PART I

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FACES IN THE FIRE

FACES IN THE FIRE

and

OTHER FANCIES

BY F. W. BOREHAM

AUTHOR OF 'THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL,' 'THE SILVER SHADOW,'

'MUSHROOMS ON THE MOOR,' 'THE GOLDEN MILESTONE,' 'MOUNTAINS

IN THE MIST,' 'THE LUGGAGE OF LIFE,' ETC., ETC.

THE ABINGDON PRESS

NEW YORK CINCINNATI

CONTENTS

PART I

CHAP. PAGE

I. THE BABY AMONG THE BOMBSHELLS 13

II. STRAWBERRIES AND CREAM 24

III. THE CONQUEST OF THE CRAGS 36

IV. LINOLEUM 46

V. THE EDITOR 57

VI. THE PEACEMAKER 68

VII. NOTHING 79

VIII. THE ANGEL AND THE IRON GATE 89

IX. SHORT CUTS 98

PART II

I. THE POSTMAN 113

II. CRYING FOR THE MOON 123

III. OUR LOST ROMANCES 134

IV. A FORBIDDEN DISH 144

V. AN OLD MAID'S DIARY 153

VI. THE RIVER 163

VII. FACES IN THE FIRE 172

VIII. THE MENACE OF THE SUNLIT HILL 184

IX. AMONG THE ICEBERGS 196

PART III

I. A BOX OF TIN SOLDIERS 207

II. LOVE, MUSIC, AND SALAD 216

III. THE FELLING OF THE TREE 227

IV. SPOIL! 237

V. A PHILOSOPHY OF FANCY-WORK 247

VI. A PAIR OF BOOTS 256

VII. CHRISTMAS BELLS 265

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

It was a chilling experience, that first glimpse of New Zealand! Hour

after hour the great ship held on her way up the Cook Straits amidst

scenery that made me shudder and that scowled me out of countenance.

Rugged, massive, inhospitable, and bare, how sternly those wild and

mountainous landscapes contrasted with the quiet beauty that I had

surveyed from the same decks as the ship had dropped down Channel! I

shaded my eyes with my hands and swept the strange horizon at every

point, but nowhere could I see a sign of habitation--no man; no beast;

no sheltering roof; no winding road; no welcoming column of smoke! And

when, in the twilight of that still autumn evening, I at length

descended the gangway, and set foot for the first time on the land of my

adoption, I found myself--twelve thousand miles from home--in a country

in which not a soul knew me, and in which I knew no single soul. It was

not an exhilarating sensation.

That was on March 11, 1895--twenty-one years ago to-night. Those

one-and-twenty years have been almost evenly divided between the old

manse at Mosgiel, in New Zealand, and my present Tasmanian home. As I

sit here, and let my memory play among the years, I smile at the odd way

in which these southern lands have belied that first austere impression.

In my fire to-night I see such crowds of faces--the faces of those with

whom I have laughed and cried, and camped and played, and worked and

worshipped in the course of these one-and-twenty years. There are

fancy-faces, too; the folk of other latitudes; the faces I have never

seen; the friends my pen has brought me. I cannot write to all to-night;

so I set aside this book as a memento of the times we have spent

together. If, by good hap, it reaches any of them, let them regard it as

a shake of the hand for the sake of auld lang syne. And if, in addition

to cementing old friendships, it creates new ones, how doubly happy I

shall be!

FRANK W. BOREHAM.

Hobart, Tasmania.

PART I

I

THE BABY AMONG THE BOMBSHELLS

Everything depends on keeping up the supply of bombshells. It will be a

sad day for us all when there are no more bombs to burst, no more shocks

to be sustained, no more sensations to be experienced, no more thrills

to be enjoyed. Fancy being condemned to reside in a world that is

bankrupt of astonishments, a world that no longer has it in its power to

startle you, a world that has nothing up its sleeve! It would be like

occupying a seat at a conjuring entertainment at which the conjurer had

exhausted all his tricks, but did not like to tell you so! When I was a

small boy I used to be mildly amused by the antics of a performing bear

that occasionally visited our locality. A sickly-looking foreigner led

the poor brute by a string. Its claws were cut, and its teeth drawn. By

dint of a few kicks and cuffs it was persuaded to dance a melancholy

kind of jig, and then shamble round with a basket in search of a few

half-pence. I remember distinctly that, as I watched the unhappy

creature's dismal performance, I tried to imagine what the animal would

have looked like had no cruel captor removed him from his native lair.

The mental contrast was a very painful one. Yet it was not half so

painful as the contrast between the world as it is and a world that had

run out of bombshells. A world that could no longer surprise us would be

a world with its claws cut and its teeth drawn. Half the fun of waking

up in the morning is the feeling that you have come upon a day that is

brand new, a day that the world has never seen before, a day that is

certain to do things that no other day has ever done. Half the pleasure

of welcoming a new-born baby is the absolute certainty that here you

have a packet of amazing surprises. An individuality is here; a thing

that never was before; you cannot argue from any other child to this

one; the only thing that you can predict with confidence about this

child is that it will do things that were never done, or never done in

the same way, since this old world of ours began. Here is novelty,

originality, an infinity of bewildering possibility. Each mother thinks

that there never was a baby like her baby; and most certainly there

never was. As long as the stock of days keeps up, and as long as the

supply of babies does not peter out, there will be no lack of

bombshells. I visited the other day the ruins of an old prison. I saw

among other things the dark cells in which, in the bad old days,

prisoners languished in solitary confinement. Charles Reade and other

writers have told us how, in those black holes, convicts adopted all

kinds of ingenious expedients to secure themselves against losing their

reason in the desolate darkness. They tossed buttons about and groped

after them; they tore up their clothes and counted the pieces; they did

a thousand other things, and went mad in spite of all their pains. Now

what is this horror of the darkness? Let us analyse it. Wherein does it

differ from blindness? Why did insanity overtake these solitary men? The

horror of the darkness was not fear. A child dreads the dark because he

thinks that wolves and hobgoblins infest it. But these men had no such

terrors. The thing that unbalanced them was the maddening monotony of

the darkness. Nothing happened. In the light something happens every

second. A thousand impressions are made upon the mind in the course of

every minute. Each sensation, though it be of no more importance than

the buzz of a fly at the window-pane, the flutter of a paper to the

floor, or the sound of a footfall on the street, represents a surprise.

It is a mental jolt. It transfers the attention from one object to an

entirely different one. We pass in less than a second from the buzz of

the fly to the flutter of the paper, and again from the flutter of the

paper to the sound of the footfall. Any man who could count the separate

objects that occupied his attention in the course of a single moment

would be astonished at their variety and multiplicity. But in the dark

cell there are no sensations. The eye cannot see; the ear cannot hear.

Not one of the senses is appealed to. The mind is accustomed to flit

from sensation to sensation like a butterfly flitting from flower to

flower, but infinitely faster. But in this dark cell it languishes like

a captive butterfly in a cardboard box. If you hold me under water I

shall die, because my lungs can no longer do the work they have always

been accustomed to do. In the dark cell the mind finds itself in the

same predicament. It is drowned in inky air. The mind lives on

sensations; but here there are no sensations. And if the world gets

shorn of its surprise-power, it will become a maddening place to live

in. We only exist by being continually startled. We are kept alive by

the everlasting bursting of bombshells.

I am not so much concerned, however, with the ability of the world to

afford us a continuous series of thrills as with my own capacity to be

surprised. The tendency is to lose the power of astonishment. I am told

that, in battle, the moment in which a man finds himself for the first

time under fire is a truly terrifying experience. But after awhile the

new-comer settles down to it, and, with shells bursting all around him,

he goes about his tasks as calmly as on parade. This idiosyncrasy of

ours may be a very fine thing under such circumstances, but under other

conditions it has the gravest elements of danger. As I sit here writing,

a baby crawls upon the floor. It is good fun watching him. He plays with

the paper band that fell from a packet of envelopes. He puts it round

his wrist like a bracelet. He tears it, and lo, the bracelet of a moment

ago is a long ribbon of coloured paper. He is astounded. His wide-open

eyes are a picture. The telephone rings. He looks up with approval.

Anything that rings or rattles is very much to his taste. I go over to

his new-found toy, and begin talking to it. He is dumbfounded. My

altercation with the telephone completely bewilders him. Whilst I am

thus occupied, he moves towards my vacant chair. He tries to pull

himself up by it, but pulls it over on to himself. The savagery of the

thing appals him; he never dreamed of an attack from such a source. In

what a world of wonder is he living! Bombs are bursting all around him

all day long. A baby's life must be a thrillingly sensational affair.

But the pity of it is that he will grow out of it. He may be surrounded

with the most amazing contrivances on every hand, but the wonder of it

will make little or no appeal to him. He will be like the soldier in the

trenches who no longer notices the roar and crash of the shells. When

Livingstone set out for England in 1856, he determined to take with him

Sekwebu, the leader of his African escort. But when the party reached

Mauritius, the poor African was so bewildered by the steamers and other

marvels of civilization that he went mad, threw himself into the sea,

and was seen no more. I only wish that an artist had sketched the scene

upon which poor Sekwebu gazed so nervously as he stood on the deck of

the _Frolic_ that day sixty years ago. I suspect that the 'marvels of

civilization' that so terrified him would appear to us to be very

ramshackle and antiquated affairs. We lie back in our sumptuous

motor-cars and yawn whilst surrounded on every hand with astonishments

compared with which the things that Sekwebu saw are not worthy to be

compared. That is the tragic feature of the thing. In the midst of

marvels we tend to become blasé. It is not that we are occupying a seat

at a conjuring entertainment at which the conjurer has exhausted all his

tricks, and does not like to tell you so. On the contrary, it is like

occupying a seat at a conjuring entertainment and falling fast asleep

just as the performer is getting to his most baffling and masterly

achievements. I like to watch this baby of mine among his bombshells.

The least thing electrifies him. What a sensational world this would be

if I could only contrive to retain unspoiled that childish capacity for

wonder!

I shall be told that it is the baby's ignorance that makes him so

susceptible to sensation. It is nothing of the kind. Ignorance does not

create wonder; it destroys it. I walked along a track through the bush

one day in company with two men. One was a naturalist; the other was an

ignoramus. Twenty times at least the naturalist swooped down upon some

curious grass, some novel fern, or some rare orchid. The walk that

morning was, to his knowing eyes, as sensational as a hair-raising film

at a cinematograph. But to my other companion it was absolutely

uneventful, and the only thing at which he wondered was the enthusiasm

of our common friend. When Alfred Russel Wallace was gathering in South

America his historic collection of botanical and zoological specimens,

the natives of the Amazon Valley thought him mad. He paid them

handsomely to catch creatures for which they could discover no use at

all. To him the great forests of Bolivia and Brazil were alive with

sensation. They fascinated and enthralled him. But the black men could

not understand it. They saw no reason for his rapture. Yet his wonder

was not the outcome of ignorance; it was the outcome of knowledge.

Depend upon it, the more I learn, the more sensational the world will

become. If I can only become wise enough I may recapture the glorious

amazements of the baby among his bombshells.

Now let me come to a very practical application. Half the art of life

lies in possessing effective explosives and in knowing how to use them.

In the best of his books, Jack London tells us that the secret of White

Fang's success in fighting other dogs was his power of surprise. 'When

dogs fight there are usually preliminaries--snarlings and bristlings,

and stiff-legged struttings. But White Fang omitted these. He gave no

warning of his intention. He rushed in and snapped and slashed on the

instant, without notice, before his foe could prepare to meet him. Thus

he exhibited the value of surprise. A dog taken off its guard, its

shoulder slashed open, or its ear ripped in ribbons before it knew what

was happening, was a dog half whipped.' Here is the strategy of surprise

in the wild. Has it nothing to teach me? I think it has. I remember

going for a walk one evening in New Zealand, many years ago, with a

minister whose name was at one time famous throughout the world. I was

just beginning then, and was hungry for ideas. I shall never forget

that, towards the close of our conversation, my companion stopped,

looked me full in the face, and exclaimed with tremendous emphasis,

'Keep up your surprise-power, my dear fellow; the pulpit must never,

never lose its power of startling people!' I have very often since

recalled that memorable walk; and the farther I leave the episode across

the years behind me the more the truth of that fine saying gains upon my

heart.

Let me suggest a really great question. Is it enough for a preacher to

preach the truth? In a place where I was quite unknown, I turned into a

church one day and enjoyed the rare luxury of hearing another man

preach. But, much as I appreciated the experience, I found, when I came

out, that the preacher had started a rather curious line of thought. He

was a very gracious man; it was a genuine pleasure to have seen and

heard him. And yet there seemed to be a something lacking. The sermon

was absolutely without surprise. Every sentence was splendidly true, and

yet not a single sentence startled me. There was no sting in it. I

seemed to have heard it all over and over and over again; I could even

see what was coming. Surely it is the preacher's duty to give the truth

such a setting, and present it in such a way, that the oldest truths

will appear newer than the latest sensations. He must arouse me from my

torpor; he must compel me to open my eyes and pull myself together; he

must make me sit up and think. 'Keep up your surprise-power, my dear

fellow,' said my companion that evening in the bush, speaking out of his

long and rich experience.

