ICE THURSTON ^ MEMOIhlAU 7 o JO .n ,o r. •#^''^ ^X ttv« ^hPtJ^rai ^ %/: PRINCETON, N. J. %. ^ Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund. BV 3427 .T5 W74 1908 Wright, Henry Burt, 1877- 1923. A life ^ ivith a purpose A LIFE WITH A PURPOSE JOHN LAWRENCE THURSTON A Life With a Purpose A Memorial of John Lawrence Thurston First Missionary of the Yale Mission Byv^ HENRY B. WRIGHT A simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others.'" — Emerson {Self -Reliance.) New York Chicago Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh Copyright, 1908, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street To the home circle in Amer^ icUy and to her who has so bravely returned alone to China to continue his work there. PREFACE THIS book is the simple record of a life with a purpose. It is the biography of a young man who strove first to know and then to do the will of God. If the requirements of strict adherence to truth in the presentation of facts have been met, the contents, though they may serve no higher purpose, cannot fail to be of a certain scientific value, however unskillful may have been the pen to which the responsibility of the tell- ing has been entrusted. In each succeeding generation there is an increasing number of men who believe that God reveals His thoughts and plans for the world mainly through those human lives in which He is allowed to work out with fullness His will. Modern philosophy assures us that each life which does the will of God becomes by that act the incarnation of a thought of God, which may there- after be known and read of all men. If this be true, there can be few better laboratories in which to pursue that greatest of all researches — the study of the mind of God, — than in a library of faithful records of the lives of those men and women who have borne the unmistakable stamp of having been His mouthpieces and colabourers. Lawrence Thurston's life bore precisely such a stamp, and it is for this reason that his friends have united in the preparation of a memorial. The book is not the work of a single hand. Those who knew him best, some in the home, others in the years of preparation, and others still in the shorter period of pioneer service on the field, have given generously of time and thought to complete a true 7 8 Preface and faithful record : and there is not a single chapter in which the words of his own correspondence do not reveal better than friends could tell, the greatness of the simple purpose of his hfe. The unanimity of opinion regarding Lawrence among the contributors to the volume, who reached their con- clusions independently of one another, would seem to justify the attempt in the opening chapter to formulate and to interpret that particular thought of God which in him became incarnate. The life of Lawrence Thurston brings a different message to the college students of the world from that of the hfe of Hugh Beaver or of Horace Pitkin or of Horace Rose. It reiterates a fundamental principle of Christ which mankind in its search after leaders has largely forgotten, and the obscuring of which has kept many a man in our time content to live but half a life. It demonstrates the great and eternal truth that in the kingdom of God no man need belong to the rank and file of men, and that, through the miracle of obedi- ence, every man whom the world is pleased to call ordi- nary may become extraordinary, since, by the grace of God, all men were " born to be kings." It establishes what Bushnell once affirmed ; that God is girding every man for a place and a calling, in which, taking it from him, even though it be internally humble, he may be as consciously exalted as if he held the rule of a kingdom. CONTENTS I. The Miracle of Obedience II. Home Life and Early Training III. Four Years at Yale IV. The Yale Missionary Band V. Theological Seminary VI. The Island Camp .... VII. The Yale Mission to China — Lawrence': Appointment .... VIII. The Pioneer Missionary . IX. The Chang-Sha Invitation X. " Ordered Home " . 13 27 59 89 125 153 177 205 261 291 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE John Lawrence Thurston Title Whitinsville Church . . .... 30 The Parsonage 30 Rev. John R. Thurston 34 Mrs. Augusta Storey Thurston .... 34 Lawrence with His Brother Charles, Aged Six . 36 Worcester Academy Grounds ..... 38 "The Islands of the Blest." Approach to Johnny's Isle ...... 156 Johnny's Island. Tents and Canoes . . .156 Campers at Work . 158 Campers at Dinner . 160 Lawrence as Pioneer Missionary . , . . 208 Mrs. Thurston . 208 The Road to the Pasture 210 Lawrence in Furs in North China . . . 230 Lawrence at His Desk on the Field . . . 230 II I The Miracle of Obedience « If any man is in Christ he is a new creature ; the old things are passed away; behold they are become new." — 2 Cor. 5; 77. « Life stripped of its essentials offers but two alternatives to the man of action. He may work for himself alone, building his little selfish walls across the advancing path of civilization and making them stumbling blocks in the way of progress. Then however successful he may be, ultimately the stern mills of the Gods will grind him and his structures to dust, and he and his work will vanish from the earth. Or, having the eyes that see, he may place his effort parallel with those eternal lines of force that mark the purposes of God, and then what he builds will endure." — Herbert Knox Smith to the Yale Alumni of Hartford. ** God has a life-plan for every human life. In the eternal councils of His will, when He arranged the destiny of every star, and every sand-grain and every grass-blade, and each of those tiny insects which live but for an hour, the Creator had a thought for You and Me. Our life was to be the slow unfolding of this thought, as the corn stalk from the corn, or the flower from the gradually opening bud. It was a thought of what we were to be, of what we might become, of what He would have us do with our days and years, or influence with our lives. But we all had the terrible power to evade this thought, and shape our lives from another thought, another will, if we chose. The bud could only become a flower, and the star revolve in the orbit God had fixed. But it was man's prerogative to choose his path, his duty to choose it in God, But the Divine right to choose at all has always seemed more to him than his duty to choose in God, so, for the most part, he has taken his life from God, and cut out his career from himself. . . . The general truth of these words is simply this ; that the end of life is to do God's will. Now that is a great and surprising revelation. No man ever found that out. It has been before the world these eighteen hundred years, yet few have ever found it out to-day." — Henry Drummond, *« The Ideal Life.^^ " If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God or whether I speak of Myself." — John 7 .* ly. " He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also ; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto the Father." — John 14 : 12. *' The world has yet to see what God can do with a man unreservedly consecrated to Him." THE MIRACLE OF OBEDIENCE IN its quest after leaders in thought and action throughout the centuries, the world has again and again and with singular persistency gone astray. Its eyes have almost invariably been fixed upon the heights, — upon palace and hall of learning. It has looked for a descent from above ; it has concentrated its attention upon the upper regions of plenty and opportunity. Sometimes, it is true, in these very places the object of its search has been found. But more often men have stopped short in their seeking to find that he for whom they were looking had already come. Whence he came they knew not, save that while their eyes were turned up- ward he seemed to have ascended from below, — from the unexpected and the neglected quarter, from the door of the humble hut, and from places where men knew not letters, having never learned. But whether the true leader descends from palace or ascends from the cabin, there is no mistaking him when he comes. His advent in the larger spheres of human thought and action Watson has sketched in striking language : " No one could have foretold his origin ; no one can take credit for training him ; no one can boast afterwards of having been his colleague. From behind the veil he comes — from a palace, or from a cottage, or from a col- 15 l6 A Life With a Purpose lege, or from a desert. Upon him is laid one burden, and he rests not until it be fulfilled ; he is incalculable, con- centrated, forceful, autocratic. Now he is the idol of the people ; now he is their victim ; he is ever independent of them, and ever their champion. They may not under- stand him yet he expresses them ; they may put him to death yet he accomplishes their desire. These are the makers of the race through whom God intervenes in human history." ^ But it is not alone in the greater arena of the nations that such unique figures with the stamp of mission upon them, from time to time appear. Few persons pass through life in its ordinary walks without having at some time come in contact with men and women of this pecuHar type. " There are those who stand out from among the crowd which reflects merely the atmosphere of feeling and standard of society around it," says Mozley,^ " with an impress upon them which bespeaks a heavenly birth. Their criterion of what is valuable, and to be sought after, is different from that of others." The humblest home, the rudest school is transformed by the ad- vent of just such rare souls. They seem always to do and to say, not the obvious but that which proves ultimately to have been the right thing. " The otherworldliness of such a character," says Drummond,^ " is the thing that strikes you ; you are not prepared for what it will do or say or become next, for it moves from a far-off center, and in spite of its transparency and sweetness, that presence fills you always with awe. A man never ijohn Watson, "The Life of the Master," p, ii. ^Mozley, " Sermons Before the University of Oxford," p. 240. ^Drummond, « Natural Law in the Spiritual World," pp. 134-135. The Miracle of Obedience 17 feels the discord of his own life, never hears the jar of the machinery by which he tries to manufacture his own good points till he has stood in the stillness of such a presence. Then he discerns the difference between growth and work." The world has a ready explanation for such unique figures. Like the great painters and musicians and scholars of the ages, so these too, it affirms, are geniuses, — the spiritual geniuses of the race. They are possessed of special gifts, denied to the generahty of mankind. They alone were " born to be kings," — to be extra- ordinary. It was fated that the rest of men should, in spiritual matters, as in others, be ordinary, — should be- long to the rank and file of men. This explanation, though striking and plausible, is by no means a new one. It was a tenet of the ancient Roman religion. Paucis vivat humanum genuSy " For the few the race must live," wrote Cicero. But true men have always felt a shudder when they come to con- sider the actual acceptance of such a view into their creed. That I may be saved must other men be lost ? Does the law of the survival of the fittest, over which men have no control and capable of being overridden by no higher law prevail in the spiritual realm ? "A thousand times No ! " cries the human heart. " If it be so I will have none of salvation." " In God's spiritual universe," pleaded Robertson,^ '• there are no favourites of heaven who can attain knowledge and spiritual wisdom apart from obedience. There are none repro- bate by an eternal decree who can surrender self, and in all things submit to God, and yet fail of spiritual con- victions. It is not therefore a rare partial condescension 1 Robertson, " Sermons," Third Series, No. 7. i8 A Life With a Purpose of God, arbitrary and causeless, which gives knowledge of the truth to some, and shuts it out from others, but a vast, universal, glorious law. The Hght lighteth every man that cometh into the world. * If a7iy man will do His will, he shall know.' " And when we come to the life and teaching of Jesus there is no mistaking the emphasis which He placed upon the unlimited possibilities for development in every hu- man being. To His mind there need be no such thing as an average man. " If any man will ... he shall know," were His words. '* He that believeth . . . the works that I do shall he do also and greater works than these shall he do." Trained outside of palace and halls of learning, He spent the greater part of His life among those whom the world is pleased to call the rank and file of men. In Cephas He was quick to discern a latent Peter, and in witness to the great truth that the ordinary man was born to become extraordinary, from fishermen and tax collectors He developed the spiritual leaders of the world. It is true that in the moral and spiritual realm in those cases where men could, but would not be saved. He clearly taught the great principle of the survival of the fittest ; but overshadowing this in the grandeur of its loftiness He reared a mightier truth that any man who would, might be made fit to survive, and that for a man once made fit himself, the greatest work in the world was to return to the depths and help the unfit to make themselves fittest. " If a7iy man be will- ing," He said, " he shall know ; " and the truth which He taught was reiterated by His disciples. *' God hath showed me," said Peter, " that I should not call any 7nan common." " If any man is in Christ," added Paul, " he is a new creature. The old things are passed away." The Miracle of Obedience 19 The phenomena, then, which the world in wonder de- scribes as miracles of spiritual genius, — gifts predestined to an appointed few, — were in the eyes of Jesus and His apostles but the inevitable results of a law, — of a process of obedience possible to any man. Is there then a mighty miraculous law of God, underly- ing the life of men, the processes of which may be ob- served, a law, whereby weak men are made strong, whereby the ordinary man can become extraordinary, a law which no man can create or master, but a law of which any man may avail himself if he will ? Are the phrases which were so constantly on Paul's lips, " Him that enabled me," " The strength which God supplieth," " Newness of life," " My God shall fulfill every need," *' I can do all things through Him," " His working which worketh in me mightily," mere empty phrases of rhetoric, or are they the genuine witnesses to a mysteri- ous power which had made of Paul a new creature ? When such a thought first dawns upon one, its pos- sibilities are well-nigh overwhelming. President Jordan tells us that one half of the normal strength of the young men of America is to-day wasted in dissipation gross or petty, and we stand aghast before the thought of what the nation has lost in power of achievement through human wilfulness. But what of the fourfold or the ten- fold strength which God intended to supply to men which they have never claimed, and which after all was really their normal strength in God's thought for their lives ? How many leaders have been lost to the world through this form of human wilfulness? What count- less numbers of men and women who have been content to constitute the rank and file may have been " born to be kings " ! " As the earth sweeps on with vast treasures 20 A Life With a Purpose of gold and gems all uncovered," says Hillis/ " so men move forward laden with treasures which are neither ex- plored nor suspected." Is this all fancy or is it fact? " If any man be willing," said Jesus, " he shall know, and greater works than Mine shall he do." Does it not now become more apparent why it was that the form of sin which Jesus regarded as the worst was satiety and self- sufficiency ? That there is such a thing as the miraculous law of obedience whereby the lives of ordinary men and women have been transformed by the renewing of their minds to be mighty proofs of the perfect will of God, the majority of Christians do not to-day deny. The evi- dence is too abundant and too well established to admit of denial. Nor on the whole is there much uncertainty as to the general lines along which the process moves. " / came not to do Mine own willy but the will of Him that sent Me," said Christ. " Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do," were the words which marked the turning point of Paul's career. " If any man willeth to do His willf* taught Christ, " he shall know . . . and greater works than these shall he do." Were the Hves of a hun- dred of the transformed leaders of the past and present — what the world calls its spiritual geniuses — to be exam- ined, they would all be found to revert to the single open secret that they willed to do God's will. Yet among a great many honest men and women there ex- ists to-day a real perplexity as to what it is to do God's will. Students return from some great religious gather- ing where they have honestly felt and perhaps openly expressed their deep desire to do the will of God. They have sung from their hearts : 1 Hillis, " The Influence of Christ in Modern Life," p. 172. The Miracle of Obedience 21 *'I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord, Over mountain or land or sea, I'll do what you want me to do, dear Lord, I'll be what you want me to be." They may have definitely given their lives to foreign missionary service as that form of consecration which seems to be the highest possible ; and yet, as the weeks pass, the growth, the promised knowledge of the teach- ing, the power to do greater works than Christ did, does not appear. And so, while not denying the possibility of such experiences as the above to a certain privileged few, it is to these few alone that they are forced to narrow the universal promise of Jesus that " if any man willeth to do God's will ... he shall know." What is it to do God's will? "Do the right," says Bushnell.^ But what is the right ? Different men have different standards. " Love," says Mozley.^ But what is it to love ? " Obey," says Robertson.^ But what, we ask, are the specific things we are to do ? *' Believ- ing in Jesus Christ, going on into the holiness of the life that is Christ's, entering into Christ's service for the redemption of the world," says Speer.^ But how far are we to go before results come ? No man can ever do all these things perfectly and the world is all at sea as to creed and methods. " Being willing to obey," says Drum- mond.^ " But I honestly think I am," the perplexed in- quirer replies. " How shall I know whether I am or not ? " " Follow Christ," says Lyman Abbott.^ " I have been » Cheney, " Life of Horace Bushnell," p. 58. ' Mozley, " Sermons Before the University of Oxford," p. 240. ' Robertson, " Sermons," Third Series, No. 7. * Speer, " Remember Jesus Christ," p. 107. ^Drummond, "The Ideal Life," p. 313, * Abbott, "The Great Companion," pp. 89-102. 22 A Life With a Purpose trying to do this for years," is the answer. How tanta- Hzingly indefinite the problem seems ! What would we not give if we could see Jesus during those thirty years when He was working practically with the problem of God's will in His own life, or Paul during the three years in the solitude of Arabia, when God must have answered that question of his on the Damascus road : " What wilt Thou have me to do ? " Have Christ and His fore- most apostle left no records of these secret soul struggles ? May we never know the details of the process by which they came to know the will of God ? Are we fated to see only the result — the incontestable miracle of obedi- ence at its end ? Fortunately the mere record of events of those hidden years in the lives of Jesus and of Paul, of which few direct traces remain, is not the only source from which we may learn. There is no struggle through which Jesus went in the earlier years which did not leave its traces upon His later life and teaching, and it has remained for a modern seer ^ to reconstruct from the data of the later years which we do possess, the touchstone which Jesus must have applied to every problem when He strove to determine the particular will of God for His life. It was a fourfold touchstone and the tests were these : an abso- lute standard of purity, of honesty, of unselfishness and of love. And when we turn to the two places in all his writings where Paul attempts to define what the will of God is [cf. I Thess. 4:3; Eph. 5 : 17] — passages which are also an unconscious revelation on his part of the experiences of those earlier hidden years in Arabia, — we iSpeer, "The Principles of Jesus." The absolute standards of Jesus : Purity, Matt. 5 : 29-30 ; Honesty, John 8 : 44 ; Unselfishness, Luke 14 : 33; Love, John 13 : 34. The Miracle of Obedience 23 are struck at once with the remarkable coincidence that it is this identical fourfold touchstone of Christ which. Paul commends to the churches at Thessalonica and Ephesus. " For this is the will of God," he writes to those of Thessalonica, "... that ye abstain from fornication ... not in the passion of lust (Purity) fcf. Eph. 5:3-14] . . . that no man overreach and wrong his brother in the matter (Honesty) [cf. Eph. 4 : 25-28] . . . that ye abound more and more and that ye study to be quiet and to do your own business and to work with your own hands (Unselfish- ness) [cf. Eph. 4 : 29-32] . . . but concerning love of the brethren ye have no need that one write to you (Love) [cf. Eph. 5 : 1-2]." ^ Consciously or unconsciously, it is here— where Jesus and where Paul began,— that we all must begin when we will to do the will of God.^ To every problem of con- duct or career, of pleasure or of duty, to a small matter like our bearing in a game of sport, to a large matter like our answer to an appeal for foreign missionary service, we put the fourfold question : Is my solution the abso- lutely pure thing ; is it the absolutely honest thing ; is it the most unselfish thing ; is it the fullest expression of my love ? And if it fails to measure up to any one of the four tests, we turn away from it in the sure confidence that it cannot be the will of God for our lives. It is deeply significant that the issue of disobedience to any of these four standards is couched by Jesus in the strongest » I Thess. 4:1-12; Eph. 4:1-5: 17- nA A 2 It was here that Frederic Robertson began: " If there be no God, and no future state, yet even then it is better to be generous than selfish, better to be chaste than hcentious, better to be true than false, better to be brave than to be a coward."—" Life," Vol. I, pp. 109-II0. 24 A Life With a Purpose of terms,! while in each instance the result of obedience is the actual realization of unseen things.^ Each one of these four standards, also, is the commonly accepted essential to growth in a different one of the four integral parts which go to make up a man. Jesus, we are told, increased in stature, in wisdom, in favour with man and in favour with God. He bade all men love God with strength, with mind, with heart and with soul. If a man would develop physically, he must be pure, if he would develop mentally he must be honest, if he would develop socially he must be unselfish, if he would develop spirit- ually he must express himself in love. Is it unreasonable that a path to unlimited achievement for every man should lie through the gateway of obedi- ence to the leading of this fourfold touchstone ? May it not be that what the world calls genius is much more a matter of right living than many men would care to ad- mit ? Jesus said " not that clear intellect will give you a right heart, but that a right heart and a pure life will clarify the intellect. Not, become a man of letters and learning and you will attain spiritual freedom ; but do rightly and you will judge justly ; obey and you will know." ^ The ordinary man who wills to have a mind freed from the shackles of impure imagery, an eye that looks at things squarely and brooks deception neither of self nor of others, a hand that will not spare itself in work, and a heart that will express without reserve its 1 Impurity : Matt. 5 : 29, " Be cast into hell." Dishonesty : Luke 16: II, "Who will commit to you the true riches." Selfishness : Luke 14 : 33, " He cannot be My disciple." Lovelessness : Matt. 25 : 46, " Eter- nal punishment." ^Purity: Matt. 5:8, "He shall see God." Honesty: Luke 16: ii, «• The true riches." Unselfishness : Luke 9 : 24, " He shall save his life." Love : Matt. 25 : 34, " Inherit the kingdom prepared." ' Robertson, " Sermons," Third Series, No. 7, The Miracle of Obedience 1^ honest convictions and genuine affections, will often even in this earthly life outstrip the brilliant genius who though starting far ahead in the race because of in- herited gifts, is shackled and ultimately overthrown by impurity, dishonesty, selfishness or atrophy of heart. And who can doubt the ultimate result when we enter upon real living after these days of preparations and lay- ings of foundations are over. " We may not be able to- day to think Plato's thought, create Shakespeare's Ham- let or live with the moral sublimity of Lincoln ; but give us eternity and infinite opportunity and there is no limit to our possible growth in those directions." ^ Such was the great truth that little by little dawned upon us as we lived and worked by the side of Lawrence Thurston. * Griggs, " Moral Education," p. 23. II Home Life and Early Training " Strictly speaking I was never led to Christ, never having known what it was not to be a Christian. This must not imply that sin has not always been a powerful factor in my life, but thanks to a Christian inheritance and home and godly parents I have never known what it was to be in open rebellion against God." — From Lawrence' s reply to questions at ordination. " A ship in a heavy gale, strains and springs a leak and founders. Men say, * The gale which caused that ship to founder began in the shipyard.' It would not have strained and sprung a leak if it had been properly built. Those timbers that were put in because they were cheaper, were elements of weakness that weakened the whole craft. The defects were covered up with paint and putty as defects usually are and she looked as well, and in the harbour she lay as well, and in a calm she went as well as any other ship. But when the hurricane came down, the well-built craft went safely through the gale, while the one that was poorly built foundered. The trouble was not that this one was not handled as well as the other but that she was not built as well. " One man lays out his life plans with moderation — that is with rela- tion to his own capacity ; with relation to what a man ought to want, ought to do, and ought to be ; with a keel of equity, and with ribs of truth and righteousness — and he is always building as under the eye of the eternal Father. Another man, not meaning to do wrong, lays out his life plans under the inspirations of over-eager desire of greed ; not of stealing and lying and dishonour, but of greed, of the inordinate use of his secular worldly feelings. By and by comes the period of trial and suffering. Five, or ten, or twenty years may elapse before it comes ; but however remote that period may be, the weakness that in the one case was in- corporated in the original plan inheres in the structure, and it falls be- neath the storm, while the other that was properly organized survives." — Beecher, II HOME LIFE AND EARLY TRAINING JOHN LAWRENCE THURSTON was bom in the Congregational parsonage at Whitinsville, Mass., on August 4, 1874, and for the thirty years of his life this same spot remained his home. He was thus privileged from the first to come under the direct influence of two of the most powerful forces that can shape character — God-fearing parents, and the simple, unaffected life of a New England country town. The factory village of Whitinsville, with its long stretches of ponds which supply the power to drive the thousand busy machines plying each day in the big Whitin cotton-mills and machine-shops, has doubtless much in common with other New England towns. But its people have a spirit of their own which the stranger who tarries for a night among them is quick to note. One is awakened in the quiet of the early morning by the vigorous warning strokes of the mill bell, and for a few moments he hears beneath his window the quick steps of men and women, hurrying to their work, sometimes in silence but more often in little groups of three or four, and with a cheerful greeting one to the other as they go. In a little while the great bell sends forth another warn- ing call, the footsteps as they pass and die away in the distance become fewer and more rapid, the distant rumble of machinery begins, and by seven o'clock the town has settled back into the peacefulness characteristic of any 29 JO A Life With a Purpose New England village, which is only disturbed again when the whistle sounds for noon or for night and the stream of humanity pours forth from the factory doors, now, it is true, wearing upon hands and dress the marks of honest toil. But whether he meets them at morning or at night, one notes in the workers of Whitinsville a spirit of in- dustry and loyalty and content. The town has grown up around a single family whose members are the resident owners of the mills and shop and who have, in many different ways, fulfilled the obligations of brotherhood to those about them. The Memorial Hall, the beautiful Congregational Church and numerous other public bene- factions, the provision for aged