VIGIVING THAT COUNTS
An old fable tells of a good man to whom the Lord said he would give whatever he most desired. Besought by friends to ask great things, he refused. Finally he asked that he might be able to do a great deal of good without ever knowing it. And so it came about that every time the good man's shadow fell behind him or at either side, so that he could not see it, it had the power to cure disease, soothe pain and comfort sorrow.
When he walked along, his shadow, thrown on the ground on either side or behind him, made arid paths green, caused withered plants to bloom, gave clear water to dried up brooks, fresh color to pale little children, and joy to unhappy mothers.
But he simply went about his daily life, diffusing virtue as the star diffuses light and theflower perfume, without ever being aware of it. And the people, respecting his humility, followed him silently, never speaking to him about his miracles. Little by little, they even came to forget his name, and called him only "The Holy Shadow."
It would be a splendid thing if all would learn the lesson taught in the fable—that the man who would do good should have the courage to be unconscious of the good he is doing, and so as unlike as possible the rich woman of whom some one has told, who turned a deaf ear to every petition for help unless there was a subscription paper circulated and she was given the chance to head the list. "But no poor person came into her house who said, 'May God reward you!' She never experienced the pleasure of making a poor woman on the back stairs happy with a cup of warm coffee, or hungry children with a slice of bread and butter, or an infirm man with a penny. Perhaps she satisfied her conscience by saying that she did not believe in indiscriminate charity. Frequently that excuse is given conscientiously but how often the real meaning is, 'I do not believe in charity that does not make people talk of my generosity.'"
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus taughtthe folly of giving in such a manner. The lesson was enforced by two pictures—a man standing on the street, giving alms to the poor, while attention is called to his generosity by the sounding of a trumpet which everyone must hear, and a man whose giving is so much a matter of secrecy that he does not think of it a second time. There is no rolling of it over as a sweetmeat under his tongue, as if to say, "What a generous man I am!" Nor is there any motive in the giving but pure desire to glorify God. All this is properly included in the interpretation of "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth."
VIIEXPENSIVE ECONOMY
A magazine editor offered a prize for the best account by a reader of the adjustment of income and expenditure made necessary by the vaulting prices of recent years. The prize was awarded to one whose revised budget showed the revision downward of many items, and the elimination of two or three other items. The comparison of the budgets was interesting and helpful; most readers would be apt to approve heartily all but one of the changes andeliminations. This was the exception: the earlier budget allowed five dollars per month for "church and charity," while the revised budget made no mention of the claims of others, no provision for the privilege of giving.
If you had been a judge in that contest, would you have felt like giving the prize to a paper that suggested such an omission? Suppose you had the task of cutting your budget, would you feel like revising downward the provision for giving? What do you think of the statement of a famous business man who, having insisted in time of financial reverses on making gifts as usual, said to objecting friends, "Economy should not begin at the house of God." Why not let economy begin there?
What answer would have been given to such a query by the poor tenement dweller in New York City who, though compelled to earn the support of her family by scrubbing floors in a great office building, set aside a dollar and a half per week for the care of four orphans in India who but for her gifts would have starved?
What answer would have been made by the Polish Jew, long resident in America, who directed in his will that regular gifts be made at Christmas and Easter to the Christians as well as to the Jews of his home town in Europe?That bequest was made in memory of days and nights of terror when, as a boy, he hid in the house from the fiendish persecutions of so-called Christians who thought Easter and Christmas favorable times for the intimidation of the Jews. What would he have said to the idea of economy that forgets the needs of others and makes no provision for satisfying the hungry, to help the suffering?
What would have been the comment of Him who told the parable of the rich man who built great barns to hold the surplus product of his lands, thinking that there was nothing better in life than to eat, drink, and be merry; who compared the gifts of the rich man and the poor widow; who commended the love of the woman who poured out the costly ointment upon His head; who promises glorious recognition to those who give, in His name, to any who are in need?
A successful manufacturer, whose eyes have been opened to the folly of attempting to save by cutting off gifts, has written a series of essays on "The Business Man and His Overflow," his purpose being to show that happiness is dependent on helpfulness. "Who is the most successful business man?" he asks. "The man who has the largest bank account?Not necessarily. . . . The most successful business man is he who renders the greatest service to mankind and whose life is most useful."
Two paths are open to us: we can give, and we can give more, or we can economize in giving until we give nothing.
Which is the path of courage?
THE world is full of lonely people—people who keep to themselves, turning away from every approach of others, from all invitations to come out of retirement. They persist in living alone, thinking their own thoughts, pleasing only themselves.