'The pulpit,' he said, 'must never, never lose its power of startling

people!' The preacher, that is to say, must keep up his stock of

explosives. The Bishop of London declared the other day that the Church

is suffering from too much 'dearly beloved brethren.' She would be

better judiciously to mix it with a few bombshells.

And yet, after all, I suppose it was largely my own fault that the

sermon of which I have spoken seemed to me to be so ineffective. There

are tremendous astonishments in the Christian evangel which, however

baldly stated, should fire my sluggish soul with wonder, and fill it

with amazement. The fact that I listened so blandly shows that I have

become blasé. I am like the soldier in the trenches who no longer

notices the bursting shells about him. I am like the auditor who

occupies a seat at the conjuring entertainment, but has fallen asleep

just as the thing is getting sensational.

In one of his latest books, Harold Begbie gives us a fine picture of

John Wyclif reading from his own translation of the Bible to those who

had never before listened to those stately and wonderful cadences. The

hearers look at each other with wide-open eyes, and are almost

incredulous in their astonishment. Every sentence is a sensation. They

can scarcely believe their ears. They are like the baby on the floor.

The simplicities startle them. If only I can renew the romance of my

childhood, and recapture that early sense of wonder, the world will

suddenly become as marvellous as the prince's palace in the fairy

stories, and the ministry of the Church will become life's most

sensational sensation.

II

STRAWBERRIES AND CREAM

Strawberries are delicious, as every one knows. 'It may be,' says Dr.

Boteler, a quaint old English writer, 'it may be that God could make a

better berry than a strawberry, but most certainly He never did.' Yes,

strawberries are delicious; but I am not going to write about

strawberries. Cream is also very nice, very nice indeed; but nothing

shall induce me to write about cream. I have promised myself a chapter,

neither on _strawberries_ nor on _cream_, but on _strawberries and

cream_. The distinction, as I shall endeavour to show, is a vitally

important one. Now the theme was suggested on this wise. I was walking

through the city this afternoon, when I met a gentleman from whom, only

this morning, I received an important letter. We shook hands, and were

just plunging into the subject-matter of his letter when a tall

policeman reminded us of the illegality of loitering on the pavement.

Yet it was too hot to walk about.

'Come in here,' my companion suggested, pointing to a café near by,

'and have a cup of afternoon tea.'

'No, thank you,' I replied, 'I had a cup not long ago.'

'Well, strawberries and cream, then?'

The temptation was too strong for me; he had touched a vulnerable point;

and I succumbed. The afternoon was very oppressive; the restaurant

looked invitingly cool; a quiet corner among the ferns seemed to beckon

us; and the strawberries and cream, daintily served, soon completed our

felicity.

Strawberries and cream! It is an odd conjunction when you come to think

of it. The gardener goes off to his well-kept beds and brings back a big

basket, lined with cabbage leaves, and filled to the brim with fine

fresh strawberries. The maid slips off to the dairy and returns with a

jug of rich and foamy cream. To what different realms they belong! The

gardener lives, moves, and has his being in one world; the milkmaid

spends her life in quite another. The cream belongs to the animal

kingdom; the strawberries to the vegetable kingdom. But here, on these

pretty little plates in the fern-grot are the gardener's world and the

milkmaid's world beautifully blended. Here, on the table before us, are

the animal and the vegetable kingdom perfectly supplementing and

completing each other. It is another phase of the wonder which

suggested the nursery rhyme:

Flour of England, fruit of Spain,

Met together in a shower of rain.

Empires confront each other within the compass of a plum-pudding;

continents salute each other in a tea-cup; the great subdivisions of the

universe greet each other in a plate of strawberries and cream. What

_ententes_, and _rapprochements_, and international conferences take

place every day among the plates and dishes that adorn our tables!

It is a thousand pities that we have no authentic record of the

discoverer of strawberries and cream. For ages the world enjoyed its

strawberries, and for ages the world enjoyed its cream. But strawberries

and cream was an unheard-of mixture. Then there dawned one of the great

days of this planet's little story, a day that ought to have been

carefully recorded and annually commemorated. History, as it is written,

betrays a sad lack of perspective. It has no true sense of proportion.

There came a fateful day on which some audacious dietetic adventurer

took the cream that had been brought from his dairy, poured it on the

strawberries that had been plucked from his garden, and discovered with

delight that the whole was greater than the sum of all its parts. Yet

of that memorable day the historian takes no notice. With the amours of

kings, the intrigues of courts, and the squabbles of statesmen he has

filled countless pages; yet only in very rare instances have these

things contributed to the sum of human happiness anything comparable to

the pleasures afforded by strawberries and cream. We have never done

justice to the intellectual prowess of the men who first tried some of

the mixtures that are to us a matter of course. Salt and potatoes, for

example. I heard the other day of a little girl who defined salt as

'that which makes potatoes very nasty if you have none of it with them.'

It is not a bad definition. But, surely, something is due to the memory

of the man who discovered that the insipidity might be removed, and the

potato be made a staple article of diet, by the simple addition of a

pinch of salt! Then, too, there are the men who found out that

horseradish is the thing to eat with roast beef; that apple sauce lends

an added charm to a joint of pork; that red currant jelly enhances the

flavour of jugged hare; that mint sauce blends beautifully with lamb;

that boiled mutton is all the better for caper sauce; and that butter is

the natural corollary of bread. 'The man of superior intellect,' says

Tennyson, in vindication of his weakness for boiled beef and new

potatoes, 'knows what is good to eat.' And George Gissing in a

reference to these selfsame new potatoes, adds a corroborative word.

'Our cook,' he says, 'when dressing these new potatoes, puts into the

saucepan a sprig of mint. This is genius. Not otherwise could the

flavour of the vegetable be so perfectly, yet so delicately, emphasized.

The mint is there, and we know it; yet our palate knows only the young

potato.' There have been thousands of statues erected to the memory of

men who have done far less to promote the happiness of mankind than did

any of these. Every great invention is preceded by thousands and

thousands of fruitless attempts. Think of the nauseous conglomerations

that must have been tried and tasted, not without a shudder, before

these happy combinations were at length launched upon the world. Think

of the jeers of derision that greeted the first announcement of these

preposterous concoctions! Imagine the guffaws when a man told his

companions that he had been eating red currant jelly with jugged hare!

Imagine the nameless dietetic atrocities that that ingenious epicure

must have perpetrated before he hit upon his ultimate triumph! I have

not the initiative to attempt it. I lack the splendid daring of the

pioneer. In a thousand years' time men will smack their lips over all

kinds of mixtures of which I should shudder to hear. I am content to go

on eating this by itself and that by itself, just as for ages men were

content to eat strawberries by themselves and cream by itself, never

dreaming that this thing and that thing as much belong to each other as

do strawberries and cream.

Now this genius for mixing things is one of the hall-marks of our

humanity. Strawberry leaves are part of the crest of a duchess; but

strawberries and cream might be regarded as a suitable crest for the

race. Man is an animal, but he is more than an animal; and he proves his

superiority by mixing things. His poorer relatives of the brute creation

never do it. They eat strawberries, and they are fond of cream; but it

would never have occurred to any one of them to mix the strawberries

with the cream. An animal, even the most intelligent and domesticated

animal, will eat one thing and then he will eat another thing; but the

idea of mixing the first thing with the second thing before eating

either never enters into his comprehension.

The strawberries and cream represent, therefore, in a pleasant and

attractive way, our human genius for mixing things. There is nothing

surprising about it. Indeed, it is eminently fitting and characteristic.

For we are ourselves such extraordinary medlies. Let any man think his

way back across the ages, and mark the ingredients that have woven

themselves into his make-up, and he will not be surprised at the

extraordinary miscellany of passions that he sometimes discovers within

the recesses of his own soul. 'I remember,' Rudyard Kipling makes the

Thames to say:

... I remember, like yesterday,

The earliest Cockney who came my way,

When he pushed through the forest that lined the Strand,

With paint on his face and a club in his hand.

He was death to feather and fin and fur,

He trapped my beavers at Westminster,

He netted my salmon, he hunted my deer,

He killed my herons off Lambeth Pier;

He fought his neighbour with axes and swords,

Flint or bronze, at my upper fords,

While down at Greenwich for slaves and tin

The tall Phoenician ships stole in.

Men of the island caves mixed their blood with men of the great

continental forests. It was an extraordinary agglomeration.

Norseman and Negro and Gaul and Greek

Drank with the Britons in Barking Creek,

And the Romans came with a heavy hand,

And bridged and roaded and ruled the land,

And the Roman left and the Danes blew in--

And that's where your history books begin!

Is it any wonder that sometimes I feel, mingling with the emotions

inspired by a recent communion service, the savagery of some

long-forgotten caveman ancestor? Civilization is so very young, and

barbarism was so very old, that it is not surprising that I occasionally

hark back involuntarily to the days to which my blood was most

accustomed. I am an odd mixture considered from any point of view.

'There are very few human actions,' says Mark Rutherford, 'of which it

can be said that this or that, taken by itself, produced them. With our

inborn tendency to abstract, to separate mentally the concrete into

factors which do not exist separately, we are always disposed to assign

causes which are too simple. Nothing in nature is propelled or impeded

by one force acting alone. There is no such thing, save in the brain of

the mathematician. I see no reason why even motives diametrically

opposite should not unite in one resulting deed.' Of course not! It is

my duty, that is to say, to take myself to pieces as little as possible.

It does not really matter how much of my present temperament I got from

the communion service, and how much I got from the caveman with the club

in his hand. Here I am, a present entity, with the caveman, the

tribesman, the Roman, and the Dane all mixed up together in me; and it

is my business, instead of taking the complex mechanism to pieces, to

make it, as a united and harmonious whole, do the work for which I have

been sent into the world. I am not to talk one moment of the

strawberries on my plate, and then, in the next breath, to speak of the

cream. It is not so much a matter of strawberries _and_ cream as of

_strawberriesandcream_.

There is, I fancy, a good deal in that. We are too fond of taking the

cream from the strawberries, and the strawberries from the cream. I have

on my plate here, not two things, but one thing; and that one thing is

_strawberriesandcream_. One of the oldest and one of the silliest

mistakes that men have made is their everlasting inclination to divide

_strawberries-and-cream_ into strawberries _and_ cream. Think of the

toothless chatter concerning the sexes. Have men or women done most for

the world? Is the husband or is the wife most essential to the home? It

will be quite time enough to attempt to answer such ridiculous questions

when the waitresses at the restaurants begin to ask us whether we will

have strawberries _or_ cream! In the beginning, we are told, God created

man in His own image, male and female created He them. It is not so much

a matter of male _and_ female: it is _maleandfemale_, just as it is

_strawberriesandcream_. The thing takes other forms. Which do you

prefer--summer or winter? As though we should appreciate summer if we

never had a winter, or winter if we never had a summer! Is song or

speech the most effective evangelistic agency? As though there would be

anything to sing about if the gospel had never been preached! Or

anything worth preaching if the gospel had never set anybody singing! It

is so very ridiculous to try to separate the strawberries from the

cream. Miss Rosaline Masson, in commenting upon Wordsworth's beautiful

sonnet on Westminster Bridge, says that it is the outcome of Dorothy

Wordsworth's divine power of perception and her brother's divine power

of expression. But who would dare to take the sonnet to pieces and say

how much is Dorothy's, and how much is William's? It is Dorothy's and

William's. It is strawberries and cream.

I always feel extremely sorry for the man who tries to move a vote of

thanks at the close of a pleasant and successful function. Not for

worlds could I be persuaded to attempt it. It is a most difficult and

complicated business, and I should collapse utterly. It consists in

taking the whole performance to pieces and allocating the praise. So

much for the decorators; so much for the singers; so much for the

elocutionists; so much for the speakers; so much for the chairman; so

much for the pianist; so much for the secretary; and so on. To me it

would be like furnishing a statistical table on leaving the restaurant

showing how much of my enjoyment I owed to the strawberries and how much

to the cream. Dissection is not in my line. I only know that I

thoroughly enjoyed the _strawberriesandcream_.

In selecting strawberries and cream as emblems of the mixed things of

life, I fancy that my choice is a particularly happy one. That cream

must be mixed with other foods goes without saying; and in Shakespeare's

most notable reference to strawberries it is the same peculiarity that

seems to have impressed him. He has a very pleasing allusion to the

facility with which the strawberry mixes with other things. The passage

occurs at the beginning of _King Henry the Fifth_. The Archbishop of

Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely are discussing the new king. They are

astonished at the change which has overtaken him since his accession. As

a prince he was wild and dissolute, and broke his father's heart. But,

as soon as he became king, he instantly sent for his boon-companions,

told them that he intended by God's good grace to live an entirely new

life, and begged them to follow his example. As the Archbishop of

Canterbury puts it:

The breath no sooner left his father's body

But that his wildness, mortified in him,

Seemed to die, too. Yea, at that very moment.

