RADIANCIES OF SERVICE
I want to radiate by thought, word, and act the joy and blessedness of
service. What a privilege it is to be able to do something for your
fellows! How great and constant is the joy of ministering! How ready we
are to run with willing feet to do some little or big thing for those we
love! The lover will climb dangerous Alpine heights to get the rare and
richly treasured edelweiss for his beloved. Leander gladly and joyously
braved the dangers of the Hellespont that he might cheer and encourage
his Hero. The lover has always cried, in all ages, to his loved one,
asking her to send him on some difficult errand. He would gladly go
anywhere, to any service, however arduous and dangerous, to prove his
love. The records of chivalry are full of daring deeds accomplished by
men in order to please the women they loved.
Against this kind of service I have nothing to say. At the same time,
this is not the kind of service of which I now write. I would radiate
the thought that in our service we should treat all men and women with
the same willing gladness of ministry that the lover has for the
mistress of his heart. I desire to be ready and willing to fly on the
wings of helpfulness to do service for the meanest and most despicable
of human kind, if thereby he, or she, may be benefited. I would radiate
the belief that our willing service belongs to humanity, all men, all
women, not to a select few, not to the small and chosen circle whom we
call our loved ones and friends. I would radiate the spirit of service
that possessed and animated the strong, pure soul of William Morris,
that led him to place his precious time and service at the disposal of a
committee of men, not one of whom knew enough to appreciate his
exquisite and beautiful devotion, and under whose control he was ready
to go and speak words of cheer, fellowship, and brotherhood in the
lowest and most degraded parts of London. He was imbued with this
passion for service and it was service to the whole of mankind--not the
chosen few.
I once picked up some socialistic newspaper with which I was not
familiar, but in it was an account of the life of a man who had recently
died. According to the story of his biographer, this man was carried
away with this passion for human service to the lowest and most
degraded, and he had spent his active and busy life in ministering to
those who, as a rule, are ignored by their more fortunate brothers and
sisters. It was a story that thrilled me to a higher and nobler
endeavor.
Many a time I have bowed my soul in reverence and humility before a
group of Salvation Army lasses who, with sweet, gentle ministrations,
have cheered the dwellers in the wretched hovels of London, New York,
and other cities. I know one maiden, delicately constituted, and reared
in a home full of wealth and luxury, who felt this passionate call of
service so strongly, that, in spite of the protests of her relatives and
friends, she went to London, united with the Salvation Army, and with
her own beautiful and gentle hands, down upon her knees, has scrubbed
into cleanliness the floor of a drunken wife and drunken husband whose
children had never known a clean floor in the whole of their dirty and
wretched lives. I have helped her clean out the accumulated filth, of
what seemed to be months, in similar wretched places, and all this, as
well as the more refined ministrations of the mind and soul, were
offered with a sweet and gentle insistence that no one could take
offense at, and without an air of conscious self-approbation that one so
often finds in those who are seeking to minister to others.
But it is not only in this larger and devoted sense that I would radiate
my desire to serve and minister to my fellows. It is in the small and
every-day things of life, no matter what my work or surroundings may
be, that I would radiate this ministering spirit. What a pleasure it is
to do things for others. What a joy to realize that your friends love
you enough to want you to do something for them.
I find, however, that in the mind of many is the idea that certain
service is menial, and that they would not serve if they were not
obliged to do so for the money it brings. I have a deep and profound
pity in my soul for those who look upon life with this perverted vision.
If I were a waiter in a cheap restaurant, it seems to me it would be my
joy to serve the cheap meals as quickly and as cheerfully as I possibly
could. Surely ministering to the bodily wants of men and women is a
service which ought to be blessed. If I were a housemaid I feel that I
should find joy in making and keeping everything as orderly and tidy as
possible.
I have several times stayed in a semi-public institution where a great
number of nurses were employed, and I have watched both men and women
engaged in this beautiful service. In this particular place they all
seemed full of this passion for service. There was no impatience at the
often exacting calls and demands of the querulous and unreasonable
invalids. Their very lives were a dedication.
Sometimes we meet with those who will refuse to do certain things
because they regard them as more menial than those they were engaged to
perform, as, for instance, the case of a bell boy who refused to take
away a coal-scuttle when asked to do so because that was not in the list
of his duties, and a man "lower down in the scale" was supposed to
attend to work of that kind. Now, while I recognize that there must be
for convenience's sake, a division of labor, I want to radiate the
feeling and belief that there is no higher, no lower, in this call of
personal service. It is just as honorable to be a street sweeper or a
scavenger of the meanest kind (so-called), to be a farm laborer, to be a
kitchen drudge, to be a factory hand, as it is to be a minister of a
church that pays a salary of $20,000 a year. The real blessedness of
life of all grades of service from the scavenger to the expensive pastor
is determined by the _spirit_ behind the service, and the kitchen drudge
who does her work with the consciousness in her own soul that she is
gladly, merrily, cheerfully undertaking her work and doing it well for
the comfort, benefit, cheer, and blessing of her employers is of more
benefit to mankind than the services of the expensive pastor of the
exclusive church who regards his ministry as a proof of his own
intellectual worth, and as a means of asserting his high social
position.
Who can ever forget the wonderful picture of that sturdy Scotch Doctor
depicted by Ian Maclaren in his _Bonnie Brier Bush_, whose passion of
devotion and ministry was so pure that it reached every soul in the
whole region.
Frances Hodgson Burnett, in her _Dawn of a To-morrow_, tells of a
degraded street waif who yet had this passion of ministry in her soul,
and I have come to the conclusion that wherever it is found, it is
divine, and therefore blessed. Hence I would radiate it at all times,
under all conditions, and under all circumstances to all classes and
conditions of men.
