PART II

I—ODD VOLUMES

We have had a kind of wedding in my study this morning. The bride

arrived by post. It happened in this wise. Twenty years ago I attended

an auction sale at Mosgiel. A valuable library was under the hammer and

the chance was too good to be missed. The books were all tied up in

bundles and laid out on tables. I took a note of the numbers of those

lots that contained works that I wanted. When, on the arrival of the

carrier's cart, I proudly inspected my purchases, I found among them an

odd volume. It was the first part of _Foster's Life and Correspondence_.

The book was bound up with a number of others, and I could not buy

_them_ without becoming responsible for _it_. My first inclination was

to throw it away; and the temptation recurred when I left Mosgiel for

Hobart, and again when I left Hobart for Armadale. Of what use was an

odd volume? In packing up at Hobart I actually tossed it to the heap of

rubbish that was to be left behind; but an aching void in the last case

led to its ultimate rescue. This is the first part of our little

romance.

Last week I was visiting a country minister. In the ordinary course of

things, I glanced over his book-shelves. I was just turning away, when,

among some dusty volumes away on the topmost shelf, my eye caught the

words _Foster's Life and Correspondence_. It, too, was an odd volume. On

hearing of my own experience, the good man urged me to transfer the

volume to my portmanteau and say no more about it. It was, he said, of

no use to him.

'But, my dear fellow,' I replied, 'I might just as well say that _mine_

is of no use to _me_. We must leave the matter in the meantime. It is so

long since I looked at the volume on my shelves that I cannot be sure

that they are companions. They may be duplicates. Yours, I see, is

_Volume Two_. If, on my return, I find that mine is _Volume One_, we

will come to some arrangement. If not, neither of us can help the

other.'

My Mosgiel purchase turned out to be the _first_ volume. I posted my

friend a copy of _Bleak House_, which, as I happened to know, he had

never read, and he forwarded the _Foster_ by return of post. And this

morning I took the odd volume from the lumber on the top shelf,

introduced it to its mate, and now the two stand proudly side by side

among my biographies. They make a handsome pair: no bride and bridegroom

could look more perfectly matched. I do not suppose that they had ever

met before; but that circumstance in itself presents no lawful

impediment to their being united in a lifelong partnership.

The mating of books is a very mechanical affair. At a big publishing

house you may see two huge cases side by side, just as they have come

from the printer's. The one is packed with copies of _Volume One_; the

other contains copies of _Volume Two_. An assistant, asked by a customer

for a copy of the complete work, takes a book from the one box and a

book from the other; claps them together with a bang; and they are mated

for all time to come. There is no question of selection, and no question

of consent. There is no '_Wilt thou have..._' and no _'I will_.' The

volume in the top right-hand corner of the one box is unable to steal a

shy and furtive glance at the book lying in a corresponding position in

the other box. His destined partner may be a little plumper or a little

thinner than himself; she may be neatly attired in a pretty cover that

sets off her charms to perfection, or she may be dressed in an

ill-fitting wrapper that is smudged or torn; he cannot tell. He can only

wait, and she can only wait, until they are unceremoniously snatched

from their respective corners, banged together, and thus, for richer for

poorer, for better for worse, made partners in a bond that is

indissoluble. There is no question of sexual selection such as Darwin,

Wallace, and the great biologists like to portray. The books in the one

box do not strut and parade and show off their beauties in order to win

the admiration of the books in the other box. That may be because they

are conscious that they are all so much alike; they feel that there is

little to pick and choose between them; or, on the other hand, it may be

because they suspect that the books in the other box are all much of a

muchness, and that it matters very little which bride each bridegroom

has. But, whatever the reason, there it is! There is no element of

selection such as we find in the fields and the forests; there is no

lovemaking and courtship such as we mortals know; the volumes are

arbitrarily paired off, and the thing is done.

And, strangely enough, they appear to belong to each other from that

very moment. One would feel that he was conniving at a kind of literary

adultery if he were to take the second volume of _this_ set and the

second volume of _that_ set and deliberately transpose them. I call the

earth and the heavens to witness that, in my procedure this morning, I

have been guilty of no such enormity. We are living in a rough world.

With some books, as with some people, things go hardly. In the course of

years a volume may be cruelly deserted by its companion; or its partner

may come to an untimely end. The law of the land provides that in such

sad cases, a second marriage is no shame. One does not like to think of

my first volume of _Foster_ spending all its days among the lumber on

_my_ top shelf, and of my friend's second volume spending all its days

in the dust and neglect of _his_ top shelf. I do not often take my stand

on my ministerial dignity; but I maintain that, being a minister, I have

at least as good a right as any publisher's assistant to take those two

sad and lonely volumes—the one from my top shelf in the city, and the

other from my friend's top shelf in the country—and to unite them in

the holy bond of matrimony. And as they stand before me side by

side—never to perch upon a top shelf any more—I feel that I have done

myself, my friend and them good service by having taken pity on their

loneliness and launched them on a united career of happiness and

usefulness. As things stood, neither was of any use to anybody; their

union has made it possible for each to fulfill its destiny.

Let it be distinctly understood that I am not writing of _single_

volumes. A single volume is not an _odd_ volume. As I sit here at my

desk and survey my shelves, I see at a glance that many of the books are

complete in one volume. It would be the height of absurdity for me to

take one such book, say _Pilgrim's Progress_, and another such book, say

_Pickwick Papers_, and declare them _Volumes One_ and _Two_ for the mere

sake of pairing them off. Neither the publisher's assistant nor the

minister is vested with authority to mate the books after so arbitrary a

fashion. The _Pilgrim's Progress_ is a single volume, and the _Pickwick

Papers_ is a single volume; and it is better for them to do the work

that they were sent into the world to do as single volumes, rather than

to enter into an alliance that will make them each ridiculous and

stultify them both. I am not arguing for the celibacy of the clergy or

for the celibacy of the laity; how could I consistently adopt such a

line of reasoning immediately after having celebrated the marriage of

the _Fosters_? I am simply telling all the single volumes in my

study—who are looking a little downcast and unhappy now that the

excitement of the wedding is past—that _single_ volumes are not _odd_

volumes. It is very nice, of course, to be happily mated; but it is

quite possible for a solitary life to be a very useful one. Robert Louis

Stevenson would have gone further. In his _Virginibus Puerisque_ he as

good as says that no man can be a hero after he is married. The fact

that he has a home of his own, and is surrounded by love and tenderness

and thoughtful care, militates against the culture of the sterner

virtues. 'If comfortable,' Stevenson says, 'marriage is not heroic. It

inevitably narrows and damps the spirit of generous men. In marriage a

man becomes stark and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his

moral being. The air of the fireside withers up all the fine wildings of

the husband's heart. He is so comfortable and happy that he begins to

prefer comfort and happiness to anything else on earth, his wife

included. Yesterday he would have shared his last shilling; to-day his

first duty is to his family,' and is fulfilled in large measure by

laying down vintages and husbanding the health of an invaluable parent.

Twenty years ago this man was equally capable of crime or heroism; now

he is fit for neither. His soul is asleep, and you may speak without

restraint; for you will not waken him.

In his references to women, Stevenson does not speak quite so

confidently. 'It is true,' he says, 'that some of the merriest and most

genuine of women are old maids, and that those old maids, and wives who

are unhappily married, have often most of the motherly touch. And this

would seem to show, even for women, the same narrowing influence in

comfortable married life.' Yet, on the other hand, he feels that

marriage affects a woman differently. It makes greater demands upon her.

The very comfort which is the husband's peril is largely the fruit of

her thoughtfulness, her industry and her unselfishness. With wifehood,

too, comes motherhood; and motherhood, side by side with felicities that

only mothers know, inflicts a ceaseless discipline of suffering and

self-denial. 'For women,' Stevenson admits, 'there is less danger.

Marriage is of so much use to a woman, opens out so much more in life,

and puts her in the way of so much freedom and usefulness that, whether

she marry ill or well, she can hardly miss the benefit.' And he sums up

by advising you, 'If you wish the pick of men and women, take a good

bachelor and a good wife.' Since, however, if all women became good

wives, all men could not remain good bachelors, it is obvious that

Stevenson is crying for the moon. But he has said enough to dispel the

gloomy and downcast looks that disfigured the countenances of all my

single volumes immediately after the wedding. Single volumes are

certainly not odd volumes; they are complete in themselves; and we are

all very glad of them.

But there are odd volumes. Charles Wagner says that 'in certain shelters

for old people, where husbands and wives may pass a tranquil old age

together, a very expressive term is used to designate one who is left

alone. The bereft solitary is called _an odd volume_. How

appropriate—like a book astray from its companion tome! Odd volumes

indeed, those who have hitherto been one of two inseparables! They

celebrated their silver and golden weddings, and suddenly find

themselves desolate. They seem like guests left behind at the end of the

feast or the play; the lights are out, the curtain is down; they wander

about in the emptiness like souls in torment, possessed with the idea of

continually searching for something they have lost. They hardly refrain

from asking "Have you seen my husband?" "Where shall I find my wife?"

Odd volumes, these!' And you may find them in palaces as well as in

almshouses. Did we not all hear the cry that rang through the halls of

Windsor on the day on which the Prince Consort passed away? 'I have no

one now to call me "Victoria"!' And there are others. They knew no

golden wedding, no silver wedding, no wedding at all; and yet felt

themselves mated. Some, like Evangeline and Gabriel—and like my two

_Fosters_—are separated by distance and ignorance of each other's

whereabouts. Some, like Drumsheugh and Marget Howe, are separated by the

iron hand of circumstance; some are kept apart by cruel

misunderstandings and mistaken judgments; and some—

Women there are on earth, most sweet and high,

Who lose their own, and walk bereft and lonely,

Loving that one lost heart until they die

Loving it only.

And so they never see beside them grow

Children, whose coming is like breath of flowers;

Consoled by subtler loves than angels know

Through childless hours.

Faithful in life, and faithful unto death,

Such souls, in sooth, illume with lustre splendid

That glimpsed, glad land wherein, the Vision saith,

Earth's wrongs are ended.

The purest spirit that ever walked this earth of ours was—I say it

reverently—an odd volume. I do not mean that He was a single volume: I

mean far more than that. He felt that He was not single: He was not

complete in Himself. In some wonderful and mystical way, Deity and

Humanity were odd volumes; volumes that were intended to supplement and

complete each other; volumes that had become alienated and torn asunder.