Consideration like an angel came,

And whipped the offending Adam out of him.

Leaving his body as a paradise,

To envelop and contain celestial spirits.

To which the Bishop of Ely replies:

The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,

And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best,

Neighboured by fruit of baser quality.

It is a suggestive passage, considered from any point of view We live

mixed lives in a mixed world, and we do not come upon the strawberries

by themselves or all at once. We may find strawberries to-morrow where

we can discover nothing but stinging-nettles to-day 'Madcap Harry' was

not the only son whose life at first yielded nothing but nettles that

stung and lacerated his father's soul, and yet afterwards produced

strawberries that were the delight, not only of the Church, but of the

world at large.

III

THE CONQUEST OF THE CRAGS

I was strolling one still evening along a lonely New Zealand shore, when

I made a grim discovery that has often set me thinking. I had been

walking along the wet and crinkled sands, the tide being out, and had

amused myself with the shells and the seaweed that had been left lying

about by the receding waters. There is always a peculiar charm about

such a stroll. It holds such infinite possibilities. One seems to be

exploiting the surprise-packet of the universe. Jane Barlow, in her

_Bogland Studies_, makes one of her characters say:

What use is one's life widout chances? Ye've always a chance

wid the tide;

For ye never can tell what 'twill take in its head to strew

round on the shore;

Maybe driftwood, or grand bits of boards that come handy for

splicing an oar,

Or a crab skytin' back o'er the shine o' the wet; sure,

whatever ye've found,

It's a sort of diversion them whiles when ye've starvin' and

strelin' around.

Absorbed in so delightful an occupation the passage of time escaped my

attention, until suddenly I noticed that twilight was rapidly falling,

and I thought of my return. Before retracing my steps, however, I sat

down for a moment's rest among the sand-dunes. The possibility of making

a discovery among those arid mounds did not occur to me. But, as I sat

absent-mindedly poking the soft sand with my stick, I suddenly struck

something hard. I proceeded to dig it out, and found a couple of human

skulls. They adorn the top shelf of my book-case before me at this

moment. They always look down upon me as I write. I often catch myself

leaning back in my chair, staring up at them, and trying to read their

secret. Who were they, I wonder, these two bony companions of mine? Two

Maoris finishing, among the lonely dunes, their last fierce fatal feud?

Two travellers, hopelessly lost, who threw themselves down here to die?

A couple of sailors, whose ship had struck the cruel reefs out yonder,

and whose bodies were tossed up here by the pitiless waves? A pair of

lovers trapped by the treacherous tide? I cannot tell. What a

tantalizing mystery they seem to hold, as they grin down at me from this

high shelf of mine! It is part of the ghostly sense of mystery that

always haunts the sea and its tragedies. On the land, when disaster

occurs, all the wreckage is left to tell its own tale; but on the ocean

Fate instantly obliterates all her tracks. The magnificent vessel

lurches over, plunges with a roar into the deep, and the waves close

over the frightful ruin. Compared with the silence of the sea, the

Sphinx is voluble. The deep, dark, icy ocean-bed guards its secrets, and

guards them well.

Sometimes, however, it is more easy to read the riddle. Here in

Tasmania, within easy reach of this quiet study of mine, there is a

battle-field that I love to visit. It extends for miles and miles, and

the whole place is strewn with the wreckage that tells of the titanic

conflict. I do not mean that the place is littered with dead men's

bones. It was a far finer and a far fiercer fight than men could have

waged, and it lasted longer than any war recorded in the annals of

history. It is the battle-field on which the land fought the sea. It is

a rocky and precipitous coast. Sometimes I like to walk along the top of

the cliff, and look down upon the pile of massive boulders that lie

tumbled in picturesque and bewildering confusion about the beach below.

Or, at low tide, I like to make my way among those monstrous piles of

broken rock that lie, higgledy-piggledy, all along the shore. What a

fight it was, day and night, summer and winter, year in and year out,

age after age! Occasionally the attack slackened down, and the rippling

waters merely lapped softly against the rocks. But there was no real

truce. The sea was only gathering up its forces in secret for the

majestic assault that was to come. Then the great breakers came rushing

in, like regiments of cavalry in full career, and each huge wave hurled

itself upon the crags with such fury that the spray dashed up sky high.

It was a titanic struggle, and the waters won. That is the extraordinary

thing--the waters won. The water seems so soft, so yielding, so fluid,

and the rocks seem so impregnable, so adamantine, so immutable. Yet the

waters always win. The land makes no impression on the sea; but the sea

grinds the land to powder. I know that the sea is often spoken of as the

natural emblem of all that is fickle and changeful; but it is a pure

illusion. There are, of course superficial variations of tone and tint

and temper; but, as compared with the kaleidoscopic changes that

overtake the land, the ocean is eternally and everywhere the same. It,

and not the rocks, is the symbol of immutability. 'Look at the sea!'

exclaims Max Pemberton, in _Red Morn_. 'How I love it! I like to think

that those great rolling waves will go leaping by a thousand years from

now. There is never any change about the sea. You never come back to it

and say, "How it's changed!" or "Who's been building here?" or "Where's

the old place I loved?" No; it is always the same. I suppose if one

stood here for a million years the sea would not be different. You're

quite sure of it, and it never disappoints you.' The land, on the

contrary, is for ever changing. Man is always working his

transformations, and Nature is toiling to the same end.

'When the Romans came to England,' says Frank Buckland, the naturalist,

'Julius Caesar probably looked upon an outline of cliff very different

from that which holds our gaze to-day. First there comes a sun-crack

along the edge of the cliff; the rain-water gets into the crack; then

comes the frost. The rain-water in freezing expands, and by degrees

wedges off a great slice of chalk cliff; down this tumbles into the

water; and Neptune sets his great waves to work to tidy up the mess.' No

man can know the veriest rudiments of geology without recognizing that

it is the land, and not the sea, that is constantly changing. We may

visit some historic battle-field to-day, and, finding it a network of

bustling streets and crowded alleys, may hopelessly fail to repeople the

scene with the battalions that wheeled and charged, wavered and rallied,

there in the brave days of old. But when, from the deck of a steamer, I

surveyed the blue and tossing waters off Cape Trafalgar, I knew that I

was gazing upon the scene just as it presented itself to the eye of

Nelson on the day of his immortal victory and glorious death more than a

century ago.

Now, beneath this triumph of the ocean--the triumph that leaves the land

in fragments whilst the sea itself sustains no injury--there lies a

deeper significance than at first appears. Job saw it. No elusive

secret, lurking in the universe around him, escaped his restless eye.

'The waters wear the stones!' he cried, and it was a shout of victory

that rose from his heart when he said it. 'The waters wear the stones,'

he exclaimed, 'and Thou washest away the things which grow out of the

dust of the earth.' It is the death-knell of the material. It is the

triumph of the eternal. A little child looks upon the great granite

cliffs, and it seems impossible that the lapping waves can ever pound

them to pieces. But they do. And in the same way, Job says, man seems so

impregnable, and the world so mighty, that it appears a thing incredible

that God can finally prevail. But He shall. The quiet waters conquer the

frowning cliffs at length. The walls of Jericho fall down. This is the

victory that overcometh the world.

And so here on this battle-field where the land and the sea fought for

mastery, I find Job sitting, and he interprets for me the paean that the

waves are singing. It is the laughter of their triumph. 'The waters wear

away the stones.' That was the heartening message that gave to Spain one

of her very greatest teachers. St. Isidore of Seville was only a boy at

the time. He found his lessons hard to learn. Study was a drudgery, and

he was tempted to give up. The huge obstacles against which he, like the

waves at the base of the cliff, was beating out his life seemed

adamantine. So he ran away from school. But in the heat of the day he

sat down to rest beside a little spring that trickled over a rock. He

noticed that the water fell in drops, and only one drop at a time; yet

those drops had worn away a large stone. It reminded him of the tasks he

had forsaken, and he returned to his desk. Diligent application overcame

his dullness, and made him one of the first scholars of his time. He

never forgot the drops of water, dripping, dripping, dripping on the

rock that they were conquering. 'Those drops of water,' says his

biographer, 'gave to Spain a brilliant historian, and to the Church a

famous doctor.'

It is always the gentle things of life that conquer us. 'The moving

waters'--to quote Keats' beautiful phrase--

The moving waters at their priest-like task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores'

wear down the towering cliffs along the coast. It is Aesop's fable of

the North Wind and the sun over again. The North Wind, with its violence

and bluster, only makes the traveller button his coat the tighter. It

is the genial warmth of the sun that makes him take it off. It is always

by gentleness that the adamantine world is mastered. That is one of

life's most lovely secrets. We are not ruled as much as we think by

parliaments and commandments and enactments. The proportion of our lives

that is governed by such things is very small. But the proportion that

is dominated by gentler and more winsome forces is very great. The

voices that sway us with a regal authority are soft and tender voices,

the voices of those whose genial goodness compels us to love them. The

imperial tones to which we capitulate unconditionally are very rarely

stern official tones. Who does not remember how, in _The Rosary_, the

Hon. Jane Champion asks Garth Dalmain why he does not marry? And Garth

tells her of old Margery, his childhood's friend and nurse, now his

housekeeper and general mender and tender--old Margery, with her black

satin apron, lawn kerchief, and lavender ribbons. 'No doubt, Miss

Champion, it will seem absurd to you that I should sit here on the

duchess's lawn and confess that I have been held back from proposing

marriage to the women I most admired because of what would have been my

old nurse's opinion of them.' Yet so it invariably is. Our servants are

often our masters. Life's loftiest authorities never derive their

sanctions from rank, office, or station. The soul has enthronements and

coronations of its own. A little child often leads it. A Carpenter

becomes its king. Out of Nazareth comes the Conqueror of the World. The

pure and cleansing waters wear down the giant crags at the last.

But with purity and gentleness must go patience. The lapping waters do

not reduce the rocky strata at a blow. It is always by means of patience

that the finest conquests are won. Who that has read Jack London's _Call

of the Wild_ will ever forget the great fight at the end of the book

between Buck, the dog hero, and the huge bull-moose? 'Three

hundredweight more than half a ton he weighed, the old bull; he had

lived a long, strong life, full of fight and struggle, and at the end he

faced death at the teeth of a creature whose head did not reach beyond

his great knuckled knees!' How was it done? 'There is a patience in the

wild,' Jack London says, 'a patience dogged, tireless, persistent as

life itself'; and it was by means of this patience that Buck brought

down his stately antlered prey. 'Night and day, Buck never left him,

never gave him a moment's rest, never permitted him to browse on the

leaves of the trees or the shoots of the young birch or willow. Nor did

he give the old bull one single opportunity to slake his burning thirst

in the slender, trickling streams they crossed.' For four days Buck

hung pitilessly at the huge beast's heels, and at the end of the fourth

day he pulled the bull-moose down. Buck looked so little, but he wore

the monarch out. The waters seem so feeble, but they beat the rocks to

powder. It is thus that the foolish things of this world always confound

the wise; the weak things conquer the mighty; and the things that are

not bring to naught the things that are.

IV

LINOLEUM

True love is never utilitarian. I am well aware that, in novels and in

plays, the fair heroine considerately falls in love with the brave man

who, at a critical moment, saves her from a watery grave or from the

lurid horrors of a burning building. It is very good of the lady in the

novel. I admire the gratitude which prompts her romantic affection, and,

nine times out of ten, my judgement cordially approves her taste. I

know, too, that, in fiction, the sick or wounded hero invariably falls

desperately in love with the devoted nurse whose patient and untiring

attention ensures his recovery. It is very good of the hero. Again I

say, I admire his gratitude and almost invariably endorse his choice.

But it must be distinctly understood that this sort of thing is strictly

confined to novels and theatricals. In real life, men and women do not

fall in love out of gratitude. As a matter of fact, I am much more

likely to fall in love with somebody for whom I have done something than

with somebody who has done something for me.