"I can have no place in my life for friendship," one of these unfortunates says.
"I can't be expected to devote myself to my family; it is all I can do to make a living," is the complaint of another.
"I live in the present," says a third; "the past has no interest for me, and the future holds nothing but worries."
"Live more out-of-doors, you say!" is the word of a fourth. "Why should I bother about Nature when Nature does nothing but thwart me?"
"Make God my friend?" a fifth asks in surprise. "Talk to me in rational terms. God doesn't bother about me; why should I bother about Him?"
Is it any wonder that the lives of so many everywhere are empty? It does not occur to them that by their determination to isolate themselves they cut themselves off from the surest road to courage, both received and given—the road of companionship with the people and things most worth while.
ICOMPANIONSHIP WITH FRIENDS
There are those who say that friendship is a lost art; that modern life is too busy for friendship. "Why don't you pause long enough to call on B——?" a father asked his son; "you used to be such good friends." "Oh, I haven't time for that now," was the careless reply; "if I am to get ahead, I feel I must devote myself only to those things that can be a decided help to my advancement."
The mistake made by that son is emphasized by the advice of a keen old man, spoken to a business associate: "If I were asked to give advice to a group of young men who wanted to get ahead in business, I would simply say, 'make friends.' As I sat before the fire the other night I let my mind run back, and it was with surprise that I learned thatmany of the things which in my youth I credited to my ability as a business man came to me because I had made influential friends who did things for me because they liked me. The man who is right has the right kind of friends, and the man who is wrong has the kind of friends who are attracted by his wrongness. A man gets what he is."
Possibly some will think that advice faulty in expression, for it seems at first glance to put friendship on a coldly calculating basis, as if it urged the maker of friends to say before consenting to try for a man's friendship, "Is there anything I can get out of such a friendship for myself?" Of course it is unthinkable that anyone should estimate friendship in that way; friendship that calculates is unworthy the name, and the calculator ought to be doomed to the loneliest kind of life. But, evidently, what the adviser had in mind is the spirit that makes friends because it is worth while to have friends for friendship's sake, that never counts on advancement through the efforts of others. Such a spirit is bound to be surprised some day by the realization that for his success he owed much to the friends whom he made without a thought of self.
One beginner in business decided that hemust find his friendships in serving others. There were those who told him he was making a mistake, but he went calmly on, devoting hours each week to service with an associate in a boys' club. Nothing seemed to come of this but satisfaction to himself and joy to a group whose homes were cheerless.Yet, there was something more—the pleasure of friendship with his associate. One day he was surprised by an invitation to call on the head of a large manufacturing concern. "You don't know me," the man said, "but I know you, for you have been teaching with my son down at the boys' club. For a long time I have been on the lookout for a young man who can come into this business with a view to taking up the work with my son when I must retire. From what I have heard your friend, my son, tell of you, you are the man I have sought."
It is impossible to count on a thing like that as a result of friendship, and the man who is worthy of such a friendship never thinks of reckoning on anything but giving to his friend the best that is in him as he enjoys the comfort of association with him.
Many years ago the author ofThe Four Featherswrote of such a friendship between two men:
"It was a helpful instrument, which would not wear out, put into their hands for a hard, lifelong use, but it was not and never had been spoken of between them. Both men were grateful for it, as for a rare and undeserved gift; yet both knew that it might entail an obligation of sacrifice. But the sacrifices, were they needful, would be made, and they would not be mentioned."
It has been well said that "Love gives and receives, and keeps no account on either side," but that is very different from deliberately using friendship for selfish ends.
IISUCCESSFUL COMRADES
For days two men had been together, tramping, driving, boating, eating, sleeping, talking. And when the time for separation came, one said to the other: "Will you please give a message to your wife? Tell her for me, if you will, that she has made her husband into a real comrade."
That man would have been at a loss to tell what are the elements that go to the making up of a good comrade. In fact, he intimated as much on the last day of the excursion. "You can no more tell the things that go tomake up a real comrade than you can explain the things that make a landscape beautiful; you can only see and rejoice."
Just so, it is possible to see instances of good comradeship and rejoice.
In order that there may be real comradeship between two individuals it is not at all necessary that they shall belong to the same station in life. One of those to whom John Muir, the great naturalist, proved himself a true comrade was a guide who many times went with him into the fastnesses of the high Sierras of California. "It was great to hear him talk," the guide has said. "Often we sat together like two men who had always known each other. It wasn't always necessary to talk; often there would be no word said for half an hour. But we understood each other in the silence."