The amazing thing about the Scriptures is that, in both Testaments, they

employ the very phraseology of mating and marriage. The quest that led

to the Cross is the quest of the lover for His betrothed; and the

consummation of all things is to be a marriage supper—the Marriage

Supper of the Lamb. And it may be that, in the larger, the lesser is

included. It may be that when Deity and Humanity, so long estranged, are

at length perfectly united, other odd volumes will find their mates and

the isolations of this life be swallowed up in the glad reunions of the

life everlasting.

II—O'ER CRAG AND TORRENT

I

Lexie Drummond had a place of her own in the hearts of the Mosgiel

people. To begin with, she was lonely; and lonely folk have a remarkable

way of exacting secret homage. Lexie worked at a loom in the woollen

factory, and lived by herself in one of the factory cottages near by. I

wish you could have seen it. The door invariably stood open, even when

Lexie was away at her work. Everything was faultlessly natty and clean.

An enormous tabby cat, 'Matey,' purred on the mat, while a golden canary

sang bravely from his cage in the creeper just outside the door. Lexie

had a trim little garden, in which she grew lavender and mignonette,

roses and carnations. Lexie's white carnations always took the prize at

our local Flower Show. Lexie mothered Mosgiel. If anybody was in

trouble, she would be sure to drop in; and, in cases of serious

sickness, she would often stay the night. Some people would deny that

Lexie was beautiful; yet she had a loveliness peculiar to herself. She

was tall, finely-built, and wonderfully strong. When Roger Gunton, the

heaviest man on the plain, was seized with sudden illness, and his body

was racked with excruciating pain, Lexie alone could turn him from side

to side, and he would allow nobody else to touch him. If her face lacked

the vivacity and sparkle of more voluptuous beauties, it possessed,

nevertheless, a quiet gravity, a serious winsomeness, that rendered it

extremely attractive. The furrows in her face, and the strands of grey

in her hair, made her look older than she really was. Everybody knew

Lexie's age; her name was a perpetual reminder of the number of her

years. For, in an unguarded moment, she had once revealed the

circumstance that she was born on the day on which the Princess of

Wales—afterwards Queen Alexandra—was married, and she was named after

the royal bride. Mosgiel never forgot personal details of that kind. In

addition to all this, Mosgiel vaguely suspected that Lexie carried a

secret in her breast. She came to Mosgiel only a few years before I did;

and everybody felt that her previous history was involved in tantalizing

mystery.

II

It was Friday night. In the dining-room at the Mosgiel manse we were

enjoying a quiet evening by the fire. I was lounging in an armchair with

a novel. I could afford to be restful, for, that week, I had but one

sermon to prepare. On the approaching Sunday, the anniversary of the

Sunday school was to be celebrated; in the morning John Broadbanks and I

were exchanging pulpits in honor of the occasion; and, availing myself

of a minister's immemorial prerogative, I had decided to preach an old

sermon at Silverstream. All at once we were startled by the ringing of

the front door bell. It was the Sunday school superintendent.

'We are in an awful hole,' he exclaimed, after having discussed the

weather, the health of our respective families, and a few other

inevitable preliminaries. 'Lexie Drummond has been taken ill, and the

doctor won't hear of her leaving the house for a week or two. She has

been preparing the children for their part-songs, and has the whole

programme at her fingers' ends; I don't know how on earth we are going

to manage without her.'

I promised to run down and see Lexie about it first thing in the

morning; and did so. Lexie was confined to her bed, and old Janet

Davidson was nursing her. 'Matey' was curled up close to his mistress's

feet, while the canary was singing blithely from his cage near the open

window. I saw at a glance that Lexie had been crying, and I attributed

her grief to anxiety and disappointment in connection with the

anniversary. She quickly undeceived me.

'You'll never notice that I'm not there,' she said, with a watery smile.

'The children know their parts thoroughly, and Bella Christie, who has

been helping me, is as familiar with the program as I am.'

I assured her that we should miss her sadly; but expressed my relief

that everything had been so well arranged.

'And now, Lexie,' I said, as I took her hand in parting, 'you must worry

no more about it; we will do our very best to make it pass off well.'

'Oh,' she replied, quickly, recognizing in my words a reference to her

tell-tale eyes, 'it wasn't the anniversary that I was worrying about;

indeed, it was silly of me to cry at all!' And, to show how extremely

silly it was, she broke, with womanish perversity, into a fresh outburst

of tears.

'She has something she wants to tell you,' Janet interposed, 'but she

doesn't like to.'

Lexie pretended to look vexed at the old lady's garrulity; but I fancied

that I detected, behind the frown, a look of real relief.

'Some other time,' she said. 'Good-bye, I shall think of you all

to-morrow!' Janet opened the door and I left her.

III

The anniversary passed off happily; Lexie was soon herself again; and, a

fortnight later, I saw her in her old place at church. We knew that she

would insist on taking her class in the afternoon; so, to save her the

long walk home, we took her to the manse to dinner.

'Several of the teachers have been telling me of the address that you

gave on the evening of the Sunday school anniversary,' she said, on our

way to the manse. 'I wish you would let me see the manuscript.'

'I can do better than that,' I replied. 'The address was printed in

yesterday's _Taieri Advocate_. I have several copies to spare if you

care to have one.'

On arrival at the manse she insisted on going round the garden and

admiring the flowers before composing herself on the sofa in the

dining-room. I gave her the paper I had promised her, and hurried away

to prepare for dinner. When I returned a few minutes later the paper was

lying on the floor beside her, and she was crying as if her heart would

break. By a supreme effort she regained her self-possession, promised to

explain in the afternoon, and, in obedience to the summons, took her

place at table.

During dinner I mentally reviewed the address which had so strangely

reopened the fountains of her grief. It was the address which, under the

title 'The Little Palace Beautiful,' appears in _The Golden Milestone_.

It begins: 'There are only four children in the wide, wide world, and

each of us is the parent of at least one of them.' The first of the four

is _The Little Child that Never Was_. 'He is,' the address says, 'an

exquisitely beautiful child. He is the child of all lonely men and

lonely women, the child of their dreams and their fancies, the child

that will never be born. He is the son of the solitary.' And the address

goes on to quote from Ada Cambridge's _Virgin Martyrs_:

Every wild she-bird has nest and mate in the warm April weather,

But a captive woman, made for love, no mate, no nest, has she.

In the spring of young desire, young men and maids are wed together,

And the happy mothers flaunt their bliss for all the world to see;

Nature's sacramental feast for them—an empty board for me.

Time, that heals so many sorrows, keeps mine ever freshly aching,

Though my face is growing furrowed and my brown hair turning white.

Still I mourn my irremediable loss, asleep or waking;

Still I hear my son's voice calling 'Mother' in the dead of night,

And am haunted by my girl's eyes that will never see the light.

As the address came back to me, I began to understand. I remembered what

the gossips said about the mystery in Lexie's life. What was it, I

wondered, that she meant to tell me after dinner?

IV

'You don't know me!' she cried passionately, when, once more, we found

ourselves alone together. 'You treat me as if I were a good woman; you

let me work at the church, and you bring me into your home; but you

don't know me; really, really, you don't! I have committed a great sin,

a very great sin; and I am suffering for it; and others are suffering

for it.' She paused, as if wondering how to begin her story, and then

started afresh.

'I was brought up in the country,' she said, 'not far from Hokitui. My

parents both died when I was a little girl; my guardians followed them a

few years ago; so that now I am quite alone. At school I became very

fond of Davie Bannerman, and he made no secret of his partiality for me.

He used to bring me something—an apple or a cake or a picture or some

sweets—every day. When I was nineteen we became engaged and were both

very happy about it. Everybody in the Hokitui district loved Davie; he

was handsome and good-natured; I used to think his laugh the grandest

music I had ever heard. But I was proud, terribly proud. And, being

proud, I was selfish. And, being selfish, I was jealous. Davie was good

to everybody; yet I could not bear to see him paying attention to

anybody but myself. He was a member of the Hokitui church, and used to

spend a good deal of time there. I had no interest in such things in

those days, and I was angry with him for neglecting me. But most of all

was I jealous of Sadie McKay. Sadie was his cousin; she was one of the

church girls; and I hated to think, when he was not with _me_, that he

was with _her_. Davie always took my scoldings merrily, and quickly

coaxed me into a better mind. And I dare say that all would have gone

well but for the accident that spoiled everything.

'Sadie was riding in from the farm one morning when, on the outskirts of

Hokitui, she met a traction engine. Her horse bolted, and was soon out

of control. As luck would have it, Davie was standing at a shop door

near the township corner, and saw the horse galloping madly towards him.

He rushed into the road and managed to check the animal before Sadie was

thrown; but, in doing so, he was hurled to the ground, and the horse

trod on his right arm, crushing it. He lay in the hospital for nearly

two months; but I never went near him. When he left the hospital he

wrote to me. It was a pitiful scrawl, written with his left hand; his

right was amputated. "I have had a heavy loss," he said, "and I do not

know how I can manage without my arm; but now I must suffer a still

heavier loss, and I do not know how I can live without _you_. But it

would not be right for me to burden you, and you must find somebody

else, Lexie, who can care for you better than I can." I returned the

engagement ring, and that was the end of it. If he had lost his arm in

any other way I could have endured life-long poverty with him; but to

have lost his arm for Sadie!' She paused and seemed to be looking out of

the window, but I knew that her story was not finished.

'A few months later I took a situation in Ashburton. There I met, at a

party, a young Englishman—Horace Latchford—who took a fancy to me. He

was visiting New Zealand for the sake of his health. He told me that he

owned a large estate in Devonshire, and would make me a perfect queen.

During his stay—a period of about four months—life was one long

frolic. Six months later he sent for me to go to him; and I went. But my

eyes were soon opened. There was no estate in Devonshire; Horace was

often intoxicated when he came to see me; and, instead of getting

married, I returned to New Zealand in disgust. I came to Mosgiel, partly

because I knew that I could get good work in the factory, and partly

because I knew that nobody here would know me. Since I returned from

England, ten years ago, I have only met one person who knew me in the

old days at Hokitui. I was spending a holiday at Moeraki, and she was

staying at the same boarding-house. I did not tell her that I had

settled at Mosgiel; but she told me that none of the Bannermans were now

living at Hokitui. Davie, she said, was the first to leave. He went to

one of the cities to learn a profession that did not imperatively demand

the use of two hands.' She paused again, and I waited.