I was talking the other day with a nurse in a children's hospital. It is

a heartbreaking business, she told me. 'You get into the way of nursing

them, and comforting them, and playing with them, and mothering them,

until you feel that they belong to you. And then, just as you have come

to love the little thing as though he were your own, out he goes. And he

always goes out with his father or his mother, clapping his hands for

very joy at the excitement of going home, and you are left with a big

lump in your throat, and perhaps a tear in your eye, at the thought that

you will never see him again!' Clearly, therefore, we do not fall in

love as a matter of gratitude. The people who cling to us and depend

upon us are much more likely to win our hearts than the people who have

placed us under an obligation to them. If, instead of telling us that

the heroine fell in love with the man who had saved her from drowning,

the novelist had told us that the man who risked his life by plunging

into the river fell in love with the white and upturned face as he laid

it gently on the bank; or if, instead of telling us that the patient

fell in love with the nurse, he had told us that the nurse fell in love

with the patient upon whom she had lavished such beautiful devotion, he

would have been much more true to nature and to real life. It is

indisputable, of course, that, the rescuer having fallen in love with

the rescued, she may soon discover his secret, and, since love begets

love, reciprocate his affection. It is equally true that, the nurse

having conceived so tender a passion for her patient, he may soon read

the meaning of the light in her eye and of the tone in her voice, and

feel towards her as she first felt towards him. But that is quite

another matter, and is beside our point at present. Just now, I am only

concerned with challenging the novelist's unwarrantable assumption that

we fall in love out of gratitude. We do nothing of the kind. Love, I

repeat, is never utilitarian. We may fall hopelessly in love with a

thing that is of very little use to us; and we may feel no sentimental

attractions at all towards a thing that is almost indispensable. If any

man dares to dispute these conclusions, I shall simply produce a roll of

linoleum in support of my arguments, and he will be promptly crushed

beneath the weight of argument that the linoleum will furnish.

The linoleum is the most conspicuous feature of the domestic

establishment. It is impertinent, self-assertive, and loud. If you visit

a house in which there is a linoleum, the thing rushes at you, and you

see it even before the front door has been opened. Every minister who

spends his afternoons in knocking at people's doors knows exactly what I

mean. The very sound of the knock tells you a good deal. Such sounds

are of three kinds. There is the echoing and reverberating knock that

tells you of bare boards; there is the dead and sombre thud that tells

of linoleum on the floor; and there is the softened and muffled tap that

tells of a hall well carpeted. And so I say that the linoleum--if there

be one--rushes at you, and you seem to see it even before the door has

been opened. Perhaps it is this immodesty on its part that prevents your

liking it. It is always with the coy, shy, modest things that we fall in

love most readily.

But however that may be, the fact remains. Since this queer old world of

ours began, men and women have fallen in love with all sorts of strange

things; but there is no record of any man or woman yet having really

fallen in love with a roll of linoleum. Of everything else about the

house you get very fond. I can understand a man shedding tears when his

arm-chair has to go to the sale-room or the scrap-heap. Robert Louis

Stevenson once told the story of his favourite chair until he moved his

schoolboy audience to tears! And everybody knows how Dickens makes you

laugh and cry at the drollery and pathos with which, in all his books,

he invests chairs, tables, clocks, pictures, and every other article of

furniture. I fancy I should feel life to be less worth living if I were

deprived of some of the household odds and ends with which all my

felicity seems to be mysteriously associated. But I cannot conceive of

myself as yielding to even a momentary sensation of tenderness over the

sale, destruction, or exchange of any of the linoleums. I feel perfectly

certain that neither Stevenson nor Dickens would ever have felt an atom

of sentiment concerning linoleum. Yet why? Few things about the house

are more serviceable. I could point offhand to a hundred things no one

of which has earned its right to a place in the home one-hundredth part

as nobly as has the linoleum. Yet I am very fond of each of those

hundred things, whilst I am not at all fond of the linoleum. I

appreciate it, but I do not love it. So there it is! Said I not truly

that love is never utilitarian? We grow fond of things because we grow

fond of things; we never grow fond of things simply because they are of

use to us.

But we cannot in decency let the matter rest at that. There must be some

reason for the failure of the linoleum to stir my affections. Why does

it alone, among my household goods and chattels, kindle no warmth within

my soul? The linoleum is both pretty and useful; what more can I want?

Many things pretty, but not useful, have swept me off my feet. Many

things useful, but not pretty, have captivated my heart. And more than

once things neither pretty nor useful have completely enslaved me. Yet

here is the linoleum, both pretty and useful, and I feel for it no

fondness whatsoever; I remain as cold as ice, and as hard as adamant.

Why is it? To begin with, I fancy the pattern has something to do with

it. I do not now refer to any particular pattern; but to all the

linoleum patterns that were ever designed. Those endless squares and

circles and diamonds and stars! Could anything be more repelling? Here,

for instance, on the linoleum, I find a star. I know at once that if I

look I shall see hundreds of similar stars. They will all be in

perfectly straight lines, not one a quarter of an inch out of its place.

They will all be mathematically equidistant; they will be of exactly the

same size, of identically the same colour, and their angles will all

point in precisely the same direction. If the stars in the firmament

above us were arranged on the same principle, they would drive us mad.

The beauty of it is that, _there_, one star differeth from another star

in glory. But on the linoleum they do nothing of the sort.

Or perhaps the pattern is a floral one. It thinks to coax me into a

feeling that I am in the garden among the roses, the rhododendrons, or

the chrysanthemums. But it is a hopeless failure. Whoever saw roses,

rhododendrons, or chrysanthemums, all of exactly the same size, of

precisely the same colour, and hanging in rows at mathematically

identical levels? The beauty of the garden is that having looked at

_this_ rose, I am the more eager to see _that_ one; having admired

_this_ chrysanthemum, I am the more curious to mark the variety

presented by _the next_. No two are precisely the same. And because this

infinite diversity is the essential charm both of the heavens above and

of the earth beneath, I am shocked and repelled by the monotony of the

pattern on the linoleum. In the old days it was customary to plaster the

walls, even of sick-rooms, with papers of patterns equally pronounced,

and many a poor patient was tortured almost to death by the glaring

geometrical abominations. The doctor said that the sufferer was to be

kept perfectly quiet; yet the pattern on the wall is allowed to scream

at him and shout at him from night until morning, and from morning until

night. He has counted those awful stars or roses, perpendicularly,

horizontally, diagonally, from right to left, from left to right, from

top to bottom, and from bottom to top, until the hideous monstrosities

are reproduced in frightful duplicate upon the fevered tissues of his

throbbing brain. He may close his eyes, but he sees them still. It was a

form of torture worthy of an inquisitor-general. The pattern on the

linoleum is happily not quite so bad. When we are ill we do not see it;

and when we are well we may to some extent avoid it. Not altogether; for

even if we do not look at it, we have an uncanny feeling that it is

there. Between the hearthrug and the table I catch sight of the bright

flaunting head of a scarlet poppy, or of the tossing petals of a huge

chrysanthemum, and my imagination instantly flashes to my mind the

horrible impression of tantalizing rows of exactly similar blossoms

running off with mathematical precision in every conceivable direction.

For some reason or other we instinctively recoil from these monotonous

regularities. I once heard a friend observe that the average woman would

rather marry a man whose life was painfully irregular than a man whose

life was painfully regular. It may have been an over-statement of the

case; but there is something in it. We fall in love with good people,

and we fall in love with bad people; but with the man who is 'too

proper,' and the woman who is 'too straight-laced,' we very, very rarely

fall in love. It is the problem of Tennyson's 'Maud.' As a girl Maud was

irregular--and lovable.

Maud, with her venturous climbings and tumbles and childish escapes,

Maud, the delight of the village, the ringing joy of the Hall,

Maud, with her sweet purse-mouth when my father dangled the grapes,

Maud, the beloved of my mother, the moon-faced darling of all.

But later on Maud was regular--and as unattractive as linoleum.

... Maud, she has neither savour nor salt,

But a cold and clear-cut face, as I found when her carriage passed,

Perfectly beautiful: let it be granted her: where is the fault?

All that I saw (for her eyes were downcast, not to be seen)

Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,

Dead perfection, no more.

Shall I be told that this is high doctrine, and hard to bear, this

doctrine of the lovableness of irregularity? I think not. Towering above

all our biographies, as snowclad heights tower above dusty little

molehills, there stands the life-story of One who, alone among the sons

of men, was altogether good. It is the most charming and the most varied

life-story that has ever been written since this little world began. Its

lovely deeds and graceful speech, its tender pathos and its awful

tragedy, have won the hearts of men all over the world, and all down the

ages. But find monotony there if you can! It is like a sky full of stars

or a field of fairest flowers. The life that repels, as the linoleum

repels, by the very severity of its regularity, has something wrong with

it somewhere.

If I have outraged the sensibilities of any well-meaning champion of a

geometrical and mathematical and linoleum-like regularity, let me hasten

to conciliate him! I know that even regularity--the regularity of the

linoleum pattern--may have its advantages. Dr. George MacDonald, in

_Robert Falconer_, says that 'there is a well-authenticated story of a

notorious convict who was reformed by entering, in one of the colonies,

a church where the matting along the aisle was of the same pattern as

that in the church to which he had gone with his mother as a boy.'

Bravo! It is pleasant, extremely pleasant, to find that even monotony

has its compensations. Let me but get to know my 'too proper' and

'straight-laced' friends a little better, and I shall doubtless discover

even there a few redeeming features.

But, for all that, the linoleum is cold; and we do not fall in love with

cold things. A volcano is a much more dangerous affair than an iceberg;

but it is much more easy to fall in love with the things that make you

shudder than with the things that make you shiver. That was the trouble

with Maud, she was so chilly and chilling; her 'cold and clear-cut face,

faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null!' And that is

precisely the trouble with every system of religion, morality, or

philosophy--save one--that has ever been presented to the minds of men.

Plato and Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius were splendid, simply splendid;

but they were frigid, frigid as Maud, and their counsels of perfection

could never have enchained my heart. Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed--the

stars of the East--were wonderful, but oh, so cold! I turn from these

icy regularities to the lovely life I have already mentioned. And, to

use Whittier's expressive word, it is 'warm.'

Yes, warm, sweet, tender, even yet

A present help is He;

And faith has yet its Olivet,

And love its Galilee.

_'Warm'_ ... _'love'_ ... here are words that touch my soul to tears.

'We love Him because _He first loved us_.' The monotony and frigidity of

the linoleum have given way to the beauty and the brightness of flowery

fields all bathed in summer sunshine.

V

THE EDITOR

I approach my present theme with considerable diffidence, for reasons

obvious and for reasons obscure. For one thing, I was for some years an

editor myself, and I cannot satisfy myself that the experiment was even

a moderate success. Everything went splendidly, so far as I was

concerned, as long as I wrote everything myself; but I was terribly

pestered by other people. They worried me year in and year out, morning,

noon, and night. They would insist on sending me manuscripts that I had

neither the grace to accept nor the courage to decline. They wrote the

most learned treatises, the most pathetic stories, and the most

affecting little sonnets. The latter, they explained, were for Poet's

Corner. They actually deluged me with letters, intended for publication,

dealing with all sorts of subjects in which I took not the slightest

glimmer of interest. They sometimes even presumed, in some carping or

captious way, to criticize or review things that I had myself

written--as though such things were open to question! At other times

they wrote to applaud the sentiments I had expressed--as though I

needed their corroboration! They were an awful nuisance. The stupid

thing was only a monthly, and how they imagined that there would be any

room for _their_ contributions, by the time I had been a whole month

writing, passes my comprehension. Then came the awakening, and it was a

rude one. I suddenly realized that I was a fraud, a delusion, and a

snare. I was not an editor at all. I was simply masquerading, playing a

great game of bluff and make-believe. As a matter of fact, I was nothing

more than an objectionably garrulous contributor who had gained

possession of the editor's sanctum, usurped the editor's authority, and

commandeered the editor's chair. I felt so ashamed of myself that I

precipitately fled, and, although I have several times since been

invited to assume editorial responsibilities, I have shown my profound

respect for journalism by politely but firmly declining. It does not at

all follow that, because a man can make a few bricks, he can therefore

build a mansion. A chemist may be very clever at making up

prescriptions, but that does not prove his ability to prescribe.

During the years to which I have referred, that paper really had no

editor. An editor would have done three things. He would have written a

few wise words himself. He would have pitilessly repressed my

unconscionable volubility. And he would have given the public the

benefit of some of those carefully prepared contributions which I, with

savage satisfaction, hurled into the waste-paper basket. It would have

been a good thing for the paper if the editorials had been so few and so

brief that people could have been reasonably expected to read them. They

would then have attached to them the gravity and authority that such

contributions should normally carry. And it would have been good for the

world in general, and for me in particular, if liberal quantities of my

manuscript had been substitutionally sacrificed in redemption of some of

those rolls of paper, whose destruction I now deplore, which I consigned

to limbo with so light a heart. Since then I have had a fairly wide

experience of editors, and the years have increased my respect. 'O

Lord,' an up-country suppliant once exclaimed at the week-night

prayer-meeting, 'O Lord, the more I sees of other people the more I

likes myself!' I do not quite share the good man's feeling, at any rate

so far as editors are concerned. The more I have seen of the ways of

other editors the less am I pleased with the memory of my own attempt.