Where would have been the work of Judge Lindsay of Denver, Golden Rule
Jones of Toledo, McClaughery of Elmira Penitentiary, Chief Kohler of
Cleveland, Governor Hunt and Warden Sims of Arizona, if they had worked
only for the worthy? It was the very openness of the unworthiness of
those for whom they strove, that made the appeal to these large-hearted
men.
It is so easy to criticise men of this stamp because they have dared to
break away from the conventional rendering of service only to the
worthy. It is so easy to cry that they are doing more harm than good.
But those who know the work and know the hearts that are constantly
being touched and molded into betterment by it are better able to judge
of its higher results.
Shall I hesitate to render service because I myself am not perfect?
Shall I refuse to give the shivering and hungry beggar on the street a
twenty-five cent meal ticket because I myself am not free from debt?
Shall I refuse to guide the lost wayfarer because I myself do not know
all the winding pathways of life?
By no means! Let me do the best I may while I may, and seize every
opportunity that arises. It was a Christian minister that dared to
rebuke Father Damien by claiming that he was not immaculate in his
service to the repulsive and loathsome lepers of Molokai. And it was
Robert Louis Stevenson who showed that Christian minister what true
Christianity would have led him to say instead of what he did say.
Father Damien's ministry was self-sacrificing, noble, and divine, even
though,--granting for the moment the truth of the minister's
slander,--his service was touched of the earth, earthy. Yet the
beneficence and blessedness of it was so supremely above the smug,
self-satisfied, standing-aloofness of the "immaculate" ministerial
critic that Stevenson's colossal rebuke to the latter found perfect echo
in the heart of every decent man and woman throughout the world. Joaquin
Miller expresses the same thought in his beautiful and strong poem on
Father Damien when he says:
Why do ye not as he has done?
If we can do so much better than those we criticise, why, in the name of
heaven and suffering humanity, do we not go ahead and do it? Let us do
our best regardless of our own infirmities and weakness and the
consequent criticisms of others.
So I want to radiate to the needy and unworthy my readiness, nay, my
anxiety to serve them whenever and wherever I possibly can. And though
my service be not unmixed gold, though there be in it some of the dross
of imperfection, I would not withhold my hand on that account, but I
would serve the more readily and gladly in the hope and assurance that
by suffering with the needy and unworthy in their need and unworthiness
the fire of their pain and sorrow may help refine away the dross in me
and leave only that of pure gold.
"Give to the needy! _worthy_ or _unworthy_!" should be the battle cry of
him who wishes to be a blessing to his fellows, and the more unworthy
the needy are, the more loving and wise the service should be. When Walt
Whitman was shedding blessing, benediction, comfort, and joy on every
hand throughout the hospitals of Washington, he had little or no money
to give. He asked no questions when he went to the bedside of the sick
and dying soldier boys as to whether they were worthy or not. They were
needy and that was enough for him. He stayed and soothed their weary
hours by telling them stories, reading to them, writing letters home
for them, and in a thousand and one little and big ways seeking to make
their sick beds more tolerable during the long hours of enforced
confinement.
One of his rules for the making of a true poet was that he should "give
alms to all who ask," and that he should "stand up for the stupid and
crazy." I have a friend in Chicago who seeks absolutely to live these
two rules in his daily life. Even though he may often give to the
unworthy, he feels he can better afford to do that than to miss once
giving to a really needy person lest he might be giving to some one who
was neither needy nor worthy.
A poet, whom I am very fond of quoting, once wrote:
In men whom men condemn as ill,
I find so much of goodness still;
In men whom men account divine,
I find so much of sin and blot;
I hesitate to draw the line between the two;
Where God has not.
It is impossible properly and wisely to differentiate, and because a man
is unworthy is all the more reason that his fellows should seek to help
him into a state of worthiness.
How I wish I could imbue all with the spirit that moves Charles
Montgomery, the prisoner's friend of San Francisco. He goes to the state
penitentiaries at San Quentin and Folsom, and arranges to give help to
the prisoners as soon as they are released. Nay, he provides places for
them and then goes before the board of parole and secures their release.
He takes a true brother's interest in the men and seeks to win them to a
nobler life. Doubtless he is often deceived, but in scores of cases he
starts the men on the up-grade. What is one failure or ten, to one
success or ten? If it were _my_ son that was saved I should be most
grateful even though he saved but one. It would make his work glorious
and blessed to me. Then try to feel what it must be for some other
father or mother to learn that his, or her, son is saved from the life
of hell, to the life of heaven, here and now, and do as much for that
son as you would for your own.
I doubt not that some of the boys Judge Lindsay seeks to save in Denver,
are not all they ought to be, and that sometimes he is disappointed in
the results. But does this make him lose heart, or cease to work for the
new cases that come? By no means! It makes him more determined than ever
to reach their hearts. He is more tender, more long-suffering, more
patient, more sympathetic, more loving. The greater the need the greater
the endeavor.
The other day I sat down to the dinner table with a friend who outlined
to me a project in which himself and four others are interested. It is
to buy a farm, on the shores of a small but beautiful lake, a few miles
out from one of our great cities, and there establish a home and a
school for needy children. These five devoted young people are now
working hard and each one is saving every cent he can out of his own
earnings that, without calling upon any one else, they may be able to
buy the farm. I had asked my friend why he did not go to hear the great
actress Bernhardt. The reason was that he preferred to put the three
dollars that a ticket to hear Bernhardt would have cost into his "child
farm fund." Here was self-denial with joy, for the privilege of service.
And whom will he serve? There will be no question asked as to the
worthiness or unworthiness of the children that will be received into
this home when established.[E]
[E] Since these pages were written this farm-school has become an
established fact, and is doing excellent and beautiful work for needy
children.