and incapacitated work- men, and the thoughtfulness in supplying household necessities to workmen at living prices in times of great stringency in the world outside, have bound together employer and employee into that greatest of all unions whose basis is the brotherhood of man. It is no easy task for a Christian minister to interpret God to the busy workers of such a town. He who would bring the message of Christianity to men who toil in the shop, whether with mind or with hand, as employers or as employees, must be himself a worker with just a trifle quicker step when the bell sends forth its warning in the early hours, and with just a shade more genuinely cheer- ful greeting, as he passes about his duties, than any of his flock. For, in the final analysis, religion is imparted and not taught and the most eloquent and convincing lan- guage in which the preacher speaks is that of his own Hfe. Rev. John Rogers Thurston, Lawrence's father, who was installed as pastor of the Congregational Church at Whitinsville in 1871, had received both by inheritance WHITINSVILLE CHURCH THE PARSONAGE Home Life and Early Training 31 and from the sterner training of his early life many req- uisite traits for precisely such a ministry. He belonged to an old and honoured family. The name Thurston, variously interpreted as meaning God's-rock or God's- servant, appears as early as 800 A. d. in a Danish monk who lived at the Abbey of Croyland ; and the same name is found many times thereafter in various callings and offices. The most celebrated of the family was Thurston who was elected twenty-eighth Archbishop of York and who served many years as chaplain and secretary of Henry II. The special branch of the Thurston family to which Lawrence's father belonged came to Newbury, Mass., from the town of Thornbury, county of Gloucester, England, between 1635 and 1638, removing later to old Rowley, Mass., in the part now called Georgetown. Here, in 1794, John Thurston, Lawrence's grandfather, was born. But soon after the family again removed to Sedgwick, Me., and the boy remained on the farm working for his father, until the latter's death in 1 821, when he took entire charge of the homestead until 1830. He then removed to Bangor and became the " Keeper of the Ordinary " for the Theological Seminary. He was one of the original members of the Hammond Street Church, a devout and earnest Christian, and as Dr. Pond said of him, " Always at the prayer-meeting." His son, John Rogers Thurston, Lawrence's father, was born at Bangor in 1831. Lawrence's father was thus born of rugged. God-fear- ing stock, but it was the stern training of his early life which more especially fitted him to be a leader of those who work. When he was two years of age both of his parents died, and during the years of education which 32 A Life With a Purpose followed he was largely dependent upon his own re- sources. He entered Yale at sixteen with a poor prepar- ation, and although compelled to devote many hours each week to manual labour for self-support, he graduated in 185 1 with an oration stand, having improved in scholar- ship regularly each successive year of the course. At the end of his freshman year he had united with the College Church and later he definitely decided to enter the mission field, planning to go to China with his cousin, Rev. Henry Blodget, Yale, '48. For four years after graduating he taught in order to earn money to pay debts incurred in securing his education, and then, after completing his theological studies at Bangor, he received his appointment from the American Board as a mission- ary to China. Illness in the family, however, made it necessary for him to relinquish his long-cherished ambi- tion, and to find God's plan for his life in the home ministry. For more than ten years, excepting the months spent in the Christian Commission during the Civil War, he was settled in Newbury, Mass., over the church of which three of his ancestors had been members. Here his first wife died leaving two daughters, Margaret and Elizabeth. From Newbury, Mr. Thurston was called in 1 87 1 to Whitinsville, having previously married Miss Caroline A. W. Storey, a member of the well-known Newburyport family of Storeys, a woman of rare char- acter from whom Lawrence inherited much of the vivac- ity and keen sense of humour which later characterized his sunny nature. Here for more than thirty-five years he has served the town, not only in the capacity of Congregational pastor, but also as its representative in the State Legislature and in other public positions. Lawrence was the second son born from this latter Home Life and Early Training 33 marriage and was named for his paternal grandparents, John Thurston and Abigail Lawrence Thurston — the latter, a granddaughter of Asa Lawrence, captain of the Groton Minutemen at Bunker Hill. The home circle in which he grew up included the two half-sisters, Margaret and EHzabeth, his elder brother Charles who preceded him both at Worcester Academy and at Yale, leaving a brilliant record as a scholar, and a younger sister Isabel to whom in later years he was in a peculiar sense a true " elder brother " in love and sympathy and companionship. Of Lawrence's early childhood his mother writes : "He was a very bright and apparently healthy baby until his third year, when a severe cold, followed by an at- tack of what was called ' marasmus,' kept him an invalid for more than two years, and though after this time he apparently recovered, he was never robust. During his long sickness, in spite of the fact that he lost strength and flesh to a pitiful extent, the energy that characterized him in after years was never wanting, and when he was too weak to walk, he insisted upon being dressed each day, and carried to the table with the family, where, though his appetite was very small, he could enter into the life of the household. During these years, he was much under the care of a cousin who was devoted to him, and whom he loved fondly in return. When he grew stronger, he was ever busy about something, and as he was much with his mother and cousin, he liked to do as they did, and learned to sew very neatly. He was always very careful that the work should be all his own, and if he found that a stitch had been taken by any one, with the idea of help- ing him to finish some little gift, the work had to be 34 A Life With a Purpose ripped out, that it might be entirely his own. He was a great lover of home, and preferred to have his playmates come to be with him in the house or the large yard and in the hay-loft, where many happy hours were spent. As he grew older and went to school, it was found that he picked up more * slang ' in a week than his elder brother had in two years, and his friends of later years will re- member his fondness for what we might call picturesque language. But his conscience was alert, and he never strayed, I think, into profanity." Lawrence's boyhood and youth were thus centered to a large degree at the parsonage, where his father found time, in spite of his many pastoral duties, to carry on a little gardening and light farming. The boy soon came to know every foot of the pasture, to and from which he or his brother drove the cows each day, and where he was always alert, in the spring and summer, for the coming of the birds and the berries and the wild flowers. He watched the garden with its ever changing crops, and recorded daily in his little diary, by a system of his own, the changes in the weather, the variations of the thermometer, and the number of eggs which the hens laid. Close at hand was the pond with its polywogs and lizards and shiners and later when he became the proud possessor of a boat, he enjoyed to the full extent the bass fishing and swimming in its waters during the summer months. But best of all spots of his early childhood days was the home with its big yard and the hay-loft in the barn, whither the lad invited his boy friends when school was over or on Saturdays, and where he and his companions enjoyed themselves as children only can. When the little army of invaders threatened to disturb 'Jl Home Life and Early Training 35 the necessary quiet of the pastor's study, the wise father merely put double doors on his own retreat and reared in the yard a horizontal bar and a swing which made home and its surroundings doubly attractive to the grow- ing boy. From early childhood, in the evenings up to bedtime and on Sunday afternoons, he would listen by the hour while his mother read aloud to him from missionary biographies and books of travel and adven- ture. It is interesting to note that even at an early age " Hamlin's Life," the '• Biography of Livingstone," and a book called " Fiji and the Fijians " were his special favourites. The memory of these childhood experiences was a pre- cious inspiration to Lawrence when, years later, he found himself away from home and friends on anniversary days. " I have been thinking of you to-day," he wrote on a Sunday evening during the year of the Yale Band cam- paign when alone in Chicago, " as together at home, and I have thought how I should like to drop in on you, and have a sing with Belle, and go to church where I belong, and sit down after church and have prayers, and then have a good long talk with you all. Why I feel as though I could talk a steady stream for hours and then not finish." ** I shall think of you all," he writes again, just before one Christmas day, " and suppose your tree will come on Saturday evening. . . . You must send me a list of the Christmas presents and tell me all about it. . . . I wish next Christmas we might have the children down and have a real celebration with tree and all. ... A tree without children is like camping without the fellows. 36 A Life With a Purpose What fun it used to be to get up and dress by the fire in mamma's room and, in our excitement, plead with papa to dress us which he couldn't do, as he must go down and light up [/. e., the hghts on the tree, the ceremonies of which took place before breakfast]. Then I remem- ber my jig-saw Christmas. If I remember correctly, I didn't do anything but saw all day, and oh, the woe that filled my soul when, within a day or two, I screwed it up too tight and broke off a great piece and wrecked it. . . . Do you remember when I came home with my third tin drum from the Sunday-school tree ? /do any- way. And I never can feel that those Christmas delights are past even though I am no longer a child." And Lawrence realized well the secret of the home to which he so often turned back for inspiration and counsel. " I must tell you what said to me when I came back after Thanksgiving," he once wrote to his parents from preparatory school. " We were talking about home, etc., and he said, ' I am convinced that I should like to live in your home for about a month, you all seem so happy.' I tell you what, we children don't realize what a home we have. It is heaven on earth. And this is all because of Christianity and Christ's love shining through papa and mamma. If I can have a home like ours for my children, life will have been worth the living even if I accomplish nothing more." Lawrence's education began in the primary schools of Whitinsville when he was seven years of age. He was at first very shy, and for several years made few friends out- side of his immediate circle. In 1887, he entered the grammar school where he came under the careful train- LAWRENCE WITH HIS BROTHER CHARLES, A(iED SIX Home Life and Early Training 37 ing of Miss Ella Aldrich. To the lad of thirteen, by whom lessons had never been learned any too easily, and who was always eager for the hour to come when he could be once more in the loft or by the pond's side, those extra minutes after school, spent in correcting mis- takes made in problems or in atonement for minor trans- gressions, were a source of discontent. On one occasion, when the whole school had been kept after four o'clock for some breach of conduct, as the minutes of detention dragged on in silence, suddenly Lawrence rose from his seat and solemnly moved " that we adjourn." That this was meant in good faith and in entire respect, although there was undoubtedly an element of roguery in it, is ap- parent from an entry in the diary which he kept during this year and which is his sole comment on this incident. " Yesterday we struck for the dismission of school at four o'clock. She gave it to us, but was very hard on us with lessons." Years afterwards he had occasion to visit Miss Aldrich in person and to express to her his deep gratitude for the thorough foundation in mathematics which he owed entirely to her careful drill, and which later served him in such good stead in Worcester Academy. When in June, 1889, Lawrence finished the work at the grammar school, the question arose whether he should continue his studies at the high school at Whitinsville or go to Worcester Academy, where his brother Charles was already enrolled as a student. The decision was left largely with Lawrence himself and it involved much care- ful thought on his part. And although boarding-school life at Worcester necessitated a severing to some extent of the home ties, it was upon this latter course that he finally decided. 38 A Life With a Purpose There are few experiences in life which a normal boy enjoys more thoroughly at the time, or remembers after- wards with more distinctness than those connected with his high school days. No later triumph in college or in the world of action has in it precisely such exhilaration, no subsequent defeat leaves quite as bitter a sting as that which each newcomer experiences in his earliest struggles to assert himself among his peers within the strange and isolated little world of the fitting school, in those few bud- ding years of his life when time is long and the world is new. The preparatory school which Lawrence entered at the age of fifteen in the fall of 1889 was one excellently equipped to meet the needs of an active growing boy. Worcester Academy, already well known among the boarding schools of New England from its honourable record of over a half-century, was just entering upon a new era of material expansion under Mr. Abercrombie who had been called to the principalship in 1882. Dur- ing Lawrence's school-days three new buildings costing over ;^200,ooo were added to the school plant and the number of boys in the academy increased to nearly 2CX). The scholarship record of Worcester Academy graduates at college was such as to rank it among the best fitting schools in New England, and the remarkable success of its athletic teams had given it an enviable name in the student world. Lawrence began his boarding-school life under circum- stances which made the breaking of home ties less of a wrench than it has been for many boys. His brother Charles had already been in residence at the academy for two years and was now one of the leading men in the school. It had been arranged that the two boys should Home Life and Early Training 39 room together and this circumstance gave Lawrence an excellent opportunity to meet his brother's chums in the upper classes as well as the members of his own class. Lawrence joined the school Y. M. C. A. within a week after entering the academy but he does not seem to have taken any active part in its meetings other than that of regular attendance. He was for some time very distrustful of his powers as a speaker and the results of his occasional public declamations in the chapel which constituted a part of his regular school work seem to have been very unsatisfactory to himself. " One good thing that came from the Thursday meetings," he wrote home after his first term, " was the formation of a first year Christian Endeavour Society. I have joined as an associate member. They wanted me to join as an active member but I didn't want to lead the meetings, so I didn't." His interest in the preaching services during the first year appears to have been no more nor less than that of a normal healthy boy, although special mention of several addresses on City or Foreign Missions is to be found in his diary. Into the life of the boys he entered with great en- thusiasm. The fact that he was not strong physically precluded the possibility of extensive participation in athletic sports, but he was a loyal supporter of the school and of his class in all the athletic competitions. His diary for the first year records the result of every base- ball or football game, with ample justification for the team in defeat and a corresponding joy in victory. Writing home to the family on the occasion of a notable victory, he had happened to describe with much detail a banquet which the whole school had attended. " I don't know but what you will think," he concluded, *' that I 40 A Life With a Purpose cared more for the supper than for the game, but I didn't." Later in the year he wrote regarding the inter-class field sports, " '93 was second. We cheered all the way home." And those who knew Lawrence's invincible spirit in the more serious struggles of later life will have little doubt as to the identity of one, at least, of the organizers of the defeated but unconquered class of '93 in its march back to the academy grounds. To his studies Lawrence applied himself faithfully. He was neither fond of study nor quick to learn and the results obtained were not always commensurate with his efforts. His eldest sister who was at home with him for a Christmas vacation wrote, " Lawrence is as full of life and thought as ever ; a most interesting boy. I cannot understand why his studies come so hard. He shows the pluck of his Puritan ancestors and the sweetness of an angel about it." In later years he often referred with no little amusement and some genuine annoyance to what he knew to have been an overestimate of himself in his class standing during the first term at preparatory school, and again during the first term at college, in courses where his brother had preceded him and where Charlie's brilliant record in scholarship made a presupposition in Lawrence's favour at the start. During the first term at Worcester he was ranked second in a class of twenty- three and a note was added at the bottom of the report- card — " Lawrence nearly does what Charlie does so handsomely. There may be material for a class leader in him yet." So far as Lawrence was directly responsible for the result, the high rating on this occasion was largely due to a nearly perfect mark in mathematics. ♦* All the fellows were in my room before the mathematics exam," he wrote home in exultation. Nor was this the only Home Life and Early Training 41 time when he had occasion to be grateful for Miss Aldrich's careful grounding in accuracy and close rea- soning. The first year passed uneventfully with httle to inter- rupt the ordinary routine of school life. When he re- turned to Worcester for his second year, his circle of in- timate acquaintances had greatly widened and he entered upon his duties with much more self-confidence. " I spoke in prayer- meeting," his diary records on January 16, 1891. In his studies he still worked faithfully and took the results good-naturedly. " My rank last term was twenty-four. I don't remember the term before as large numbers are harder to remember than small ones." Sophomore year was for him preeminently a year of ven- tures, in which the growing lad was feeling about for the special line of achievement in which he might prove his powers to his fellows. The first of these did not bear the fruit which he had anticipated. Before nearly every boy in his preparatory school-days there arises sooner or later an alluring vision of himself acclaimed victor before an admiring crowd of onlookers, in some test of speed or endurance with his fellows. And the vision in prospect seems so easy of realization. Who can forget the joys of the first day of training for that initial contest ; the supreme satisfaction of self-imposed rigid diet and of early hours of retiring ; the absolute as- surance, in spite of discouraging time records in the trial runs, of one's ability, somehow, in some unexplained way, to distance all competitors when the contest shall finally come. And who will forget also the inevitable issue of that first contest, when the tyro, answering to his name at the hne, and starting forth beneath the unsympathetic gaze and comments of the stands, seemed to himself a 42 A Life With a Purpose petty mortal striving against gods, as gamely struggling in the rear, he watched the frames of his rivals disappear- ing ahead down the track, propelled as it were, by seven league boots. The story of Lawrence's athletic aspira- tions is best told in the brief words of his diary : May 6. I began to train for walking (the mile walk) this afternoon. May II. Went to gym to see about training. May 12. Trained. I walked as far as the ruins of the house. May ig. We trained. The cinder track is being laid. May 20. We trained. The track was laid to- day. May 21. We trained for the last time before the sports. May 22. I got my gym clothes and put them in a bag for the races. May 2 J. (The day of the games.) WiUiams walked the mile in eight minutes, twenty seconds. I walked and had 150 yards handicap and came in 150 yards behind." This performance closed Lawrence's active athletic career. He always felt in later years that it had been providential that he had not been able to engage regularly in athletics. And indeed it seems probable that his in- terest in the more serious achievements of his life must of necessity have been lessened had he devoted his in- tense and invincible spirit whole-heartedly to any sport. Lawrence's second venture of sophomore year was Home Life and Early Training 43 one calculated to prove of more lasting value to the school and to himself. When he had first entered the academy the thing which had disappointed him most sorely was to find so few among the boys who loved as he did the woods and the hills, the birds and the flowers which had been so large a part of his Hfe at Whitinsville. Writing to his sister early in May he told the story of the formation of the Agassiz Association, in which he had a prominent part. " May jd, i8gi. " I want to tell you chiefly about our Natural History Society which we will after this call the Agassiz Associa- tion, as we have joined that society. About a week be- fore the end of the fall term Mr. A asked all who were interested in natural history to meet in his recitation room and talk over forming a society. Nearly thirty came and it was decided at the beginning of the winter term to call a meeting and form a society. When we met we elected Rob Smith for president and Aldrich for vice-president. Ever since we formed the society it has been on the high wave of success. You see Mr. S is a member and is very much interested and although Mr. A has not had time to go to any of the meetings, yet we know that he wants the society to succeed, so we have everything in our favour. We have a room in the schoolhouse (the new building) for our collections and hold our meetings in Mr. S 's recitation room on the same floor. " At the meetings we have papers read and before the end of this term we hope to have a Harvard professor, a friend of Mr. S 's, give us a lecture on geology. We keep a log of all the flowers and animals as they come 44 A Life With a Purpose and after a few years it will be interesting to compare these and notice the early and late seasons. ^ H< ^ ^K :ic :(( " We took our walk Monday and were out about three hours. We all had a perfectly delightful time. We found fully thirty flowers in bloom. Rob Smith kept the list. I found one new flower, the dwarf ginseng or ground nut. I see that you found it at Norton but we haven't pressed it before. Rob brought home for the society meeting a black, poisonous water-snake, but we put him in a tin box so that he is perfectly safe, and a little puff adder about a foot long. We think we shall put both in alcohol. We found several common lizards and one black one with yellow spots. I have forgotten his name. ****** *' Yours lovingly, " Lawrence." The society flourished for many years and continued to hold a prominent place in Lawrence's interests during the whole of his connection with the school. In June, 1891, Charles Thurston graduated from the academy, and when Lawrence returned to school the next fall at the beginning of junior year, he entered upon a new period in his life. For the first time he may be said to have passed entirely outside of the direct influence of the family circle. His brother's departure necessitated the selection of a roommate, and soon subordinate offices fell to his lot in school and class organizations with which Charlie had been connected, but where the elder brother was no longer above to advise. But more significant than these, coming as it did at the beginning of the Home Life and Early Training 45 period of independent action in his life was his joining of the church at Whitinsville on the third of January, 1892. His decision to unite with the Church of Christ came about in a perfectly natural way. He was now nearly eighteen years of age, and when his father had raised the question of a public profession in a letter to him in the fall he had at once responded favourably to the sugges- tion. He could point to no definite moment of conver- sion and submission to the will of God. Both inheritance and surroundings had made the step an easy and natural one. His mother's devotion to her family had interpreted to him the love-in-sacrifice of the Master. He had learned Christ's great principle of love-in-action as he had listened to his father's bold utterances from the pulpit against the saloon, and then had watched him holding the hose of the volunteer fire company in a heroic attempt to save the property of the saloon-keeper from burning down. Above all he had seen the working results of a vital Christianity in the little church of 250 members in whose parish he had been reared, which was now giving between five and ten thousand dollars a year for foreign missions, and whose total benevolences often amounted to from fifteen to twenty thousand dollars. But although this decision seems to have been the result of no decided change of heart, there was a very evident change in Lawrence's interests and activities with the beginning of the winter term of junior year. To a nature like his a public declaration to serve Christ meant actual service. He had not been back at school many days before he began to plan for a camping party with some of his classmates on the Whitinsville pond during the next summer. This was eventually carried 46 A Life With a Purpose out and proved to be the beginning of the annual gath- erings which in later years meant so much to his friends in spiritual uplift. He did not withdraw from the school activities, but with his characteristic practical bent of mind proceeded to bring his Christianity into these ac- tivities. His informal talks and the society debates in which he took part were now concerned with more exclusively ethical problems. With his friends he dis- cussed the tobacco question and the opening of the World's Fair on Sunday. Late in the spring he led the Y. M. C. A. meeting for the first time. The subject was — " Filling our hearts with good things " (Luke II : 21-27). In his preliminary examination for admission to Yale College at the close of junior year Lawrence was not suc- cessful, and he returned to school in the fall of 1892 as a senior with much additional curriculum work due to this failure, and with many new extra curriculum interests. He had been appointed to the exalted and responsible position of a school monitorship. He had also accepted the presidency of the Agassiz Association and an assist- ant editorship of the Academy, the school paper. The fall term kept him very busy and brought some hours of discouragement : " I have been doing very poorly in my lessons," he wrote home in the middle of December, " and that has worried me. I have felt sometimes as if I would rather drop it and try something I can do, but I have managed to keep up and now I feel a great deal better." And keep at it he did, in spite of failure and disheartening experiences, for Lawrence had set his face steadfastly towards Yale, and it was not for such as he, having put his hand to the plow to look back, or having begun to build, not to finish. Home Life and Early Training 47 There were bright hours too when the honest effort which he was exerting towards a future goal, brought with it the satisfaction of feeling that he had already the right to count himself a loyal supporter of the college of his choice and to rejoice in her triumphs. As the day of the big Yale-Harvard football game at Springfield ap- proached, there was no little excitement in the academy, and the colony of Yale supporters, although in the minority, on one occasion at least, had the best of the argument. " Yesterday morning several of the Harvard fellows decked their windows with crimson and yelled for Har- vard, but about 4 P. M. what a change there was. The crimson disappeared, and all that was to be heard from the Harvard men were low murmurs and grumblings and suggestions for us to wait till next year and then see what Harvard would do. It was also amusing to see how many Yale men there were in the evening compared to the few in the morning. As Ben W said there were three Yale supporters at breakfast and forty at supper." At the beginning of the winter term of his senior year, Lawrence, after correspondence with his father, arrived at a decision which, as his friends now look back upon it in the light of his later career, appears