Nor is it essential that people shall be much together before they can be real comrades. Theodore Roosevelt and Joel Chandler Harris knew one another by reputation only until the red letter day when Uncle Remus entered the door of the White House, in response to an urgent letter of invitation in which the President wrote: "Presidents may come and presidents may go, but Uncle Remus stays put. Georgia has done a great many things for the Union,but she has never done more than when she gave Joel Chandler Harris to American literature." When the two animal-lovers finally came together there was real comradeship. That the reporters understood this was evident from the wire one of them sent to his paper: "Midnight—Mr. Harris has not returned to his hotel. The White House is ablaze with light. It is said that Mr. Harris is telling the story of Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby." But the Georgian's own colloquial account of the memorable session with his comrade at Washington was more explicit:
"There are things about the White House that'll astonish you ef ever you git there while Teddy is on hand. It's a home; it'll come over you like a sweet dream the minnit you git in the door. . . . It's a kind of feelin' that you kin have in your own house, if you've lived right, but it's the rarest thing in the world that you kin find it in anybody else's house. . . . We mostly talked of little children an' all the pranks they're up to from mornin' till night, an' how they draw old folks into all sorts of traps, and make 'em play tricks on themselves. That's the kinder talk I like, an' I could set up long past my bedtime an' listen to it. Jest at the right time, the President would chip inwi' some of his adventures wi' the children. . . . I felt just like I had been on a visit to some old friend that I hadn't seen in years."
When Robert Louis Stevenson and Edward Livingston Trudeau spent days together at Dr. Trudeau's Adirondack sanitarium—the one as patient, the other as physician—they proved that true comradeship is possible even when men's tastes are most unlike. It was possible because they knew how to ignore differences and to find common ground in the worth-while things. "My life interests were bound up in the study of facts, and in the laboratory I bowed duly to the majesty of fact, wherever it might lead," Dr. Trudeau wrote. "Mr. Stevenson's view was to ignore or avoid as much as possible unpleasant facts, and live in a beautiful, extraneous and ideal world of fancy. I got him one day into the laboratory, from which he escaped at the first opportunity. . . . On the other hand, I knew well I could not discuss intelligently with him the things he lived among and the masterly work he produced, because I was incompetent to appreciate to the full the wonderful situations his brilliant mind evolved and the high literary merit of the work in which he described the flights of his great genius."
Yet these two men were great companions, for in spite of differences as to details, their hopes and ambitions and ideals all pointed to the best things in life. After the author's departure, he sent to the doctor a splendidly bound set of his works, first writing in each volume a whimsical bit of rhyme, composed for the occasion.
Though all of these men were real comrades, there is a higher manifestation of comradeship than this. This was shown in the relation of Daniel Coit Gilman, later President of Johns Hopkins University, when he wrote to a fellow student of the deepest things in his life:
"I don't wish merely to thank you in a general way for writing as you did an expression of sympathy, but more especially to respond to the sentiments on Christian acquaintance which you there bring out. I agree with you most fully and only regret that I did not know at an earlier time upon our journey what were your feelings upon a few such topics. I tell you, Brace, that I hate cant and all that sort of thing as much as you or anyone else can do. It is not with everyone that I would enjoy a talk upon religious subjects. I hardly ever wrote a letter on them to those I know best. But when anyone believes in an inner life of faith and joy, and is willing to talk about itin an earnest, everyday style and tone, I do enjoy it most exceedingly."
Theodore Storrs Lee cultivated the relation of a comrade with his fellow students that he might talk to them, without cant, on the deepest things of life. His biographer says: "Many a time did he seek out men in lonely rooms, bewildered or weakened by the college struggles. Many a quiet talk did he have as he and his selected companion trod his favorite walk. No one else in college had so many intimate talks with so many men. . . . On one occasion, when he was urging a friend to give his life to Christian service, he seemed to be unsuccessful—until, on leaving the man at the close of the walk, he made a genial, large-minded remark that opened the way to the heart of his friend." . . . "It was only natural that I should try to meet him half-way," the friend said later, in explanation of his own changed attitude. He had been won by real comradeliness. "It was this devotion to the men in college that led him into the holy of holies of many a man's heart," wrote a friend, "causing many of us to feel in a very real way the sentiment expressed by Mrs. Browning:
"The face of all the world is changed, I thinkSince first I heard the footsteps of thy soul."