'When I came to Mosgiel,' she went on, 'I got in the way of coming to

the church. I became deeply impressed, and you received me into

membership. And, every day since, as I have done little things, and

taken little duties, in connection with the work, I have come to

understand Davie as I never understood him in the old days. I hated his

fondness for the church. And, every day now, my sin seems to be more and

more terrible. Just lately it has been with me night and day. And when I

read your address my punishment seemed greater than I could bear. I have

prayed thousands of times that the dreadful tangle might be unravelled.

I have not prayed selfishly; I could be perfectly contented if only I

knew that Davie is happy, and that his faith in God and womanhood has

not been shaken by my wickedness. We sang _Lead, Kindly Light_ in church

this morning. Do you think that God really guides us? Does He put us

right even when we have done wrong? Will He straighten things out? I

would give anything to be quite sure! I seem to be in a maze, and can

find no way out of it!'

V

It seemed an infinite relief to Lexie to have told me her story. She was

much more often at the manse after that; a new bond seemed to have

sprung up between us. I fancied that there came into Lexie's face a

deeper peace and a greater content. The peace was, however, rudely

broken. About two years after Lexie had unburdened her soul to me, I

opened the paper one morning and confronted a startling announcement.

The personal paragraphs contained the statement that '_Mr. David

Bannerman, the brilliant Auckland solicitor, has been appointed Lecturer

in Common Law at the Otago University._' There followed a brief outline

of the new professor's career which left no shadow of doubt as to his

identity. I particularly noticed that there was no reference to his

marriage. What, if anything, was to be done? The Otago University was in

Dunedin, only ten miles from Mosgiel. Ought I to allow these two people

to drift on, perhaps for years, eating their hearts out within a few

miles of each other? Was it not due to Davie that he should know that

Lexie was at Mosgiel? He might desire to _seek_ her; or he might desire

to _avoid_ her; in either case the information would be of value. I

stated the position in this way to Lexie, but she would not hear of my

taking any action. After a while, however, she agreed to my writing,

telling the professor-elect that I knew of her whereabouts. I added that

she was universally loved and honored for her fine work in the church

and in the district. I enclosed a copy of 'The Little Palace Beautiful,'

and mentioned the fact that I had once caught her weeping bitterly as

she read it. It took four days for a mail from Mosgiel to reach

Auckland. After a long talk with Lexie, I posted my letter on a Sunday

evening. On Friday afternoon I received a reply-paid telegram: '_Wire

lady's address immediately._'

The new professor was married three months after entering upon the

duties of his chair at the University; and, when I last saw her, Lexie

was enthroned in the center of a charming little circle. I received a

letter from her yesterday—the letter that suggested this record. She

tells me, with pardonable pride, that her eldest boy has matriculated

and also joined the church.

'I am getting to be an old woman now,' she says, 'and I spend a lot of

time in looking backward. Isn't it wonderful? It all came right after

all! But for the accident, Davie would never have been a professor; and,

if we had been married in the old days, I should only have been a drag

and a hindrance. As it is, we have passed o'er moor and fen, o'er crag

and torrent; but the Kindly Light that I once doubted has led us all the

way!'

III—THE PRETENDER

I

'_Let's pretend!_' cried Jean.

They were enjoying a romp after tea; but the game had been suddenly

interrupted.

'How can we drown him when there's no water?' asked Ernest, looking

wonderfully wise.

'Oh, let's pretend the lawn's the water!' replied Jean, brushing aside

with impatience so trifling a difficulty.

_Let's pretend!_ I used to wonder why Bonnie Prince Charlie was called

the Pretender, as though he enjoyed some monopoly in that regard. We are

all pretenders. Some, perhaps, are more skilful than others. Jean was

especially clever. One day a lady called and gave her a beautiful bunch

of flowers. Ernest was particularly fond of flowers, and thought that he

could capture them by guile.

'I say, Jean,' he cried, 'let's have a game! We'll 'tend the flowers are

mine!'

'All right,' Jean replied, with a sly twinkle, 'and you 'tend you've got

'em!'

Precisely! There is no end to the possibilities of pretending. It is the

one game of which we never grow tired. We learn to play it as soon as we

are out of the cradle and it still fascinates us as we totter on the

brink of the grave. Indeed, as H. C. Bunner shows, childhood and age

often play the game together. Look at this!

It was an old, old, old, old lady,

And a boy who was half-past three;

And the way that they played together

Was beautiful to see.

She couldn't go running and jumping,

And the boy no more could he,

For he was a pale little fellow,

With a thin, little twisted knee.

They sat in the yellow sunlight,

Out under the maple tree;

And the game that they played I'll tell you,

Just as it was told to me.

It was Hide-and-Seek they were playing,

Though you'd never have known it to be—

With an old, old, old, old lady,

And a boy with a twisted knee.

The boy would bend down his face, close his eyes, and guess where she

was hiding. He was allowed three guesses. She was in the china-closet!

Wrong! Well, she was in the chest in Papa's bedroom—the chest with the

queer old key! Wrong again; but warmer! Well, then, she was in the

clothes-press! It was his third guess, and it was right. In the

clothes-press she was! It was his turn to hide and Granny's turn to

guess!

Then she covered her face with her fingers,

Which were wrinkled and white and wee;

And she guessed where the boy was hiding,

With a one and a two and a three.

And they never had stirred from their places

Right under the maple tree,

This old, old, old, old lady

And the boy with the lame little knee.

This dear, dear, dear, old lady

And the boy who was half-past three.

It is the oldest game in the world; it was played—just as it is played

to-day—before any other game was dreamed of, and the children of

to-morrow will be playing it when the games of to-day are all forgotten.

It is the most universal game in the world; it is played in Pekin just

as it is played in London; it is played in Mysore just as it is played

in New York; it is played in Timbuctoo just as we play it here in

Melbourne. The rules of the game never alter with the period or change

with the place. It is equally popular in all grades of society. The

royal children play it in the palace-grounds and the street urchins play

it in the alleys and the slums. For the beauty of it is, that it needs

no paraphernalia or tackle or gear; you have not to buy a bat or a ball,

a racket or a net; you do not require special grounds or courts or

links. The 'old, old, old, old lady,' and 'the boy with the twisted

knee' take it into their heads to have a game; and, then and there,

without moving an inch or getting a thing, they set to work and play it!

Jean cries, 'Let's pretend!' and straightway everybody is pretending!

'Let's pretend!' cried Jean. There was nothing original in the

suggestion. If the words are not actually a quotation from Shakespeare,

it is perfectly certain that Shakespeare uttered them. They voice the

very spirit of the drama. The play and the pantomime are all a matter of

pretending. It happened last evening that I had an appointment in the

city. I had promised to meet a friend on the Town Hall steps at

half-past seven. I was early; it was a delicious summer's evening, and I

enjoyed watching the crowd. The crowd is always worth watching, but at

that hour the crowd is at its best. The strain of the day is over and

the weariness of night has not yet come. The crowd is fresh, vivacious,

light-hearted. As I stood upon the steps, I saw young men and maidens

keeping their trysts with each other; they were making no effort to

conceal their joy in each other's society; as they tripped off together,

they were laughingly anticipating the entertainment to which they were

hastening. Gentlemen in evening dress, accompanied by handsome women,

beautifully gowned, swept by in sumptuous cars that were brightly lit

and daintily adorned with choicest flowers. Here and there, in this

unbroken tide of traffic, I caught a glimpse of features more quaint and

of garments more fantastic. I saw a troubadour, a viking, a

knight-errant, a pierrot and a Spanish cavalier. I saw a gipsy queen, a

geisha-girl, a milkmaid, an Egyptian princess, and a lady of the court

of Louis the Fourteenth. They were on their way to a fancy dress ball at

Government House. I stood entranced as this pageant of pleasure swept

past me, and a strange thought seized my fancy. I reminded myself that,

in any one of ten thousand cities, I might witness, at this same hour,

an identically similar spectacle. If I could have taken my stand in the

Strand in London, or in Princes Street, Edinburgh, or in Sackville

Street, Dublin, or in Broadway, New York, or in the main thoroughfare of

any city in Christendom, I should have gazed upon a scene which would

have seemed like a mere reflection of this one. And then I asked myself

for an interpretation of it all. What did it all mean—this throng of

happy pedestrians laughing and chatting as they surged along the

pavements; this ceaseless procession of gay vehicles in the

brilliantly-illumined roadway?

II

It is a tribute to our human passion for pretending. His Excellency

stands in the reception hall at Government House and laughingly welcomes

his guests. They are pretenders, every one. The troubadour is no

troubadour; the viking, no viking; the gipsy, no gipsy; and the

milkmaid, no milkmaid. They are just pretending and they have gone to

all this trouble and to all this expense that the full-orbed joy of

pretending may be for one crowded hour their own. And the other

people—the gentlemen in evening dress; the ladies richly begowned and

bejewelled; the surging crowd upon the path. They are making their way

to the theatres. They are going to see the great actors and actresses

pretend. One actor will pretend to be a cripple and another will pretend

to be a king; one actress will pretend to be an empress and one will

pretend to be a slave; and the better the actors and the actresses

pretend the better these people will like it.

For the people love pretending; that is how the theatre came to be. Like

Topsy, it had no father and no mother. It sprang from our insatiable

fondness for make-believe. In his _Short History of the English People_

John Richard Green says that 'it was the people itself that created the

stage'; and he graphically describes their initial ventures. 'The

theatre,' he says, 'was the courtyard of an inn or a mere booth such as

is still seen at a country fair; the bulk of the audience sat beneath

the open sky; a few covered seats accommodated the wealthier spectators

while patrons and nobles sprawled upon the actual boards.' In those days

the audience had to do its part of the pretending. If the spectators saw

a few flowers they accepted the hint and imagined that the play was

being enacted in a beautiful garden. In a battle scene the arrival of an

army was represented by a stampede across the stage of a dozen clumsy

sceneshifters brandishing swords and bucklers. In order to assist the

audience to muster appropriate emotions, the stage was draped with black

when a tragedy was about to be presented and with blue when the

performance was to portray life in some lighter vein. What is this but a

group of children playing at charades, at dressing-up, at 'just

pretending?' Children pretend in order that they may escape from the

limitations of reality into the infinitudes of romance. Once they begin

to pretend all life is open to them. They have uttered the magic

'Sesame' and every gate unbars. Their seniors invade the same realm for

the same reason. This is the significance of those crowded streets last

night.

III

Now this brings me to a very interesting point. Is it wrong to pretend?