The way in which these other editors have treated my own manuscript

makes me blush for very shame as I remember my editorial intolerance of

such packages. Very occasionally an editor has found it necessary to

delete some portion of my contribution, and, nine times out of ten, I

have admired the perspicacity which detected the excrescence and

strengthened the whole by removing the part. I say nine times out of

ten; but I hint at the tenth case in no spirit of resentment or

bitterness. I am young yet, and the years may easily teach me that, even

in the instances that still seem doubtful to me, I am under a deep and

lasting obligation to the editorial surgery.

The editor is the emblem of all those potent, elusive, invisible forces

that control our human destinies. We are clearly living in an edited

world. We may not always agree with the editor; it would be passing

strange if we did. We may see lots of things admitted that we, had we

been editor, would have vigorously excluded. The venom of the cobra, the

cruelty of the wolf, the anguish of a sickly babe, and the flaunting

shame of the street corner; had I been editor I should have ruthlessly

suppressed all these contributions. But my earlier experience of

editorship haunts my memory to warn me. I was too fond of rejecting

things in those days. I was too much attached to the waste-paper basket.

And I have been sorry for it ever since. And perhaps when I have lived a

few aeons longer, and have had experience of more worlds than one, I

shall feel ashamed of my present inclination to doubt the editor's

wisdom. Knowing as little as I know, I should certainly have rejected

these contributions with scorn and impatience. The fangs of the viper,

the teeth of the crocodile, and all things hideous and hateful, I should

have intolerantly excluded. And, some ages later, with the experience of

a few millenniums and the knowledge of many worlds to guide me, I should

have lamented my folly, even as I now deplore my old editorial

exclusiveness.

And, on the other hand, we sometimes catch a glimpse of the editor's

waste-paper basket, and the revelation is an astounding one. The waste

of the world is terrific. And among these rejected manuscripts I see

some most exquisitely beautiful things. The other day, not far from

here, a snake bit a little girl and killed her. Now here was a curious

freak of editorship! On the editor's table there lay two manuscripts.

There was the snake--a loathsome, scaly brute, with wicked little eyes

and venomous fangs, a thing that made your flesh creep to look at it.

And there was the little girl, a sweet little thing with curly hair and

soft blue eyes, a thing that you could not see without loving. Had I

been there, I should have tried to kill the snake and save the child.

That is to say, I should have accepted the child-manuscript, and

rejected the snake-manuscript. But the editor does exactly the opposite.

The snake-manuscript is accepted; the horrid thing glides through the

bush at this moment as a recognized part of the scheme of the universe.

The child-manuscript is rejected; it is thrown away; have we not seen

it, like a crumpled poem, in the editor's waste-paper basket? How

differently I should have acted had I been editor! And then, when I

afterwards reviewed my editorship, as I to-day review that other

editorship of mine, I should have seen that I was wrong. And that

reflection makes me very thankful that I am not the editor. We shall yet

come to see, in spite of all present appearances to the contrary, that

the editor adopted the kindest, wisest, best course with each of the

manuscripts presented. We shall see

That nothing walks with aimless feet;

That not one life shall be destroyed,

Or cast as rubbish to the void,

When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain;

That not a moth with vain desire

Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,

Or but subserves another's gain.

Everybody feels at liberty to criticize the Editor; but, depend upon it,

when all the information is before us that is before Him, we shall see

that our paltry judgement was very blind. And we shall recognize with

profound admiration that we have been living in a most skilfully edited

world.

For, after all, that is the point. The Editor knows so much more than I

do. He has eyes and ears in the ends of the earth. His sanctum seems so

remote from everything, and yet it is an observatory from which He

beholds all the drama of the world's great throbbing life. When I was a

boy I was very fond of a contrivance that was called a camera-obscura. I

usually found it among the attractions of a seaside town. You paid a

penny, entered a room, and sat down beside a round white table. The

operator followed, and closed the door. The place was then in total

darkness; you could not see your hand before you. It seemed incredible

that in this black hole one could get a clearer view of all that was

happening in the neighbourhood than was possible out in the sunlight.

Yet, as soon as the lens above you was opened, the whole scene appeared

like a moving coloured photograph on the white table. The waves breaking

on the beach; the people strolling on the promenade; everything was

faithfully depicted there. Not a dog could wag his tail but there, in

the darkness, you saw him do it. An observer who watched you enter, and

saw the door close after you, could be certain that now, for awhile, you

were cut off from everything. And yet, as a fact, you only went into the

darkness that you might see the whole scene in the more perfect

perspective. What is this but the editor's sanctum? He enters it and,

to all appearances, he leaves the world behind him as he does so. But it

is a mere illusion. He enters it that he may see the whole world more

clearly from its quiet seclusion.

In the same way, when I look round upon the world, and see the things

that are allowed to happen, the Editor seems fearfully aloof. He seems

to have gone into His heaven and closed the door behind Him. 'Clouds and

darkness are round about Him,' says the psalmist. And if clouds and

darkness are round about Him, is it any wonder that His vision is

obscure? If clouds and darkness are round about Him, is it any wonder

that He acts so strangely? If clouds and darkness are round about Him,

is it any wonder that He rejects the child-manuscript and accepts the

snake-manuscript? And yet, and yet; what if the darkness that envelops

Him be the darkness of the camera-obscura? The psalmist declares that it

is just because clouds and darkness are round about Him that

righteousness and judgement are the habitation of His throne. It is a

darkness that obscures Him from me without in the slightest degree

concealing me from Him.

So there the editor sits in his seclusion. Nobody is so unobtrusive. You

may read your paper, day after day, year in and year out, without even

discovering the editor's name. You would not recognize him if you met

him on the street. He may be young or old, tall or short, stout or

slim, dark or fair, shabby or genteel--you have no idea. There is

something strangely mysterious about the elusive individuality of that

potent personage who every day draws so near to you, and yet of whom you

know so little. One of these days I shall be invited to preach a special

sermon to editors, and, in view of so dazzling an opportunity, I have

already selected my text. I shall speak of that Ideal Servant of

Humanity of whom the prophet tells. 'He shall not scream, nor be loud,

nor advertise Himself,' Isaiah says, 'but He shall never break a bruised

reed nor quench a smouldering wick.' That would make a great theme for a

sermon to editors. There He is, so mysterious and yet so mighty; so

remote and yet so omniscient; so invisible and yet so eloquent; so slow

to obtrude Himself and yet so swift to discern any flickering spark of

genius in others. He shall not advertise Himself nor quench a single

smouldering wick.

There are two great moments in the history of a manuscript. The first is

the moment of its preparation; the second is the moment of its

appearance. And in between the two comes the editor's censorship and

revision. I said just now that I had noticed that editorial emendations

are almost invariably distinct improvements. The article as it appears

is better than the article as it left my hands. Now let me think. I

spoke a moment ago of the child-manuscript and the snake-manuscript; but

what about myself? Am not I too a manuscript, and shall I not also fall

into the Editor's hands? What about all the blots, and the smudges, and

the erasures, and the alterations? Will they all be seen when I appear,

_when I appear_? The Editor sees to that. The Editor will take care that

none of the smudges on this poor manuscript shall be seen when I appear.

'For we know,' says one of the Editor's most intimate friends, 'we know

that _when we appear_ we shall be like Him--without spot or wrinkle or

any such thing!' It is a great thing to know that, before I appear, I

shall undergo the Editor's revision.

Charlie was very excited. His father was a sailor. The ship was homeward

bound, and dad would soon be home. Thinking so intently and exclusively

of his father's coming, Charlie determined to carve out a ship of his

own. He took a block of wood, and set to work. But the wood was hard,

and the knife was blunt, and Charlie's fingers were very small.

'Dad may be here when you wake up in the morning, Charlie!' his mother

said to him one night.

That night Charlie took his ship and his knife to bed with him. When his

father came at midnight Charlie was fast asleep, the blistered hand on

the counterpane not far from the knife and the ship. The father took

the ship, and, with his own strong hand, and his own sharp knife, it was

soon a trim and shapely vessel. Charlie awoke with the lark next

morning, and, proudly seizing his ship, he ran to greet his father; and

it is difficult to say which of the two was the more proud of it. It is

an infinite comfort to know that, however blotted and blurred this poor

manuscript may be when I lay down my pen at night, the Editor will see

to it that I have nothing to be ashamed of _when I appear_ in the

morning.

VI

THE PEACEMAKER

Things had come to a pretty pass up at Corinth, when Paul felt it

incumbent upon him to write to the members of the Church, imploring them

to be reconciled to God. 'Now then,' Paul said to those recalcitrant

believers, 'now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did

beseech you by us, we pray you, in Christ's stead, _be ye reconciled to

God_.' I used to wonder what he can possibly have meant; but now I think

I understand.

I

Claudius was wealthy. He dwelt in a beautiful house on the top of a

hill, on the eastern side of the city of Corinth. From his spacious

balconies he looked down upon the blue, blue waters of the Adriatic as

they lapped caressingly the sands of the bay on the one side, and on the

spreading sapphire of the island-studded Aegean gleaming most charmingly

upon the other. Away in the distance he commanded a magnificent

prospect, and could clearly make out the towers and domes of Athens as

they pierced the sky on the far horizon. The Acropolis could be seen

distinctly. It was a delightful home, delightfully situated. Claudius

was a member of the Church; but he was not very happy about it. Claudius

had prospered amazingly of late years, and his prosperity had involved

him in commercial and social entanglements from which it would be very

difficult now to escape. The life that Claudius had set before himself

in the early days of his spiritual experience seemed to him later on

like a beautiful dream. That is to say, it seemed to him like a dream

when he thought about it; but he did not think about it more often than

he could help. Claudius knew perfectly well that the life of which he

used to dream was worth some sacrifice; and he knew that he was really

the poorer, and not the richer, for having abandoned that radiant ideal.

He occasionally attended the assembly of worshippers, it is true; but he

derived small satisfaction from the exercise. It seemed like exposing

his poor withered, emaciated soul to the limelight; and he saw with a

start how starved and famished it had become. And so the inner

experience of poor Claudius became a perpetual battle-ground. At times

the old dream seemed within an ace of being victorious. He was more than

half inclined to break away from all his later entanglements, and to

renew the ardour of his youthful aspirations. But he had scarcely

reached this devout determination when the glamour of his later life

once more began to dazzle him. Alluring invitations, temptingly

phrased, poured in upon him. It is horrid to be discourteous! How could

he bring himself to offend people from whom he had received nothing but

kindness? Surely a man owes something to the proprieties of life! And so

the fight went on. But in the depths of his secret soul Claudius knew

that that fight was a fight between Claudius on the one hand and God on

the other. He knew, too, that in that stern conflict Claudius was

altogether wrong, and God was altogether right. And he knew that, if he

persisted in the unequal struggle, nothing but shame and humiliation

awaited him. Claudius knew it, and Paul knew it. Paul knew it, and

proffered his good offices as mediator. 'Now then,' he wrote, with

Claudius in his eye, 'now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though

God did beseech you by us, we pray you, in Christ's stead, _be ye

reconciled to God_.' And the words brought to the heart of poor Claudius

just such a surge of vehement emotion as a lover feels at the prospect

of once more embracing the beloved form with which he had so angrily and

hastily parted.

II

Polonius and Phebe were in a very different case. Polonius dwelt close

to the city in order to be near his work, and his windows commanded no

view of any kind. He was not a slave, but sometimes he said bitterly

that the slaves were as happy as he. The world had gone hardly with

Polonius. The stars in their courses seemed to be fighting against him.

He had tried hard to be brave, but circumstances sometimes conspire

against courage. Polonius, in spite of the most commendable endeavours,

was poor; yet if poverty had been his only misfortune he could have

borne it with a smile. But, in addition to poverty, troubles came thick

and fast upon him. Like Claudius, he was a member of the church at

Corinth; and it was in connexion with his labours of love for the

sanctuary that he had first met Phebe. She was young and fair in those

days, and her loveliness was glorified by her devotion. But his love for

her had fallen upon her tender spirit like a malediction. It was as

though his fondness for his sweet young wife had woven a malignant spell

about her early womanhood. He would have died a thousand deaths to make

her happy; yet since first they linked their lives they had known

nothing but incessant struggle and ceaseless grief. Phebe herself had

been ill again and again. Four little children had stolen like sunbeams

into their home; only, like sunbeams, to vanish again, and give place to

tempests of tears. Then came a long blank; and they fancied they were

doomed to spend the rest of their sad lives childlessly. But, at length,

to their unspeakable delight, their little home once more resounded

with the shout of baby merriment and the patter of baby footsteps. It

was as if the four children who had perished had bequeathed to this new

treasure all the affection that they had excited in the breasts of their

poor parents. And then, after seven happy years, it too faded and died.

Polonius and Phebe were broken-hearted. Never again, they said, would

they go to the assembly at Corinth. How could they believe in the love

of God after this? And so their hearts grew hard, and their souls were

soured, and all sweetness departed from their spirits.