IIICOMPANIONSHIP WITH THE PAST
What, courage from companionship with the past? The pessimist says, "Impossible! The past was so much better than the present. See how the country is going to the dogs!" and they point to the revelations of dishonesty in high places. "There were no such blots on our records when the country was young."
A public man gave an effective answer to such croakers when he said:
"As we go on year by year reading in the newspapers of the dreadful things that are occurring; wicked rich men, wicked politicians and wicked men of all kinds, we are apt to feel that we have fallen on very evil times. But are we any worse than our fathers were? John Adams, in 1776, was Secretary of War. He wrote a letter which is still in existence, and told of the terrible corruption that prevailed in the country; he told how everybody was trying to rob the soldiers, rob the War Department, and he said he was really ashamed of the times in which he lived. When Jefferson was President of the United States it was thought that the whole country was going to be given over to French infidelity. When Jackson was Presidentpeople thought the country ruined, because of his action in regard to the United States Bank. And we know how in Polk's time the Mexican War was an era of rascality and dishonesty that appalled the whole country."
It is a mistake to look back a generation or two and say, "The good old days were better than these." In the address already referred to the speaker continued:
"Only thirty years ago, on my first visit to California, I went with a friend to the mining district in the Sierras. One summer evening we sat upon the flume looking over the landscape. My friend was a distinguished man of great ability. In the distance the sun was setting, reflecting its light on the dome of the Capitol of the state, at Sacramento, twenty miles off. He turned to me and said suddenly: 'I would like to be you for one reason, that you are thirty years younger than I am, and they are going to be thirty of the greatest years the world has ever seen.' He is dead now, but his words were prophetic. He and I used to talk about how we could send power down into the mines. An engine would fill the mine with smoke and gases, and yet we must have power to run the drills, etc., using compressed air. How easy to-day, just to drop a wire down andsend the power of electricity! At that time there was but a single railroad running across the continent, which took a single sleeping car each day. Look at the difference now, with six great trunk lines sending out more than a dozen trains, and more than a hundred sleeping cars each day."
Students of American history know something of the fears of early adherents of the United States Government lest the republic prove a failure, and of the threats of doubters and disaffected citizens to do their best to replace the republic by a monarchy. But comparatively few realize how great were the fears, and how brazenly the prophecies were spoken.
An examination of "The Complete Anas of Thomas Jefferson," the collection of private memoranda made by the patriot when he was successively Secretary of State, Vice-President, and President, discloses the fact that some of the gravest of these fears were held by those high in authority, and that the prophecies of evil came from men who were leaders in the nation.
On April 6, 1792, President Washington, in conversation with Jefferson, "expressed his fear that there would, ere long, be a separation of the Union, that the public mind seemed dissatisfied and tending to this." On October 1,1792, he spoke to the Secretary of his desire to retire at the end of his term as President. "Still, however, if his aid was thought necessary to save the cause to which he had devoted his life principally, he would make the sacrifice of a longer continuance."
On April 7, 1793, Tobias Lear, in conversation with Jefferson, spoke pessimistically of the affairs of the country. The debt, he was sure, was growing on the country in spite of claims to the contrary. He said that "the man who vaunted the present government so much on some occasions was the very man who at other times declared that it was a poor thing, and such a one as could not stand, and he was sensible they only esteemed it as a stepping-stone to something else."
On December 1, 1793, an influential Senator (name given) said to several of his fellow Senators that things would never go right until there was a President for life, and a hereditary Senate.
On December 27, 1797, Jefferson said that Tenche Coxe told him that a little before Alexander Hamilton went out of office, he said: "For my part I avow myself a monarchist; I have no objection to a trial being made of this thing of a republic, but, . . . etc."
On February 6, 1798, it was reported to Jefferson that a man of influence in the Government had said, "I have made up my mind on this subject; I would rather the old ship should go down than not." Later he qualified his words, making his statement hypothetical, by adding, "if we are to be always kept pumping so."
On January 24, 1800, it was reported to Jefferson that, at a banquet in New York, Alexander Hamilton made no remark when the health of the President was proposed, but that he asked for three cheers when the health of George III was suggested.
On March 27, 1800, the Anas record: "Dr. Rush tells me that within a few days he has heard a member of Congress lament our separation from Great Britain, and express his sincere wishes that we were again dependent on her."