In the greatest sermon ever preached—the Sermon on the Mount—Jesus

called certain people hypocrites. But, did He, by doing so, condemn all

forms of hypocrisy? If so, the people upon whom I looked last night were

all of them earning for themselves His malediction. And so were the

people gathered in the quaint old English courtyard. And so was Jean

when she called to her playmates: 'Let's pretend!' And so was 'the old,

old, old, old lady' and 'the boy with the twisted knee.' For a

hypocrite—as the very word suggests—is simply a pretender. A hypocrite

is one who colors his face, or dresses up or acts a part. Does it

follow, therefore, because Jesus condemned the Pharisees and called them

hypocrites, that all pretenders fall beneath His frown? To ask the

question is to answer it. Fancy Jesus frowning at Jean! Fancy Jesus

frowning at 'the old, old, old, old lady' and 'the boy with the twisted

knee!' Why Jesus Himself _pretended_ on occasions. He behaved towards

the Syro-Phœnician woman as though He had no sympathy with her in her

distress. He saw the disciples in trouble on the lake; and, walking on

the water, He made as though He would have passed them by. When, after

journeying with two of His disciples to Emmaus, He reached the door of

their home, He made as though He would have gone further! 'He made as

though!' 'He made as though!' 'He made as though!' The feints of Deity!

Let a man but keep his eyes wide open and he will see some very lovable

hypocrites, some very amiable pretenders, in the course of a day's

march. I have been reading _The Butterfly Man_. And here in the early

part of the book is a scene in which a child and a criminal take part.

Mary Virginia shows John Flint a pasteboard box. It contains a

dark-colored and rather ugly grey moth with his wings turned down.

'You wouldn't think him pretty, would you?' asked the child.

'No,' replied John Flint disappointedly, 'I shouldn't!'

Mary Virginia smiled, and, picking up the little moth, held his body,

very gently, between her finger tips. He fluttered, spreading out his

grey wings; and then John saw the beautiful pansy-like underwings, and

the glorious lower pair of scarlet velvet, barred and bordered with

black.

'I got to thinking,' said the girl, thoughtfully, lifting her clear and

candid eyes to John Flint's, 'I got to thinking, when he threw aside his

plain grey cloak and showed me his lovely underwings, that he's like

some people. You couldn't be expected to know what was underneath, could

you? So you pass them by, thinking how ordinary and uninteresting and

ugly they are, and you feel rather sorry for them—because you don't

know. But if you once get close enough to touch them—why, then you find

out! You only think of the dust-colored outside, and all the while the

underwings are right there, waiting for you to find them! Isn't it

wonderful and beautiful? And the best of it all is, it's true!'

In these artless sentences, tripping, so easily from a child's tongue,

Marie Oemler sums up the burden of her book. The incident is a parable.

For John Flint was _himself_ the drab and ugly moth. In the opening

chapters of the story, he is a horrible object—coarse, brutal,

loathsome, revolting. But there were underwings. And gradually, beneath

the touch of gentle influences, those underwings became visible; and, in

the later stages of the story, all men admired and revered and loved the

beautiful nobleness of the Butterfly Man.

IV

There are people, I suppose, who trick themselves out to make themselves

appear much prettier or much nicer or—worse still—much holier than

they really are. 'Let's pretend!' they cry; and there is something

sinister in their pretending. It is against these people—and against

them only—that the anathemas of the Sermon on the Mount are directed.

Again, there are people who, like Ian Maclaren's Drumtochty folk, go

through life dreading lest their underwings should be seen, their

virtues exposed, their goodness discovered. They bear themselves

distantly and give an impression of aloofness; you would never dream,

unless you got to know them, that their dispositions were so sweet,

their characters so strong, their souls so saintly.

I am told that a great actor achieves his triumphs through contemplating

so closely the character that he impersonates. His own individuality

becomes, for the time being, absorbed in another. Henry Irving forgets

that he is Henry Irving and believes himself to be Macbeth. I have read

of One who, seeming to possess no form nor comeliness, nor any beauty

that men should desire Him, was nevertheless the chiefest among ten

thousand and the altogether lovely. It may be that these amiable

pretenders of whom we are all so fond have contemplated so closely _His_

character that they have unconsciously caught His spirit and acquired

His ways. They cleverly conceal the rainbow-tinted underwings, beneath a

coat of drab; but, having once caught a glimpse of their glory, we ever

after feel it shining through the grey.

IV—ACHMED'S INVESTMENT

I

Gilt-edged securities are all very well; but men do not make their

fortunes out of gilt-edged securities. Gilt-edged securities may suit

those whose circumstances compel them to husband jealously their meagre

savings; but the big dividends are made out of the risky speculations.

There are investments in which a man cannot, by any possibility, lose

his treasure, and in which he must, with mathematical certainty, reap a

modest margin of profit. And, on the other hand, there are investments

in which a man may, quite easily, lose every penny that he hazards, but

in which he may, quite conceivably, make a perfectly golden haul. An

Eastern sage with a well-established reputation for wisdom urges us to

venture fearlessly at times upon these more perilous but more profitable

ventures, '_Cast thy bread_,' he says, '_upon the waters._' The man who

believes in gilt-edged securities will prefer to cast it upon _the

land_. The land is a fixture. The land does not float away or fly away

or fade away. You find it where you left it. It is stable, substantial,

secure. Because of its fixity, men trust it. For thousands of years it

was the bank of the nations. Men hid their treasures in fields, as many

a lucky finder afterwards discovered to his delight. But the waters!

_Cast thy bread upon the waters!_ The waters are the very emblem of all

that is fickle, variable and inconstant. They ebb and they flow; they

rise and they fall; they are restless, unstable, fluctuating. They suck

down into their dark depths the treasures confided to their care and

leave no trace upon the surface of the hiding-place in which the booty

lies concealed. The waters! _Cast thy bread upon the waters!_ The man

who believes only in gilt-edged securities shakes his head. This is no

investment for him. But the man who can afford to take desperate hazards

pricks up his ears.

'The waters!' he exclaims. 'He tells me to cast my bread upon the

waters! It is the last place in the world to which I should have thought

of casting it! But I shall venture!'

And he becomes immensely rich in consequence.

II

Achmed Ali is a young Egyptian farmer. His lands are in the Nile Valley,

and, in the flood-time, two thirds of his property is under water. But

flood-time is also sowing-time, and what is he to do? He can, of course,

sow that portion of his land that stands above the waterline. And he

does. This is his gilt-edged security. He is practically certain of

getting back in the late summer the grain that he sows in the spring,

with a fair proportion of increase in addition. But on that narrow

margin of profit Achmed Ali cannot support wife and children and pay all

the expenses of his farm. He turns wistfully towards the river. He

surveys the section of his farm over which the waters are sluggishly

drifting. Sometimes they recede, leaving a broad strip of shining,

gurgling mud. He is tempted to scatter his seed over that belt of ooze

at once. He waits a few hours, however, hoping that the retreat of the

waters will continue, and that, in a few days, he will be able to carry

his seed-basket over the whole area that is now submerged. But his hopes

are soon shattered. The swaying waters come welling in again and even

lick the edges of the land he has already sown. If only he could get at

those inundated fields! The land is soft and moist! It has been enriched

and fertilized by the action of the flood-waters. Saturated by the

moisture in the soil, and warmed by the rays of the tropical sun, the

seed would germinate and spring up as if by magic; and the harvest would

beggar that of the land that the river has never touched! But these are

castles in the air. The flood is there. It shows no sign of withdrawing.

He knows that, after it has gone, it will be a day or two before he can

cross the soft, sticky, slimy soil with his basket. And by that time the

season may have passed. It will be too late to sow.

It is to Achmed Ali that our Eastern sage is speaking. 'Why wait for the

flood?' he asks. '_Cast thy bread upon the waters!_ Much good

grain—grain that thou canst ill afford to lose—will float away and

never more be seen. Much of it will be greedily devoured by fish and

water-fowl. But what of that? Much of it will drift about on the shallow

waters, and be deposited, as they recede, on the soft warm mud from

which they ebb. With thy heavy feet and clumsy form and weighty basket

thou couldst not cross the soil till long after the waters leave it. Let

the waters do their work for thee! Turn thy foe into a friend! Make of

the tyrant a slave! _Cast thy bread upon the waters!_'

It is no gilt-edged security; but Achmed Ali resolves to take the risk.

Among the reeds round the bend of the river his flat-bottomed boat is

moored. He hurries up to the barn for his basket of seed. He gazes

almost fondly, upon the precious grain that he is about to invest in

such a precarious speculation. He bears it down to the boat and pushes

out on to the shallow waters. A tall ibis, stalking with stately stride

along the edge of the stream, is startled by the commotion and flies

away, flapping its wings with slow and measured beat. Achmed is now well

out upon the river. The flood that had defied him now supports him. He

feels as the Philistines must have felt when they harnessed Samson to

their mill. He paddles up to one end of his property and works his way

down to the other, scattering the seed broadcast as he goes. Then,

having disposed of every grain, he paddles back to his starting-point

and ties up his boat. He stands for a moment on the bank watching the

seed floating hither and thither upon the eddying waters. In some places

it is still strewn evenly upon the tide; in others it has drifted into

snakelike formations that curl and straighten themselves out again on

the surface of the flood. It seems an awful waste. But is it?

In a day or two the waters recede, leaving the saturated seed strewn

over the oozy soil. It sinks in of its own weight and is quickly lost to

view. And then Achmed sees the wisdom of the counsel he has followed.

And in the summer, when he garners a rich harvest from the very lands

over which his boat had drifted, he blesses that Eastern sage for those

wise words.

III

In my old Mosgiel days, I was often invited to address evening meetings

in Dunedin. The trouble lay in the return. A train left Dunedin at

twenty past nine and there was no other until twenty past ten, or, on

some nights, twenty past eleven. It was sometimes difficult to leave a

meeting in time to catch the first of these trains, yet, if I stayed for

a later one, it meant a midnight arrival at the manse and a woeful sense

of weariness next morning. On the particular night of which I am now

thinking, I missed the early train. There was no other until twenty past

eleven. I sat on the railway platform, feeling very sorry for myself.

When at length the train started, I found myself sharing with one

companion a long compartment, with doors at either extremity and seats

along the sides, capable of accommodating fifty people. He sat at one

end and I at the other. I expect that I looked to him as woebegone and

disconsolate as he looked to me. The train rumbled on through the night.