to have been one of the most important of his life. It was the decision to remain another year after graduation at the academy, and thus be able to enter Yale without conditions. To it, Lawrence came slowly, at first very reluctantly, as is apparent in the letter which follows. Yet had Lawrence Thurston entered Yale in 1893, it is difficult to see. 48 A Life With a Purpose humanly speaking, how, without the fellowship of the Volunteers of '98, and the experiences of the Yale Mis- sionary Band, his life could have rounded out as it did to make him the man of the hour as the pioneer missionary of the Yale China Mission. *^ Ja?tuary 2g, i8gj. " You seem to be troubled about the amount of out- side work I do. During the last two weeks while I have been working so hard I don't think I have done five hours of outside work, and what little I did do was of a nature that it rested my mind rather than tired it, except perhaps last night's debate. The courage to plod along in lessons which I do not succeed in is what I need. I suppose if I took German in college I might be able to get in next year as I would have to read but three books of the Iliad in the summer. I fear I would have to give up the News idea [competition for a position on the edi- torial board of the Yale Daily News\ if I did that, and that would disappoint me very much. I want to do the very best thing, but this life is so short that it seems to me as if to use a year more in school is a great loss. Of course, the question is whether I can do more good by staying here another year and getting better fitted for college or whether a year of life outside of college will be better. I will have to work very hard if I do, and may have to shut myself up more than I believe in for a year or two." Lawrence's final decision vi^as to take the extra year and, this decision once made, he experienced that peace and contentment which is ever the reward of those who have resolved to do their work thoroughly and honestly, Home Life and Early Training 49 whatever may be the temporary sacrifice or however alluring the short cut. The cloud of worry and self- distrust passed from his mind and his letters have again their old ring. He now had time, too, to reflect on questions relatmg to more than his immediate future. The following letter shows the problem which was engaging his attention. " March 26, 18 gj. " This morning Mr. Scott, a medical missionary to Ceylon, preached in Union Church. As he is just starting for the field and has done no work as yet, he of course could not tell us much about the work, but he gave a very good sermon. It seems to me that a medi- cal missionary has one of the greatest opportunities that can come to a man. I have often wished that I liked medicine. " I have been interested lately in counting up the number of professions I should Hke to go into. Law has a tremendous fascination for me and I have been rather surprised to find that people that have known me but a short time rather take it for granted that I am going to be a lawyer. Along with law comes public life where there is such a large field for doing good. The ministry, at home or abroad, is one of the very best professions for exerting a great influence for good, and I believe it is one of the most delightful. Though of course I don't use delightful in its common sense. Then I am very fond of journalism and there again is a wide field. Medi- cine I have mentioned. The teachers have a noble work to do, and I don't mean simply the academy and college professors but common school teachers. I have always been fond of business and probably always will be. ^o A Life With a Purpose " Don't think I have mentioned these in any order, for I have put them down as they have come to me. What an opportunity a young man does have and how short a time there is to grasp it in ! " A month and a half later appears another significant paragraph in one of his letters : " This evening Mr. Davis presented the Chinese side of the Geary outrage. I never realized before what a future there was before China. You know our great di- plomatist believes that the Chinese are to be to America what the Goths and Huns were to Rome. Whether we believe it or not there is something to think about in it." Although Lawrence had decided to return to Worces- ter Academy for another year, he completed the regu- lar school work and received his diploma with the class of 1893 in June. In the class history he came in for a full share of good-natured bantering. " Then there is John L. Thurston," the history reads, " a man with a perfectly rabid affection for Yale. With Mr. S [a Harvard man] he wrangles frequently on the subject and is often successful. He is the only man in the class that claims to grind and this he does incessantly. He has without doubt the most copious vocabulary of slang that has ever been put in constant use. For this reason Societies for the Prevention of Slang have been frequently organized for his benefit but with indifferent success." The gradu- ating class numbered twenty-two men, only one of whom, his roommate Paul Whitin, was to be with him later in the class of 1898 at Yale. It was during the summer of 1893 that Lawrence Home Life and Early Training 51 attended his first great religious conference, and its effect on his subsequent spiritual interests is clearly traceable. The gathering in question was the annual convention of the Christian Endeavour Society held that year at Mon- treal, from July 5th to 9th. Lawrence kept a careful record of the journey and of the events of each day, noting the main points in each devotional address with comments of his own, and culling from the discussions on method, suggestions for work in his own society on his return. The first sermon by Dr. Chapman, on •' Re- ceive ye the Holy Ghost," made a deep impression. A later talk on " Soul Winning" he characterizes emphat- ically as " a very important subject." It seems probable from his notes that it was at this conference that he first caught the vision of the power of a surrendered Hfe. The fact that this vision first came to him where it did rather than at the student gathering at Northfield un- doubtedly accounts largely for the fact that even in his college days his interests lay chiefly in the deputation work to the young people of the Christian Endeavour Societies of the surrounding churches. And the under- lying aim of the Yale Missionary Band, in which he was later to play so prominent a part, was first and fore- most to bring the Christian forces of the college into more vital connection with the Young People's So- cieties. During the last weeks of the summer vacation a trip with his brother Charles to the World's Fair, at Chicago, with stop-overs at Washington, Niagara Falls and Toronto gave an excellent preparation for the busy year which was to follow. Lawrence returned to the academy in the fall of 1893 with all the prestige of a senior but with the additional advantage of the experience of one 52 A Life With a Purpose senior year at the school. He came back also with a clean-cut decision to make his life count for Christ. The stories which he wrote for publication in the school paper of which he still continued to be an editor have no uncertain ring. What a year after graduation from col- lege often means to a young man in settling definitely his principles of life, if spent in the comparative isolation of travel, advanced study or temporary teaching before entering upon the absorbing activities of his chosen career, the extra year at Worcester meant to Lawrence. He had before him a definite but not over-difficult task — to enter Yale without conditions. Moreover he was mature enough not to confuse opportunity for re- flection with idleness. The year proved to be one of special religious interest in the academy. In the early fall Mr. Sayford, the evangelist, spoke for several evenings in succession before the boys, and many committed themselves definitely to the Christian life. After Mr. Sayford had left, Lawrence was one of a little group on whom fell the responsibility for the conserving of spiritual results. The work had a reflex influence on his own soul life and he found time to be often alone with God. ^^ November 5, i8g^. " I have taken several delightful walks lately. I took one very fine walk about five miles long on Wednesday. I went alone and enjoyed myself full as well, for then there is no one to entertain and you can be alone with your thoughts and nature. There is something fasci- nating to me in being alone in the woods and fields. Perhaps it is a little selfish but one must rest once in a while." Home Life and Early Training 53 A letter written later in the year reveals clearly his un- compromising attitude towards deviations from the standards of schoolboy honour. .. It has been quite lively here this week in more ways than one First three boys have been expelled or sus- nended • They all deserved it and there are . more like them. Friday Mr. A talked to us about the whole matter after chapel. The root of the ev.Us dis- honesty, the very thing that 1 spoke of while at home Lying and cheating are so easy for schoolboy to fall into They don't do it intentionally, but gradually their consciences become blunted and before they know it a he is as easy as a cnb on the Xenophon margin was before. When you see class leaders in scholarship, school leaders in athletics stooping to little meannesses to gam a point or two on the teacher's book, or in the estimation of their fellows, it makes you sick at heart. A high sense of honour, a very sensitive conscience are rare qualities I wouldn't imply that there aren't many good fellows but their standards are not high enough. Their ideals are either of a low order or are lacking altogether. . . • The complications which arose from his position of spiritual leadership among the boys were not without their humorous side. ' "January 21, iSg^j.. " There was a great horse on me the other day in class and Mr A thought it was so good he told me to write home about it; so here goes. The question was asked Gary who Jacob was and as he didnt answer, 54 A Life With a Purpose Mr. A asked the class. Well to tell the truth, though I thought he was Isaac's son, I wasn't sure, so I didn't raise my hand. So few said they knew that Mr. A thought he would take a census of the class on the subject. First all those who knew raised their hands, and as I wasn't sure, my conscience wouldn't let me, so when those who didn't, raised their hands, I had to too. Up went my hand and down came Abie. * What, a minister's son don't know who Jacob was ! Well what is this generation coming to ? ' I was then the butt of the class for the next five minutes. He told me I had better come over and get Dan's book of Bible stories, etc. I felt like informing him that I probably had more books on the subject than all of his kids put together. He may think this generation doesn't know much Bible, but I'll warrant my training on the subject in a New Eng- land minister's family has been fully as good as his on a southern plantation." It was early in March that Lawrence disclosed the secret of those solitary walks among the quiet hills, to which reference has already been made. The letter which revealed the decision — to which he had come — the first fruits of the miracle of obedience in his life — rang with the joyful note of victory and the decision itself was a fitting climax to the first period of his life. , " March 4, iSg^.. " You remember about a year ago that I wrote of the five professions which seemed the most attractive to me. That list has gradually narrowed down till now one seems to be the prominent one, the only one which I can look Home Life and Early Training j*^ forward to. It may not be the one which in God's providence I shall follow. I may have mistaken my calling and I may change. But it is not the decision of a moment, nor of a week, or month but that of nearly a year of careful thought. I have prayed over it and walked many miles with it in mind. Now it seems to me and has seemed for several weeks that God has un- mistakably called me to the ministry. It may be to missions but I feel more probably to a pastorate. I can't, I would not resist it. " My life has been happier for the past few weeks than for a great while, I do not know why. But I have begun to take a most serious view of life. I would not be pietistic for the wide world. I almost consider that wicked. But I would be tremendously in earnest about life. To go through life or even to start in life without Christ, with no thought of the future, only for self, only for pleasure, carried away with the present, is something that I cannot understand a person's doing." Happy years indeed they were — those early years of Lawrence's life, at home and in the fitting-school. " There are but four Sundays left," he wrote from Worcester on May 20, 1 894, " and then my letters from Worcester Academy will cease and five years of work will be ended. It seems hardly possible that five years have gone by since I decided in papa's study to go to Worcester Academy instead of the high school. Five years ago I was in the grammar school and now when I go back to that same school, how small the chil- dren look. Five years ago I was driving the cows back from the pasture and I wouldn't have missed those years of simple boyish pleasure for anything." 56 A Life With a Purpose The impression which he left on the school is well summed up in letters from two of the academy in- structors. " ... I first knew Lawrence Thurston when he entered Worcester Academy. . . . He was a small boy not overstrong, but he enjoyed life as a young boy ought and did creditable work in his lessons. I watched his development of mind and body during the four years of his preparation for college. From the first he was a young man of principle. He had ideals and was con- sistent in striving to reach them, but his thought was by no means for himself alone, he was decidedly public spirited. What was for the good of the class or for the good of the school was sure to interest him. He had the courage of his convictions too, and did not hesitate to express himself even though his cause might not be popular. Not the least of his interests was the religious life of the school, an interest which grew in his college life to be a passion. But in all his zeal I never heard that any one questioned his sincerity. In a word my impression of Lawrence Thurston is that he was a young man of no extraordinary powers but one who accom- plished much by his splendid zeal and sincerity ; a young man very much in earnest, sincerely trying to live up to his ideal, and to bring better things to pass." "... Lawrence Thurston inherited the strong convictions which make so rich an inheritance for the child of New England. He belonged to the best stock of that New England, the stock that never talks about itself, but is always doing the best things with quiet modesty. He was a faithful student and a hard worker, Home Life and Early Training 57 at Worcester Academy, not daunted by tasks which he found difficult. In the building and about the grounds he was always frank and sunny. He was not the type of boy who never gets into mischief because he has no fun in him. There was always in his eye a merry look which did good like a medicine, and in his heart the fun which gave pleasure rather than pain. His religious life was like the rest of his school life, normal and happy and helpful. He stands to me the type of a sturdy but sympathetic, strong but happy Christianity. The im- pression of sunny, lovable strength which he made upon us at Worcester was permanent and is worth recording. His goodness was of the wholesome kind which deserves the permanence it attained." In June, 1894, Lawrence was successful with the entrance examinations and received a clean paper of admission to Yale. For five years at Worcester Acad- emy he had been quietly laying out his plans to meet any testing which the heavy gales of the coming years might bring. His modest Httle vessel made slight dis- play as it slipped from the stays for its trial in the test- ing waters of college life. For some time the little ship ran by the side of the rest unnoticed. But it could not be for long. The ship had been builded as under the eye of an eternal Father. The keel of equity and the ribs of truth and righteousness were there. Ill Four Years at Yale " Yale is a place for work. Few who go to Yale and stay are not busy. The student is held steadily to a reasonable amount of mental effort whether or no he went to New Haven to learn from his teachers and his books. In his life with his fellows he is held as steadily and more relent- lessly to some kind or other of labour. Otherwise he is not of that life." — Welchy " Yale, Her Campus ^ Classrooms and Athletics, ^^ p. ly. " The longer I live the more certain I am that the great difference be- tween men, the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is energy and invincible determination — a purpose once fixed and then death or victory. That quahty will do anything that can be done in this world ; and no titles, no circumstances, no opportunities will make a two legged creature a man without it." — Sir Thomas Buxton. " One boy here resolves — I will win this scholarship ; I will be head of the school ; I will be captain of the eleven ; and does it. Another re- solves — this school shall be purer in tone, simpler in habits, braver and stronger in temper for my presence here ; does his best but doubts after all whether he has succeeded. I need not say that the latter is the best idealist; but which is the most successful? " — Thomas Hughes. Ill FOUR YEARS AT YALE THE first days of life at a great university are apt to evoke in the newcomer feelings which vary alternately between inspiration and deep depression. There is a supreme satisfaction in the as- surance that one is actually a part of a well-known in- stitution of learning and has earned the right to rank himself a member of a brotherhood which includes some of the most distinguished men of the land. But there often follows in the wake of such a thought a feeling of self-distrust, when one realizes through actual contact how great in numbers and resources the university really is, how exacting are its demands and how intense is the life which throbs in its veins. It was not strange that Lawrence should have been, as he himself once expressed it, overawed by the new sur- roundings into which he came. - 1 entered college a much scared freshman, independent to the last degree but too scared to be fresh." He once wrote to a friend " . . . I was not fitted to deal with classmates. I was afraid of them and at the same time repelled them in some way or other. I did not understand deaUng with men and I fear I do not now— that is in the aggregate." Two of his im- mediate family it is true, a father and a brother, had al- ready preceded him at Yale ; and from them he had learned much regarding the ideals and traditions of the college. His brother, because of the extra year which 6i 62 A Life With a Purpose Lawrence had spent at Worcester, was now three years ahead of him at Yale, ranking second in scholarship in a class of over 250 students. But in the new environment this counted for little. The relations between classes of several hundred men in a large university were far differ- ent from those between forms of twenty-five or thirty men in a boarding-school. It is distinctive of Yale Hfe that each class is a Httle community in itself, left alone by the rest of the student body to develop its own leaders dur- ing the first three years of the course and subject only to college traditions of order and propriety, imposed by the distant and exalted seniors. In time, if he proved him- self worthy, Lawrence must inevitably be where his brother was, but he must first fight his own battles in a different community, where no record but his own would ultimately count. There were other circumstances which made the new order of things seem stranger than it has for some. Lawrence entered Yale from a school which prepared mainly for Harvard and consequently he knew but few members of his class at the start. Moreover the college was passing through a period of reconstruction. While every college generation is to a greater or less degree a period of gradual transition from one order of things to another in student thought and tradition, the decade of the nineties which included the four years of Lawrence's student life saw the agitation and in some cases the actual consummation of changes in Yale life so radical in their nature as to stamp these years beyond question as the be- ginning of a new era in the life of the institution. Dur- ing these years the boasted democracy of Yale was put to a searching test. Within the decade in question Yale passed from a college into a university. In the year 1895 Four Years at Yale 63 twice as many men were enrolled as students in the academical department as had been enrolled ten years previous ; the prosperity of the country had largely in- creased the number of sons of wealthy famihes who an- nually sought admission ; and the growth of the college in equipment and material resources had kept pace with the increase in students. With the new order of things the simple buildings of the old brick row soon began to make way for the modern dormitory with its more luxu- rious appointments. In 1893 and 1894 South College, Atheneum and North Middle were demolished in rapid order, and as their successors arose the well equipped structures of Vanderbilt, White and Berkeley. It was inevitable, with the increased number of men who now entered Yale from each of the larger fitting institutions, that the better known Yale preparatory schools should make themselves felt more strongly as controlling forces in student politics during freshman year. The society- system of the college, which had been no more than adequate when the classes numbered ioo,still remained un- changed, notwithstanding the fact that each class was now composed of nearly three times as many men as formerly. There naturally resulted, especially in the earlier years of the course, an intensity of interest in society matters and acute competition for social recognition, which, while not without its value in calling forth the student's best efforts, gave to many men a very disproportionate view of the things of real value in college life. In a decade Yale had grown fast and to this growth her institutions and tradi- tions had not yet been fully adjusted. And yet in spite of temporary confusion of real values, in the earlier years of the course, few men passed through Yale in those days who failed to realize what ultimately 64 A Life With a Purpose counted in the estimate of a man among his fellows. The judgment might be long deferred but it was sure. Persistent effort, steady development, fair play, and man- hood — these were the final tests. Yale was a place for work. Few would deny this. A man must be busy about something. But Yale was more than this ; it was a place for development ; there was room for the man who entered with a handicap. It was not enough that one had done something in days gone by, or even arrived at an exceptional state of proficiency in his special line. Of the gifted man without the handicap more was required. No matter how high a man started in freshman year the college sentiment demanded relentlessly, that the work done in each succeeding year must be superior to that done the year before. Furthermore Yale was a place where every man must have fair play — an equal chance for this development. There could be no place for one who had attained by suppressing his rivals rather than by surpassing them in a fair and open contest. Lastly, the final test of a man was manhood ; not the offices which he held, not the record of what he had done, but what these offices and achievements had wrought in him. It is a tribute to the genuineness and permanency of these Yale ideals that Lawrence Thurston, although his reward was not immediate, seems never to have doubted their ultimate issue. He early recognized that it was not appointed him to be a leader in the conventional Hnes of college activity. Entering Yale with no extraordinary gifts of body or mind he belonged distinctly in the earlier years to the rank and file of the class. When we first came to know him he seemed to have accepted the fact and to be mainly engaged in cultivating within his life some of the fundamental traits of Christian Hfe in which Four Years at Yale 65 there was room for all to excel and which no classmate, not even the most prominent man in the class, could preempt. He had apparently grasped the great truth that, if he was not able to lead in conventional lines as some others did, he could at least be always pure and honest and unselfish and grateful. And as his friends watched him term after term, they saw perfected in him, by a process as natural and inevitable, yet every whit as wonderful as the ripening of the full corn in the ear, the miracle of obedience — the ordinary man become the leader. Shy, self-distrustful of his powers as he entered Yale, he saw before him two definite lines of work which were plainly his duty, his studies and his service of Christ, and to these he devoted himself with an unflinching purpose. Nothing is more characteristic of him than his career in scholarship, with its steady advance term after term and year after year till commencement day. Although he had been unsuccessful in some studies in the preparatory school, he entered college without a condition and carried out successfully his determination never to be in danger of receiving a single condition during his college days. He missed the first division in scholarship by four points in the first term of freshman year. He exceeded the required first division stand by three points during the second term. He received a dissertation standing \_t. e.y the fourth group of eight on the Yale honour list] for the work of the first two years ; he graduated with an oration standing \i. e., the next highest group above the dissertation] for the four years of the course. And the same spirit of persistent effort of steady de- velopment which characterized his studies, Lawrence carried into what was to be the consuming passion of his college days — his service of Christ. In one of his earliest 66 A Life With a Purpose letters home from college he had expressed the hope that this might be the center of all his college hfe. On the first Sunday night of his student life he associated him- self definitely with Yale's organized Christian work. The class of which he was a member was strong in Christian men, over two-thirds of the number being church-members when they entered. There were many opportunities for service in the college Christian Asso- ciation whose activities were centered in Dwight Hall under the vigorous leadership of WiUiam H. Sallmon, later president of Carleton College, who at that time had just graduated from Yale, and had returned as general secretary. The stimulus which this side of Yale Hfe proved to him, and the spirit with which he gave himself to it is well portrayed in a letter written after his grad- uation from college : " I decided to be a minister in preparatory school and thought at least that I faced the missionary question. But I think it is safe to say that my spiritual develop- ment really began at college. You know the story of my volunteering. Northfield undoubtedly marked an epoch in my hfe, and that first summer saw me stumping the country for missions, — easily one of the best means of growth that ever came to me. Sophomore year, mis- sions began in earnest, and by junior year I was manag- ing the study class." One of his earliest letters home describes more fully the opportunities which opened up before him : " October 21 y 18^4.. " Dear Ones : " Whatever idea I may have given you of the other phases of college life from the store of my small Four Years at Yale 67 experience, if I remember correctly, there is one side of it which I have not, as yet, mentioned. And it is rather strange, as I hope it is to be the center of all my college life. That is the Christian hfe at college. *< Of course it is almost entirely conducted by classes and in very few cases do the members of the different classes come in contact. The class prayer-meetings come directly after the morning service and the subject is the same for all. So far, ours has been well attended and not much time is lost between the speakers. It is not a question of when one wishes to speak, but of when one can get a chance to speak. " Wednesday evening comes the Bible class which must have over fifty members, some active, some asso- ciate. The leader is A. P. Stokes, Jr., of '96. He is senior deacon of his class and evidently a very earnest, fine fellow. The topic is ' The Life of Christ,' and we are expected to do some studying on it, though of course questions, except in a general way, are impossible. Stokes, however, is full of the subject, and we will get a great deal of inspiration from the class I don't doubt. " Last Thursday evening there was started a class for the study of missions with the special topic of * The His- torical Development of the Missionary Idea.' It is a class especially for volunteers, and is open to all four classes in college, but they are glad to have any one in- terested in missions come in with them and so I have gone into that work. But I mean that this shall be only conditional, for there are other things calling for more earnest attention. This class will also