On December 13, 1803, Jefferson told of the coming to President Adams of a minister from New England who planned to solicit funds in New England for a college in Green County, Tennessee. He wished to have the President's endorsement of the project. But "Mr. Adams . . . said he saw no possibility of continuing the union of the States; that their dissolution musttake place; that he therefore saw no propriety in recommending to New England men to promote a literary institution in the South; that it was in fact giving strength to those who were to be their enemies, and, therefore, he would have nothing to do with it."
One who reads bits like these from Jefferson's private papers appreciates more fully some of the grave difficulties that confronted the country's early leaders; he rejoices more than ever before that the United States emerged so triumphantly from troubled waters until, little more than a century after those days of dire foreboding, it was showing other nations the way to democracy; he takes courage in days of present doubt and uncertainty, assured that the country which has already weathered so many storms will continue to solve its grave problems, and will be more than ever a beacon light to the world.
IVCOMPANIONSHIP WITH NATURE
"Look at the World," is the advice David Grayson gives to those who follow him in his delightful essays on Great Possessions—possessions that cannot be measured with a yardstickor entered in the bank book. This is his cure for all the trials and vexations that come in the course of a busy life. For how can a man remain unsettled and morose and distressed when he is gazing at the broad expanse of the sky, studying the beauty of the trees, or listening to the mellow voices of the birds? How can the wanderer in field and forest forget that God is love?
Some people think that to drink in the glories of nature they must go to the mountains, or seek some other far-away spot. Mistake! The place to enjoy God's world is just where one is, and the time is that very moment. This was the lesson taught so impressively by Alice Freeman Palmer, when she described the little dweller in the tenements who resolved to see something beautiful each day, and who, one day, when confined to the house, found her something in watching a rain-soaked sparrow drinking from the gutter on the tin roof. And this was the thought in the mind of Mr. Grayson when he said:
"I love a sprig of white cedar, especially the spicy, sweet inside bark, or a pine needle, or the tender, sweet, juicy end of a spike of timothy grass drawn slowly from its sheath, or a twig of the birch that tastes like wintergreen."
Hamlin Garland, in "A Son of the Middle Border," has told the story of his boyhood on an Iowa farm. He knew how to enjoy the sights to which so many are blind:
"I am reliving days when the warm sun, falling on radiant slopes of grass, lit the meadow phlox and tall tiger lilies to flaming torches of color. I think of blackberry thickets and odorous grapevines, and cherry-trees and the delicious nuts which grew in profusion throughout the forest to the north. The forest, which seemed endless and was of enchanted solemnity, served as our wilderness. We explored it at every opportunity. We loved every day for the color it brought, each season for the wealth of its experiences, and we welcomed the thought of spending all our years in this beautiful home where the wood and the prairie of our song did actually meet and mingle. . . . I studied the clouds. I gnawed the beautiful red skin from the seed vessels which hung upon the wild rose bushes, and I counted the prairie chickens as they began to come together in winter flocks, running through the stubble in search of food. I stopped now and again to examine the lizards unhoused by the shares, . . . and I measured the little granaries of wheat which the mice and gophers haddeposited deep under the ground, storehouses which the plow had violated. My eyes dwelt enviously on the sailing hawk and on the passing of ducks. . . . Often of a warm day I heard the sovereign cry of the sand-hill crane falling from the azure throne, so high, so far, his form could not be seen, so close to the sun that my eyes could not detect his solitary, majestic, circling sweep. . . . His brazen, reverberating call will forever remain associated in my mind with mellow, pulsating earth, spring grass and cloudless glorious May-time skies."
Henry Fawcett lived at about the same period in a rural district in England. He, too, delighted to ramble in the fields. One day, when he was out hunting with his father, an accidental gunshot deprived him of his eyesight. But the boy would not think of shutting himself away from the joys of nature which meant so much to him. "I very soon came to the resolution to live, as far as possible, just as I had lived before. . . . No one can more enjoy catching a salmon in the Tweed of the Spey, or throwing a fly in some quiet trout stream in Wiltshire or Hampshire."
In the story of the life of John J. Audubon an incident is told that shows how the greatest joy can be found in what seems like one of themost ordinary things in the life of the forest—the nesting of the birds:
"He became interested in a bird, not as large as the wren, of such peculiar grey plumage that it harmonized with the bark of the trees, and could scarcely be seen. One night he came home greatly excited, saying he had found a pair that was evidently preparing to make a nest. The next morning he went into the woods, taking with him a telescopic microscope. The scientific instrument he erected under the tree that gave shelter to the literally invisible inhabitants he was searching for, and, making a pillow of some moss, he lay upon his back, and looking through the telescope, day after day, noted the progress of the little birds, and, after three weeks of such patient labor, felt that he had been amply rewarded for the toil and the sacrifice by the results he had obtained."