There is a story very like this in our own literature. In the old house

at Kettering, Andrew Fuller was lying ill in one room, whilst his only

surviving daughter--a child of six--lay at the point of death in the

next. He tried hard to reconcile himself and his poor wife to the

impending calamity. But their spirits revolted. The thought that, after

having buried first one child and then another, this one too might be

snatched from them was more than they could bear. But, 'on Tuesday, May

30,' says Fuller in his diary, 'on Tuesday, May 30, as I lay ill in bed

in another room, I heard a whispering. I inquired, and all were silent!

All were silent!--but all is well. _I feel reconciled to God_.' That is

a fine saying. '_I feel reconciled to God_.' But poor Polonius and Phebe

could as yet enter no such brave words in their domestic record.

'Wherefore,' writes Paul, with a thought, perhaps, of Polonius and

Phebe, 'wherefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did

beseech you by us, we pray you, in Christ's stead, _be ye reconciled to

God_.' And when Polonius and Phebe heard that touching appeal they

resolved no longer to kick against the pricks. 'Renew my will,' they

prayed, anticipating the language of a later hymn:

Renew my will from day to day;

Blend it with Thine; and take away

All that now makes it hard to say,

'Thy will be done!'

And, like Andrew Fuller and his wife at Kettering, Polonius and his wife

at Corinth were able to say, '_I feel reconciled to God_.'

III

To the south of Corinth, just where the great main road begins to ascend

the ridge of the mountains, lived Julia. Julia was a widow, comfortably

circumstanced. Her husband had died years before, leaving her with the

charge of their one young son. And as the days had gone by, and time had

sprinkled strands of silver into Julia's hair, she had built her hopes

more and more upon the future of her boy. Julia's husband had died

before either he or she had so much as heard the name of Jesus. But

after his death Paul came over from Athens to Corinth in the course of

that first memorable visit to Europe, and Julia had been among his

earliest converts. After her conversion Julia often thought of her

husband, and was ill at ease. But, like a wise woman, she determined to

work for the things that remained rather than to weep over those that

were lost to her. And so she devoted all her love, and all her thought,

and all her energy, and all her time to her little son. When Paul's

first letter to the Christians at Corinth was read to the church, she

caught a phrase about being 'baptized for the dead.' She did not quite

know what Paul meant by the words; but at any rate she would try to

instil into the heart of her boy the lovely faith that she felt certain

her husband would cheerfully have embraced. And wonderfully she

succeeded. The boy listened with eyes wide open to the tender stories

that Julia told him, and his heart acknowledged their profound

significance. At the same age at which Jesus went with Mary to the

Temple, and was found in the midst of the doctors, young Amplius went

with Julia up to the church at Corinth, and was found in the midst of

the deacons.

From the very first the soul of Amplius prospered. He was like those

trees of which the psalmist sings which, 'planted in the courts of the

Lord, flourish in the house of our God.' From the time of his baptism

and reception into the sacred fellowship, the child Amplius grew, like

the child Jesus, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the

grace of God was upon him. Then, after about six years of happy

Christian experience, Amplius confided a wonderful secret to Julia. He

told her that he had resolved, with her consent, to devote himself to

the sacred office of the ministry. And at that word the soul of Julia

died within her. She knew what those early preachers and teachers had

suffered. She knew of the martyrdom of all those first apostles. She had

heard that even Paul himself had been 'in journeyings often, in perils

of rivers and in perils of robbers, in perils by his own countrymen and

in perils of the heathen, in perils of the city and in perils of the

desert, in perils of the sea and in perils among false brethren.' And

Julia's heart failed her as she thought of Amplius faced by such

dangers. Moreover, Julia had other plans for Amplius. She had fondly

dreamed of him as holding a great place in the city of Corinth. When she

had seen rulers and governors performing exalted functions on State

occasions, she had said within herself, 'Some day, perhaps, Amplius will

wear those robes,' or 'Some day, perhaps, Amplius will make that

speech.' And now all such dreams were rudely shattered. Her son would

fain be a minister, an outcast, perhaps even a martyr. And at that

thought the soul of Julia rebelled, and she began to fight against God.

There is a case like this, also, in our own literature. Grey Hazelrigg

was the only child of Lady Hazelrigg, of Carlton Hall. Her ladyship

intended her son for the army, but he failed to pass the tests. She then

sent him to Cambridge University. There he came under deep religious

influences. He began, as opportunities presented themselves, to preach

the gospel. His efforts met with immediate acceptance, and he wrote to

his astonished mother to say that he desired to become a minister of the

old Strict Baptist Communion! The request struck Carlton Hall like a

thunderbolt, and the spirit of Lady Hazelrigg rose in instant revolt.

But Grey prayed in secret, and preached in public, and pleaded with his

mother whenever a suitable opportunity occurred. Then came an experience

of which, the Rev. W. Y. Fullerton says, he spoke with sparkling eyes

seventy years afterwards. He was on a journey when his mind was suddenly

and strangely arrested by the words of Jeremiah, 'Verily, it shall be

well with Thy remnant.' He took it to refer to Lady Hazelrigg's

opposition to his call; and, surely enough, 'the very next letter that

he received from his mother bore the joyful tidings that she was, as she

herself phrased it, _reconciled to God_.' Mr. Grey Hazelrigg lived to

be nearly a hundred, and his work, both as a writer and a preacher, will

be remembered in England with thankfulness for many a day to come. There

can be no doubt, therefore, that, in those earlier days, Lady Hazelrigg

was fighting against God. And there can be no doubt, either, that, in

those early days, Julia was fighting against God. And therefore Paul

wrote as he did, perhaps with Julia specially in mind. 'Now then,' he

said, 'we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by

us, we pray you, in Christ's stead, _be ye reconciled to God_.' And,

like Lady Hazelrigg, Julia made her peace with God, and her son adorned

the Christian ministry for many a long day.

IV

'_Be ye reconciled to God_'--Paul the Peacemaker wrote to the Christians

at Corinth. It is vastly important. We so easily drift away from early

attachments and early friendships; and even the divine friendship is not

immune from this cruel and heartless treatment. We drift away from it,

and must needs be reconciled. '_Be ye reconciled to God_,' says Paul the

Peacemaker 'for unless you yourselves are reconciled to God, how can you

reconcile to God those who are without?' How can I reconcile hearts that

are alienated if, between either of those hearts and mine, there exists

some embarrassing estrangement? '_Be ye reconciled to God_,' said Paul

the Peacemaker to the church at Corinth, for he knew that the Church's

ministry of reconciliation would stand stultified and useless so long as

the Church herself was out of touch with her Lord.

VII

NOTHING

Nature, they say, abhors a vacuum. For the life of me, I do not know

why. But then, for the matter of that, I do not know why I myself love

many of the things that I love, and loathe many of the things that I

abhor. Nature, however, is not usually capricious. Some deep policy

generally prompts her strange behaviour. I must go into this matter a

little more carefully. First of all, what is a vacuum? What is Nothing?

I was at a prize distribution not long ago, and as I came out into the

street I came upon a little chap crying as though his heart would break.

He was quite alone. His parents had not thought it worth their while to

accompany him to the function, and thus show their interest in his

school life. Perhaps it was owing to the same lack of sympathy on their

part that he was among the few boys who were bearing home no prize.

'Hullo, sonny,' I exclaimed,'what's the matter?'

'_Oh, nothing_!' he replied, between his sobs.

'Then what on earth are you crying for?'

'_Oh, nothing_!' he repeated.

I respected his delicacy, and probed no farther into the cause of his

discomfiture, but I had collected further evidence of my contention that

there is more in Nothing than you would suppose. Nor had I gone far

before still further corroboration greeted me. For, at the top of the

street, I came upon a group of lads in the centre of which was a boy

with a very handsome prize. I paused and admired it.

'And what was this for?' I asked.

'_Oh, nothing_!' he answered, with a blush.

'But, my dear fellow, you must have done something to deserve it!'

'_Oh, it was nothing_!' he reiterated, and it was from his companions

that I obtained the information that I sought. But here again it was

made clear to me that there is a good deal in Nothing. Nothing is worth

thinking about. It is a huge mistake to take things at their face value.

Nothing may sometimes represent a modest contrivance for hiding

everything; and we must not allow ourselves to be deceived.

An old tradition assures us that, on the sudden death of one of

Frederick the Great's chaplains, a certain candidate showed himself most

eager for the vacant post. The king told him to proceed to the royal

chapel and to preach an impromptu sermon on a text that he would find in

the pulpit on arrival. When the critical moment arrived, the preacher

opened the sealed packet, and found it--_blank_! Not a word or pen-mark

appeared! With a calm smile the clergyman cast his eyes over the

congregation, and then said, 'Brethren, here is Nothing. Blessed is he

whom Nothing can annoy, whom Nothing can make afraid or swerve from his

duty. We read that God from Nothing made all things. And yet look at the

stupendous majesty of His infinite creation! And does not Job tell us

that Nothing is the foundation of everything? "He hangeth the world upon

Nothing," the patriarch declares.' The candidate then proceeded to

elaborate the wonder and majesty of that creation that emanated from

Nothing, and depended on Nothing. I need scarcely add that Frederick

bestowed upon so ingenious a preacher the vacant chaplaincy. And in the

years that followed he became one of the monarch's most intimate friends

and most trusted advisers.

We must not, however, fly to the opposite extreme, and make too much of

Nothing. For the odd thing is that, twice at least in her strange and

chequered history, the Church has fallen in love with members of the

Nothing family, and, after the fashion of lovers, has completely lost

her head over them. On the first occasion she became deeply enamoured of

Doing Nothing, and on the second occasion she went crazy over

Having-Nothing. I must tell of these amorous exploits one at a time. The

adoration of Doing-Nothing had a great vogue at one stage of the

Church's history. Who that has once read the thirty-seventh chapter of

Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_--the chapter on 'The Origin, Progress, and

Effects of the Monastic Life'--will ever cease to be haunted by the

weird, fantastic spectacle therein presented? Men suddenly took it into

their heads that the only way of serving God was by doing nothing. They

swarmed out into the deserts, and lived solitary lives. They took vows

of perpetual silence, and ceased to speak; they ate only the most

disgusting food; they lived the lives of wild beasts. 'Even sleep, the

last refuge of the unhappy, was rigorously measured; the vacant hours

rolled heavily on, without business and without pleasure; and, before

the close of each day, the tedious progress of the sun was repeatedly

accursed.' Here was an amazing phenomenon. It was, of course, only a

passing fancy, the merest piece of coquetry on the Church's part. It is

unthinkable that she thought seriously of Doing-Nothing, and of settling

down with him for the rest of her natural life. The glamour of this

casual flirtation soon wore off. The Church discovered to her

mortification that there was nothing in Nothing. Saint Anthony, of

Alexandria, who felt that the life of the city was too full of

incitement to frivolity and pleasure, fled to the desert, to escape

from these temptations. He became a hermit. But he gave it up, and

returned to Alexandria. The abominable imaginations that haunted his

mind in the solitude were far more loathsome and degrading than anything

he had experienced in the busy city. Fra Angelico, who also fell in love

with Doing-Nothing, says that he heard the flapping of the wings of

unclean things about his lonely cell. And Francis Xavier has told us of

the seven terrible days that he spent in the tomb of Thomas at Malabar.

'All around me,' he says, 'malignant devils prowled incessantly, and

wrestled with me with invisible but obscene hands.' It is the old story,

there is nothing in Nothing; and he who falls in love with any member of

that family will live to regret the adventure. I remember being greatly

impressed by a sentence or two in Nansen's _Farthest North_. He is

describing the maddening monotony of the interminable Arctic night.

'Ah!' he exclaims suddenly, 'life's peace is said to be found by holy

men in the desert. Here indeed is desert enough; _but peace_!--of that I

know nothing. I suppose it is the holiness that is lacking.' The

explorer was simply discovering that there is nothing in Nothing but

what you yourself take into it.

One would have supposed that, after this heart-breaking affair with

Doing-Nothing, the Church would have been on her guard against all

members of the Nothing family. But no! she was deceived a second

time--in this instance by the wiles of Having-Nothing. I allude, of

course, to the story of the Mendicant Orders. We all know how Francis

d'Assisi fell in love with Poverty. One day, to the consternation of his

friends, they received a letter from the gay young soldier, telling them

of his intention to lead an entirely new life. 'I am thinking of taking

a wife more beautiful, more rich, more pure than you could ever

imagine.' The wife was the Lady Poverty; and Giotto, in a fresco at

Assisi, has represented Francis placing the ring on the finger of his

bride. The feminine figure is crowned with roses, but she is arrayed in

rags, and her feet are bruised with stones and torn with briars. Francis

borrowed the tattered and filthy garments of a beggar, and sought alms

at the street corners that he might enter into the secret of poverty;

and then he and Dominic founded those orders of mendicant monks which

became one of the most potent missionary forces of the Middle Ages.