meet once a week and calls for outside work which any one entering it will gladly give. " To-day something else has come up which presents 68 A Life With a Purpose itself more strongly to me than anything else so far. That is a training class. It is to be composed of fifteen men from the class and to be led by H. T. Fowler, vice- president of the graduate department. As the class is to be limited I may not get into the '98 class, and may have to enter the general class from the university. It will inevitably bring me in contact with the most earnest men of the class and college, and that is just what I want. I was in doubt as to whether I was consecrated enough. But I have entered my name and God will help me. " All this may seem to you a great deal to undertake but really it is not much and I hope to take up more before the end of my course. . . . " With lots of love, " Lawrence." During the fall term of freshman year Lawrence was busy in many forms of Christian work. It was in Feb- ruary of that same year, during the visit of Sherwood Eddy to Yale, that he was brought face to face with the greatest decision of his life — the call to foreign mission- ary service. The steps by which he was led to volunteer he has himself outlined in the letter which he wrote to his parents informing them of the decision to which he had come. " New Haven, Conn., February 16, i8g^, " Dear Ones at Home : " The greatest decision of my life has been made during the past week. I am a member of the Student Volunteer Movement. I have expressed my purpose in writing of becoming a foreign missionary if God permits. This is how the decision was made. I had been very Four Years at Yale 69 much moved by Eddy's addresses, but yet not more than usual, as I have always been intensely interested in for- eign missions. Tuesday afternoon, B , chairman of the Religious Committee, met me and asked me to sign with him, I said, ' No,' and gave my reasons, which seemed satisfactory. Then he wanted my advice as to his own decision. I told him I would talk with him in the evening. In the meanwhile I went to Eddy for advice, and after he had advised me about B , he asked me my reason for not signing. I explained that I was perfectly wilhng to go anywhere, but that I did not wish to set my heart on either home or foreign work, for fear of needless disappointment, and that besides my rheumatism troubled me so much, that I feared that life and money would be thrown away in sending me. He answered the second objection by saying there were many climates more favourable for those subject to rheu- matism than this, and that I might also be cured. In regard to the first, he said that my influence would be helpful to the Movement, and that during my college course I might multiply my life several times by being identified with the Movement. This set me to thinking. I made an appointment with him for the next afternoon. Then I went to see B and set him to thinking on an article in the February Student Volunteer, by Jessup, discussing the twelve classes of men not wanted as foreign missionaries, and ending with an appeal for men. It must have had a powerful influence. I know it did on me. When I came home that night, I prayed as I never had before. It was a fearful struggle and I slept undecided. I thought I was willing to go anywhere, but when it came to setting my face steadfastly towards the foreign field, it seemed a different thing. The next morning I yo A Life With a Purpose prayed and it was decided. It was all over and only once or twice did a thought come of looking back. Eddy would not let me sign without seeing a doctor about my rheumatism. ... I have come to the conclusion that any hindrance from rheumatism is included in the card, which simply reads, * It is my purpose, if God per- mit, to become a foreign missionary." The joy which the decision brought to the parsonage at Whitinsville can well be imagined. Lawrence's father had been detained by the hand of God from entering the foreign field and it had been the deepest desire of his heart that a son of his might fill the place which he had planned to occupy in China. That this decision of Law- rence's was reached without undue urging on the part of his father is further evident from a letter which he wrote home the following week. " February 2jy i8g^. " One of the things which has made my volunteering easy has been the assurance that I would receive but a God's speed from my family. The letters from papa and mamma this week have been additional evidence of this feeling and it has been a great comfort to me. We who have been brought up on missions all our Hves hardly realize how hard it is for many to even persuade their families to let them go. George Eddy says that hun- dreds are kept back simply because of the opposition of friends. " I am also very thankful that I have never been urged to go or in fact spoken to on the subject of a missionary life for myself. Now that I have taken the greatest step in the way of a purpose for life that a man can take, I Four Years at Yale 71 feel that I may speak on this more freely than before. A minister's son is at a greater advantage than a busi- ness man's son in that he is absolutely free to choose his occupation. Yet I have no doubt that many a minister's son is so pestered by hints, if not by direct urging, to follow his father's calHng, that he is driven further and further away from any thought of it. This has not been my misfortune. On the contrary, I have been absolutely free to think the matter over, weigh the arguments for and against, and decide for myself. . . ." What this decision meant to his own classmates in inspiration and example has been sketched by one of them. " The closest ties binding us from the very first days of the term were those of our religious work. We discov- ered each other in one of the early meetings in Dwight Hall, where we had both taken a strong stand for the most earnest purposes of the course. I think that every man feels himself strangely drawn to those who in the same spirit speak out their mind in those early meetings for decision, recognizing how much of common interest it is going to mean in the coming days. My brother and I spoke of the pleasure of finding that the man across the hall was ' dead in earnest ' and we consequently became most intimate. It was a time of peculiar rehgious inter- est at Yale along missionary lines. A secretary of the Student Volunteer Movement stayed at Yale for a num- ber of days in conference with many of us who were trying to solve the life-work problem. It was not a hurried stirring of emotion or unwise enthusiasm but a most thoroughgoing searching of motives and plans of 72 A Life With a Purpose life that the little group of * ninety- eight ' men were making. The religious meetings felt the result of it and it was far from infrequent to find the conversation drift- ing towards the question, ' Well, have you decided what you are going to do with yourself?' There were three men who had the missionary decision settled when they entered college and these were the nucleus about which others gathered. The secretary was staying in my room, and here many of the interviews were held that were helping men to the decisive step. Laurie was among these who faced the problem fearlessly and with his usual freedom from all consideration of his own pleasures and ambitions. He was very doubtful whether he had strength enough to face missionary work, but the question that staggered most of us seemed the most easy for him to settle. He was willing to do anything that God made clear to him as His will, and that became the predomi- nating mark of his earnestness. The question of his health became a matter for the future to decide, and he volunteered in the quiet spirit of a man of mature judgment without emotion or romance. It was a simple problem as he used to discuss it. The solution of life was to get into the place where a man was needed most and there spend such strength and ability as God had given him, to the last ounce, but always tempered with an unbiased judgment and the broadest view obtainable. " It is -this missionary decision that swallows up every other memory of our freshman year. It was the main spring of our religious life and for the matter of that it was the chief influence of all our struggles and purposes. I remember some of the fellows showing more or less of intensity and over- enthusiasm in those strenuous days, but Laurie in my memory kept that reserve of balance Four Years at Yale 73 that so strongly marked his life in later years. He was not swept away in any sense. He followed the natural currents of his life and these led him to that point of conviction that the greatest need he would ever find was in the countries of the East and that if he should be free when the time came for sailing, there was the place for him. He used to speak of the practical tendencies of his mind and the fact that he could teach carpentry and farm- ing, if he couldn't handle their philosophy. " Missions had no glamour for him. He saw the work and its privations as clearly as a man may from this side of the seas ; he knew its discouragements and its possible dangers ; and he set his mind and heart for the long run- ning fight with the evils and indifference he would meet there. Those were the earnest days of life, when the spirit outran the body and the cost seemed small, if only there was a clear light shining somewhere. We used to get up on the high window seats of the top floor of Lawrance in the evening and look across the tops of the campus elms talking, until late hours, of those elements of life that prove that humanity has God within reach. Laurie had the ' single eye ' if ever man had. Some of us were spending most of the time counting the cost and weighing personal ambitions or business openings against these thoughts of responsibility and men's need, and many a time he put the clear word into the conversation that showed us the principles that lay deeper than we had yet mined. Selfish things troubled him little,— less than most men. He had the ambitions and the tendencies to- wards that selfish life but they were far outweighed by the heavy considerations of duty and service. He was greatly useful in talking with other men on these topics after his own decision was clear, and though I don't know 74 A Life With a Purpose the men by name, many of them will remember those hours in the fall of freshman year that were spent in this field of strong battles between self and the other man who needed our help*" To Lawrence the decision to volunteer meant the ab- solute surrender of his life to God. From that time on he became in a certain sense a speciaHst in missions and his life had but one consuming purpose. Yet the prac- tical side of his nature asserted itself here as it did ever in his life. He did not wait for the years to go by until he should actually stand on a foreign shore before he began his work. Extracts from his later letters of freshman year show the interest with which he now applied himself to every opportunity for service which presented itself and the conscientiousness with which he considered the smallest questions of personal living. *' March ^j, i8g^, " You may see how busy my Sundays are by the fact that it is 7:30 and this is the first chance I have had to finish this letter. But I wouldn't give up this intense life for anything. I am supremely happy only when I am at work on development along some line of my practical Christian life. Give me the life which some men live here in college and I should be ready to leave." " March j/, iSg^, " I may have told you that W , the poor fellow I am trying to help at the Mission promised me a week ago last Friday evening that he would stop drinking and begin to read the Bible. I confess I trembled a little bit Four Years at Yale 75 when I asked Tuesday night how he had succeeded. But he told me that he hadn't touched a drop since then. He had also read the first six chapters of Mark. Nor is he doing it in his own strength. I really think he is quite a hopeful case and there seems to be good reason to be- lieve he will hold out." " April 28, i8gj. " To-day is as full as usual. I have just returned from teaching that class of boys at Bethany, who seemed to be verily possessed. It's a terrible strain on a man. I must be receiving my just retribution for my performances when a small boy in Sunday-school." " May s, 189s ' " What a great inspiration college is ! One comes in contact with so much and so varied humanity. First, a devoted, whole-souled Christian, then a lukewarm one, then a man who needs the love of Christ in his heart. I have just been talking with B , one of the strongest Christians in the class. It was a perfect inspiration. Perhaps after supper I shall come in touch with his opposite. . . . To-day has been as delightful as usual. This afternoon I led the volunteer meeting of freshmen and brought home the principle of sacrifice both as applying to ourselves and to the Christian Church. When twenty-four well prepared young men and women have recently been rejected by the Presby- terian board simply from lack of money it seems a mockery to ask for more men. What we want is more men and money with emphasis on the money. We will never, I believe, have enough money till the Church be- 76 A Life With a Purpose gins to grasp the true meaning of total surrender and sacrifice to God." " May 18 y 18^5. "... Tuesday evening Paul and I went to the Joint Play. . . . As I have sworn off on the theatre, on principles which I shall explain later, I enjoyed it very much, perhaps more so than a regular theatregoer. The whole thing was amateur. Even the play, Mr. Bonaparte, was written by college men. It was a take-off on Napoleon and though it had nothing to do with Yale was a clever production. *' The reason that I have given up the theatre is simply because of the life of the actors. Not that there are not notable exceptions to the general rule. But it is an in- disputable fact that the lives of most actors are far from what they should be. Still more indisputably, the life behind the scenes is totally unfavourable to the devel- opment of a spiritual nature. Granting then that the theatre is not conducive to the development of a spiritual nature nor even a moral nature among the actors, I cannot as a Christian man support the institu- tion by my presence. I claim that there is no need of having any other grounds to stand on. These are strong enough and I cannot see how they can be refuted. The claim that the effect on the spectators is bad, is debatable. The effect varies with the individual, there being extremes of both natures. I have stated my views to several men, as the necessity presented itself, and have never been even answered. Some I am afraid are self-convicted but are not willing to give it up. I might add that most of these men are of argumentative natures and would be likely to answer if possible. Four Years at Yale 77 " The reason that I went to the Joint Play was that my objections did not apply to amateur acting. . . ." '' Dear Papa and Mamma : " The main reason for my not writing in the middle of the week was because I didn't know what to say about my having a bicycle. In fact I don't know now, but I will try to tell you how far I have got. Of course the question is simply, shall I have a bicycle or give the same money to missions ? supposing that you would be willing for me to do this. If I felt sure that it would really improve my health and make me better able to serve God I should be willing to have the bicycle. Not of course, that I don't really wish it very much but I try to suppress those feelings ; for I can't judge if I let feelings which are simply selfish come up. I reahze that if I didn't have one Belle would be disappointed, and it would look a little peculiar to the townspeople, but those must be minor considerations. With the fearful need in the field I simply tremble to think of the wrong investment of any money and especially of so much money. In regard to health, the only possible advan- tage of a bicycle over simply walking are greater ex- hilaration, more all round exercise, and greater variety in scenery. I am perfectly ready to do which is best. But I am very much afraid of selfishness on the one hand and fear of appearing inconsistent on the other. But I know that apparent inconsistency would affect only the thoughtless, whereas failure to keep my health would affect both the thoughtless and the thoughtful. I want your advice on the subject very much. " I haven't written this in the regular letter because there is no need of the family knowing all about it. yS A Life With a Purpose " Of course I thank you very much, more than I can tell, for the offer, and I only pray that I may be guided to do all for the glory of God. " With a great deal of love, " Lawrence." It remains to be said that his final decision was to purchase the bicycle ; his subsequent arrest soon after that of one of the most dignified members of the Yale faculty, for failure to observe a minor city bicycle ordi- nance, causing infinite amusement among his friends and exposing him to no end of good-natured bantering. Lawrence had not been on the Freshman Religious Committee during freshman year, nor was he elected a class deacon. But with the beginning of sophomore year his faithful work began to attract attention. He was placed on the Foreign Missionary and Boys' Club Committees of the Christian Association and led a mis- sion study class on the Bible and missions. Although at first he was not the leader of the Band of Volunteers, his influence there was always as strong as that of any man in the group. He was not the most popular. He was probably not the man who accomplished most in college for the causes that were there discussed. But spiritually he was one of the strongest, and his unusually level judgment for outlining a policy or plan of work and his faithful performance of every duty that was laid upon him, quickly led others to put great trust in his ability to accomplish things. During sophomore year he began his missionary deputation work for the college. He spoke four times that year, at New Britain, Torring- ton. Deep River and Seymour. A little book started at this time and kept by him for several years, gives a com- Four Years at Yale 79 plete statement of each meeting he addressed with the numbers present on each occasion, and suggestions re- garding the best means of approach when missions were presented at these places in the future. It was characteristic of Lawrence that he should crave for his friends in the home town the spiritual advantages which he was enjoying to such a remarkable degree at Yale. Early in January, 1896, there was special religious interest in the college as an indirect result of an evangel- istic campaign by Rev. B. Fay Mills in the city. Both Mr. Mills and Dr. Alexander McKenzie spoke to large bodies of students at Dwight Hall and these addresses were supplemented by the visits of Luce or Eddy of the Student Volunteer Mission. Through the cooperation of these men Messrs. Stout and McNair were secured to speak in Whitinsville. Lawrence himself came home from college and the meetings made a decided impression on many of the young people. During the first two years at Yale Lawrence had deliberately chosen to narrow his circle of acquaintances for the largest efficiency in his chosen sphere of work. It was inevitable that he should be regarded in the last two years as one of the missionary leaders of the class. In junior and senior years he served on the Foreign Mis- sions Committee of the Christian Association acting as chairman in his senior year. During the last year he was also leader of the Student Volunteer Band. He spoke frequently in the churches of New Haven and vicinity, and on him in his last year devolved the organization of the Yale delegation of twenty-seven for the Volunteer Convention at Cleveland. His reports in the Christian Association Record of senior year, as chairman of the Foreign Missions Committee of the 8o A Life With a Purpose association, and as leader of the Cleveland delegation are both noteworthy for their thorough grasp of the principles of organization and their breadth of view in the conception of the scope and aim of missions. But although the sphere of his activities were thus somewhat limited, his Hfe was exerting a powerful influ- ence among the Christian men with whom he came in contact. " His greatest influence was not among the careless men of the class, at the fence or loafing in their rooms," writes a close friend, " but among the group of men who were most in earnest in the serious things of life. In that missionary room at D wight Hall he was loved and respected and given a place of leadership more than in any other group in the class. We recognized the reasons that made it impossible for him to be popular with all, and we respected him the more for his zeal. " As I write, the familiar scene in that little room each Sunday at five, comes before me in great distinctness. The sun is setting through the trees to the west, there is a faint sound of hurrying feet or of animated conversa- tion, the tones of the organ in the adjacent hall are form- ing a mellow background to the words of prayer that are ascending as the dozen men who form the group are upon their knees about the table. One after another leads our thoughts for the fields abroad or the needs of the college or the deputation work in the surrounding towns. At the close of the hour we unite in a verse or two of some familiar hymn often started by B with his rich and sympathetic voice, and so another week has begun filled with problems and opportunities. And always as that memory is stirred I can hear Laurie's voice, low and in- Four Years at Yale 8i tense, as he pleads for the needs of the world and for a fuller realization on our part of the tremendous responsi- bility that is ours. His prayers had an element of terri- ble intensity that woke every one of us to a conception of his earnestness. His words at times came with hesi- tancy and were never chosen with regard to literary beauty or finish, but his jaw would be set and his voice thrill the room with feeling, as each sentence went to the mark to hit something and to hit it hard. " Many times we were together in some missionary campaign in the near cities and while he was not a speaker of great fluency or polish, yet the spirit of the man had a power to get results that was a real stimulus to me. He was never caught unprepared or out of tune with the work he was undertaking, because the deep per- sistency of the man's character showed itself in the seriousness with which he entered upon such a work. It had been prayed over and planned through long before the time came for the journey so that to the full extent of his ability he ' finished the work ' in each instance. " In our senior year Laurie was the leader of the Band and did a larger share of its planning than ever. It was the natural year for the other interests of college life to sweep away the religious zeal that might have been ours earUer in the course. But his faithfulness and determina- tion held many of us more firm than would have been possible if left to our own tendencies." But Yale life is so ordered that it is scarcely possible for the influence of a man of power to be confined to any one group of men. The frequent change of scholarship divisions with daily oral recitations in the earlier years where men come to know and understand one another 82 A Life With a Purpose very well even without a formal introduction ; the morn- ing chapel bringing the whole college together under one roof each day ; the class prayer-meetings with their interchange of views and above all the Yale delegation at Northfield make it probable that by the end of sopho- more year a man will have some definite impression of nearly every other man in his class. And when this slow process of mutual introduction had worked itself out in the class of '98 we came to know Lawrence and to love him. It must not be inferred, because of the intensity of his great hfe purpose and its constant demands upon his time, that Lawrence was in any sense of the word a recluse. He was one of the happiest, sunniest, most normal men of the class. He loved his college as few men have loved her. Every worthy phase of her mani- fold life gained his sympathetic attention. He was quick to grasp the humorous side of a situation and this made him a most agreeable companion. He entered with en- thusiasm into the special prerogatives and privileges of each succeeding year from freshman year on. If he did not linger as long at the fence as some it was not because he did not love to do so, and the few moments that he did tarry there meant more to him as he passed on to his many duties than did hours of such privilege to the majority of men. As an upper-class man his acknowledged position of leadership in missions gave him a confidence in himself which had before been lacking. He had felt in the early years that he had but little to offer and that men would not care to know him, but the cordial reception of his modest advances among some of the class leaders inspired and pleased him. And gradually he widened the circle Four Years at Yale I 3 of those whom he invited each vacation to share the pleasures of camping in his home town, — surprised and yet unselfishly gratified to find that his Httle circle could give even to some whom he had known less intimately what they could not obtain elsewhere, and that they looked to him for impetus to action and achievement. Some of his classmates have left on record their im- pressions of those days. " He was the most consistent Christian in '98," one writes. " Perhaps he was narrow," says another, " but he was very lovable in his narrow- ness." " He combined to an unusual degree," is the word of another, " the art of ' having a good time ' with the science of * being good.' He was always merry, yet he never had to call for pipe, bowl or fiddlers to make him so. Although he had a sterner code of ethics than his classmates, none of them ever enjoyed life more thor- oughly than he did. Willing to spend four hours over freshman Greek when necessary, he was just as willing to spend long hours preparing for our * freshman fun ' at the Glee Club * Prom. ' Concert. I never knew any one more truly reverent, yet his piety was never marred by any undue solemnity. With an ability to be tremendously earnest there went at the same time a keen sense of hu- mour, which kept him out of the pitfall of taking himself too seriously. He always seemed to appreciate the other man's point of view. ... It was this unique combi- nation of qualities that made him so lovable, that made him for me the true Christian, full of faith and full of fun, always fired with religious devotion, yet never with- out that sweet reasonableness which was his peculiar charm." " How well I remember the first physics recitation," writes a fourth. " The book said ' Strike a match and 84 A Life With a Purpose observe the effect.' The rest of us passed over that part of the lesson as obvious and unnecessary, but Lawrence faithfully performed the experiment and recorded the results. I have never forgotten the instance." Another writes : " In thinking of Laurie in those college days one char- acteristic stands out above the rest. It might be expressed in various ways, but I will use the term Consecration. He had decided, and used often to frankly express it, that he was not built for popularity among the idlers of the class or even the merely * good fellow ' of the college type. He felt himself justified in centering most of his interest in those lines that needed him most. Yet he never took the position that things were useless merely because he found no time for them. Often he has spoken of his great desire that these things might have had a place in his hfe since they added pleasure and a great means of approach to the hearts of men, but, since he had to choose, he chose the things that were the most vital. " I suppose he was the most faithful man in our class in the matter of getting his daily Bible study and his quiet times of thought and prayer. Many is the time that I have felt a deep rebuke in finding him quietly working away at the thing that was for him his first duty, when the burden of it had softly and easily slid from my own shoulders. His reliability and faithfulness came from just this source. He had chosen the lines for his activity, and if he gave himself to any pursuit he would carry it out regardless of its cost. He went at his exercise in this same spirit of dogged determination. His lessons did not come easily to him, yet he stood well Four Years at Yale 85 because of the amount of time he was willing to devote to them, and what he learned he had small need of re- viewing, for it was never crammed or half digested, but was stowed away in his mind for practical use. " Times without number we have discussed the ques- tions that come before college men for decision, and I always used to insist with him that he drew lines of duty and principle too fine. " He had never smoked in college. He could see the good in a man who did, and never was willing to con- demn a man harshly because he chose to be broader than Laurie thought right ; but for himself and his own life smoking was wrong. Once having decided it there was no moving him. I remember one instance in particular. It came to the time of the class histories on the campus at the close of his college course and the class pipe went the rounds, but despite the pleadings of the committee he was unwilling to break what was to him a vital prin- ciple, even on such a justifiable occasion. He spoke about it afterwards with great regret, wishing that he might have avoided so open a break with the men who had urged it upon him ; but he was sure in his own mind that he ought not to yield, and that settled the question for all time. He was narrow in the popular, careless sense of the word, and was so considered by many men in the class and even by his friends. But it seems to me as those incidents sweep before the memory that it was the narrowness of concentration and not of ignorance or of bigotry. His life had a fixed amount of energy to be invested, and he knew he must not spread it out too thin over unessential things. He used to bring the matter up in those talks in the winter evenings after the day's work was done or we had returned from some meeting, and 86 A Life With a Purpose always his breadth of view was in contrast to the concen- tration of his activity. He recognized the good in the time spent in all athletics, or at the fence making the friendships that were to last for life, but he definitely gave up some of those pleasantest elements of college life for the larger gain of character and usefulness. I would not commend his limitations any more than he would himself if he were writing this ; but I do praise the consecration and courage of a man tTiat could clearly follow a path that he had marked out in spite of criticism or of the pleadings of his friends. Strength was the cry of his ambition and not popularity or attractiveness. To do, as well as was possible for him, the things to which he com- mitted his effort was the quest of those years." In every class at Yale there are men who for various reasons come late into prominence in the hfe of the class. Their ultimate recognition is often delayed too long for adequate class or social honours. But the prominence of men of this type in the hearts of their classmates is al- ways permanent and enduring, for it is invariably based upon a matured character. They have stood the search- ing tests of the four years and the impression which they leave upon their associates is never effaced. They rank among the most loyal graduates of the college. They have met the tests of the Yale ideal, and embodied its principles in their lives. To them their classmates go for help and suggestion, and their reward is this, that their classmates never question whether such men have been successful at Yale. It was to such a reward that Lawrence Thurston came in the closing year at Yale. Many men told him person- ally what his life had meant to them. Four Years at Yale 87 " It is five years since we first met at Yale," one wrote. . . . " Your friendship was a tremendous inspiration to me and had it not been for the steady hands that held me until my missionary foundation was laid, it is hard to tell where I would have landed." *' I wish I had more to offer," says another, " for I foresee that there will come times in the next twenty years, if that may be granted to us, when I would give almost anything in my power for your counsel, sympathy and advic^." *• It certainly has been a great privilege for me to have known you and to have had you as a friend," was the message of his roommate. " Oftentimes when I look (back) upon experiences I can see them as special bless- ings come straight from God. Among these I put my living at 260 Lawrance Hall with L. Thurston. . . . You have helped me in many ways." The year of the Yale Band campaign brought to him a revelation of the appreciation which Yale graduates and Yale families had for his faithful efforts, of which he had never dreamed. And later when the question of financial support for the Yale China Mission was agitated among his class, one of them wrote : " As to backing you up in the China Mission. I am very glad that I can be one of the group to have the privilege. Foreign missions becomes almost home mis- sions when a dear personal friend goes out." Yes, Thomas Hughes was right. It is such lives as these that are truly successful. 