When a boy David Livingstone laid the foundation for the love of the open that helped to make his life in Africa a never-ending delight. "Before he was ten he had wandered all over the Clyde banks about Blantyre and had begun to collect and wonder at shells and flowers," one of his biographers says.
Not far away, also in Scotland, Henry Drummond spent his boyhood. He, too, knew thepleasure of wandering afield. He liked to go to the rock on which stands grim Stirling Castle, and look away to the windings of the crooked Forth, the green Ochil Hills, and, farther away, Ben Lomond, Ben Venue, and Ben Ledi, the guardians of the beautiful Highland lochs. He was never weary of feasting his eyes on them. In later years he would go back to the scenes of his boyhood, climb to the Castle, and, looking out on the beautiful prospect, would say "Man, there's no place like this; no place like Scotland."
Bayard Taylor first made a name for himself by his ability to see the things that many people pass by, and to describe them sympathetically. But he, also, in boyhood days learned the lesson that paved the way for later achievements. He was not six years old when he used to wander to a fascinating swamp near his Pennsylvania home. If the child was missed from the house, the first thing that suggested itself was to climb upon a mound which overlooked the swamp. Once, from the roof of the house, he discovered unknown forests and fresh fields which he made up his mind to explore. Later, in company with a Quaker schoolmaster, he took long walks, and thus learned many things about the trees and plants.When he was twelve he began to write out the thoughts that came to him in this intimate study of nature.
In far-away Norway Ole Bull had a like experience. At an early age he began to be on familiar terms with the silent things about him. The quality of his later work was influenced by the grandeur of the scenery in which he lived. To him trees, rocks, waterfalls, mountains, all spoke a language which demanded expression through the strings of his violin; he turned everything into music. His biographer says:
"When, in early childhood, playing alone in the meadow, he saw a delicate bluebell moving in the breeze, he fancied he heard the bell ring, and the grass accompanying it with most exceptionally fine voices."
John Muir, who later wrote of the great Sequoias of California and the glaciers of Alaska, when a boy of ten found delight in scenes of which he wrote as follows:
"Oh, that glorious Wisconsin wilderness! Everything new and pure in the very prime of spring, when nature's pulses were beating highest and mysteriously keeping tune with our own! Young hearts, young leaves, flowers, animals, the winds and the streams andthe sparkling lake, all wildly, gladly rejoicing together."
There is something missing in the life of one who cannot enter into the feelings of a boy like Muir or Taylor or Drummond. And when such a boy grows up, the gap in the life will be more conspicuous than ever.
Think of the poverty of the stranger to whom a traveler, feeling that he must give expression to his keen delight in the autumn foliage, said, "What wonderful coloring!" "Where?" came the reply. "Oh, the trees! Well, I'm not interested in trees. Talk to me about coal. I know coal."
VCOMPANIONSHIP WITH GOD
Some people insist that it is impractical moonshine to speak of making a companion of God, that folks who talk about such things are dreamers, far removed from touch with the cold reality of daily life.
Then how about the nephew of whom Dr. Alexander MacColl told at Northfield? He was surely a practical man. For four years he had been in the thick of the fighting in France. Yet at the close of one of his letters to his unclehe said: "I hope when the war is over that I may be able to spend a month somewhere among the hills. I often think that if more people in the world had lived among such hills as we have in Scotland there would have been no world war."
"When I came yesterday afternoon, and saw again the glory of these hills," was Dr. MacColl's comment, "I found myself sharing very deeply in that feeling of my good nephew, and wishing that more people in the world had known what it is to commune with God in the silences."
That fine young Scotchman would have known how to take a college student who, while having a country walk with a friend, was explaining the reason for his belief in God and his trust in Him. As he concluded his message he pointed to a large tree which they were passing, saying as he did so, "God is as real to me as that tree."
He had a right to say such a thing, for he not only believed, but he was conscious that God was with him, his Companion wherever he went. This being the case, prayer became for him the simplest and most natural thing in the world. God was by his side; then why should not he talk to God, by ejaculation as well as bymore formal utterance? Yet his talks with God never became formal. They were always intimate and confidential—like the approaches of Principal John Cairns, the famous Scotch minister. His biographer tells of a time when he was at the manse of a country minister in whose church he was to preach next day. The minister's wife withdrew to get a cup of tea for the old man, leaving her little boy there. By and by she heard a strange, unaccustomed sound, as it seemed to her under such conditions. And as she listened and looked, she saw that the old man was kneeling with the boy. It had seemed to him the most natural thing in the world to speak to his Great Friend about his little friend.
