them have thanked God for it. As it was, he just bowed there on his hands troubled in spirit, and cried out, "How long, Lord? Wilt thou hide thyself forever?"
He arose after a time and went to the window, looking out upon the rain as it drove itself heavily against the panes.
"Here it is the night for our prayer meeting, and I'd like to know how many will be out in such a storm as this," he muttered, half aloud. "A mere handful in that little back room, when I was counting on so great a number."
"In other words, Rev. Ralph Carleton thinks he could have arranged the weather better than his Lord, and because it does not suit him he must needs find fault, and be woefully put out about it," said a voice behind him.
He turned and looked gravely at his wife, who had entered in time to hear his complaint, and who now looked up, half amused and half seriously, into his face.
"The rebuke was needed, Mary," he at last said, "and may the dear Master forgive my want of faith." Then drawing her down on the lounge beside him, he poured into her sympathizing ears the whole story of his dejectedness. She listened attentively until he had finished, and then, with mirth dancing in her eyes, though her words were grave enough, repeated almost his own utterances to one of his members the evening before. With his own gesture and emphasis, she pointed out the success of the mission, the great changes in Ray Branford, and other marked evidences of God's blessing upon the home church, and closed with the words, "Physician, heal thyself."
He heard her through without a comment; then, dropping on his knees, he drew her down beside him, and begged God's forgiveness for his want of courage and faith, for his desire to have things his own, and not God's way, and thanked him for the true helper and sympathizer he had given him in his wife. He prayed that there might be given to them both fuller grace, greater power, and more submissive wills to toil on God's time and in God's way for the extension of his kingdom on the earth. He arose from his knees, saying, "There, Mary, I will go back to my work, and even if I have but one out to-night besides myself, they shall have the best spiritual food I can give them."
The storm increased rather than diminished in violence as night came on, and when Mr. Carleton and his wife entered the church, they found that the sexton had lighted and heated only the small room. But this was large enough to hold the bare dozen who had braved the storm for that hour of prayer. Two of the deacons and their wives, three young ladies who had recently joined the church, the sexton and his wife, with Mr. and Mrs. Carleton made eleven. Who was the twelfth? Will you believe it? It was Ray Branford. Never before had he attended a Friday night prayer meeting at the First Church; and now to be out in all that storm! It seemed easy enough to account for it, when he explained to Mr. Carleton, as he shook hands with him, that a neighbor had been taken suddenly sick and he had come up for the doctor. The doctor wasn't at home, and wouldn't be for an hour; and as he was going to ride back with him to the Forge, he thought he might as well come in to the prayer meeting and wait there, as over at the doctor's office. This was thehumanexplanation of it; but up there in heaven they would have told you it was aprovidenceof God.
Mr. Carleton was very informal in that service. He took his chair right down near his little audience, and opening his Bible he read a few verses from the forty-third chapter of Isaiah, and then called on Deacon Blake to pray. This good brother was one of those who are so rare, who know how to come directly to God and tell him just what they need. When he had done that, he stopped. It was a very brief prayer, almost as brief as that of Bartimeus when he asked the Lord for sight; but all of that little company felt they had been lifted right into God's presence, and that he knew, and would give them just what they needed most. Then they sang a familiar hymn, after which Mr. Carleton, still sitting in his chair, gave them a brief talk.
"There is one verse here in this passage I have read," he remarked, "that I want you all to notice, 'Fear not: for I have redeemed thee; I have called thee by thy name: thou art mine.' This, of course, applies first to God's chosen people Israel; but secondly, to the spiritual Israel, and thus to each child of God. Every one of us here to-night, if he belongs to Christ, can claim the words.
"The child of God is admonished to fear not—to let nothing trouble him—neither life's trials nor death itself. He of all men should have no cause for alarm. The reason for this is threefold. God has redeemed him; has called him by name; has declared, 'Thou art mine.' This is not a mere repetition of thought. There is a gradation and a climax. To be called by name is more than mere redemption; to have it declared that 'thou art God's is more than the calling by name. There are three steps, and they are progressive—first, redemption, then intimacy, and last, identity; for Christ and his disciple are one."
Then briefly, but pointedly, Mr. Carleton proceeded to illustrate the three steps—redemption through Christ, intimacy with Christ, and identity with him. He closed by quoting the words: "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne," and added, "When the disciple has placed himself in complete submission to the will of God, as did our blessed Master, then is this last stage reached—namely, his complete identification with his Lord."
From the moment that Mr. Carleton read the Scripture lesson Ray Branford seemed unusually agitated, and before he had finished his remarks great tears were flowing down the boy's cheeks. When, however, he at the close of the meeting hastened to the lad's side with the anxious inquiry: "What is it, Ray? Can I help you?" the boy hastily brushed away his tears, and brusquely replied: "Those were the words my mother repeated when dying." Then he turned, and fled out into the storm and darkness.
This, then, was the cause for his great agitation, and with a shade of disappointment apparent on his face, Mr. Carleton turned around to speak with Deacon Blake.
"Brother Carleton," said that wise old gentleman, "don't you know that the Lord can go with that boy in all this storm and darkness, and save him, too?" And he did.
"Dr. Gasque, what is it to be a Christian?" Ray asked, as he got into that gentleman's buggy, and they rode off together toward the Black Forge Mills.
Now it happened that Dr. Gasque, though a very skillful physician, and one who prided himself on his strict morality, was not a Christian. He was not even a church-goer. But he knew Ray's history well, and realized that the boy to ask such a question must be thoroughly in earnest. Under the circumstances, then, he probably did what was the very best thing to do, for he answered: "I don't know."
"Well," said the boy, "if there is anything in Christianity at all, ought not a man who is constantly with those who are passing into eternity to know something about it himself, that he might tell others of it?"
The question, startling as it was to the doctor, was characteristic of the lad. For some months he had manifested a similar directness in his questions to his teacher, and to Mr. Carleton. A long silence followed, and the lights at the Forge were in sight before the doctor answered; but he at last said: "I suppose he had."
"How would you settle such a question?" persisted the boy.
There came to the doctor a bright vision of a home among the New Hampshire hills, and a white-haired father and mother praying for their only son, and he answered, huskily: "I should go directly to Christ himself."
"Thank you!" Ray said, as he leaped out of the buggy, and hastened home. Going directly to his room, he closed and locked the door. Then he knelt down by his bedside, repeating over and over again the words: "Lord Jesus, take me. Lord Jesus, take me."
After a while he rose from his knees, lighted the lamp, took his Bible from the old chest in which he kept it, and turned over its pages. He was quite familiar with them now, and soon found what he wanted. "Him that cometh unto me, I will in nowise cast out." "That means Ray Branford, just as much as any one else," he commented. He now turned to the story of the Philippian jailer, and read Paul's direction to him: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." "If that was sound advice then, it is sound advice now," he said. "And Miss Squire says faith is just to believe God is both able and willing to do as he promises." He closed the book with a quick snap, and again knelt by the bedside. "Lord Jesus, I come to thee, and I believe thou canst and that thou wilt save me now," he prayed. He said it as plainly and simply as he might have asked a friend for a book; or, as a child might come to its mother for a glass of water. Then he rose from his knees, and prepared for bed with the air of one who had gotten just what he had asked for. It was a very simple affair, after all; but angels had witnessed the scene, a new name had been written down upon the Book of Life, and all heaven was moved with joy. For is it not written, "There is joy in the presence of the angels of God overonesinner that repenteth?"