88 A Life With a Purpose One night towards the close of senior year two mem- bers of '98 sat in the privacy of a college room talking in the gathering twilight about their plans for the years to come. Both were men who had been prominent in the social life of the college. One was a professed fol- lower of Christ ; the other was not and much of his Hfe at college had been wild. The swift approach of the hour of separation from one another had broken down the customary reserve between college men, and the Chris- tian leader was pleading at the eleventh hour with his fel- low to start the Christian life. In his eagerness to win his friend he made the requirements very easy, w^ith scarcely any renunciation of the old life. His comrade sat in silence for a few moments and then with a peculiar ex- pression on his face he turned and said, " When I do be- come a Christian, I don't want to be that kind. If I ever do swing over, I want to be the kind of a Christian Laurie Thurston is." IV The Yale Missionary Band " And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand . . . freely ye received, freely give. Get you no gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses; no wallet for your journey ... for the labourer is worthy of his food. ... Be not anxious how or what ye shall speak ; for it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you." IV THE YALE MISSIONARY BAND THERE is a deal of truth in the current phrase which characterizes the Ufe centering about a college or university as the student world. A college community is, in a very true sense, a miniature world, organically a part of the greater universe of thought and action which moves round about it, yet none the less strangely isolated from these same surroundings. Within the brief four years of a student generation men live their college lives for good or evil and then make their exit from the stage never again to play a part in that same drama. When the curtain rises once more, other actors are upon the scenes. Those who were there before have passed on into a new and larger world. And as upon life itself there break at times visions of greater service and usefulness in some new world of in- finite opportunity, the extent and full meaning of which the best of men scarcely comprehend, so to men in their college days come visions of service in the world outside, visions large, at times well-nigh overpowering, visions be- fore which many ponder long in doubt, incredulous of the strength which God supplieth. And often in the ponder- ing the vision fades away and is gone. But sometimes the enthusiasm and faith of youth lays hold with a stout heart and a firm hand, and the vision becomes a reality, imprinted in clear outline upon the history of the day and generation. 91 g2 A Life With a Purpose The story of the Yale Missionary Band is the story of such a vision which men saw in the closing days of their college course and to which they were not disobedient. The steps which led to the undertaking of this important campaign in the interests of missionary education, and the part which Lawrence Thurston played in it, have been sketched by one who was himself engaged in it. " During the meetings of the Volunteer Band in our senior year at Yale, we had often expressed the con- viction that the comparatively large number of volunteers in Ninety-eight ought to leave a deeper impression on the religious life of the college than had been the case of any class since Ninety-two, when Pitkin was leader. It was a matter of regret and prayerful thought that no greater missionary interest had been stirred in the lower classes, and we constantly faced the thought that before many months we would have left the university and no results of our work would be in evidence. In discussing this state of affairs one afternoon in the regular meeting two suggestions were made. The first was that a public statement by members of the Band to our class and col- lege mates of the reasons why we had decided upon mis- sions as our life-work might prove of help in arousing stronger interest. This afterwards was carried out with the cooperation of the officers of the Y. M. C. A. in one of the general religious meetings of the university in Dwight Hall at which Laurie and three others spoke with great earnestness and feeling. The other suggestion that was to bring far greater results was the discussion of the possibility of a number of the group taking the missionary message, from the standpoint of a young man, The Yale Missionary Band 93 through the cities of the East and seeking thus to arouse a deeper interest or at least a more intelligent knowledge of the cause and claims of foreign missions, among the young people of the churches. No sooner was the idea presented than we gave it most serious consideration. It seemed clear that four years of thought and reading and experience in speaking on these topics ought to have prepared members of the Band to present the claims of this work with more than average force, and that such a presentation was greatly needed. Into this plan as a possibiHty Laurie threw himself from the very first with enthusiasm. He saw its possibilities more clearly I think than did any other member of the group. I myself was most dubious of the project and far from sanguine of its results and have always confessed that my interest in the plan was due largely to the grim and determined way in which he began to investigate its feasibility. Advice was taken from many of the leaders of the missionary move- ments in Boston and New York. One afternoon we had a long conference with Mr. Robert E. Speer in regard to it and at that time Laurie presented the plan in its first complete statement of the details of method and purpose that lay in his mind. Mr. Mott had also been consulted and long letters had passed between Laurie and his father who was closely in touch with conditions prevailing in the country and the churches. " Much to my surprise these men felt that there were strong possibilities in the idea and Mr. Thurston espe- cially believed that such a campaign would bring large results, if carried through with enthusiasm. A half dozen men of the Band were considering the advisability of putting a year of life into it, but there was as yet no center or head to the project. Spring was far advanced g^ A Life With a Purpose and any plans must be rapidly matured if the thing was to be a success. We went to the Northfield Conference, hardly knowing whether it was to be launched or not. At the conference one of the leading spirits of the move- ment decided that he could not go and one or two others found difficulties arising and it looked dark ahead, yet Laurie steadily persevered in his hopes that it would eventually be carried through. Vickrey was sure that he could go and believed in the success of the plans, and three others of us were on the fence while Laurie was the real center of the movement. " During that summer all the difficulties in the way of such a campaign seemed to heap themselves together to discourage it. There was no money to support it, and there was no great eagerness for it on the part of the men who were facing the cost of investing an entire year in such an untried venture. No missionary movement had been found that cared to be responsible for it, and it seemed as though it were to fall dead from lack of some one to lead it. In my own mind I have always been sure that it was directly due to the persistent faith in the suc- cess of the plan which Laurie Thurston so often ex- pressed, that it was finally carried out. That summer under the trees in the yard of the parsonage in the little New England village we talked by the hour planning the details and beginning the correspondence that at last launched the movement. His judgment was invaluable and his spirit of courage and quiet determination was al- ways in evidence. " If the work of the Yale Band had any lasting re- sult in developing missionary interest throughout the country, it was due more to him than to any other person." The Yale Missionary Band 95 Early in the fall of 1898 a circular letter was prepared giving a general statement of the purposes of the Band, as follows ; The purpose of the work is : First: To assist the Young People's Societies, particu- larly in the larger cities, in awakening and maintaining a stronger missionary interest, and thus ultimately diffus- ing the interest through the entire Church. Second: To bring strikingly to the attention of the churches, the fact that competent college men have offered themselves for service in the foreign field, but cannot be sent for lack of funds. The plans for the year were broad and far-reaching. The itinerary included all the larger cities of the East and middle West. In general the Band was to remain a week in each of the more important centers. The work was to be thoroughly undenominational in character and the Young People's Societies of all Protestant denomina- tions were invited to cooperate. As a matter of fact before the campaign closed the Band had received the hearty support of the Christian Endeavour Society, the Baptist Young People's Union, the Epworth League, the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, as well as the Young Men's and the Young Women's Christian Associations and Pastors' Unions. Confidence in the movement was in- spired at the start by its representative advisory board, which included Mr. John R. Mott, secretary of the World's Student Federation, and secretaries from each of the leading missionary boards. Special emphasis was also laid upon the fact that the campaign was first and foremost one of education and not of appeal for fundSc 96 A Life With a Purpose If the audiences were aroused to larger giving, it was requested that contributions be made through the chan- nels of the regular denominational board. The only collections taken were those to defray local expenses, and even these were often omitted. Thus the visit of the Band was without expense to the churches and societies visited other than that of entertainment. The preliminary arrangements in each city visited were in the hands of a central local committee. The letter of suggestions in connection with the work of the Yale Missionary Band, sent some time beforehand by the Band to this committee, is a model of completeness and fore- sight. Equally thorough were the preparations that were laid for the success of the campaign in prayer. At the head of the prayer cycle were the following quotations : " Let us advance upon our Xanttsy —Joseph Neesima. " If men of our generation will enter the holy place of prayer, and become henceforth men whose hearts God has touched with the prayer passion, the history of His Church will be changed." — Robert E. Speer. " Ye that are the Lord's remembrancers, take no rest, and give Him no rest, till He establish, and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth." — Isa. 62 : 6-J. The objects of daily prayer were : Sunday: For the committee on arrangements, that wisdom, grace and strength may be given in their respon- sible work — that they may be " wise master builders." Monday: For the members of the Yale Band, that they may come with hearts overflowing in the power and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Tuesday : That the pastors, churches and Young Peo- The Yale Missionary Band 97 pie's Societies of the entire city may be united as never before in one common aim. Wednesday : That all obstacles and hindrances to the success of this visit may be removed, especially those of prejudice and indifference. That there may be an entire absence of selfishness, jealousy, unkind criticism, and everything not Christiike. Thursday: That there may be awakened a spirit of expectation throughout the city. That the hearts of the people may be opened to receive the messages. Friday : That the consciences of the people may be aroused and their hearts made aflame with missionary zeal. That the people may be led {a) to study ; (b) to pray; (c) to give; (d^ and some to go. Saturday : That the work of the Band may abide, and that the Young People's Societies may be organized for definite, permanent, progressive mission work. The Band included five men, all close friends, D. Brewer Eddy, C. Brownell Gage, Charles V. Vickrey, Arthur B. Williams, and Lawrence. The five men represented five widely separated states of the Union — New York, Massa- chusetts, Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Nebraska. In relig- ious affiliation, two were Congregationalists, two Meth- odist, and one a Presbyterian. All had been actively engaged in practical religious work at Yale in addition to their special missionary interests. A feeling of some anxiety as to personal fitness for so great an undertaking, mingled, however, with a willing- ness to go forward in utter dependence upon God, marked the beginning of the enterprise. After a five days' consultation in New York City with representa- tives of the different missionary boards the campaign 98 A Life With a Purpose was started at Scranton, Pa., during the first week in October (1-6). This city was the home of one of the members of the Band as well as of Harry Luce, Yale, 1892, classmate and intimate friend of Horace Pitkin, and missionary to China, and had a well-earned reputa- tion as a loyal Yale center of influence, through its strong Alumni Association. Both because of the lack of expe- rience by members of the Band themselves and of a lack of preparation for the visit on the part of the local committee which had no model by which it could be guided, only a few of the societies and people could be reached. A stop of a single day was made at Wilkes- barre, and from here the Band passed on to Washington. It was at Washington that the effective work really commenced, a detailed report of which, prepared by members of the Band, follows : " At Washington we found an ideal committee who, three days before our arrival, sent us word that there was nothing more to be done in preparation except to pray. The campaign was so arranged that every one of the eighty societies could be touched — announcements and complete combination invitation-programs had been distributed widely. The work was opened by a general rally which though not monstrous in size was important, because composed of the leaders of the work. A most delightful little reception had been arranged before the rally, where we could meet and confer with the presi- dents of societies regarding our plans. The next day — Sunday — was a very busy one. A quartette composed of Mr. Eddy and three men from Johns Hopkins' Medical School, two of whom were old Yale friends and volun- teers, was kept busy all day. They opened the service The Yale Missionary Band 99 in one place, and then left it in the hands of one of the Band and hurried to another. The remainder of the time was taken up by meetings in the different sections of the city — four each night — at which we endeavoured to bring out as strongly as possible the need of more earnest defi- nite prayer, intelligent interest, and greater sacrifice for the Master's cause. Each meeting was followed by a conference. It is certainly encouraging to note how ready the majority of the young people are for an ad- vance step, sometimes as many as two-thirds of the entire audience remaining to the practical conference. One of the most delightful of these evening services at Washing- ton was one in which fifteen of the coloured churches united. The week's work here closed with a consecra- tion meeting of those most interested, where we have reason to believe that God did a special work in setting aside some for the carrying on of the missionary activity in that city." After leaving Washington the itinerary of the Band included in succession, Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philadel- phia, Pittsburg and Allegheny, and Columbus. From Columbus, in November, came a formal report letter of the Band to their friends in New England and in the cities which they had already visited. It was the first in a series of letters in the preparation of which all the Band assisted. '* To the Friends of the Yale Missionary Band: " In response to the repeated requests for a report of our work, it has been determined to send out each month a report letter, that you may have a share with us in carrying a message to the cities we visit and that our 100 A Life With a Purpose tour may serve through these reports to unite in one spirit a volume of prayer that shall go up from us all for an awakening of the Church and of our young people's societies. " We can hardly realize that the suggestion of one of our Volunteer Band meetings last January has actually been carried out. We feel that it is due to the advice and cooperation of some of the Christian movements among the college men, and especially to Mr. Brockman, that we are now in the work. We cannot doubt our call into it especially when we see how every part of it, even the financial support, has been directly cared for by the Lord. Only one small amount towards that support came as the result of solicitation, and every effort of our own to get money for our expenses has proved a failure, — it almost seems for the direct purpose of teaching us our utter dependence upon God." After a detailed statement of the methods of work in each of the cities, where over two hundred meetings had been held and between 30,000 to 40,000 people reached with a message the report closed. "The difficulties of the work have been to secure thorough and wise preparation and wide-spread adver- tisement for the meetings, and to obtain in the short time of our visit to these large centers any definite action on the part of the societies represented at con- ferences. " On the other hand, the removal of difficulties which appeared to block our purpose, the opening of cities that seemed closed, the raising up of consecrated men and women to work for the missionary interests of those The Yale Missionary Band lol cities, and the deepening of our own spiritual lives are but a few of the signs of an unseen Power that has never left us in doubt as to whose work this is. And while a sense of the responsibilities of a campaign hke this has grown upon us, we have been more and more humbled to see how unessential we are to the result, and how small a share we are to have in it. It must be confessed that at the start, occupied with the details of new labour, our desire was largely that God would use us in the work to which He had called us. But there has come a larger vision of the kingdom, and a larger prayer that not merely the blessing for which we may be channels, but the blessing in which greater things are expected than one man or band of men could ever have attempted, may come to His Church and through it to the world. As we have seen how few societies ever imagined they had any- thing more to do than to appoint a missionary com- mittee of those left over after all the rest were appointed, if indeed they did as much as that, and how many of the remainder are perfectly satisfied if a quarter of their mem- bers are giving two cents a week as an expression of their interest in the work for which Christ died ; and as we have seen in the isolated examples what latent power lies in these same societies when Christ has been sanctified as Lord, we burn to utter the message of the need and possi- biHties of a missionary awakeningamongyoung people. If any considerable portion of the six or seven millions of these people in the various organizations of our country may get such an experience that they cannot but speak the things they have seen and heard, and feel such a love that they must express it in real sacrifice, it thrills one to think what it means to the Church, to the world, and to Christ. O ! fellow Christians, let us tithe our income, scale down 102 A Life With a Purpose our expenses, and bring a gift that will receive the Master's comment, * They love much.' " The message that comes to us here in Columbus in the devotional hours we spend together each day is one that we cannot keep from this letter as it goes out. We had been praying for others and the Lord turned our thought back upon ourselves and showed us why the great blessings we asked had not come. ' Be ye clean, ye that bear the vessels of the Lord.' After a confession of what He revealed, there came back a new and deeper longing to call down the blessing waiting for those cold churches and dead societies. We tremble in sending out this message to think of the responsibility, not only of ourselves but of you all, for whose intercession the king- dom of heaven waits. ' Even so come, Lord Jesus.' " The months of November and December were spent mainly in Ohio and Illinois, the regular itinerary includ- ing Cincinnati, Dayton, St. Louis, Springfield, 111., Cairo, Galesburg, Streator, Peoria, Rockford and Cedar Falls, Iowa. In addition to these regular engagements meetings were also held at Covington and Newport, Ky., Streator, 111., and at ten or more educational institutions, including Lane Theological Seminary, the Eclectic Med- ical Institute, Knox College, and the Iowa State Normal School. Early in December, before the five separated for the holidays, they sent the following Christmas mes- sage to the men at Yale : " To the Christian Men at Yale : " Dear Fellows — Just now when we are thinking of the fun which is to be packed into the next few weeks of vacation, and are planning for good times perhaps The Yale Missionary Band 103 even farther ahead, there comes a thought which we feel many of you will welcome. " We well know that in many places in distant lands people are pleading to be taught the story of our Master's love — that any should be turned away is indeed a sad thing when we have the message placed in our keeping, and yet that is actually what is happening ; for our mis- sionary boards, with hands tied by the coldness in the heart of the Church, are forced to cripple their work even on the threshold of these vast fields of promise. " We, every one of us, know that our hves in college are pretty selfish lives when we look at them at all closely — not many of us have ever, because of the real love which we have for our Lord Jesus, actually sacrificed any of our pleasures that we might please Him in some way. " Fellows, how can we make this Christmas time a most joyful one to Him — yes, and to us ? Does the best proof of our devotion lie in the exchange of loving though needless gifts among friends and famihes ? Our lives are already filled with joy. " Shall we not make this Christmas season most blessed by telling our parents and those who stand closest to us, that the Christmas gift we most desire is a receipt from the missionary board of our church for an offering made to them. Shall we not give to our friends also the op- portunity of receiving from us a like gift if they so desire. " Let us go farther than this, fellows, and set aside in the days to come, a definite proportion of our allowance for our Lord — let it cut into the room, the dinners, the books — to say nothing of many other things. They are nothing compared to the love which is His. Surely the Master will be pleased as we remember Him in this way. 104 A Life With a Purpose Many young people throughout our country are uniting with you. And when we think of the joy which will come from the breaking of the light in many darkened lives, as a result of this loving service to our Lord, we can indeed hear His sweet voice saying, * Ye did it unto Me.' " Yours in His glad service, " The Yale Missionary Band." From Chicago, where several of the Band had spent their vacation (Christmas), came the second report letter early in January of 1899, which after summarizing the detailed work in each city and acknowledging the val- uable services rendered the Band by Miss Ella D. Mac- Laurin, secretary of the A. B. M. U., closed as follows ; " In one city a young man during the missionary meetings determined to become a Christian, and on the following Sunday united with the Church. Such results, often coming as definite answers to definite prayers, are to be gratefully accepted as the evidence that God is giving the increase in spite of much carelessness and many mistakes in planting and watering. " From the experience of these three months, two thoughts have been brought home very forcibly to us. The first is from the answers to prayer which have varied from the solution of business difficulties beyond our con- trol, and the recovery of the sick when the work seemed to demand immediate restoration, to the presence of the Spirit in meetings and in human lives. Such answers give a slight realization of the power of prayer so seldom used. How many of us know how to obtain definite answers to definite asking? A growing desire has thus The Yale Missionary Band 105 been born to learn the secrets of this power, and to see the Church entering the school of prayer that she may- become faithful in her stewardship of this manifold grace. By it closed doors have been opened, the need of men supplied in God's own generous way, and by it the present financial difficulties shall become but another of those triumphs in the history of the kingdom, which stimulate the faith of the Church. To enter the ministry of intercession the Lord calls for humble surrendered lives. Is it not worth the price ? " The second thought is a desire that the Church might get the inspiration that has come to us from seeing the enthusiasm of sacrifice in many lives. Young women who are earning their