Dr. Arthur Smith was like that with God, and his son Henry took after him. One January day in 1905 the father reached New York from China and sought his son. They went to a hotel room to bridge the time of absence by "a tremendous lot of back conversation," as the son wrote to the mother. But before they had any chance to talk of other matters the father said, "Come, boy, let's have a prayer." "Wasn't that just like him?" Henry asked his mother.
A minister who was spending his vacation inthe northern woods was called in to see a dying lumberman. Before leaving the visitor prayed with the sick man, and suggested that he pray for himself. The objection was made that it was useless to pray—God understood a man's trials, and He knew what was wanted before a request was made. The minister asked him if he didn't know what his children needed before they asked him, if he didn't know they were disappointed or troubled; yet didn't he wish to have them talk over these things with him?
The man thought a moment. Then he said, "Do you think that would be prayer—just for me to lie here and tell God what He knows already—how it hurts, and all my disappointment, and my anxiety for the future of my children and my wife—and everything—just to tell Him?"
"I think it would," said the minister. "I think it would be prayer of a very real kind."
One who had learned that prayer is not a mere formal exercise, to be dreaded and postponed, has said:
"Pray often—in bits, with a persistency of habit that betrays a childlike eagerness and absorption. Rise up to question God as children do their earthly parents—at morning, noon and night and between times. Ask Him abouteverything. Be with Him more than with all other persons. Acquire the home habit with Him. Be a child in His hands. Do not fear lest He be too busy to listen, or too grown up to care or to understand. Just talk to Him, in broken sentences, half-formed with crude wishes; in foolish chatter, if need be. Make the Heavenly Father the center of your life, the source and judge of all your satisfactions. Be sure to let Him put you to bed, waken you in the morning, wait on you at table, order your day's doings, protect you from harm, soothe your disquiet, supply all your daily needs."
Such a prayer is good, not only when one is sick, but when one is well and busy with the affairs of daily life. A clergyman has told of a visit to London during which he called on a merchant whom he had met in America. At the business house he was told that he could not see the merchant, as it was steamer day, and orders had been given not to disturb him. But when the card was taken up, the merchant appeared, his face beaming with pleasure. After a moment's greeting the visitor offered to go away, but the merchant took him into his office, and said:
"I am very glad you have called. I would not have had you fail. I am very busy, but Ialways have a moment for my Lord. I have a little place for private prayer. You must come in with me, and we shall have a season of prayer together."
Busy, but not too busy for prayer, longing to see his friend, but eager to spend the ten minutes of the call in prayer with that other Friend who made the brief visit worth while!
In telling this incident, one writer on the subject of prayer has said:
"Several, perhaps many merchants in one of our large cities have fitted up for themselves dark, narrow, boxlike closets, whither, each by himself, they are wont to retire for a few minutes at times, during the pressure of the day's business, for the refreshment of soul, which they find they really need in communion with God. One of these men is reported to have said: 'On some days, if I had not that resort, I believe I should go mad, so great is the pressure.'"
Dr. Purves once told an incident of the distinguished scientist, Professor Joseph Henry, as given him by one of Dr. Henry's students. "I well remember the wonderful care with which he arranged all his principal experiments. Then often, when the testing moment came, that holy as well as great philosopherwould raise his hand in adoring reverence and call upon me to uncover my head and worship in silence, 'because,' he said, 'God is here. I am about to ask God a question.'"
To Mary Slessor of Calabar, whom the Africans learned to love devotedly, prayer was as simple and easy as talking to a friend in the room. "Her religion was a religion of the heart," her biographer says. "Her communion with her Father was of the most natural, most childlike character. No rule or habit guided her. She just spoke to Him as a child to its father when she needed help and strength, or when her heart was filled with joy and gratitude, at any time, in any place. He was so real to her, so near, that her words were almost of the nature of conversation. There was no formality, no self-consciousness, no stereotyped diction, only the simplest language from a quiet and humble heart. It is told of her that once, when she was in Scotland, after a tiresome journey, she sat down at the tea table alone, and, lifting up her eyes, said, 'Thank you, Father—ye ken I'm tired,' in the most ordinary way as if she had been addressing her friend. On another occasion in the country, she lost her spectacles while coming from a meeting in the dark. She could not do withoutthem, and she prayed simply and directly, 'O Father, give me back my spectacles!' A lady asked her how she obtained such intimacy with God. 'Ah, woman,' she said, 'when I am out there in the bush, I have often no other one to speak to but my Father, and I just talk to Him. . . .'"