The light was too dim to permit of reading; the jolting was too great to

permit of sleeping; and I was just about to record a solemn vow never to

speak in town again when a curious line of thought captivated me. I

could not read; I could not sleep; but I could talk! And here, in the

far corner of the compartment, was another belated unfortunate who could

neither read nor sleep and who might like to beguile the time with

conversation! And then it occurred to me not only that I _could_ do it

but that I _should_ do it. We had been thrown together for an hour in

this strange way at dead of night; we should probably never meet again

until the Day of Judgement; what right had I to let him go as though our

tracks had never crossed at all? Was the great message that, on Sundays,

I delivered to my Mosgiel people, intended exclusively for them, and was

it only to be delivered on Sundays? I felt that my Sunday congregation

was a gilt-edged security; but here was a chance for a rash speculation!

The train stopped at Burnside. I stepped out on to the station and

walked up and down for a moment inhaling the fresh mountain air. I

wanted to have all my wits about me and to be at my best. The engine

whistled, and, on returning to the compartment, I was careful to

re-enter it by the door near which my companion was sitting, and I took

the seat immediately opposite to him. I then saw that he was quite a

young fellow, probably a farmer's son. We soon struck up a pleasant

conversation, and then, having created an atmosphere, I expressed the

hope that we were fellow-travellers on life's greater journey.

'It's strange that you should ask me that,' he said, 'I've been thinking

a lot about such things lately.'

We became so engrossed in our conversation that the train had been

standing a minute or so at Mosgiel before we realized that we had

reached the end of our journey. I found that our ways took us in

diametrically opposite directions. He had a long walk ahead of him.

'Well,' I said, in taking farewell of him, 'you may see your way to a

decision as you walk along the road. If so, remember that you need no

one to help you. Lift up your heart to the Saviour; He will understand!'

We parted with a warm handclasp. Long before I reached the manse I was

biting my lips at having omitted to take his name and address. However,

like Achmed Ali, I had cast my bread upon the waters.

Five years passed. One Monday morning I was seated in the train for

Dunedin. The compartment was nearly full. Between Abbotsford and

Burnside the door at one end of the carriage opened, and a tall, dark

man came through, handing each passenger a neat little pamphlet. He gave

me a copy of _Safety, Certainty, and Enjoyment_. I looked up to thank

him, and, as our eyes met, he recognized me.

'Why,' he exclaimed, 'you're the very man!'

I made room for him to sit beside me. I told him that his face seemed

familiar, although I could not remember where we had met before.

'Why,' he said, 'don't you remember that night in the train? You told

me, if I saw my way to a decision, to lift up my heart to the Saviour on

the road. And I did. I've felt sorry ever since that I didn't ask who

you were, so that I could come and tell you. But, as the light came to

me in a railway train, I have always tried to do as much good as

possible when I have had occasion to travel. I can't _speak_ to people

as you spoke to me; but I always bring a packet of booklets with me.'

I recalled the inward struggle that preceded my approach that night. I

remembered bracing myself on the Burnside station for the ordeal. It

seemed at the time a very rash and risky speculation.

But here was my harvest! I have invested most of my time and energy in

gilt-edged securities, and, on the whole, I have no reason to be

dissatisfied with the return that they have yielded me. But I have

seldom obtained from my gilt-edged securities so handsome a profit as

that unpromising venture ultimately brought to me.

IV

The only way to keep a thing is to throw it away. The only way to hold

your money is to invest it. The only way to ensure remembering a poem is

to keep repeating it to others. If you hear a good story and attempt to

keep it for your own delectation, you will forget it in a week. Laugh

over it with every man you meet and it will ripple in your soul for

years.

It sometimes happens, when I have finished one of these screeds of mine,

that I feel a fatherly solicitude concerning it. You sometimes grow fond

of a thing, not because you cherish an inflated conception of its value,

but because through sheer familiarity, it has become a part of you. So I

look at these white sheets over which I have been bending for days and

into which I have poured all my soul. I feel anxious about them. Yet it

is absurd to keep them. If I store them away I shall soon forget their

contents and my labor will all be lost. But the printer is six hundred

miles away. I think of all the hands through which they must pass on

their way from me to him. I register them at the Post Office, but still

I think of all the risks. These white sheets of mine are such frail and

flimsy things; an accident, a fire, and where then would they be? But

one happy morning I see my screed in print! I feel that I have it at

last! It is beyond the reach of fire or accident. If _this_ house is

burned down, I can obtain a copy in _that_ one! I feel that nothing now

can rob me of the child I brought into being. It is scattered broadcast,

and, having been scattered broadcast, is at last my very, very own!

The only way to keep a thing is to throw it away. Achmed Ali knows that.

He looks fondly at the grain in the basket but he knows that he cannot

keep it in the barn. 'Seeds which mildew in the garner, scattered, fill

with gold the plain.' And so he casts some of it on the land—his

gilt-edged security—and gets it back with interest; and he casts the

rest upon the water—his risky speculation—and gets it back many times

multiplied.

V—SATURDAY

Saturday is the name, not so much of a day, as of a specific phase of

human experience. And it is a great phase. We all catch ourselves at odd

moments living over again some of the unforgettable Saturdays of long

ago. In actual fact, a man may be lounging in an armchair beside his

winter fire or sprawling on the lawn on a drowsy summer afternoon. But,

under such conditions, the actual fact is soon relegated to oblivion. A

far-away look comes into his eyes, a wayward smile flits over his face,

and, giving rein to his fancy, he sees landscapes on which his gaze has

not rested for many a long year. He roams at will among the golden

Saturdays of auld lang syne. He feels afresh the mighty thrill that

swept his soul when, after a long heroic struggle, his side won that

famous match upon a certain village green; he lives again through the

fierce excitement of a paper-chase that led the hare and hounds over the

great green hills and down through the dark pine forest in the valley;

he enjoys once more the birds'-nesting expedition in the winding lane;

and he sees, as vividly as he saw them at the time, the shining trophies

that rewarded his fishing excursions to the millponds and trout-streams

of the outlying countryside. In those far-off days, Saturday was the

wild romance of the week.

I remember being told by my first schoolmaster that Saturday was named

after Saturn, and that Saturn was the planet that had rings all round

it. From that hour, by a singular confusion of ideas, I always thought

of Saturday as the day that had the rings round it. I somehow associated

the day with the lady of the nursery rhyme who has rings on her fingers

and bells on her toes, and who, therefore, has music wherever she goes.

I liked to think that Saturday moved among the other days of the week in

such melodious pomp and splendor. The notion intensified the zest with

which I welcomed the great day. For Saturday was great; it was great in

its coming and great in its going. It began gloriously and it ended

gloriously. I do not mean that it ended as it began. By no means. There

is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon. The glory of

Saturday's dawn was one glory; the glory of Saturday's dusk was another

glory. Saturday began like a Red Indian shouting his war-whoop as he

takes to the trail; it ended like a monk who, in the stillness of his

cloister, chants his evening hymn.

It takes a boy a minute or two, on waking, to assure himself that it is

really Saturday. He is not quite sure of himself; the notion seems too

good to be true. He sits bolt upright; rubs his eyes; and stares about

him for some confirmation of the joyous suspicion that is bringing the

blood to his cheeks in excitement. Is it really Saturday? He

distrusts—and not without cause—the confused sensations of those

waking moments. He made a mistake once before; he fancied that it was

Saturday; made all his plans accordingly; and discovered to his disgust

a few minutes later that it was only Friday after all. That Friday, at

any rate, was a most unlucky day! But Saturday! With what tingling

exhilaration and boisterous delight the conviction that it was Saturday

fastened upon us! Saturday was our day! We raced out after breakfast

like so many colts turned loose upon the heath. We tossed up our caps

for the sheer joy of it. Whatever the ordeals of the week had been, we

forgave all our tyrants and tormentors on Saturday morning. And in that

gracious and benignant absolution we experienced a foretaste of the

saintliness with which the great day wore to its close.

For Saturday, however spent, reached its climax in a consciousness of

virtue so complete and so serene and so beatific as to be almost

unearthly. Such a delicious content seldom falls within the experience

of mortals. Saturday night was bath-night; and few sensations in life

are more delectable than the angelic self-satisfaction that overtakes

the average boy after having been subjected to the magic discipline of

hot water and clean sheets. The outward change is wonderful; but the

inward transformation exceeds it by far. He feels good; looks good;

smells good; _is_ good. A boy after a bath is at peace with all the

world. The week may have gone hardly with him. Parents and teachers may

have shown a vexatious incapacity to see things from a boy's standpoint;

the proprietors of orchards and gardens may have exhibited—perhaps even

on Saturday afternoon—a singular inflexibility in their interpretation

of the laws relating to property; the world as a whole may have behaved

in a manner wofully inconsiderate and unjust. But on Saturday night,

under the softening influence of a hot bath and a clean bed, a boy finds

it in his heart to forgive everything and everybody. A vast charity

wells up in his soul. As he lays his damp head on his snowy pillow, he

revokes all his harsh judgements and cancels all his stern resolves. He

will not run away from home after all! Instead of abandoning his

unfeeling seniors to their hatred, malice and uncharitableness, he will

treat them with magnanimity and tolerance; he will give them another

chance. It is possible—appearances to the contrary

notwithstanding—that they do not mean to be unsympathetic. They simply

do not understand. Thinking thus the young saint falls asleep in the

odor of sanctity—and soap! The more wayward and troublesome he has been

in the daytime, the more angelic will he appear under these new

conditions. Watching him as he slumbers, one of the Saturnian rings

seems to encompass his brow like a halo. Saturday has come to an end!

Now, this saintly young savage of ours will learn, as the years go by,

that life itself has its Saturday phase. Dr. Chalmers used to say that

our allotted span of three score years and ten divides itself into seven

decades corresponding with the seven days of the week. The seventh—the

stretch of life that opens out before a man on his _sixtieth_

birthday—is, the doctor used to say, a Sabbatic period. In it, he

should shake himself free, as far as possible, from the toil and moil of

life, and give himself to the cultivation of a quiet and restful spirit.

That being so, it follows that the sixth period—the period that opens

out before a man on his _fiftieth_ birthday—is the Saturday of life. It

is a great time, every way. Like the Saturday of the old days, and like

the Saturday of riper years, it has characteristics peculiarly its own.

On his fiftieth birthday, if Mr. J. W. Robertson Scott is to be

believed, a man enters the gates of a new world. It is not of necessity

a better world or a worse one; it is simply a different one. We seldom

enter upon a new experience without finding that the change has involved

us in a few drawbacks and deprivations, as well as in some distinct

benefits and advantages. The step that a man takes on his fiftieth

birthday is no exception to this rule. Mr. Robertson Scott caught sight

of the gates of the new era some time before he actually reached them.