But once again the Church found out that her affections were being

played with. There is no more virtue in Having-Nothing than in

Doing-Nothing. They are both good-for-nothing. It may be that some of us

would be better men if we had less money; but then, others of us would

be better men if we had more. It may be that, here and there, you may

find a Silas Marner who has been saved by sudden poverty from miserly

greed and hardening self-absorption. But, for one such case, it would be

easy to point to hundreds of men who have been driven by poverty from

the ways of honour, and to hundreds of women who have been forced by

poverty from the paths of virtue. It all comes back to this: there is

nothing in Nothing. Doing-Nothing and Having-Nothing are deceivers--the

pair of them; and the Church must not be beguiled by their

blandishments. Work and money are both good things. Even William Law saw

that. His _Serious Call_ has often almost made a monk of me, but a

sudden flash of common sense always breaks from the page just in time.

'There are two things,' he says in his fine chapter on 'The Wise and

Pious Use of an Estate,' 'there are two things which, of all others,

most want to be under a strict rule, and which are the greatest

blessings both to ourselves and others, when they are rightly used.

These two things are our time and our money. These talents are the

continual means and opportunities of doing good.' Beware, that is to

say, of Doing-Nothing, of Having-Nothing, and of the whole family of

Nothings. It is not for nothing that Nature abhors them.

And now it suddenly comes home to me that I am playing on the very verge

of a tremendous truth. There is nothing in Nothing. Let me remember

that when next I am at death-grips with temptation! Cupid is said to

have complained to Jupiter that he could never seize the Muses because

he could never find them idle. And I suppose that our everyday remark

that 'Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do' has its

origin in the same idea. John Locke, the great philosopher, used to say

that, in the hour of temptation, he preferred any company rather than

his own. If possible, he sought the companionship of children. Anything

rather than Nothing. It reminds us of Hannibal. The great Carthaginian

led his troops up the Alpine passes, but he found that the heights were

strongly held by the Romans. Attack was out of the question. Hannibal

watched closely one night, however, and discovered that, under cover of

darkness, the enemy withdrew for the night to the warmer valley on the

opposite slope. Next night, therefore, Hannibal led his troops to the

heights, and, when the Roman general approached in the morning, he found

that the tables had been turned upon him. There is always peril in

vacancy. The uncultivated garden brings forth weeds. The unoccupied mind

becomes the devil's playground. The vacant soul is a lost soul. There is

nothing in Nothing.

But for the greatest illustration of my present theme I must betake me

to Mark Rutherford. The incident occurred at the most sunless and

joyless stage of Mark's career. From all his wretchedness he sought

relief in Nothing. He kept his own company, wandered about the fields,

abandoned himself to moods, and lost himself in vague and insoluble

problems. But one day a strange thing happened. 'I was walking along

under the south side of a hill, which was a great place for butterflies,

when I saw a man, apparently about fifty years old, coming along with a

butterfly net.' They soon chummed up. 'He told me that he had come seven

miles that morning to that spot, because he knew that it was haunted by

one particular species of butterfly; and, as it was a still, bright day,

he hoped to find a specimen.' At first Mark Rutherford felt a kind of

contempt for a man who could give himself up to so childish a pastime.

But, later on, he heard his story. Years before he had married a

delicate girl, of whom he was devotedly fond. She died in childbirth,

leaving him completely broken. And, by some inscrutable mystery of fate,

the child grew up to be a cripple, horribly deformed, inexpressibly

hideous, as ugly as an ape, as lustful as a satyr, and as ferocious as a

tiger! The son, after many years, died in a mad-house; and the horror of

it all nearly consigned his poor father to a similar asylum. 'During

those dark days,' he told Mark Rutherford, 'I went on _gazing gloomily

into dark emptiness_, till all life became nothing for me.' _Gazing into

emptiness_, mark you! Then there swept across this aching void of

nothingness a beautiful butterfly! It caught his fancy, interested him,

filled the gap, and saved his reason from uttermost collapse. He began

collecting butterflies. He was no longer _gazing into emptiness_. And

the moral of the incident is stated in a single sentence. 'Men should

not be too curious in analysing and condemning any means which Nature

devises to save them from themselves, whether it be coins, old books,

curiosities, fossils, or butterflies.'

'Any means which Nature devises.' We are back to Nature again.

'Nature abhors a vacuum'; it was at that point that we set out.

I see now that Nature is right, after all. I can never be saved by

Nothing. The abstract will never satisfy me. I want something; aye,

more, I want _Some One_; and until I find _Him_ my restless soul calls

down all the echoing corridors of Nothingness, 'Oh that I knew _where I

might find Him_!'

VIII

THE ANGEL AND THE IRON GATE

It is of no use arguing against an iron gate. There it stands--chained

and padlocked, barred and bolted--right across your path, and you can

neither coax nor cow it into yielding. So was it with Peter on the night

of his miraculous escape from prison. 'Herod,' we are told, 'killed

James with the sword, and, because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he

proceeded to take Peter also.' There he lay, 'sleeping between two

soldiers, bound with chains, whilst the keepers before the door kept the

prison.' He expected that his next visitor would be the headsman; and

whilst he waited for the _executioner_, there came an _angel_! This sort

of thing happens fairly often. They are sitting round the fire, and the

lady in the arm-chair is talking of her sailor-son.

'Ah!' she says, 'I haven't heard of him for over a year now, and I begin

to think that I shall never hear again.'

There is a sharp ring at the bell. She starts.

'Something tells me,' she continues, 'that this is a message to say

that the ship is lost, and that I shall never see my boy again.'

Even whilst she speaks the door is opened, and her last syllable is

scarcely uttered before she is folded in the sailor's arms.

The principle holds true to the very end. It is a sick-room, and the

pale wan face of the patient looks very weary.

'Oh, how I dread death!' she says; 'I cannot bear to think that I must

die.'

An hour later the door of the unseen opens to her, and there stands on

the threshold, not Death, but _Life Everlasting_!

Peter very, very often waits for the executioner, and welcomes an angel.

I

During the next few moments Peter scarcely knew whether he was in the

body or out of the body. Was he alive or was he dead? Was he waking or

was he dreaming? 'He wist not that it was true which was done by the

angel, but thought he saw a vision.' He walked like a man with his head

in the clouds. Doors were opening; chains were falling; he seemed to be

living in a land of enchantment, a world of magic. But the iron gate put

an end to all illusion. 'They came to the iron gate,' and, as I said a

moment ago, an iron gate is a very difficult thing to argue with. The

iron gate represents the return to reality. After our most radiant

spiritual experiences we come abruptly to the humdrum and the

commonplace. It was Mary's Sunday evening out. Mary, you must know, is a

housemaid in a big boarding establishment, and her life is by no means

an easy one. But Mary is also a member of the Church. On Sunday she was

in her favourite seat. Perhaps it was that she was specially hungry for

some uplifting word, or perhaps it was that the message was peculiarly

suitable to her condition; but, be that as it may, the service that

night seemed to carry poor Mary to the very gate of heaven. The

Communion Service that followed completed her ecstasy, and Mary seemed

scarcely to touch the pavement with her feet as she hurried home. She

fell asleep crooning to herself the hymn with which the service closed:

O Love, that will not let me go,

I rest my weary soul in Thee;

I give Thee back the life I owe,

That in Thine ocean depths its flow

May richer, fuller be.

She knew nothing more until, in the chilly dark of the morning, the

alarum clock screamed at her to jump up, clean the cold front steps,

dust the great silent rooms, and light the copper-fire. 'And she came

to the iron gate.' There come points in life at which poetry merges into

the severest prose; romance yields to reality; the miracle of the open

prison is succeeded by the menace of the iron gate.

II

As long as Peter had an iron gate before him, he had an angel beside

him. It was not until the iron gate had been safely negotiated that

'forthwith the angel departed from him.' Mary made a mistake when she

fancied that she had left all the glory behind her. The angel is with us

more often than we think. A devout Jew, in bidding you farewell, will

always use a plural pronoun. And if you ask for whom, besides yourself,

his blessing is intended, he will reply that it is for you and for _the

angel over your shoulder_. We are too fond of fancying that the angel is

only with us when the chains are miraculously falling from off our feet,

and when the doors are miraculously opening before our faces. We are too

slow to believe that the angel is still by our side when we emerge into

the night and come to the iron gate. It is a very ancient heathen

superstition. 'There came a man of God, and spake unto the king of

Israel, and said, Thus saith the Lord, because the Syrians have said,

"The Lord is God of the _hills_, but He is not God of the _valleys_,"

therefore will I deliver all this great multitude into thine hand, and

ye shall know that I am the Lord.' We are always assuming that He is the

God of the mountaintops, and that He leaves us to thread the darksome

valleys alone; and our assumption is a cruel and unjust one. As long as

Peter had an iron gate before him, he had an angel beside him.

III

The converse, however, is equally true. As long as Peter had an angel

beside him, he had an iron gate ahead of him. Angels do not walk by our

sides for fun. 'Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to

minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?' If there is an angel

by my side, depend upon it, there is work that only an angel can do in

front of me. Mary's radiant experience that Sunday evening was directly

and intimately related with the brazen yell of the alarum clock on

Monday morning. It was not intended as a mere temporary elevation of the

spirit, but as an assurance of a gracious presence--a presence that

should never be withdrawn as long as a need existed. It is part of the

infinite pathos of life that we misinterpret our visions. Jacob beheld

his staircase leading from earth to heaven, with angels ascending and

descending upon it. And straightway, as he prepared to leave, he began

to say good-bye to the angels! 'Surely,' he exclaimed, 'the Lord is in

_this place_! How dreadful is _this place_! _This_ is none other but the

house of God, and _this_ is the gate of heaven! And he called the name

of _that place_ Bethel!' And thus he missed the whole meaning of the

beatific vision. The vision was to warn him of the perils that awaited

him, and to assure him that 'behold, I am with thee in _all places_

whither thou goest.'

'_All places_!' said the Vision.

'This place! _this place_! THIS PLACE!' said Jacob.

And so he journeyed on towards his iron gate, pitifully ignorant of the

meaning of the golden dream. Life's ecstasies are warnings,

premonitions, danger-signals. Even in the experience of the Holiest, the

open heavens and the voice from the excellent glory immediately preceded

the grim struggle with the tempter in the wilderness. Paul had his

vision; he saw the Man of Macedonia; and he followed the gleam--to

bonds, stripes, and imprisonment. Bunyan knew what he was doing when he

placed the Palace Beautiful, with all its sweet hospitalities and

delightful ministries, immediately before that dark Valley of

Humiliation in which Christian struggled with Apollyon. When we hear

angels' voices speaking, when we find our fetters falling, when we see

our jail doors opening, be very sure that outside, outside, there is a

dark night and an iron gate!

IV

But there is always this about it. Although the radiant vision is a

premonition of the coming struggle, it is also an augury concerning that

struggle. Opening doors are an earnest of opening gates. It is

inconceivable that I shall be miraculously delivered from my dungeon,

with its guards and its chains, and then be baulked by an iron gate out

there in the blackness of the night. It is inconceivable that here, at

the Communion Service, God should draw so near to the spirit of this

young housemaid, and then leave her to face alone the drudgery of Monday

morning. If Mary is half as wise as I take her to be, she will answer

the scream of the clock with a song. She went to bed singing; why not

get up singing? She crooned to herself on retiring the hymn that had

followed her from the Communion Table. Let her sing in the morning quite

another tune:

His love, in time past, forbids me to think

He'll leave me at last in trouble to sink,

Each sweet Ebenezer I have in review

Confirms His good pleasure to help me quite through.

The voice of the angel, the falling of fetters, and the opening of doors

are all designed to brace us for the dark night and the iron gate.

V

'The iron gate opened to them.' Of course it did. Who could suppose that

the prison doors had been opened by angel's hands, only that the

prisoner might be caught like a rat in a trap outside? 'The iron gate

opened to them _of its own accord_.' It did look like it. During my

twelve years at Mosgiel, I often went through the great woollen factory.

The machines were marvellous--simply marvellous. As you watched the

needles slip in and out, or stood beside the loom and saw the pattern

grow, it really looked as though the things were bewitched. They seemed

to be doing it all 'of their own accord.' But one day the manager said,

'Would you care to see the power-house?' And he took me away from the

busy looms to another building altogether, and there I saw the huge

engines that drove everything. Neither looms nor needles really work 'of

their own accord.' Nor do iron gates. A few minutes after the gates had

opened, and the angel had vanished, Peter 'came to the house of Mary,

the mother of Mark, where many were gathered together praying.' And then

Peter understood by what power the iron gates had opened, just as I

understood, when I saw the engine-room, how the great looms worked.