"I just talk to Him!" There is the secret of getting and keeping close to the Father, the most worth-while Companion we can possibly have with us on country walk, on vacation excursion, amid business perplexities, in the desert or in the thronged city street, when the days are crowded with burdens, or when the time of rest after work has come.
Try Him and see if it is not so.
VIA CHAPTER OF—ACCIDENTS?
A man had planned a three-day trip with care. On paper everything looked promising for a combination of business and pleasure that would make these days stand out in the record of the year.
In the morning he would go to Washington. There he would have opportunity to see in one of the Departments a man whose help in anemergency would prove invaluable. At four in the afternoon he would leave for Cincinnati. By taking the train he would miss a bit of scenery at Cumberland, which he had hoped to see. This could not be helped, however, for by the train he would be set down in Cincinnati in good season for the important one-day session of a committee, the primary object of the trip.
To be sure, he would have to miss another important committee meeting at home, unless he should forego the Washington stop. But would it not be worth while to miss one of the meetings when he did not see how he could well arrange for both?
The ticket was bought and reservation was made. Then interruption number one came. Most unexpectedly there was a call from a neighbor to render such a service as can be given but once in a lifetime. Yet that difficult service must be rendered at the moment when, according to program, he would be taking the train for Washington.
Of course there could be no question as to his course. Instead of going to Washington and seeing the man with whom conference would mean so much, he must take train by a route more direct. This would enable him to reach Cincinnati in season for the committeemeeting; and it would enable him also to attend the committee meeting at home which he had decided to put aside for the sake of the Washington opportunity.
After serving his neighbor and attending the home meeting—this turned out to be so important that to miss it would have been little short of a calamity—the direct train for Cincinnati was taken, though not without a sigh for the lost opportunity in Washington.
Yet the sigh was forgotten when on that train he became acquainted with three fellow-passengers who gave him some new and needed glimpses of life.
A study of time tables showed him that he could return by way of Washington, and could have two hours for the interview there on which he had counted so much, before the hour came for completing the homeward journey.
After a successful committee meeting in Cincinnati, the importance of which proved to be even greater than had been anticipated, the train for Washington was taken at the Cincinnati terminal. At the moment this train was due to leave, there drew in on an adjoining track cars from which weary, anxious-looking passengers alighted. "What train is that?" was the question that came to his lips.
"Number two, boss," the porter replied. "Left Washington at four yesterday afternoon. She's ten hours late, 'count of that big wreck down in the mountains."
And that was the train he had planned to take after finishing his business in Washington! If he had taken it, what of his touch with the Cincinnati meeting?
In thankful spirit, and with the resolve renewed for the ten thousandth time that he would cease to question God's wisdom in thwarting his little plans, he went to his berth. First, however, he included in his evening prayer a petition that the train might not be late in reaching Washington, since the time there would be short enough, at best.
Three hours later he roused with the start that is apt to come with the intense silence that marks a long night wait of a train between stations. The delay was so prolonged that soon the time table showed the loss of three hours.
There was one consolation, however: he would be able to pass during hours of daylight through the incomparable mountains of West Virginia.
The unexpected blessing was forgotten when the train drew into the Washington station sonear the close of the afternoon that the traveler thought he might as well go home at once. Later on, he might be able to make a special trip to the Capital. "And I might have finished my program without all that expense and trouble," he thought.
But while he was there he decided he would call on the telephone the man in the department whom he wished to see. He told the man of his late train and his disappointment.
"Perhaps it is just as well," was the word from the other end of the wire. "I have been afraid that the time set aside for our work this afternoon was altogether too short. What do you say to coming to me the first thing in the morning? Then we can devote to our program all the time that proves necessary."
So he remained overnight. The evening gave him the chance he had sought for a year to spend an evening consulting authorities at the Congressional Library. Next morning the real business of the stopover was attended to. Then he learned why it would have been impossible to receive the afternoon before the attention he received during the morning hours. He knew, too, that it would have been out of the question to seek a second interview on the same business; therefore he would havehad to rest content with the results of the first conference.
The time came to take the train for the final stage of the journey. On that train his seat-mate, a man he had never seen before, perhaps never would see again, gave him a number of bits of vital information on the very business that had led him to Washington!
Is it worth while to ask God to look out for the everyday needs of His people?