'In the tram, one evening, about six months ago, a schoolboy rose and

offered me his seat,' he tells us. The incident startled him. A man who

is still in the forties does not expect to receive such courtesies. He

consoled himself, however, with the assumption that the attentive

schoolboy was probably a boy scout who had suddenly realized that the

day was closing in without his having done the good deed prescribed for

each twenty-four hours of the life of the perfect Baden-Powellite. Four

months later, however, the same thing happened again; and then, shortly

after, came the fiftieth birthday! Clearly it was Saturday morning!

Now, the striking thing about Mr. Robertson Scott's experience is the

fact that his attainment of his jubilee appealed to him, not as an end,

but as a beginning. It was not so much a premonition of senility and

decay as the entrance upon a fresh phase of life. When Horace Walpole

wrote to Thomas Gray in 1766, urging him to write more poetry, Gray

replied that when a man has turned fifty—as he had just done—there is

nothing for it but to think of finishing. He voiced the feeling of the

period. In the eighteenth century, a man of fifty was classified among

the veterans. A hundred years later, a very different conviction held

the field. Tolstoy tells us that his fiftieth year was the year of his

greatest awakening and enlightenment; and, in _The Poet at the Breakfast

Table_, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes makes the old master witness to

something of a similar kind. His friends are anxious to know how and

when he acquired his wealth of wisdom; and he is able to reply with

remarkable precision: 'It was on the morning of my fiftieth birthday

that the solution of life's great problem came to me. It took me just

fifty years to find my place in the Eternal Order of Things.' Such

testimonies go a long way towards vindicating Mr. Robertson Scott's

assumption that the fiftieth birthday marks rather a new beginning than

a sad, regretful close. The fiftieth birthday is Saturday morning; and

who, on Saturday morning, feels that the week is over?

On the contrary, Saturday morning is, to most people, more insistent

than any other morning in its demands upon their energies. Walk up the

street on a Saturday afternoon, and you will see your neighbors garbed

and employed as they are never garbed or employed on any other day. On

Saturday we weed the garden, mow the lawn and effect the week's repairs.

On Saturday we attend to a multitude of minor matters for which we have

had no time during the week. On Saturday we clear up. And on Saturday

night we are tired. It by no means follows, therefore, that, because a

man's fiftieth birthday is his Saturday morning, his week's work is

done. It is indisputable, of course, that a man of fifty has left the

greater part of life behind him; he may be pardoned if he pauses at

times to take long and wistful glances along the road that he has

trodden; it will not be considered strange if, on very slight

provocation, he drops into a rapture of reminiscence. There is a subtle

stage in the development of fruit at which, having attained its full

size, it ripens rapidly. A man enters upon that stage on his fiftieth

birthday. A shrewd observer has said that, like peaches and pears, we

grow sweet for awhile before we begin to decay. The Saturday of life is

sweetening time. We become less harsh in our criticisms, less

overbearing in our opinions, more considerate towards our contemporaries

and more sympathetic towards our juniors. The week's work is by no means

finished. Much remains to be done. But it will be done in a new

spirit—a Saturday spirit. And if the man of fifty be spared to enjoy

octogenarian honors, he will smile as he recalls the immaturity and

unripeness of life's first five decades. It is a poor week that has no

Saturday and no Sunday in it. To have finished at fifty, an old man will

tell you, would have meant missing the best.

It has often struck me as an impressive coincidence that it was when Dr.

Johnson was approaching his fiftieth birthday—life's Saturday

morning—that he discovered a significance in Saturday that, until then,

had eluded him. He felt, as we all feel on Saturdays, that the time had

come to clear up, to put things in their places and to overtake

neglected tasks. And this is the entry he makes in his Journal:

'Having lived, not without an habitual reverence for the Sabbath, yet

without that attention to its religious duties which Christianity

requires: I resolve henceforth—_First_, to rise early on Sabbath

morning, and, in order to that, to go to sleep early on Saturday night.

_Second_, to use some more than ordinary devotion as soon as I rise.

_Third_, to examine into the tenor of my life, and particularly the last

week, and to mark my advances in religion, or my recessions from it.

_Fourth_, to read the Scriptures methodically, with such helps as are at

hand. _Fifth_, to go to church twice. _Sixth_, to read books of

divinity, either speculative or practical. _Seventh_, to instruct my

family. _Eighth_, to wear off by meditation any worldly soil contracted

in the week.'

The significance of this heroic record lies in the resolve that

Saturday, so far from unfitting him for Sunday, shall lead up to it as a

stately avenue leads up to a noble entrance-hall. 'I resolve to go to

sleep early on Saturday night.' Exactly a hundred years after the great

doctor had inscribed this famous entry on the pages of his Journal,

Charlotte Elliott wrote her well-known hymn in praise of Saturday:

Before the Majesty of heaven

To-morrow we appear;

No honor half so great is given

Throughout man's sojourn here.

The altar must be cleansed to-day,

Meet for the offered lamb;

The wood in order we must lay,

And wait to-morrow's flame.

I have heard scores of sermons on _The Proper Observance of Sunday_;

and, somehow, I have never been impressed by their utility. One of these

days some pulpit genius will preach on _The Proper Observance of

Saturday_, and then, quite conceivably, the new day will dawn.

As I lay down my pen, a pair of experiences rush back upon my mind. The

one befell me at sea, the other on land.

1. In the course of a voyage from New Zealand to England it became

necessary—in order to harmonize the clocks and calendars on board with

the clocks and calendars ashore—to take in an extra day. We awoke one

morning and it was Saturday; we awoke next morning and it was Saturday

again! That second Saturday was the strangest day that I have ever

spent. I never realized the extent to which Saturday leads up to Sunday

as I realized it that day.

2. I once numbered among my intimate friends a Jewish rabbi. I found his

society extremely delightful and wonderfully instructive. He often took

me to his synagogue, showed me its treasures, and initiated me into its

mysteries. It was all very beautiful and very suggestive. But I

invariably came away feeling dissatisfied and disappointed. I had been

gazing upon the emblems and symbols of a Saturday faith. Like that weird

Saturday on board the _Tongariro_, it was a Saturday that led to a

Saturday, a Saturday that ushered in nothing holier or sweeter than

itself.

Saturn with all his rings is grand; but the Sun is grander still! It is

from the Sun that Saturn derives his brightness and his glory. Ask

Saturn the secret of his splendor, and it is to the Sun that he

unhesitatingly points. As it is with these mighty orbs themselves, so is

it with the days that bear their names. As Samuel Johnson and Charlotte

Elliott knew so well, it is the glory of Saturday to prepare the way for

Sunday. Saturday belongs to the Order of St. John the Baptist. John was

the greatest of all the sons of men, yet it was his mission to clear the

path for the coming of a greater. The old world's Saturday-Sabbath,

commemorating a completed Creation, led up to the new world's

Sunday-Sabbath, commemorating a completed Redemption. The oracles and

mysteries that I saw in the synagogue, the emblems and expressions of a

Saturday faith, were sublime. But their sublimity lay in the fact that

they pointed men to, and prepared men for, a Sunday faith, a faith that

gathers about a wondrous Cross and an empty tomb, a faith from which

that Saturday faith, like Saturn bathed in sunlight, derives alike its

lustre and its fame.

VI—THE CHIMES

It was Christmas Eve—an Australian Christmas Eve. To an Englishman it

must always seem a weird, uncanny hotch-potch. He never grows accustomed

to the scorching Christmases that come to him beneath the Southern

Cross. Southey once declared that, however long a man lives, the first

twenty years of his life will always represent the biggest half of it.

That is indisputably so. The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

The first twenty years of life fasten upon our hearts sentiments and

traditions that will dominate all our days. I spent my first twenty

Christmases in the old land. I have spent far more than twenty in the

new. Yet, whenever I find old Father Christmas wiping the perspiration

from his brow as he wanders among the roses and strawberries of our

fierce Australian mid-summer, I feel secretly sorry for him. He looks as

jolly as ever, yet he gives you the impression of having lost his way.

He seems to be casting about him for snowflakes and icicles.

But, as I was saying, it was Christmas Eve—an Australian Christmas Eve.

The day had been sultry and trying. After tea I sauntered off across the

fields to a spot among the fir-trees, at which I can always rely upon

meeting a few grey squirrels, an old brown 'possum, and some other

friends of mine. I had scarcely taken my seat on a grassy knoll,

overlooking a belt of bush, when the laughing-jackasses broke into a

wild, unearthly chorus in the wooded valley below. And then, a few

minutes later, the cool evening air was flooded with a torrent of

harmony that transported me across the years and across the seas. The

squirrels, the 'possum, and the kookaburras were left leagues and

leagues behind. From a lofty steeple that crowned a distant crest there

floated over hill and hollow the pealing and the chiming of the bells.

The magic that slept in the lute of the Pied Piper was as nothing

compared with the magic of the bells. Beneath the witchery of their

music, time and space shrivel into nothingness and are no more. We are

wafted to old familiar places; we see the old familiar faces; we enter

into fellowship with lands far off and ages long departed. Frank Bullen

heard our Australian bells. He was only a sailor-boy at the time.

'Often,' he says, 'I would stand on deck when my ship was anchored in

Sydney Harbor on Sunday morning, and listen to the church bells playing

"Sicilian Mariners" with a dull ache at my heart, a deep longing for

something, I knew not what.' The bells, according to their wont, were

annihilating time and space. Beneath the enchantment of their minstrelsy

he sped, as on angels' wings, away from the realities of his rough and

roving sea-life, into the quiet haven of a tender past. He was back in

his old seat in a little chapel in Harrow Road. Every Englishman

overseas will understand.

The bells throw bridges across the yawning chasms of space, and link up

hearts that stand severed by the tyrannies of time. In his _Golden

Legend_, Longfellow describes Prince Henry and Elsie standing in the

twilight on the terrace of the old castle of Vautsberg on the Rhine.

Suddenly they catch the strains of distant bells. Elsie asks what bells

they are. The Prince replies:

They are the bells of Geisenheim,

That, with their melancholy chime,

Ring out the curfew of the sun.

And then he adds:

Dear Elsie, many years ago

Those same soft bells at eventide

Rang in the ears of Charlemagne,

As, seated at Fastrada's side,

At Ingelheim, in all his pride,

He heard their sound with secret pain.