living on small salaries, shop girls, typewriters, and teachers, have given ten, twenty-five, and even seventy dollars for missions, and they have taken the lead at the meetings in raising the support of a missionary. Business men have been met who are deliberately scaling down their expenses that they may give largely, and they talk with almost boyish enthusiasm of the blessedness of giving. Boys have planned to earn the support of a native worker, and one said he could do it by sawing wood. In one church a girl gave sixty dol- lars, a boy volunteered to stop smoking and give his tobacco money, a Sunday-school class of girls determined to cut off every unnecessary expense and give what they saved, and an infant class gave five dollars. It was not strange that the session in that church met and deter- mined to make the support of a missionary a matter of prayer while they canvassed the church. Why cannot we all know the blessedness of such self-denial ? As we enter the new year, whether in college or business or the home, instead of making resolutions to be carried out at lo6 A Life With a Purpose some indefinite time, shall we not at once put the Lord first in the expense account for 1899, and instead of giving to Him what is left when every need of ours has been supplied, plan the year's allowance or salary with this thought, ' Seek ye first the kingdom,' and ' My God shall fulfill every need of yours.' And may not this thought also be our message in prayer- meeting, pulpit and parlour. The Lord's people are tired of special appeals which find them unprepared to respond, but they will welcome a plan which will multiply their giving while it adds the joy of worship to what has so long seemed a necessary evil connected with religious life. The response to President McKinley's proclamation for troops is evidence of the capacity among our young people for self-sacrificing devotion when the cause appeals to them. We cannot but believe that though the enthu- siasm of many is not aroused by an annual collection for church benevolences, there are multitudes of disciples ready to respond when they hear the Captain of our Sal- vation calling for those who are willing to lose their lives in a daily surrender of time and property for His service. An appeal, not to church pride but to Christian love, not for silver collections, but for royal offerings, has found and will usually find many to respond. " The two messages go together. Prayer for the world is but sounding brass, unless it is breathed from a life of self-denial. None of us can reach the limits of giving without asking that the Lord will make us able. May He who can make all grace abound, even this grace of giving, grant us all sufficiency in everything that we may abound unto every good work, and answer our prayer that the kingdom of God may come more completely in our own land, and with power among all nations." The Yale Missionary Band 107 During the winter holidays, Lawrence was alone in Chicago, his first Christmas away from home. The rush and responsibilities of the trip during the fall months had made his weekly letter home much briefer than hitherto. " It is very hard for me to write you satisfactorily to my- self," he had written early in the fall, " as there are so many things happening that I cannot remember them all or give them in a consecutive way." Into his life was coming a growing sense of power and of ability to call on the " Strength which God supplieth." " I have been asked several times how I was standing the strain of the work," he writes again, " and I have had to confess that I hadn't realized that there was any strain at all. It is to me almost a marvel that I am enabled to work so easily. I sleep well and go to sleep quickly, eat well and feel rested most of the time." His later letters show him happy in the work and especially in the welcome which the Yale name brought to him among strangers. " We are all entertained royally, almost too royally." " The Yale name carries us almost everywhere." " Never have I had ... so much to be thankful for. I have always had reason to be thankful far more than the ordinary man- even of Americans : for home and parents and family and country, and health and strength and advantages, education at Yale and opportunities for Christian work there, and call to the ministry and to the foreign field, and so on I might go but each of these things is enough to make any one thankful. And then this year— the privilege of this work, too great it seems at times, and the way God has opened doors and cleared the pathway for it and the way He is blessing us in it. Why it is simply overwhelming. A fellow doesn't deserve it, not any of it." lo8 A Life With a Purpose The work of the first two weeks of the new year was divided between Champaign, Urbana, Danville, Ottawa, Chicago, Milwaukee and Richmond, Ind. For the next eight weeks it continued as follows : Indianapolis, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo, Syracuse, and Albany. At Indianapolis two new features were in- troduced, meetings with the Y. W. C. A. and denomina- tional rallies at the close of the week. The report letter which was issued from Albany early in March was re- plete with incidents which gave evidence that the cam- paign was fast proving itself a mighty work of God. " Dear Friends : " It is impossible to keep in touch by personal letters with all our friends during this year's work. So what- ever have been the ties that bound us together, whether friendship or fellowship in this missionary campaign or the common interests of the kingdom, we come to you, perhaps for the first time, with this report of the work. " Half of the journey is behind us. Every one of the thirty cities visited has brought to us new friends, failures, successes, and a rich fund of experience. " Naturally the most encouraging feature of this work is the increasing eagerness with which the suggested plans and methods have been received by the young people. The fruit will abide. The scores of instances of a ready response to the message of sacrifice have been evidence of the answered prayer of those who are * labouring together with us.' Even as we are writing there comes a most striking illustration of God's way of working. Off in the Hawaiian Islands, in a mission chapel, the letter reporting a portion of the work was read aloud. It asked for sacrifice in taking an advance The Yale Missionary Band 109 step in the work for missions. The thirty persons gathered there responded by pledging ;^200.oo to help send two native Christians back to their home in the Ladrone Islands to become pioneers in entering these most recent of the * Open Doors.' " For us five men it has been the greatest privilege of our lives to have a part in such a work, but even deeper than this impression of privilege is that of responsibility. " It is becoming well-nigh overwhelming. If you were in our place what would you say in the half-hour of golden opportunity, standing before a wealthy church or audience of young people, with all their possibilities of mighty power. As you stand there, fully realizing your own weakness, and keenly appreciating the critical need of those in the thick of the fight, you know that they are challenged to advance by the splendid opportunities just when we are compelling them to retreat. Before you is a congregation possessing all the fullness of supply which God has entrusted to us to satisfy that need. In that half-hour how can you persuade them that the life of sacrifice can bring to them greater joy and satisfaction than one that is self-centered. Evidences of the luxury of the homes from which they have gathered is not needed when all about you is proof that their first thought is for self. They are spending more perhaps for a choir to entertain them, more for the intellectual addresses to which they listen, perhaps even more for attractive pro- grams, and many times more for the fine temple in which to worship, than they are giving to the great enterprises for which they were called in Christ. " Is it any wonder that these churches are not winning souls ? But what can you say to them that would bring a clear vision of the dear Master as He sends us out into no A Life With a Purpose the white harvest fields. Is it not a terrible responsibil- ity ? Or what will you say to an audience of Christian Endeavourers that will not straightway be crowded from their hearts by all the pleasures and social demands of their lives. Say something you must that will lead them to desire above everything else this life of glad sur- render to the Lord's will. " The famine-stricken natives of India are not the only ones that are starving. These wealthy congregations and these young people whose Hves are crowded full of society are feeding only on the husks. " But it has grown upon us that the Lord's people are waiting to be led into a deeper consecration. There is before us all a common sense reordering of our lives begun in the definite determination that every pleasure or extravagance or custom of the world that would separate us from Christ shall be crushed, and that His will and His service shall be our greatest interest. " Certainly this will mean a more active part in Chris- tian work for many, just as it means for all more time spent in sitting at His feet in the study of His word and in prayer. Every one of us can consecrate at least the tithe of his own income or of that which is so willingly spent upon us by others. And why shall we make this sacrifice ? What forbids our living in the old way ? Only those words of His, ' Even so send I you.* " The final ten weeks of the campaign began in New York City (March 11-17) and ended with Yale (May 14). The weeks which intervened, with the exception of the Brooklyn campaign, were spent entirely in New Eng- land, in Lynn, Lowell, Portland, Boston, Providence, Springfield and Hartford successively. Besides these The Yale Missionary Band 1 1 1 regular engagements members of the Band spoke at Harvard, Brown, Andover, Mt. Holyoke and Welles- ley, and at numerous district conferences. New York City presented the hardest field because of its size and the difficulty in getting the attention where numberless meetings constantly compete. More organized effort and ingenuity were put into the preparations than in any other city. The result was a record breaking attendance, with one hundred and fifty societies and four thousand people at the week-night meetings. The final rally was marked with the novel placard: Missionary Meetifig, Standing Room Only. In the New York and Brooklyn rallies Mr. Robert E. Speer presided and made a memorable close to the ad- dresses. In Boston with its suburbs the attendance of the New York meetings was equalled. Soon after the Boston meetings occurs the following paragraph in one of the report letters : " The past three weeks have seen a more consciously fruitful service, perhaps, than any previous period. The sweetest proof of His presence in the work is a letter from a city we recently left telling of two lives which had taken Jesus as Lord as a direct or indirect result of the missionary meetings. It is but another striking proof that the spirit of missions is the Spirit of Christ." At Yale, in that upper room of Dwight Hall, where for twenty years students have gathered every Sunday evening in term time to listen to inspiring messages from the great preachers of the land, the campaign of the Yale 112 A Life With a Purpose Band ended on May 14. Fitting it was indeed that the year's work should be brought to a close in a spot so near to the little semi-circular room in which the five young men had seen the vision and from which they had gone forth to realize it a year before. In the quiet of an evening hour they told the remarkable story of the year. Different in kind, to be sure, had been their call from that which others of Yale had heard and to which they had nobly responded in May of 1898, and in obedience to which some had already laid down their lives in Cuba and the far East. But our hearts kindled as we listened to the report of these five campaigners of the Cross, who had likewise warred a good warfare against the subtler forces of indifference and selfishness " for God, for coun- try and for Yale." The actual results of the year's work and its deeper lessons were recorded in the closing letter which was issued from Yale in June. " Dear Friends : " May not this closing report letter come to you as a message from friend to friend ? Whatever the past year's work may have meant to others in the home or the foreign field, it has meant much to us. And the sharing with you the spiritual lessons of the year and the impressions received from meeting young people of many cities, we believe will mean more to you than an impersonal report of meetings and conferences. May we not, therefore, speak confidentially and personally. " In the first place, the year's experience has meant much in the prayer life. To be dependent on God al- ways does. And no one can be long in His work with- out feeling dependent, for our best laid plans ' gang aft The Yale Missionary Band 113 a-gley.' Sometimes the uncertainties of the future pre- vent us even from doing the planning. Last summer as the time approached when the arrangements with the first cities to be visited must be definite, only three men could plan certainly to do the work. The other two had obstacles. Finally those in charge of arrangements could endure the strain no longer and plead with God for a sign which would give definite assurance that they should go forward. That very night there came a letter with the news that the fourth man was able to go, and the work was assured. A few weeks later the efforts to secure money for expenses were apparently a failure, and as it seemed unwise to ask the churches to pay them, it was necessary to start on an eight months' tour, with no one to look to but the Lord who sent out His disciples without purse. Soon the slender personal resources with which we started were exhausted, and we saw no means of go- ing farther. In this second crisis we again asked God for a sign that we might know that He really wished us to proceed on what was not the * common sense ' basis. Hardly an hour later one of us opened a letter containing a large check with the promise of a duplicate from an entirely unexpected source. Do you wonder that we have with confidence gone on, even though the treasury may have at times been low ? No large gift has come since then. That first was sent by a loving Father to strengthen a weak faith. And so in planning and provid- ing we have tested Him for eight months in one neces- sity after another. If this supply be thought but a chain of coincidences, there have been deeper needs sup- plied than those of the management or the treasury. Imagine yourself with little or no experience — with only the conviction that something should be said and done 114 A Life With a Purpose to awaken the church-meeting night after night with audiences that expected you to convict, convince and arouse them. Would you not have felt helpless ? And here again His answer to prayer has been, * My grace is sufficient for thee ; for My power is made perfect in weakness.' The conviction grew deeper from October to June that power was manifested in the work almost in exact proportion as we were faithful in the prayer life. With this conviction came another, that our work must first be planned and wrought in prayer, then translated into action. At the beginning, business took the first place in our morning meeting, and prayer what time was left. Then a definite hour was reserved for prayer. But with the pressure of much business, there was great temptation to allow the business hour to still crowd the prayer. And so it was not long before prayer had to be given first place and business what remained. From putting prayer first in our work, it was a natural step into that ministry of intercession where prayer for others took the precedence over our own needs. Doubt- less, many a day, our Lord has counted the intercession together in the morning more than the interviews and meetings in the evening. And does it not seem a little ridiculous that we should be 'too busy' for it? To us the lesson of faith and faithfulness in prayer is worth a year, if it has been learned. " But aside from these personal experiences, few men ever had greater opportunities. They were worthy of Paul and Barnabas, rather than of five schoolboys just out of college. At a time when the Volunteer Move- ment stood almost blocked with 4,000 purposing to go, but hindered by lack of funds, while in many mission fields it was but a question of gathering the harvest, The Yale Missionary Band 115 think of addressing about 900 meetings with nearly 200,000 people in ninety-five cities, towns and suburbs, scattered over the wealthy section of the country, from Washington to St. Louis and Milwaukee to Portland, Me. Think of reaching between two and three thousand of the strongest young people's societies in 364 conferences on practical work. " The experience has made upon us two very strong impressions, to which previous letters have given some expression. First, is the unutterable need of Hfting the young people out of themselves and enlisting their effort more truly for Christ and the Church, instead of for their own society or even their local parish. At a recent con- vention the young people were asked to report some advance work done or attempted. One told of an im- provement in the singing. Another was commended for a new church window given. Others reported nothing new, but good prayer-meetings, in which * little time went to waste.' Less than one-fifth reported any work for others than their own members. Out of 900 socie- ties from which we have written reports, few over two- thirds were found with missionary committees, about one in five had missionary meetings oftener than once in three months, one in seven or eight had a missionary library, one in fifteen had a mission-study class, and only one in nine claimed any system of giving to missions, home or foreign. How can we show them that 100 testimonies in half an hour is not so much the service for which the Master longs, as souls saved in the foreign field through their sacrifice and in the home field through their lives. " The second impression is that the young people are as ready for an appeal for heroic sacrifice as the students who have furnished the waiting army of volunteers. They ii6 A Life With a Purpose need the appeal. They need the education which the students have had in missions. They need to be told what to do. They need leaders. If their pastors will give them a missionary education instead of an annual sermon, if the volunteers will go among them with clear- cut plans and the message, ' Who will send us ? ' and if their leaders will give the world's conquest its share of the ability and energy which they have long put into other departments, the young people will take their part in winning the world for Christ. " In a half-hour conference where from two to twenty societies were present, thorough work was impossible. Yet nearly all the societies that had no missionary com- mittee were ready to appoint one (243) ; 767, out of the 900, planned to adopt a missionary prayer cycle, to be followed at each meeting ; 686 determined to study the method of work outlined in the official missionary manual of their organization; 585 planned to secure a mission- ary library, 396 to organize a mission-study class, 525 to start a system of giving, and 477 to promote the plan of giving to the Lord the tenth of one's income. Of 353 societies questioned on the point, 288 determined to have a monthly or bi-monthly missionary meeting. One hundred and forty-one societies have indicated the amounts they were giving or would try to give, the sums aggregating ;^2 1,1 40.00. Over 350 orders have been taken for the student missionary campaign library of sixteen volumes, and many more orders have gone directly to the Student Missionary Campaign office. This will circulate about 7,000 volumes of inspiring missionary reading. The people have been eager for literature. A literature table at each of the week-night meetings has been the means of circulating 11,000 copies The Yale Missionary Band 117 of various pamphlets and small books, and 500 maps of the world, coloured to represent the prevailing religions. This includes 1,185 copies of • Missionary Methods for Missionary Committees,' 1,867 copies of * Prayer and Missions,' by Robert E. Speer ; 3,000 copies of * Pray Without Ceasing,' by Andrew Murray, and 2,300 copies of ♦ Money and the Kingdom,' by Dr. Josiah Strong. " The Christian Endeavour tithing ballots have been used in only a small proportion of the meetings, but with these results: 1,263 voted to give one-tenth or more of their incomes to the Lord's work (about three- fifths of these were already doing so) ; 304 voted to try for six months the plan of giving one-tenth ; 602 decided to give a fixed proportion, though less than the tenth ; 983 agreed to keep careful account of all they give away. " How much this will all amount to depends on the officers of the individual societies and the missionary committees in the local unions. Part of the results will depend upon some of you who read this letter. From many cities come reports of a steady advance. In a few, there is little on the surface to show for the work. But the battle goes on. We stand on the heights won by the sacrifice of thousands, from Samuel Mills and the other fellows behind the haystack down to the present student uprising. The coming century will witness a great vic- tory. We can already see the signs of it. One board alone plans to send out fifty-six new missionaries this sum- mer, in the belief that the Church is awaking. Shall we not enter the battle and stay in it as long as any fight is left in us ? If Samuel Mills in 1806 could say of his prepos- terous proposal to send the gospel to the heathen, * We can do it if we will,' it's a Christian of poor stuff that gives up because the people in his own community * are ii8 A Life With a Purpose hard to rouse.' God help us all to say in the hour of Christ's triumph, ' We have fought a good fight.' " The success of the Band campaign was immediate and its results far-reaching. It was discussed widely in the religious press and the Congregationalist characterized it editorially as one of the five significant movements of the year 1899. Happily, to all the men who were engaged in the work it was granted to know in part the results of the year of service. Lawrence's heart was often cheered by the testimony which came as time passed. " I have been very much touched at the expressions of interest in us boys (the Yale Band) from those to whom I wrote all over the country for suggestions for Cincin- nati," he wrote in 1901. "They make me feel that our hold is still strong on the hearts of many workers. And best of all they feel at home with us and really friendly." Again he writes : " I wrote to Mrs. C of Albany and received the most cordial letter. I knew I would. I have never yet found that the friendships I made that year [Yale Band] have failed. They have proved even more than I had dreamed. ... I had such a good time there. It is literally my Albany home. I feel almost like a mem- ber of the family, as I do of a good many other families scattered over the country." P'rom Syracuse, on the eve of his departure for China, came the following letter from the State Superintendent of the Christian Endeavour Society of New York. The Yale Missionary Band 1 1 9 " I want to testify that my first interest in mission study grew out of the visit to Syracuse of the Yale Band, though it has taken some time for the fruitage. How- ever I have gotten to the point where it has become in- tensely interesting. The campaign is going further than just Syracuse, for in my State work, I have been making mission study the slogan this year and I feel sure that in- terest in the subject has been aroused in many quarters even though it may not bear fruit all at once." There were other results too, more permanent and far- reaching, which it was not his privilege to know. There had been student missionary campaigns before that of the Yale Band but they had been spasmodic, local and denom- inational. This one was progressive, national and inter-denominational — the first of its kind. Of its in- fluence on a later missionary propaganda, Mr. C. V. Vick- rey wrote shortly after Lawrence's death : " I have just returned from a trip West and South in which I have been over a large part of the territory covered in the Yale Band campaign and have met many of the people whose acquaintance we first formed at that time. Many were the expressions of affectionate regard for the first of the Yale Band to reach the foreign field and the first to enter into his reward. . . . Everywhere I found the same sense of loss felt by many who I hardly supposed would have remembered the friendships of six years ago. " Another very gratifying thing to me was to see the evidence of growth and permanency in the work which Larry helped to inaugurate at the time. In Dayton, for instance, where we went for four days, there was held 120 A Life With a Purpose during my stay there a Missionary Institute attended by representatives of about seventy churches from Dayton and surrounding cities, sessions being held morning, afternoon and evening for three days. As a result of the institute there were two volunteers for the foreign field, pledges secured for the organization of one hundred and fifty mission study classes and plans inaugurated for sys- tematic deputation work among all the Young People's Societies of southwestern Ohio. Dayton is only one of the many cities where the work has taken on larger pro- portions since the original planting of the seed in '98. In fact, I think it may truthfully be said that the present Young People's Missionary Movement is in no small measure the outgrowth of the work of the Yale Band in which Larry was unquestionably the leading spirit." A member of the Band writes of the year's work and of Lawrence's part in it as follows : " As I try to set down my impressions of the year now the things that stand out especially are these : " I. The audacity of the scheme. Five college youths, inexperienced and without anything to recom- mend them save an overwhelming sense of mission, start- ing out on a year's campaign which would take them into some of the most complex situations in some of the largest cities in the country. The wonder of it to me is that the plan succeeded. But the secret is an open one. The sense of mission was absolute, the conviction with which the message was given was a burning one. The end sought was always the great thing and personalities and everything that savoured of self-confidence were con- sistently thrust into the background. The Yale Missionary Band 121 " 2. At first there was no well-developed plan of campaign. The Band had had no experience. They had to get it all. It is a marvel to me that it came so quickly. The lack of any sense of self-sufficiency I sup- pose made the men keenly alive to suggestion and they got much from the seasoned workers in Washington. From that time on there was always a great impatience with anything that did not eventuate into a practical re- sult. Much emphasis was placed on tying things up to a definite organization and placing responsibihty on individ- uals to actually realize on the plans laid. This practical spirit linked with the abounding enthusiasm was a great combination. " 3. I have never known anything since like the feel- ing of touch with the unlimited power of God through prayer. Not only was prayer made a prominent part of the work but it was the rock upon which everything was built. I think the report letters show this very clearly. " 4. No one of the group was an orator. It was something else that counted. I remember often being astonished beyond measure to see the results coming after what seemed a miserable failure of a speech. " 5. The physical strain was of course great. It was insisted that one man should be laid off each night to rest. Yet there were times when at least two of the men seemed to be breaking. A merciful Providence must have watched over the group to keep them all from sickness and to give them wisdom in caring for the rest and re- laxation periods. When they did break loose, though, it was like a pack of children. " 6. The friendships formed were something deeper than in my power to say. " As I think back over these six outstanding impressions 122 A Life With a Purpose that abide with me, from the year's work I can see at a glance that Lawrence Thurston is wrapped up in every one of them and that to a great extent he is more re- sponsible than any one for some of them. " I. He was one of the men who had the deepest sense of mission. It was he who held the men together before the plan was fairly launched, when there was some doubt as to whether it should be undertaken or not. He never wavered in his position that it was a direct call from God to do a definite piece of work and that it must therefore be undertaken. His humble faith was always equal to any emergency. He was always seeking to efface him- self, however, and take the less important pieces of work. His purpose was a very simple one, but it was as Emer- son says, ' as strong as iron necessity is to others.' I can see how this quality contributed much to the stability and solidity of the group and how it helped to keep the Band from being turned aside by obstacles. " 2. In the matter of the Band's method of work his intensely practical spirit helped tremendously to keep the necessity for attaining results constantly in the foreground. He was impatient with superficial work. In the evolu- tion of the plan of campaign he was always the wise councillor and an economist of the first rank. His mind seemed to take hold of the situation on all sides and he was continually seeking the shortest cut to the end. " 3. Lawrence's influence on the prayer life of the group was one of the strongest. Prayer to him was in- tense. It needed all the concentration of mind and soul and body of which he was capable. One felt that he was in the very presence of God and that his prayer was effectual. His prayers were always unselfish. They were for others, not for himself. It was a real life — a ^ The Yale Missionary Band 123 reality of experience that continually freshened and deepened his life. The fact that the year's work was laid upon such a spiritually deep foundation I feel was due in large measure to him. ♦' 4. This sort of prayer life showed itself of necessity in his public addresses. He was no orator. He on the contrary often had difficulty in expressing himself as he wished. Yet the intense earnestness of the utterance compelled attention, and the character behind the words drove them home with force. He spoke as he felt God would have him speak. Often it was an uncompromising and a harsh message — one difficult for him to give — yet he never shirked when the necessity for plain speech was laid upon him. " 5. Physically he was never robust. I have seen him sometimes when he had to steady himself by leaning upon the pulpit as he spoke, and often he would be utterly exhausted by his evening's work. It seemed at one time as if he would have to give up the work, because of the nervous and physical drain. Yet no one guarded the physical Kfe more carefully than he. His rest days were religiously observed, and it was he who planned a hunt for rabbits in an Illinois cornfield, and a couple of days off for pickerel fishing in Massachusetts. His love for nature and an outdoor life was deep and vital. " 6. He had a peculiar gift for strong friendships — a genius for loving men. Those to whom he gave himself in this way were not many in number I imagine, but when he really loved a man it was with an intensity and a fidelity that nothing could shake. It was a rare thing to know such a friendship as this. It was one of the priceless things that he has left us, for it keeps him with us and helps us to carry on his work in the world. 