The prayer-meeting may not be artistic. For the matter of that I saw

very little in the power-room of the factory that appealed to the sense

of the aesthetic within me; but when angels visit prisons, and iron

gates swing open of their own accord, there must be a driving-force at

work somewhere. And Peter only discovered it when he suddenly broke in

upon a midnight prayer-meeting.

IX

SHORT CUTS

We dearly love a short cut. Even in childhood we resolved the discovery

of short cuts into a kind of juvenile science. There was the gap in the

hedge, or the low part of the wall, by which we could pass, by means of

a squeeze or a clamber, into the romantic territory of our next-door

neighbour. With what fine scorn we inwardly derided the ridiculous

behaviour of our parents when, in visiting that selfsame neighbour, they

marched with solemn mien out through the front gate, along the public

highway and in through the front gate of the house next door! It took

_them_ five mortal minutes to reach a spot that, by a stoop or a bound,

_we_ could have reached in as many seconds! Then there was the dusty

track through the bush to the jetty; and the footpath across the fields

to the church. And with what wild excitement we hailed a short cut to

school! When some adventurous spirit discovered that, by going up a

certain right-of-way, and climbing a certain fence, we could approach

the school playground from a new and undreamed-of direction, our

transports knew no bounds. It was not the lazy gratification of having

invented a labour-saving device; it was the stately joy of the explorer.

Half the romance of life was bound up with those short cuts. The trysts

of courtship were kept at the stiles by which those surreptitious

footways were intersected. The most delightful walks we ever enjoyed

were the strolls along those uncharted by-paths. It may have been for

the sake of brevity and a smart passage that they were first brought

into existence; yet it was not to their brevity, in the last resort,

that they owed their peculiar charm. The gap through the hedge; the

clamber over the wall; the track through the bush to the jetty; the

footpath across the fields to the church; and the right-of-way by which

we took the school in the rear--these appealed to a certain deep human

instinct that asserted itself within us; and, dissemblers as we were, we

just made-believe that we pursued these courses in order to conserve our

energies and to save our time.

And thus we got into the habit. Whether it was a good habit or a bad

habit depends largely upon the realm to which we applied it. In my own

case, it worked disastrously--at least at times. Since I left school,

for instance, I have always been considered good at figures. Generally

speaking, you have but to state your problem, and I can furnish you with

the solution. In business--commercial and ecclesiastical--this faculty

has served me in excellent stead. But at school it was of very little

use to me. And I find it of very little use when I undertake to coach my

children in anticipation of approaching examinations. For at school the

teacher not only propounded the problem, and received my answer; he went

another step. He asked me how I had arrived at that conclusion; and at

that stage of the ordeal I invariably collapsed. He was there to teach

me the rules; and I had as much contempt for the rules as I had for the

route by which my grave and reverend parents made their way to our

neighbour's door. I was content to squeeze through the gap or to jump

over the wall. The teacher was there to show me the road to the jetty; I

scorned the road, and approached the jetty by the track through the

bush. I could see no sense in either roads or rules if you could reach

your destination more expeditiously without them. But, to pass abruptly

from the microscopic to the magnificent, history furnishes me with a

quite dramatic and most convincing demonstration of my point. In his _Up

From Slavery_, Mr. Booker Washington illustrates this tendency again and

again. The slaves were freed. But it is one thing to be free, and quite

another thing to be worthy of the rights of freemen. With one voice the

black people cried out for education. 'This experience of a whole race

going to school for the first time presents,' says Mr. Washington, 'one

of the most interesting studies that has ever occurred in connexion with

the development of any race.' But many of the people were advanced in

years. To begin at the beginning and attain to knowledge gradually

seemed a tedious process. It was like the round-about path from our

front door to that of our next-door neighbour. The black people woke up

late to the consciousness of their racial possibilities; and, like most

people who wake up late, they spent the morning of their freedom in a

desperate hurry. Here is a young coloured man, 'sitting down in a

one-room cabin, with grease on his clothing, filth all around him, and

weeds in the yard and garden, engaged in studying a French grammar!' On

another occasion, Mr. Washington 'had to take a student who had been

studying cube-root and banking and discount and explain to him that the

wisest thing for him to do first was thoroughly to master the

multiplication-table!' There is much more to the same effect. The black

race made a frantic effort to run before it had learned to walk. 'I

felt,' says Mr. Booker Washington, 'that the conditions were a good deal

like those of an old coloured man, during the days of slavery, who

wanted to learn how to play on the guitar. In his desire to take guitar

lessons he applied to one of his young masters to teach him; but the

young man, not having much faith in the ability of the slave to master

the guitar, sought to discourage him by saying, "Uncle Jake, I will give

you guitar lessons; but, Jake, I will have to charge you three dollars

for the first lesson, two dollars for the second lesson, and one dollar

for the third lesson. But I will charge you only twenty-five cents for

the last lesson." To which Uncle Jake answered, "All right, boss, I

hires you on dem terms. But, boss, I wants yer to be sure an' give me

dat las' lesson first!"' Here we have the imposing spectacle, not by any

means destitute of pathos, of an entire race seeking to reach its

destiny by a short cut.

But it is a mistake. For that ebullition of juvenile depravity which

disfigured my school-days I do now repent in dust and ashes. I was

wrong; there can be no doubt about that. There is a place in this world

for rules and roads as well as for gaps and tracks. I know now that my

parents were right in approaching our neighbour's door by way of the

public thoroughfare. Life has taught me, among other things, that short

cuts have their perils. It is the old story of the Gordian knot over

again. The Phrygians, as everybody knows, were in grave perplexity, and

consulted the oracle. The oracle assured them that all their troubles

would cease as soon as they chose for their king the first man they met

driving in his chariot to the temple of Jupiter. Leaving the sacred

building, they set out along the road and soon met Gordius, whom they

accordingly elected king. Gordius drove on to the temple, to return

thanks for his elevation, and to consecrate his chariot to the service

of the gods. When the chariot stood in the temple courts it was observed

that the pole was fastened to the yoke by a knot of bark so artfully

contrived that the ends could not be seen. The oracle then declared that

whosoever should untie this Gordian knot should be ruler over Asia.

Alexander the Great approached, but, finding himself unable to untie the

knot, he drew his sword and cut it. And the ancients said that it was

because he had cut the knot instead of untying it that his dominion was

so transitory and so brief. I fancy that, if we look into it a little,

we shall find that half our troubles arise from our bad habit of cutting

the knots that we ought to patiently untie.

Take our politics, by way of example. It is much more easy to sit back

in our chairs and pour the vials of our criticism on the powers-that-be

than to make any sensible contribution to the well-being of the State. A

case in point occurs in Mark Rutherford's _Clara Hopgood_. Baruch and

Dennis are discussing those old social problems that men have discussed

since first this world began. Dennis was enlarging upon the

inequalities and iniquities of social and industrial life, when Baruch

broke in with the pertinent and practical question: 'But what would you

do for them?'

'Ah, that beats me!' replied Dennis. 'I would hang somebody, but I don't

know who it ought to be!'

Precisely! To _cut_ the knot with a sword is so easy--and so

ineffective; to _untie_ it is so difficult--and so rich in consequence.

The politics that consist of sentencing to summary execution statesmen

from whom we differ are within the intellectual reach of most of us; and

in that particular brand of politics, therefore, most of us occasionally

indulge. But the politics that consist in really grappling with the

knotty problems, with a view to discovering some means of ameliorating

human misery, provide us with a much more formidable task. Who has

intellect sufficiently clear, and fingers sufficiently deft, to essay

the untying of the Gordian knot? The empire of the world awaits the

coming of that patient and persistent man.

Or look at another example. I often feel that very little of the oratory

expended on Protestant platforms really touches the mark. It gets

nowhere. The real question at issue is most pitifully begged. It may, of

course, be diplomatic to keep people well informed concerning the social

evils that thrive in Roman Catholic countries. It may, perhaps, be

permissible to emphasize the abuses that exist within the pale of the

Roman Catholic Church. But a devout and intelligent Roman Catholic,

listening to such an utterance, would, after making a reasonable

allowance for rhetorical exaggeration admit the truth of all that had

been said, and go home to weep, and, perhaps, to pray over it. Many of

those who have passed over from Protestant communions to the Roman

Catholic Church have travelled very widely and observed very closely.

They are not ignorant. Newman sobbed over the seamy side of Romanism

before he made the plunge. 'I have never disguised,' he wrote, 'that

there are actual circumstances in the Church of Rome which pain me much;

we do not look toward Rome as believing that its communion is

infallible.' Then, with his eyes wide open to all the facts on which our

orators dilate so luridly, he took the fatal step. And again he wrote,

'There is a divine life among us, clearly manifested, in spite of all

our disorders, which is as great a note of the Church as any can be.'

Now what was that divine note? Everything hinges upon that. And unless

our Protestant speakers are prepared to face _that_ issue they may as

well remain by their own firesides, lounge in their cosiest chairs, wear

their warmest slippers, and enjoy the latest novels. It is only at this

point that sincere and groping minds can be helpfully influenced. The

whole question is one of Authority. We dearly love a lord. There is no

escaping that fundamental fact. Every day Protestant sheep stray into

Roman Catholic pastures because there they can actually see the shepherd

and actually feel his crook. The Roman Church, with its hoary

traditions, its encrusted ritual, and its antique associations,

crystallizes itself into a single voice. It possesses an enthroned

incarnation. It has a Pope. Romanism is like a pine-tree. It towers to a

pinnacle. All its branches converge upon the topmost bough.

Protestantism is like a palm. Its summit consists of a great cluster of

graceful fronds, but no one is uppermost. Romanism is the adoration of

the topmost twig. In the person of the highest official, confused ears

catch the accent of authority for which they hunger. Here they find the

music of majesty. And they nestle their aching heads in the lap of a

Church that will sternly command their trustfulness and firmly insist

upon implicit obedience. Thereafter they need think no more. 'In the

midst of our difficulties,' wrote Newman, 'I have one ground of hope,

just one stay, but, as I think, a sufficient one. It serves me in the

stead of all arguments whatever; it hardens me against criticism; it

supports me if I begin to despond; and to it I ever come round. It is

the decision of the Holy See; Saint Peter has spoken.' Here the weary

brain finds rest. Here is the Gordian knot, so trying to the fingers,

cut swiftly with a sword. Here is the discovery of a short cut that may

save the tired feet many a long and dreary trudge.

The temptation meets us at every turn. And it is because that temptation

is so general that it figures so prominently in the Temptation in the

wilderness. He was tempted in all points like as we are; and therefore

He was tempted to take short cuts. This is the essence of that weird and

terrible story. It is notable that all the three things that Jesus was

tempted to acquire were good things, things to be desired, things that

He was destined to possess. But the whole point of the record is that He

was tempted to make His way to the bread and the angels and the kingdoms

by means of short cuts. Now this is vastly significant. It is

significant because, when you come to think of it, nearly all the things

that _we_ are tempted to acquire are good things. The temptation

consists in the suggestion that we should possess ourselves of those

good things prematurely or illicitly. We are urged to make short cuts to

our legitimate goal. Jesus was tempted to cut the Gordian knot, and to

thus obtain an immediate but fleeting hold on the objects of His just

desire. He rejected the proposal. He preferred patiently to untie the

knot, and thus to make Himself king of all kingdoms for ever and for

ever.

Of the perils attending short cuts John Bunyan is our chief expositor.

Wherever a dangerous but alluring footpath breaks off from the

high-road, a statue of Mr. Worldly Wiseman ought to be erected. For it

was Mr. Worldly Wiseman that first got the poor pilgrim into such sore

trouble. Mr. Worldly Wiseman knew a short cut to the Celestial City.

Christian took that short cut--the footpath over the hills and through

the village of Morality--and dearly did he pay for his folly. And yet it

is difficult to blame him. Poor Christian was heavily burdened, and

every inch that could be saved was a consideration. Evangelist had

clearly directed him, it is true; but then, if Mr. Worldly Wiseman knew

a short cut, why not take it? 'Let him who has no such burden as this

poor pilgrim had cast the first stone at Christian; I cannot,' says Dr.

Alexander Whyte. 'If one who looked like a gentleman came to me to-night

and told me how I could on the spot get to a peace of conscience never

to be lost again, and how I could get a heart to-night that would never

any more plague and pollute me, I should be mightily tempted to forget

what all my former teachers had told me, and try this new gospel.'

Exactly! The temptation to cut the Gordian knot is very alluring. The

advice to get-rich-quick, or to get-good-quick, or to get-there-quick,

is very acceptable. But by his story of the short cut, and the anguish

that followed, Bunyan has taught us that the longest way round is often

the shortest way home. There is sound sense in the song that bids us

'take time to be holy.' The short cut that avoids the wicket-gate and

the Cross is merely a blind lane from which we shall return sooner or

later with blistered feet and broken hearts.