And so, through the melodious medium of the bells, the royal lovers on

the terrace cross the long centuries that intervene and enter into

fellowship with those other royal lovers of an earlier time.

I remember, many years ago, spending a few days at a beautiful country

home in Hampshire. My hostess was a little old lady—_very_ little and

_very_ old. I can see her now with her prim little cap, her golden

earrings, and her silver ringlets. It was summer-time, and one evening

she invited me to accompany her on a walk across the deer-park. She was

a happy little body, and that evening she was specially vivacious. Her

conversation was punctuated with pretty ripples of silvery laughter. She

was too proud to confess to feeling tired; but when we reached a stile

with a step to it on the brow of a hill, she took a seat upon the

step—to drink in, as she was careful to explain, the beauty of the

view. I perched myself upon the stile itself and watched with interest

the antics of a fine stag among some oak-trees not far away. Then, all

at once, the bells from the village behind us rang out blithely. For a

while I listened in silence, and then turned to my companion to ask a

question. On glancing down at her face, however, I was astonished to

notice tears upon her cheek. What could be the matter with my gay little

friend? I immediately transferred my attention to the stag, who was by

this time ambling away across the park, but she knew that I had seen the

tear-drops. On our way back to the house she explained.

'My mother died,' she said, 'while I was on my honeymoon in Italy. I was

only a girl, and she was not much more. She was only twenty when I was

born, and I was only eighteen on my wedding day. I never dreamed, when I

left England, that I should never see her again. On the eve of my

wedding she came up to me, put her arm round me, and led me away to

spend one more hour alone with her. We sauntered off to the stile on

which you and I rested this evening; and as we sat there, hand in hand,

the bells pealed out just as they did to-night. And, as I listened to

them just now, her face, her form, her voice, her words—the very

_feeling_ of that other evening more than sixty years ago—came back

upon me more vividly than they have ever done before. I could almost

fancy that I was a girl again. My marriage, my children, my travels, and

my long widowhood seemed all a dream. It was the bells that took me back

again!'

I wonder if it was! I wonder if the great iron bells that hung in the

dusty old belfry of that English hamlet knew anything of the sweet and

sacred secrets that my little old friend kept locked up in that gentle

heart of hers! I wonder if the bells of Geisenheim knew anything of the

loves of Charlemagne and Fastrada, of Elsie and Prince Henry! I wonder

if the bells that drove the squirrels from my mind that summer evening

knew anything of the Christmas thoughts and Christmas memories with

which they flooded my soul! I wonder!

And, in my wonderment, I find myself in excellent company. For here is

little Paul Dombey! He has only a few days to live, although, to-day, he

is slightly better and able to get about the house a little. And, in

moving about the house, he finds a workman mending the great clock in

the hall, and Paul sees an opportunity of asking a few questions.

Indeed, Dickens says that he asked, not a few, but a long string of

them. 'He asked the man a multitude of questions about chimes and

clocks; as, whether people watched up in the lonely church steeples by

night to make them strike, and how the bells were rung when people died,

and whether those were different bells from wedding bells, or only

_sounded_ different in the fancies of the living.' In this last

question, Paul gets very near to our own. Do the bells say the things

they seem to say, or do they only _seem_ to say those things? Did the

bells of Geisenheim speak of love to the lovers on the castle terrace?

Did the bells of that Hampshire village speak to the little old lady in

the deer-park concerning the days of auld lang syne—her happy girlhood

and her mother's face? Did the bells of that Australian steeple speak of

the old-fashioned English Christmases as their delicious music fell on

my delighted ears that summer night?

Of course not! The bells take us as they find us and set us to music;

that is all! Paul Dombey, who died young, half suspected it; and Trotty

Veck of _The Chimes_, who lived to be old, proved it from experience,

and proved it up to the hilt. When things were going badly with Trotty

and Richard and Meg, and the magistrate said that people like them

should be 'put down' with the utmost rigor of the law, the chimes, when

they suddenly pealed out, made the air ring with the refrain 'Put 'em

down; Put 'em down; Facts and Figures; Facts and Figures! Put 'em down!

Put 'em down!!' 'If,' says Dickens, 'the chimes said anything, they said

this; and they said it until Trotty's brain fairly reeled.' Later on in

the story, we have the same chimes, and the same people listening to

them. But this time all is going well: Meg and Richard are to be married

on the morrow: and Trotty is at the height of his felicity. 'Just then

the bells, the old familiar bells, his own dear constant, steady

friends—the chimes—began to ring. When had they ever rung like that

before? They chimed out so lustily, so merrily, so happily, so gaily,

that he leapt to his feet and broke the spell that bound him.' And, a

few minutes later, Trotty and Richard and Meg were dancing with delight

to the gay, glad music of the bells!

When they themselves were sad, the chimes seemed mournful; when they

were glad, the chimes seemed blithe. 'Are they different bells?' asked

little Paul Dombey, 'or do they only _sound_ different?' Paul was

getting very near to the heart of a great truth; and, if only Trotty

Veck and he could have talked things over together, they might have

given us a philosophy of bells that would have immeasurably enriched our

thought.

The chimes are among the things to which distance lends enchantment. The

bells, as my little old lady and I heard them from the deer-park, were

sweeter than the same bells heard in the churchyard under the belfry. In

his _Cheapside to Arcady_, Mr. Arthur Scammell suggests that the music

of the bells awakens the echoes of all the infinites and all the

eternities. He finds himself up in the belltower. 'After the last stroke

of the bell ceases to be heard down in the church,' he says, 'the sound

is continued up here in a long diminuendo; and how long will it be

before that vibrant hum is completely extinguished? All through the

night, the air about the bells may still be throbbing with faint echoes

and reverberations; and, if an hour or a night, why not a year or a

century? May not even the sound of the first ringing of these old bells

yet lisp against the walls and roof in infinitesimal vibrations? The

tower may be alive with the thin ghosts of all the joyous and mournful

notes that have endeared and embittered the sound of bells to hundreds

of human hearts.' And if, following the same line of argument, the music

of the bells falls so sweetly on my ear as I sit upon my grassy knoll

two miles away from the steeple, who is to say that twenty miles away, a

thousand miles away, the air is not trilling and trembling with their

delicious melodies? It may be only because my perceptive faculties are

so gross, my ears so heavy, that I do not, in this Australian pleasance

of mine, catch the chimes of Big Ben and the echoes of Bow Bells. And if

Mr. Scammell's philosophy be true of bells, why not of other sounds? As

I ponder his striking suggestion, I find it more easy to understand that

great saying that _whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard

in the light, and that which ye have whispered in the ear shall be

shouted from the housetops_.

The deeds we do, the words we say,

Into still air they seem to fleet;

We count them past,

But they shall last

To the Great Judgment Day,

And we shall meet!

The bells are not only _heard_ at a distance, they are _better heard_ at

a distance. It is possible to get so near to them as to miss the music.

In his autobiography, James Nasmyth tells us of a visit he paid to the

tower of St. Giles, Edinburgh. He had often been charmed by the chimes,

and longed to get nearer to them. But the experience brought a rude

disillusionment. 'The frantic movements of the musician as he rushed

wildly from one key to another, often widely apart, gave me the idea

that the man was mad, while the banging of his mallets completely

drowned the music of the chimes.' It is possible to get too near to

things. You do not see the grandeur of a mountain as you recline upon

its slopes. The disciples were too near to Jesus; that explains some of

the most poignant tragedies of the New Testament. A minister, through

constant association with the sublimities of divine truth, may lose the

vision of their eternal grandeur. And, unless things in the manse are

very carefully managed, the members of a minister's family may easily

suffer through being too near to things. They do not see the mountain in

its grand perspective. The banging of the mallets drowns the music of

the bells.

One beautiful June evening, years ago, I was walking along the banks of

the Thames. It was Saturday night; I had undertaken to preach at

Twickenham on the Sunday. All at once I was arrested by the pealing of

the bells. Strangers stopped each other to inquire why the belfries had

become vocal at that strange hour. We learned later that the bells were

proclaiming the birth of an heir to the British throne. A prince had

been born at White Lodge, just across the river! Well might the bells

peal that night!

Well, too, may the bells peal on Christmas Eve! I like to think that,

over the birth of _that_ babe, born in Bethlehem, and cradled in a

manger, more bells have been rung than over all the princes since the

world began. The Chinese cherish a lovely legend concerning the great

bell at Pekin. The Emperor, they say, sent for Kuan-Yin, the caster of

the bells, and described the bell that he desired. It was to be larger

than any bell ever made, and its tone more beautiful. Its music was to

be heard a hundred miles away. Great honors were to be heaped upon the

bell-maker if he succeeded; a cruel death was to follow his failure.

Kuan-Yin set to work; he mixed the costliest metals; he labored night

and day; and at last he finished the bell. He tested it, and was

disappointed. He tried again, and was again mortified. He was at his

wits' end. Then Ko-ai, his beautiful daughter, consulted an astrologer.

The oracle assured her that, if the blood of a fair virgin mingled with

the molten metals, the music would ravish the ears of every listener.

Ko-ai returned to the foundry; and, when the glowing metal poured

white-hot from the furnace, she plunged into the shining bath before

her. The music of the great bell, the Easterns say, is the music of her

sacrifice. It is only an Oriental myth; but it strangely helps me to

interpret to my heart the solemn sweetness that I recognize in all these

Christmas chimes.

VII—'BE SHOD WITH SANDALS'

Is there anything fresh to be said by way of a charge to a young

minister? I confess that, until this morning, I thought not. But this

morning, to my inexpressible delight, I struck a vein that, so far as I

know, has never yet been exploited. On these solemn and impressive

occasions, we have talked about the minister's _scholarship_ and the

minister's _spirituality_ until we have come to feel that we have

completely exhausted that line of things. And in the process we have

given the awkward impression that the minister, so far from being made

of pretty much the same stuff as the butcher, the baker, and the

candlestick-maker, is a kind of biological monstrosity consisting of a

very big head and a very big heart—and of _nothing else_!

But this morning I made a discovery. Before delivering a charge to a

young minister, I took the precaution to have a good look at him. And I

found to my surprise that, in addition to the head and the heart upon

which we have always laid such inordinate emphasis, he also possesses a

fine pair of legs with a substantial pair of feet at the end of them!