124 ^ ^^^^ With a Purpose " I suppose the things he brought into the Yale Band work were so basic and fundamental that the far-reaching success of the year would not have been possible with- out him. The work might have been done of course, but when one reviews his contribution to it it seems to consist of essential things. And the whole was done in such an unconscious way with no assumption of author- ity or leadership, that it seems the more remarkable." V Theological Seminary «* He looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God." — Hebrews ii : lo. " Peace ! perfect peace ! in this dark world of sin ? The blood of Jesus whispers peace within. Peace ! perfect peace ! by thronging duties pressed ? To do the will of Jesus, this is rest. Peace ! perfect peace ! with sorrows surging round ? On Jesus' bosom naught but calm is found. Peace ! perfect peace ! with loved ones far away ? In Jesus' keeping we are safe and they. Peace ! perfect peace ! our future all unknown ? Jesus we know and He is on the throne. Peace ! perfect peace ! death shadowing us and ours ? Jesus has vanquished death and all its powers. It is enough : earth's struggles soon shall cease. And Jesus call us to heaven's perfect peace." — Edward H. Bickersteth. V THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY FROM the year of intense service in the Yale Band campaign Lawrence withdrew in the fall of 1899 into the cloistered life of the theological semi- nary. There could scarcely have been a better prepara- tion, however, for the critical and, to many, unsettling studies upon which he was about to enter, than the year through which he had just passed. Fresh from an actual experience of the working power of Christianity, and from broader observations of the needs of humanity, he was ready to face fearlessly and honestly whatever ad- vanced theology might have to offer ; and, at the same time, to make whatever adjustments in his personal views, truth might require. He had planned, from the first, to divide the three years of his seminary course equally between Auburn and Hartford Seminaries. There were instructors in both institutions under whose teaching he desired to place himself; yet he felt that he ought to graduate from a seminary of his own denomination. The fact that Bell and Eddy of his class at Yale were to be at Auburn was as strong an inducement as any which led him to spend the first year and a half at this seminary. Much the same spirit marked the seminary days which had characterized his earlier preparation for his life-work. " He was the same old Larry : giving himself * sys- tematically and proportionately ' to his work whether he 127 128 A Life With a Purpose liked it or not. He used to say, ' Woe is me if I preach not the gospel/ and I sometimes used to wonder if it were not also woe to prepare to preach ; for he had no love for some of the regular studies. Yet he accepted his ' duty ' most cheerfully ; studied by the clock, as it were, and tried to make his studies serve his own mental and moral growth, if nothing else. He was very faithful. It was something quite unusual that could induce him to throw aside his work — no matter how much he disliked it — before he thought the time was up. You could not get him away at Auburn any easier than at Yale ; prob- ably not so easily, for Larry had grown in moral vigour. Yet he was a pronounced advocate of regular daily exer- cise and recreation. Baseball, football, tennis, golf, etc., had few attractions for him, but he did take to bicycling and walking, especially the latter. His walk was char- acteristic : quick and strong. And in this we learned to follow Larry, though not in his footsteps ; they were too many. " His work in the class-room was never brilliant, but the professors could always count on his sincerity and down- right earnestness. I doubt if he loved systematic the- ology, in spite of the fact that he loved system in general. This was especially noticeable just as he was entering, but by the time he had reached senior year at Hartford something like a taste for theology seemed to have been developed. From the first he knew that he must be ready to give a reason for the faith that was in him to the inquirers of the mission field. He would often speak of the severe test before every foreign missionary, — of the questions that would be asked, the untruths that must be detected and guarded against, the partial truths to be used as guide-posts to Truth Himself, the tremendous power Theological Seminary 129 of antichrist so subtle, so smilingly obstinate, so deaden- ing, which must be faced without and possibly within the soul, and above all the demand for a message of mind as well as of heart. Such the worker must be prepared to meet, — and that, too, with convictions born of thought as well as of experience. A man must think himself through to the eternal verities, in order that, as Larry- would say, ' I can know what I've got to tell, and what I haven't.' So Larry religiously set to work to think out his * theology.' And though he was decidedly conserva- tive by nature, and at first could not conceal his distaste for things critical, yet he took things as they came with the result that he broadened in his views to a marked degree, and developed (what was already his heritage) a keen sense of perception for the essentials as well as the non-essentials. " To my mind one of his strongest points was just this conservative nature. It gave strength to his convictions, faithfulness to his faith ; and when joined with much common sense, with an homage to truth no matter where he found it, and with an ever broadening outlook and deepening love, it helped to make him a steadying power. Problems that came so near unsettling others more bril- liant if not more profound hardly seemed to move him. No man could fly off in metaphysical speculation who ever used Larry as a balance-wheel. ♦' I have said that Larry was conservative by nature. But in some respects he was decidedly radical. He dis- liked the old forms of expression. For instance, though he knew where he stood in regard to the inspiration of the Scriptures, yet he would not give them the usual pulpit appellation. ' I suppose it's all right to call it the " Word of God," but I hate old stereotyped expressions ; 130 A Life With a Purpose they don't mean anything. Why not say " Bible " and be done with it ? ' And again, when referring to the per- sonaHty of Jesus Christ, he said, ' The old word ** divine " is not enough. I beheve in the deity of Christ.' " But it was not in the realm of theology, homiletics, Greek or Hebrew, where we felt Larry's most telling in- fluence. It was in the practical spiritual Hfe. His ' prayer-Hfe ' was not marked by long continued praying upon his knees, so far as I know. He was not built that way any more than Mr. Moody was. Yet if any semi- nary man lived a life of prayer I believe he did. Always ready to do his best to * answer his own prayers,' he nevertheless leaned entirely upon his Master as the only true Answerer. He was continually saying that apart from Christ he could do nothing. And with him prayer was not merely valuable for the good it did himself; it was objective as well as subjective. One of his most common sayings was that we ' can do things outside of ourselves by prayer.' He believed that being in America he could still be working in China or Turkey through a < power that can move God.* And herein lay much of his personal power with us. It was one of his strongest convictions and one of his most telling messages. We needed men who believed in prayer and who lived the creed. The great things that Larry actually accom- plished, though he himself felt how few talents he pos- sessed, were continually bearing witness to the effectual- ness of a righteous man's fervent — so fervent — prayer. •' Larry's most notable contribution to the hfe of the seminary was along the line of missions. It was more than his hobby ; it was his life. I used to think that for reasons of study mostly he would rather have had no * missionary campaign ' work on his hands ; but they Theological Seminary 131 would not let him alone. I hardly ever went to his room when he was not thinking out or writing some letter to societies all over the country, where the Yale Band had gone the year before. The societies around Auburn were also offering opportunities too good to lose. Within the seminary he was always at it, doing his level best to keep the missionary fires alive. He helped to brace up the Volunteer Band ; he pushed the study-classes ; he made it a point to talk with the men about going to the front. Very few men escaped his personal efforts. Though he never spoke to them, still they were con- scious of his burning desire to have them face the ques- tion. Some used to accuse him of lack of tact and the like at college, but I cannot recall having heard that criticism in the seminary. He had learned better how to handle men. He was fast becoming a diplomat of no mean calibre. Besides, he had become more sympathetic. " Duty was a big word with Larry, and perhaps some men got only glimpses of his moral side, but we who read him better had reason to know that he could love deeply. Really I never knew how affectionate he was by nature till we chummed together at Auburn. He was a faithful friend, too. He was staunch enough to use the knife of criticism — sometimes with a blunt edge that hurt ; but better that than none. His spirit was love, I am sure. I used to notice too how unselfish he was and how thoughtful. He would help old Francis [the semi- nary janitor] shovel snow for a whole afternoon, while others of us were perhaps taking some more selfish form of exercise. If he had a good thing he liked to share it, and he often thought of ways and times that I never dreamed of. One day he and I were coming from the seminary' apple-orchard with our pockets full of apples 132 A Life With a Purpose and enjoying ourselves immensely. I had a vague sense of the approach of a young mill-hand, but aside from that I was shut up in my own little world. I came to myself, however, after the boy had passed, for I caught sight of an apple which had been quietly pressed into his hand while passing Larry. That little incident with its accompanying silent rebuke, its stimulus, its revela- tion of missionary Larry, will long Hnger in my memory. Larry's soul goes marching on." During the year and a half at Auburn there was much to engage Lawrence's attention. He was busy in churches and young people's societies. He also spoke at Syracuse University and on two different occasions at Wells Col- lege. But he did not allow this outside work to interfere with the purposes for which he had come to the semi- nary. After careful consideration he declined an invita- tion from Secretary Baer of the Christian Endeavour Society to travel with him during the approaching summer in a visit to the Pacific Coast. The responsibil- ity for thorough and careful training was never over- shadowed. A talk with Secretary Daniels of the Ameri- can Board " showed me what a standard they set and made me feel that I must work like a dog to be fit to offer myself to the Board." Soon after he wrote to a friend already on the foreign field commenting on lectures by Professor Knox of Union Seminary on Preparation for the Missionary Service : *' It has shown me that I must indeed be intel- lectually prepared to the highest possible extent, but more than all Christ must live in us and we must forget ourselves, yes, lose ourselves and all our selfishness in Theological Seminary 133 Christ that He may be incarnate in us and that thus men may be won by that irresistible argument. As never be- fore I realize the obstacles which you are already facing and the temptations which you are already meeting and the need that we both have of coming nearer and nearer Christ." On New Year's night, 1 901, he wrote again: ♦* Another thought has been running in my mind to- day. I wonder if it will not be my motto the coming year, yes, the coming century, as long as God lets me live in it. It is Christ's words, ' I seek not Mine own glory.' To some that would mean no aim, no ambition. But not to Christ. He sought His Father's glory. And if we in not seeking our own glory can seek instead God's glory, we shall have the highest aim, the highest ideal and the noblest ambition. It won't let us relax our efforts. But it will help us to get our thoughts off our- selves and our weaknesses and what men think of us. It will do away with this miserable self-consciousness." A little incident which happened during Lawrence's last months at Auburn is of value in revealing his un- willingness to accept any standards in matters however small which did not seem to measure up to the standards of Christ. In it he was as uncompromising as he had been towards the smokers in the seminary who used to appear on the streets with their cigarettes, setting, as he believed, a wrong example before the schoolboys who took their cues from the college men. " February 5, igoi. " I haven't told you, I think, of my feeling about songs 134 A Life With a Purpose and the resultant storm of ridicule. It began last year in my mildly suggesting that I did not think Kipling's ' Mandalay ' was an appropriate song to sing, if we stopped to think what it meant. Every one laughed at me or kept silent and laughter wasn't all. They asked me this year if I approved of ' The Pope' and I confessed I did not, nor of any drinking songs. I was amused when in a very few days Dr. came out with great emphasis in class against just such songs as inappropriate for thought- ful Christian men to use. Now this may all seem strange to you. I admit that the songs are sung thoughtlessly and only for their jingle and liveliness with no great, if any, harm to the singers. On the other hand I raise the question if they are appropriate for Christlike men to be singing. A moment's real reflection bars * The Pope ' and * Mandalay ' — however lively or pretty. Perhaps I'm all wrong, though it's a comfort to find a man like Dr. who is no pietist agreeing with me. . . . What has hurt me most is that I have been ridiculed right and left by Christian men and I have seen the meanness of laughing at convictions." " April i6, igoi, " My expression of my views started very innocently, but I was so scorned for them that they were constantly asking my opinion on other songs, making it very dis- agreeable for me. ... I do not mean to air my views when so contrary to public opinion unless neces- sary, but when I do have to I do not intend to back down. It never occurred to me that men couldn't be Christians, and devoted Christians, and sing these songs and smoke and do other things, however much I may disapprove." Theological Seminary 135 It was perhaps the memory of this battle for reality against conventionality that called forth the following ex- pression in a letter written shortly before Lawrence left Auburn for Hartford in March, 1 901. " March 4, igoi. " As the days are numbered for my chances here I see how many I have lost and I see how weak has been my life here compared to what it should have been. I trust I can start in with a clean page in Hartford and hve a more helpful, normal life there. Pray that I may learn not to antagonize and may be given strength for all the leadership that God shall ask of me there." But Lawrence's estimate of himself and of the effect of his life on Auburn Seminary was a very wrong one. His fellow students were better judges of that than he. " I remember that at first I thought of Larry as being different from the other men. In his own way he over- flowed with enthusiasm for foreign missions — so much so that he sometimes felt that the rest of us were not in sympathy with him. I think of him as I saw him first — as a little active fellow with a contagious laugh and a great big enthusiasm for missions. " And then I think of him as later I came to know him. Then I saw — and now as I look back I see — with what faithfulness, and struggle even, he sought to do the will of Christ, and how his individuality was being trans- formed and made beautiful by the risen Christ life. That is the way in which I think of Larry now — as one, whose own peculiar individuality with points attractive and un- 136 A Life With a Purpose attractive, was daily being fired, enthused and transformed by the closeness with which he lived to Christ, and by the faithfulness with which he obeyed what he believed to be the will of Christ for him. " How unselfish he was. I can't imagine his seeking a high place merely for self or his trying to push some one else aside. It was that spirit in him which made him im- patient with any of us young ministers who he thought were trying to seek the best places here at home. And it was that spirit I suppose which made him willing to use up his life in service for others. As I knew him here I can understand that it would have been torture for him to live many years as an invalid — and to be served instead of serving others. '* Another characteristic of his life was purity. It showed in his face and it was the atmosphere of his con- versation. He had gained his goal only through struggle but he had gained it, and we knowing him felt instinc- tively the spotlessness of his character. I am sure that he would be glad to have others know that there had been struggles in his life, if he could feel that the knowledge of his efforts would inspire them to press on more vigor- ously towards the same goal of spotlessness. " He had something of the very tenderness of Christ towards sinners. He was the kind of a man to whom one would naturally confess his sins. I remember his telling me one day that he hoped that before Mr. Moody died, he would have some confession to make of sins he had fallen into and risen above and so be a cause of encouragement to real out-and-out sinners. However Larry had no patience with one form of sin and that was — I scarcely know what to call it — conceit, perhaps. He said one day that there was one kind of man with whom he never Theological Seminary 137 could get along, and that was the man who felt himself intellectually or spiritually better than other men. " Then too Larry had learned somewhere Christ's own * push ' to save the world. He said one day that he had no country. He belonged to the world. It was the great desire of his life to have a large part in bringing all the world to a knowledge of the One who had trans- formed him. How he could enthuse upon the subject of foreign missions ! But only because he felt that the greatest need was in foreign lands. We visited the George Junior Republic together and he was just as en- thusiastic in speaking of the work of bringing the boys of the Republic to Christ, as he was in speaking of the work in China. <' I wish I knew how to tell of his friendship — but I do not know. All that such a life could bring to another, he brought ; and it is with great pleasure that one Auburn man looks back upon long tramps and longer talks with Larry after the seminary work-day was over." " These notes will be enough to show how positive was Larry's influence upon the seminary. If I may make distinctions, it was spiritual rather than intellectual, in- tensely practical rather than theoretical. And the semi- naries must be conscious of having felt the throbbing of the life within them in a manner that will mean a help to them long after Larry's name may be forgotten. May God send more such." His farewell to Auburn was on March loth, when he preached at Mr. Hubbard's church to seven or eight hundred people on missions. " I tried to show them three of the great appeals that have led so many students 138 A Life With a Purpose to volunteer, (i) Christ's last command, or rather request ; (2) fairness considering our pagan ancestry, and (3), the spiritual need of the heathen — the simple fact that they do not know Jesus Christ. Then I spoke of the three ways they could answer these appeals, by sending their children, by prayer and by sacrifice in giving, ending by an appeal for the costly service of Christ." At Albany he renewed the acquaintance he had made the year before during the campaign of the Yale Band and spoke to the Christian Endeavour leaders. " The meeting with the Young People was almost the most encouraging I ever held on the second round, and it showed me the possi- bilities in keeping the work up. There were fully 150 there from all over the city." Soon after Lawrence had enrolled himself as a student at Hartford, he was taken into the plans of the Yale China Mission, the evolution of which and Lawrence's part in it is told in a following chapter. During the year and a half which he remained at Hartford this new enterprise neces- sarily occupied much of his time and thought, yet his friends stand amazed at the amount of additional work he carried to a successful completion. He planned and con- ducted for a year a campaign of education for missions among the Congregational churches of Connecticut. He was called to advise with Mr. Wishard in formulating plans for the Forward Movement. He taught to classes of thirty to forty members a course in Home Missions at both the seminary and at Rev. Mr. Twichell's church. He organized the Hartford Seminary delegation for the Student Volunteer Convention at Toronto, and to him as its strong promoter the large representation was due. Frequent calls for service came to him which he was com- pelled to refuse, and it was a hard thing for him to refuse Theological Seminary 139 any opportunity to do good. " As I face the next four months," he wrote on one occasion, " I am almost appalled at the work there is to do. Pray that I may be given strength for all that God wishes and for wisdom to give up the rest." His vacations during the years at the seminary were not without their full share of responsibilities. There were religious conferences during the early part of the summer where his wide experience made his presence desirable, almost imperative. He taught his course on home missions in the church of his native town. He also preached on several occasions. " August 2^, igoi. " I preached my first sermon to-day (Rockdale) [Text was Isaiah 50 : 4]. I don't really like to read. It is a better plan for a beginner, but I like to feel that I am talking directly to my audience. I also earned my first money." " September 8, igoi. " Back from Saundersville where I spoke on missions. We had a good service and I believe that God used the message. Two years ago I spoke there and it seems to have borne a good deal of fruit, more than is usually seen. But as I told them, the soil and the care had as much to do with the crop as the seed, and I was sure some one had been using the watering pot and the soil had been receptive. I trust that to-day's seed may receive as much care and bear even more fruit. I was rather embarrassed at their insisting on paying me, but perhaps I should not object. That makes the second five dollars I have earned this summer." 140 A Life With a Purpose In speaking of Lawrence's mental development during the seminary years, one of his classmates at Yale and at the theological seminary writes : " I cannot forbear speaking of one quality in him which was greatly underestimated by some. And this was his real mental power. In the routine work of col- lege he had maintained a fair stand but nothing remark- able, but later on when he got into theological work where original thought and reasoning powers were drawn upon, his ability became more marked. His theology was not at all of the conservative type which refuses to advance, but he was willing to listen to every theory in which some spark of truth might be expected." And during these months of ceaseless service and of deep, honest wrestling with intellectual problems, Law- rence found time to ponder deeply over many personal problems. Extracts from his meditations and from letters to friends written mainly during the year and a half at Hartford fill in many details w!iich would otherwise be lacking in the picture of his theological and spiritual de- velopment. " Ja7tuary ly, igoi. " How strange this life ! This constant fight with sin, the sin of our baser selves. Victory and joy some days. Defeat the very next. I wonder if all live such a life. But victory there is and will be and growth, too, even here. We need not wait for heaven for victory. But oh, the struggle ! Don't we dishonour Christ when we struggle instead of letting Him do it all ? I think we do. Would I might remember it more than I do." Theological Seminary 141 ^'January 12 y igoi. " I am beginning to realize more and more what a small part of our life this earthly life is and how much more attractive is the next life. This supplemented with a study of ' Love not the world,' etc., has given me an insight into the great reality of our life all told. Once let heaven become real and one can see less reason for loving the externalities of life, and the inspiration begins to come to live for the next world, not this. . . The spiritual life will be free from all this bodily load, will be as free as thought, and as now our minds can instantly travel from Auburn to Marash and vice versa, so in the spiritual life we will be as free as the bird and as quick as thought. What a realm it will open to us ! And is it too speculative to be helpful ? Couple with that the thought of complete freedom from sin, perfect likeness to Christ and perfect communion with Him, and the Father and the Spirit and communion also with all who have gone before and who will come after, and also the ability to serve God perfectly, and you have a con- ception of heaven which makes earth sink into insig- nificance, and we can begin to see how it would be pos- sible only to exist till that life is realized and we are with Christ. We can see how if once such a vision possessed us, the earthly temptations and pleasures would pale and we would long only to take with us into that life as many as we could of the people about us. The whole thought has been a great inspiration to me not to live for this world." "January 28, igoi. " I don't know any greater longing . . . than that we should each learn that lesson of the constant presence of Christ in our lives." 