Nobody could have supposed from the most careful perusal of all the

ministerial charges in our literature, that any minister was ever before

known to possess these useful appendages; but there they are! I saw them

with my own eyes! Perhaps those who delivered the great classical

charges only saw the young minister in the pulpit, in which case the

limbs which I this morning discovered would naturally be invisible. Like

the feet of the seraphim in the prophet's vision, they would be modestly

concealed. But, though hidden, they exist; and it occurred to me that a

few very useful things could be said concerning them. Why should it be

considered _infra dig._, I should like to know, to talk about people's

feet, and especially about a minister's feet? The Bible has no

hesitation in talking about them. 'How beautiful upon the mountains,'

said the prophet, 'are _the feet_ of him that bringeth good tidings,

that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that

publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth.' And did

not the Master Himself, when He ordained His first disciples, deliver to

them this striking charge? '_Take no shoes_,' He said, '_but be shod

with sandals!_' The African natives thought of Livingstone's boots as a

contrivance for carpeting all the slave-tracks of Africa with leather,

so that he might walk harmlessly and painlessly along them; and when the

Saviour tells His first disciples to be shod with sandals I fancy I see

miles and miles of meaning in those arresting words.

'_Be shod with sandals!_' It is an appeal for ministerial simplicity.

There were three classes of people in Palestine. The slaves went

barefoot; the grandees wore elaborate shoes; the working classes wore

sandals. The sandals were simple, serviceable, and strong. Therefore,

said the Master to His men, '_be shod with sandals!_' The line of

simplicity is invariably the line of strength. Gibbon has shown us that

it is the simplest architecture that has defied both the vandalism of

the barbarians and the teeth of time. Macaulay has proved that it is the

simplest language that lasts longest. John Bunyan's books threaten to

survive all later literature. Why? 'The style of Bunyan,' Macaulay says,

'is delightful to every reader, and is invaluable as a study to every

person who wishes to obtain a wide command over the English language.

The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. There is not an

expression which would puzzle the rudest peasant. Several pages do not

contain a single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer has said

more exactly what he meant to say. For magnificence; for pathos; for

vehement exhortation; for subtle disquisition; for every purpose of the

poet, the orator and the divine; this homely dialect, the dialect of

plain working men, was perfectly sufficient. There is no book in our

literature on which we would so readily stake the fame of the old

unpolluted English language, no book which shows so well how rich that

language is in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been

improved by all that it has borrowed.' It is ever so. The simplest

language is the strongest language, and the simplest lives are the

strongest lives. In his 'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington,'

Tennyson says that the illustrious Duke was rich in saving commonsense.

And as the greatest only are

In his simplicity sublime.

Wherefore, said the Master, avoid the vulgarities of the slave market on

the one hand, and the stilted affectations of the schools on the other.

Let simplicity ally itself with strength. '_Be shod with sandals!_'

It is a great thing for Christ's minister to eschew this vice of

extremes. All through the ages the pendulum of ecclesiastical fashion

has been swinging between bare feet and golden slippers. From the

excessive worship of unholy revelries, to which the Roman world was

abandoned, the Christians of the first century went to the opposite

extremity, and courted persecution by their rigid abstinence from, and

their severe condemnation of, the most legitimate and necessary

pleasures. Back again swung the pendulum, until the churches became the

scenes of voluptuous luxury and extravagance. We read on, and the next

chapters of our ecclesiastical histories bring us to the story of the

monks and the hermits. We no sooner discover an age of unexampled

self-indulgence, than we straightway come upon the Puritanism that

banned _Pilgrim's Progress_ as a wanton frivolity, and that denounced

the _Fairy Queen_ as a wicked and devilish invention! And so we go on.

One day Christ's minister would go bare-footed like a slave; the next he

must needs affect a pair of golden slippers. There was a time when the

Church gloried in her poverty; her emissaries wore no shoes on their

feet; they dressed in rags and tatters; they ate the berries of the

hedgerow; they drank the waters of the wayside spring. And then, hey

presto, the scene is changed. The Church gloried in her wealth. All the

world paid tribute to the Popes. Rome rolled in riches; and her proud

bishop, Innocent the Fourth, laughed as he looked upon his countless

hoards and boasted that never again need the Church lament that of

silver and gold she had none! Here is the Church going barefooted like a

slave; and here is the Church mincing in golden slippers; and neither

spectacle is an edifying one. The Master urges His men to avoid both the

bare feet and the golden slippers. Let your moderation be known unto all

men. _Be shod with sandals!_

It is the solemn and imperative duty of a Christian minister to conserve

both the dignity and the modesty of holy things. A certain offence in

the ancient law was to be punished by the deprivation of dignity. '_Thou

shalt loose his shoe from off his foot, and his name shall be called in

Israel, the house of him that hath his shoe loosed._' Those who have

carefully read that graceful and dramatic story unfolded in the Book of

Ruth know the bitterness of that reproach. The man whose shoes were

publicly removed was like an officer whose stripes are taken from his

arm in the sight of the whole regiment. He became an object of derision

and contempt. Anyone, Dr. Samuel Cox points out, might laugh at him and

call him 'Old Baresole,' and his family would be stigmatized as the

family of a barefooted vagabond. _Be shod with sandals!_ says the

Master. Do not expose the Church to the contempt of the multitude!

Conserve her dignity! Cast not her pearls before swine! Nor is such

dignity inconsistent with simplicity. Dr. Johnson penning from his

modest room at Gough Square, that famous letter in which he proudly

declined the patronage of the Earl of Chesterfield, makes a much more

dignified picture than the gilded aristocrat who tardily fawned to the

great man's fame. And George Gissing has shown that the solitaries of

Port Royal, reading and praying in their poor apartments, cut a much

more stately figure in history than his refulgent Majesty, King Louis

the Fourteenth, strutting among the palatial chambers and the spacious

gardens of Versailles. When I see the ministers of Christ organizing

nail-driving competitions for women, and hat-trimming competitions for

men, in order to replenish a depleted treasury, I remember what Jesus

said about the sandals. He pleaded with His men not to expose His Church

to contempt. It is better to do things modestly and preserve the

Church's dignity than to swell her funds and make her an object of

derision. It is better to wear sandals and be respected than to wear

golden slippers and provoke disgust.

Modesty and dignity invariably go together. Every man who aspires to the

Christian ministry should read every word that Charles Dickens ever

wrote. In the course of that humanizing process he will then come upon

that terrible fourth chapter of _The Uncommercial Traveller_. It is the

most powerful appeal for ministerial modesty in our literature. Can any

man read without a shudder that revolting description of evangelistic

bluster? And who is he that can read without tenderness that closing

appeal of the novelist to preachers? He entreats us to remember the

twelve poor men whom Jesus chose, and to model our behavior, our

language, our style, and our choice of illustration on the exquisite

simplicity and charming grace of the New Testament records.

But we must sound yet a deeper depth. '_Be shod with sandals!_' said the

Master. Now sandals are easily slipped _off_ and easily slipped _on_.

And why should the minister be ready, at a moment's notice, to bare his

feet? The man who has read his Bible knows. There came to Moses the

Vision of the Burning Bush. 'And the Lord said unto Moses, I am the God

of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of

Jacob. Draw not nigh hither; _put off thy shoes_ from off thy feet, for

the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.' And when Moses the

servant of the Lord died, the Vision of the Captain of the Lord's Host

came to Joshua. 'And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did

worship, and said unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant? And the

captain of the Lord's host said unto Joshua, _Loose thy shoe_ from off

thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy. And Joshua did

so.' '_Be shod with sandals_,' said the Master, so that, the moment the

vision comes, you may be ready adoringly to welcome it. Nothing in the

ministry is more important than that the minister should keep in touch

with his dreams, with his visions, with his revelations. The tragedy of

the ministry is reached when we lace up our elaborate shoes and say

good-bye to the place of open vision. We never expect again to behold

the glory. The ashes are black on the altar of the soul, the altar on

which the sacred fires once blazed. The light has gone out of the eye

and the ring of passion has forsaken the voice. '_Be shod with

sandals!_' said the Master to His men. 'Take no shoes, but be shod with

sandals.' The vision that led you into the ministry may come again and

again and again. _Be shod with sandals_ that you may be ready for the

revelation!

Yes, ready for the _Revelation_ and ready, also, for the _Road_! For

sandals are easily _slipped on_. And the minister must expect the call

of the road at any moment. He must be at home in the silence; he must be

ready for the revelation, but he must not become a recluse. That was

what Longfellow meant by his _Legend Beautiful_. The vision appeared to

the monk in his cell, and he worshipped in its wondrous presence. Then

he remembered the hungry at the convent gate.

Should he slight his radiant guest,

Slight his visitant celestial,

For a crowd of ragged, bestial

Beggars at the convent gate?

Would the Vision there remain?

Would the Vision come again?

A voice within bade him go and feed the hungry in the road outside,

Do thy duty; that is best

Leave unto thy Lord the rest.

He went; and when he returned he found to his delight that the Vision

was still there.

Through the long hours intervening,

It had waited his return,

And he felt his bosom burn,

Comprehending all the meaning,

When the blessed Vision said:

'Hads't thou stayed, I must have fled!'

'_Be shod with sandals!_' said the Master; so that at a moment's notice,

you may slip them _off_ to welcome the vision or slip them _on_ to take

to the road. The crest of the Baptist Missionary Society is a picture of

an ox between a plough and an altar, while, underneath the symbols, are

the words '_Ready for Either!_' The ox is ready for service in the field

or for sacrifice in the temple. Christ's minister stands between the

glory and the majesty of things divine on the one hand and all the paths

and the prose of human life on the other. He must be ready at any moment

to enter into fellowship with the skies; and he must be ready at any

moment to hurry forth to see a sick child, to comfort a broken-hearted

woman or to share the burden of a man whose load is greater than he can

bear. '_Be shod with sandals_'; so that, whether the Revelation or the

Road shall call, you are ready for either. The ministry is neither

mundane nor monastic; the minister wears sandals that he may keep in

touch with two worlds.

Let me live in my house by the side of the road,

Where the race of men go by;

They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,

Wise, foolish. So am I.

Let me turn not away from their smiles nor their tears,—

Both parts of an infinite plan,—

Let me live in my house by the side of the road,

And be a friend to man!

And there, in his house by the side of the road, the minister will

welcome his wondrous visions, and will take good care to _be shod with

sandals_. Gurnall concludes the first volume of his great work in _The

Christian Armour_ with 'Six Directions for the Helping On of this

Spiritual Shoe'; but the man who is wise enough to wear sandals stands

in no need of any such elaborate instructions.