142 A Life With a Purpose ♦' February ^, igoi. *' Our systematic theology is from a book which is rigid and uncompromising and Calvinistic, and is taught by Dr. who believes most of it. I decided I was getting almost nothing and dropped it this term. . . . I guess one is never satisfied with some one else's sys- tematic theology. You ask what I mean by doubting whether my type of mind can ever get things straight- ened out. I mean that I am more apt to hold everything in solution and have no definite views, than to take the trouble to argue myself into a position which may be knocked out of me the next minute. I am perfectly content with no definite theory of the Atonement, for instance, which Bob H used to think very strange." " February 26, igoi, " I like 's method of going at the subject of criticism. He asks that we first find out what the Bible really says, and often he is thus able to show us that it does not say what we thought it did. This method solves many problems at the start which have cost much ink and paper for the critics. . . . •' Your idea expresses what has often im- pressed us with — that that which is infallible in the Bible is that which can be transmitted into life and only that. He also calls it that which can be vitally interpreted, i. e.y the truth which bears on life and character and conduct and which we can live — that is divine and infallible. " You see I take the whole prophecy (Jonah) as a par- able, so it does not seem wrong to wonder about the words put into the mouth of God. Perhaps I'm wrong in considering it a parable, but certainly many difficulties disappear on that basis." Theological Seminary 143 •' May 8, igoi. " I may be peculiar in never having had any philosoph- ical difficulties about prayer. I doubt if I would have ever thought prayer out at all if it had not been for others. The mere fact that we are bidden pray and have the example of Christ Himself praying for others, has always been enough to set my wonderings aside. I doubt if I could give a philosophical explanation of why I should pray for others. But Christ prayed for others and Paul did, and God's saints all through the ages have, and why should not I, even though I do not understand why. . . . " But . . . only because we can say ' Thy will be done,' do we dare to pray at all. We are to pray, and if the prayer is not right, God will not answer. I should not dare to pray again if I knew that my prayer would be answered regardless of God's will. . . . For some reason or other I have always felt that I must get my time for prayer in every day either at a regular time or otherwise if necessary, but I must have it anyway. And usually I have felt as if my day was not begun until I had prayed (that is other than my brief morning, prayer). So that if I am crowded out of it in the morning, it has to come in at the first free time regardless. . . . Though having its advantages, my way tends to the mechanical and forced. Really it is a difficult question. I know I have never been able to bring myself to change despite the disadvantages, and yet I would not say you were wrong in your plan. Nor would I advise you to change. That plan which fits one's make-up and attains the end desired is the one." " May 22, igoi. " This morning I took the thought of stewardship in 144 ^ -^^^^ With a Purpose all things from i Corinthians 4:1, 2. Stewardship in money, time, strength, opportunities — everything with which we are entrusted. A pretty big thought for fif- teen minutes. I have not been writing lately, because I was getting tired of it. In fact I have been having a peculiar time over my devotional study and have been wondering if it would be right to take a devotional book like the * Imitation of Christ ' for a change. I fear I am a restless soul in all these things and demand variety continually." *'/une 18, I go I. " What is common sense ? I meant to look it up in the Standard Dictionary but can't now. A pretty hard term to define. It involves much — good mental balance, a sense of proportions, a sense of the eternal fitness of things, and a sense of propriety, an appreciation of the feehngs of others, — in fact a knowledge of men, liberaHty towards their views, and a great deal more, and then it isn't defined. * Salt is what makes potatoes taste bad if it isn't on them.' Common sense is what makes people dangerous if they haven't it. I think it is more than ' well balanced,' but it is hard to say what more." ''July 3, 1901. " As I came up on the car this morning I meditated on the verse, ' I have learned in whatsoever state I am therein to be content.' Not that I think my state is one in which it is any virtue to be content, but the lesson was helpful, very. To be content is more than to be uncom- plaining. Uncomplaining is negative, passive ; content is positive, active. When content we are in a measure satisfied, completely peaceful with one's surroundings. I have thought of the physical conditions in which we may Theological Seminary 145 often find ourselves (on the foreign field) and with which we may be content. The condition of separation from loved ones needs the same spirit. And there is a deal of plain selfish sense in such content, for the contented person is far happier under given conditions than his opposite. If these conditions can be improved, well and good. If they can't, content makes them easier to bear." " {At C. E. Convention y Cincin7tati\ July 7, igoi. " This morning I took ' I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me,' and yesterday the thought of the peace He promises us, the peace which so filled Him that He was above all His surroundings and living in a spiritual realm free from petty worries, indifferent to dis- comfort, a spiritual pilgrim and stranger in this physical world. Oh, that I could begin to express it as it came to me — that peace which comes from otherworldliness and a consciousness of the Father's presence and the greater reality of the spiritual over the physical." " August 2^y igoi. " As to the second coming of Christ, I must confess that I am tempted to feel that it must be a spiritual coming, and yet I cannot get around some of the pas- sages which seem to indicate that it will be a visible, physical occurrence. Therefore, as usual, I simply wait for more light. As for myself, I have no expectation that I shall be alive at His coming, if it is to be more than spiritual. And so I do not trouble about it, but look with joy to His coming to me when He calls me to Himself, and this Hfe of struggles and falls and victories is over. When I shall be like Him, for I shall see Him as He is — that is the coming to which I look forward." 146 A Life With a Purpose " September ^7, igoi. " You will be interested to hear that I am making one wild struggle to keep my desk in order, in fact my whole room, although I have not got started on all of it because I am not quite settled. But I have come to the con- clusion that order is a matter of character and self-disci- pline, and that the struggle to keep things in order strengthens one's whole nature. It is just as easy to decide where to put a thing at first as it is later; and when once put there it is out of the way and no further trouble. I find it a constant test of will-power to do this, but I see gain and great ad- vantage. " Another motto I'm trying to adopt for good this year is, * Do it now.' There can hardly be any better way of accomplishing things than to do them at once and have them off your mind. I have been wasting a deal of energy in letting things hang over me and thus doing them many times over instead of holding myself to the doing of them at once. This last is hard discipHne but worth while. " I am also wondering if I should not force myself to improve the style and diction in my letters. They must surely be an influence in my training, and if written in a slovenly way with no care as to words or form, they will surely affect my English. The mere fact that I may spend my life in a foreign country should have no influ- ence. I may need to teach English to others. At least I shall need to write letters for publication and be able to speak to audiences in English at least once in ten years. But besides that, again, the self-discipline is needed if nothing more. All this looks as if I had entered a re- form school Whatever it may be, I trust I shall have Theological Seminary 147 power to keep myself there and be what I aim to be — a more efficient workman." " November 2jy igoi. " I smile at your interest in theological problems. I fear we differ there. For really I have no use for them. Most of them are mixed up with philosophy for which I have no use. The only theology for which I ever cared was Jimmy Riggs', which lived. He taught vital the- ology with all the wonderful enthusiasm of his wonderful personality and that I enjoyed. . . . I do not have to • dismiss theological problems ' from my thoughts, for they are rarely there. As a matter of fact I sometimes suspect that I have no views on many points, that I have never thought many things through. And somehow it does not trouble me." ** December 7, igoi. " I wonder how it would seem to spend a year in just study without outside calls and duties. I have never known such a year since early preparatory school-days, and then I did not appreciate it. Perhaps I was not meant for a student and this activity is my calling. I am willing, but I do not hke the feeling of the wretched scholarship which I have exhibited. Still I would not exchange my college course for that of a grind and a Phi Beta Kappa key. I would have liked to have been a scholar and an executive as well. Perhaps I might have been. I wonder if it is possible now. I have scholarly instincts in the embryo but am too much in a hurry to develop them. I need a httle German blood." " December 8, igoi. " I do not look at heaven and long to enter in because 148 A Life With a Purpose I'm weary of the fight. I'm perfectly willing to linger here if I can serve Him best, but oh ! I would like to be Hke Him. I'll gladly serve long, hard years, gladly suffer, gladly die for Him, but during those years and during that service I would like to be like Him. I don't want to have men comment on (?r admire me. I don't want to be a bit better or truer or nobler than any one else or have any reason for thinking I am. But I would like to be like Him, and that would mean that I'd want every one like Him, and then there would be no chance for com- parison. " The Psalmist may not have meant it, but it is true, * I shall be satisfied when I awake in His likeness.' That, with being with Him, will be the supreme joy of heaven. But He doesn't want me in heaven now. He wants me here. Am I wrong in wanting to be in His likeness right here ? And must I expect only slow growth with many setbacks? I do not know. I would not com- plain. I would not take my eyes off the goal just be- cause it is far off and the way is hard. But I would like to be at the goal already, to be like Him. They tell me that character counts more than words in the foreign field. All the more reason why I should be like Him." " December /j, igoi. " My mind is full of Biblical criticism and evolution and Negroes. I'd rather have it full of Negroes alone. I'd rather put it on the practical, the real and the evi- dently necessary. I wonder if it is wrong to be practical. These other questions are interesting and important, but I get so tired of them and they seem so little related to the great needs of the day. For so many to spend so much time on them seems almost like a waste of human energy." Theological Seminary 149 " December 2g J igoi. " My heart is very full to-night. God is speaking to me so these days. The last three days the central thought has been that spirit can only commune perfectly with spirit, and therefore it was better that Christ go away, for thus He became spirit and could thus come into perfect contact with our spirits. As long as He was in the body He laboured under the same difficulties we do in coming in touch with souls. The body stood between. Now He, a spirit, can ignore our bodies and come into perfect communion with our spirits, and thus our hfe with Him can be perfect, whereas before, even though we might be the favoured ones with whom He was, it must of necessity be imperfect." "January /p, igo2, " I am not often tempted to form opinions until needed. I do not keep them in stock unless they have been used at some time. ... I have much the same way of treating theological questions, not caring enough to have an opinion just for the sake of having one, but only when it can be made to bear on life and character. When the fellows begin to discuss the Hypostatic (?) union in Christ, I take a back seat. What is the use of wasting breath in discussing the insoluble ? It may be * intel- lectually suicidal ' on my part, but I am much more inter- ested in the union of Christ and man to-day, than in the union of the Divine and human in Christ when on earth." " February 7, i()02. " There is no use in discussing how busy I am and how impossible is all the work ahead of me. I am at the same l_jo A Life With a Purpose time trying to learn Christ's perfect peace and calm in the midst of thronging duties. I am becoming convinced that never till heaven opens will there be a time when there will not be more to be done than can be done, and why not take it calmly and let go undone that which the Father did not mean for us to do. . . . Oh, I'm so foolish, so foohsh, as I spend time and strength in think- ing how busy I am. I do it constantly and as constantly fight against it. " I hope I do not startle you when I speak of heaven as I do. Heaven is becoming more and more near and real to me because it is there I'll see Christ. We'll see Him face to face. We'll be with Him. There'll be no more sin to fight. We'll be like Him. And as I've often said, only my love for you keeps me from being perfectly wiUing to go any time. . . . I do not mean that I do not love life and service here. I only mean that to be with Christ will be perfect joy. Yet I pray that if it be His will He may grant us a long life together here in His service, for only thus can we take others with us. But His will be done." And as the years of critical study drew to an end, he came to realize intellectually and spiritually that peace which had been his quest. " May 6, igo2. " How to know God's will ? . . . *' I use my reason. I think that should come first un- less we are led to set it aside. And then comes prayer and then what — the simple consciousness of peace in doing God's will, in being in line with His purposes. Theological Seminary 151 That peace, that assurance is to me God's voice guiding me. It sometimes goes contrary to reason, or beyond reason. It usually goes along the line of reason. But I never feel sure of myself until I have that peace, that voice of God to my soul." VI The Island Camp " Oh, those mornings under that old tent, the sun shining in through the east flap, the air cool and the smell of the out-of-doors pervading everything, I guess I was meant to live on that island. But my business seems to hinder. A year ago to-day we were there . . . and what a crowd we had. "We can never get them together again in the dear old place. Our furloughs will not match. But then I would rather have the men out here, than there waiting for me to come home." — Letter from China, July 12, igoj. VI THE ISLAND CAMP THE last two weeks of July in the summer which followed the campaign of the Yale Band, Law- rence spent camping near Whitinsville with a little circle of his immediate friends. A part of July in each year had been sacred to *' Camp," from the time he entered Worcester Academy. It continued to be so without a break until he sailed for China in the fall of 1902. So large a place did these days of rest come to occupy in Lawrence's own life and in that of his friends, that no sketch of him would be complete without some account of Johnny's Island. In the southwestern corner of the town of Northbridge is the pond of the Whitin Machine Shop. Its expanse is larger than that of most mill-ponds of New England, and, because of the topography of the region, it out- ranks many in the beauty and naturalness of its sur- roundings. At a short distance above the village a sharp bend between groves of pine trees divides the stretch of water into an upper and lower reach. The latter is in sight of the village of Whitinsville ; the former is be- yond the range of tenement houses and shops. Once around Picnic Point, the whirling wheels of the mill town seem far away and the factory whistle gives place to the gentler note of the song-bird. Here one may find re- pose and enjoyment in the beauty of typical New Eng- land hillsides and woods. 155 156 A Life With a Purpose In this upper portion of the pond lies Johnny's Island. Years ago, before the Whitin Machine Company built its dam and flooded the back country for miles, Johnny's Island was a small pasture knoll covered with pines ; but the ponds have been in existence so long that not the slightest trace of their artificial origin remains. The ancient trees still flourish on the knoll and cover the island with a fresh carpet of pine-needles every year. Here for twelve successive summers a small party assembled for recreation and rest. While the personnel of the gatherings changed slightly from year to year and in a marked degree between the earher and later years, due in a large measure to various changes in the Hves of the members, Larry saw the beginning and the end of the camp. Of the earlier gatherings in preparatory school- days little need be said. The experiences on the island were such as may be found in the outdoor lives of many boys. But as the years of youth passed and new faces appeared in the group that gathered around the camp- fire, something deeper and less tangible than recreation experiences must be woven into the story if the truth be fully told. The camp was essentially of Larry's making. In its earlier years, others, no doubt, influenced the daily life on the island. Gradually the camp conformed to his idea. In the later years he was the pivotal force. Al- though it was intended that, in so far as it could be made so, the camp should be communistic, most of the camp- ers were dependent on the Thurstons for special condi- tions of aid and comfort. The greater part of the equipment was kept during the winter in Rev. Mr. Thurston's barn, and all the campers received much in kindnesses from the family, so that no one left the island •THE ISLANDS OF THE BLEST.' APl'ROACH TO JOHNNYS ISLE JOHNNYS ISLAND. TENTS AND CANOES The Island Camp 157 without being deep in the debt that has no recompense. In the late spring season, it was from Lawrence that the statement always came that the campers might convene on an appointed day. The letter bore an enthusiasm of anticipation and it is to be doubted whether any one who had once lived on the island cast the consideration aside without regret. Then followed letter after letter of plans ; and they spoke with a spirit of eagerness for the day to come, when the campers should gather again ; they chronicled the acceptances and the disappointments and rarely closed without some suggestion that the life was an extremely pleasant one for him. From the first, Larry was always among the hardest workers in getting the pump placed, the ground cleared, the proper locations marked out and the tents raised. It was Larry who invariably figured the capacity of the sleeping tent so as to accommodate just one more. It was Larry who knew the best places in the pond to catch sunfish or perch and who was most indefatigable in angling for them. Indeed in time the island itself came to be almost regarded as Larry's property. " The camp in its completed state was the growth of years," writes one of those who enjoyed the privileges of the island, " and it may represent in a rough way by its changing aspect the evolution of a boy's mind from the thirteenth to the twenty-sixth year. It boasted no single remarkable feature. No one could quite say what were the attractions that allured a small company to en- camp on an island in a pond of somewhat narrow con- fines, within a stone's throw of a public highway and not distant from a flourishing manufacturing village. To one who has lived in the depths of the woods, the surround- 158 A Life With a Purpose ings were certainly prosaic. The daily walk after the milk, the call of the baker, butcher and grocer, the fre- quent excursions to the village, the many visits from friends, rather lavish appointments and a larder that was not essentially primitive ; all these have caused many a frequenter of wilder localities to doubt whether this set- tlement should be called a camp or no. But a camp es- tablished for any considerable season must not neglect the social side of its life. And this being the essence the location is secondary. I have been in camps of ideal location — using the expression in the popular sense — and have never been enthusiastic about remaining ; but the days I spent on Johnny's Island were days that passed all too quickly, they were restful days ; helpful days ; days not spent in idleness ; days filled with the best things in life. " Over my desk hang three photographs of the island home. A picture of the kitchen shows the machinery of the camp, the stove, the pump, the wood-pile and the * grub-tent,' with five of the campers as demonstrators. Pans and dishes of many shapes and sizes hang about on the trees and suggest both quantity and variety. Larry was proud of his kitchen, and he was a master hand in the arrangement and management of this department. It is no easy task to feed fifteen people, and when the ap- petite is whetted by a Hfe out of doors there is an occa- sion for considerable labour. Yet the cooking of the meals and the other kitchen work were never burdensome, and many found that there was, perhaps, too little to do. Others essayed to assist in the planning, but always the oversight was Larry's ; and had he been a man who took responsibility ungracefully, the camp life would have been a burden to him. There are two things that the writer The Island Camp 159 prizes in his camp memories : one was fishing with Larry, and the other, the labour with him in the kitchen. The latter was a task that we both enjoyed — this experimental work in out of door cooking — and there never was so much of it that the newness was lost. Here we came very close to each other. Often in council together, as we sat side by side on the refrigerator box in the kitchen tent, the policy of the camp was discussed. And when, as frequently happened, we strayed away from our material affairs into other considerations, I always felt that here I had before me a man, cloaked by no conventional- ities nor veneer of manner. " A second picture shows the campers about the table at the end of the lunch hour. Lunch was a very informal meal, and a bowl and spoon were the usual insignia of the noonday gathering. Around this table in all sorts of summer weather, the company gathered for their meals. The satiating of fifteen hungry people was un- dertaken willingly, and those sincerest compliments to a cook, the eating and enjoying the food that is prepared, were habitually paid to the various chefs. And even though the campers were often designated as ' cavities ' by Larry, it was the love of an unusual appellation rather than any desire to check their enjoyment that made him use the term. In this department as in all others of the camp, a gradual evolution went on during the years. At the beginning the food was often palatable only in the imaginations of healthy boys. A constant addition of conveniences led us to have, many times in the last few years, almost as elaborate a meal as one would enjoy any- where. All this seems foreign to simplicity and does not coincide with current ideas of camp life. It may be de- sirable to hve now and then in quite primitive surround- i6o A Life With a Purpose ings. To be obliged to shift for food may be at times a beneficial experience. But a camp that has a record of a number of years and is situated in a country which yields little food in a wild state, must not depend too much on a twelfth hour occasion for its food supply, or its numbers will diminish and its record end. There must be a growth in this branch of the camp life as in others. And when the whole story is told it will be found that to establish a camp for the sake of camping was far from Larry's mind. He often spoke of the camp as a means of having his friends about him for a while and as an opportunity to act the host under conditions which would tend to dis- courage formality and in which the true man would stand revealed. *' A third picture shows the tents and in the foreground the canoes and a diving board. The tents increased in number during years from a single tent to a village of five. The old straw-filled sackings were replaced by cots. It is all very well to sleep on the ground and in full camping costume for one or two nights, simply for the sensation, but there is in it no boon of pleasure keen enough to make one choose that mode of resting for a steady thing. In other words the evolution was consistent with the whole plan of the camp, namely, comfort and simplicity. A carpet on the ground and cot-beds may not be considered by many as consistent with simplicity. We must empha- size this fact that no camp was our model. The camp was fashioned primarily under Larry's direction with able lieutenants to assist and advise. If sentiment dictated that a true camp should not have a carpet, we can only answer that the directors of the final form of camp were here serving neither popular sentiment nor commonplace ideals. < The Island Camp l6i " The canoes met many needs in the daily life. Whether it was to take the entire party on a day's outing ; to go to town for one reason or another ; to aid in fishing ; to give exercise, or to serve as a means of isolation whereby one or two might go to a quiet retreat for study or recreation, they were indispensable for the success of the camp. It is here that the writer is reminded of his strongest bond with Larry, canoeing and fishing together. For Larry was an enthusiastic fisherman. We would not be accorded a high place, perhaps, among skillful sports- men, but all the elements of enjoyment were experienced, and the rivalry was so spirited and at the same time so delicious that we had more fun often in losing a fish than in catching one. I can recall many and many an occa- sion when Larry and I spent most of a day in fishing, and the excitement only urged us on to more. Towards the end of the school year, when the open season for bass arrived, I have had an enthusiastic note from Larry asking me to join him for a day on the pond before the crowd came, and it was a source of considerable disap- pointment to be obliged at times to reply that the thing was impossible. I know that I shall be considered a suspicious lover of the sport when I say that I gained as much pleasure in handling the paddle and watching Larry fish as I did in casting the line myself. This would probably not be true with every person. Larry's enthusiasm was contagious, and I rarely saw him express so much of pleasure and surprise and excitement as he did when a bass startled him by rising to the frog, and when after a short struggle, the fish was safely landed in the canoe. Nor was it easy to manage the canoe, for my arms, no longer under the mastership of the mind, forgot their cunning, so intense is the feeling that hopes i62 A Life With a Purpose for success. Here, as in the work of the camp, I felt myself in perfect tune with Larry. It was not a part of his life-work, from which I felt myself in some sense ex- cluded. I always knew that when I could get him to go fishing with me, and he was ever eager for the sport, that I could have him to myself for a while, and that the pur- suit of a common pleasure would bring us very close to each other. It was characteristic of what I saw of him that the same enthusiasm that he put into fishing was visible in his endeavours in other lines. While he was fishing, he was a fisherman. His whole attention was given to the sport, and the work that he had left was be- hind him. I always had the whole man at such times and I do not doubt but what that was one reason why his companionship was so desirable. " Now and then on a summer afternoon dark thunder heads were seen in the west, and this warning to prepare for a blow and rain was always attended with consider- able uncertainty. The island was exposed to the showers and the full force of the blow was often experienced. The tents must be overlooked, guy ropes made fast, the flaps closed, the materials about the island collected for protection from the wet, and the boats and canoes fastened so that they would not lash each other on the wharves. The showers were probably not unlike the showers of other localities, but as we were not protected by unyielding walls, and as we lived on rather intimate terms with them, the storms seemed to us to be unusually fierce. From his early youth Larry always recorded the occurrence of thunder-storms in his diary, and one of the most vivid pieces of writing that he did for the school paper at Worcester Academy was a description of a thunder-storm at camp. I always thought that during The Island Camp 163 the passage of these showers there was a weight of anx- iety on his mind, and this seemed to be increased in the latter years when a number of his sister's friends were found among the campers. Nothing beyond the snap- ping of a rope, the blowing down of an awning, the tem- porary loss of a canoe or the leakage of a tent ever happened at these times. With the larger number of campers the chances for accident were greatly increased, however, and Larry seemed to feel that the burden of responsibility was his. I can recall no other circumstance in the camp Hfe on the island that demanded, often, a forced cheerfulness. On the other hand, there was a sense of disappointment if, during our stay, no shower came. " One of the great tests of a camper's devotion is a storm of two or three days' duration. Then one tends to reflect the cloudiness and lack of warmth in his own nature. A single day of rain may be enjoyable as a new feature. If a second day follows the newness is lost and the apathetic camper begins to lose his enthusiasrri. If, perchance, a third day dawns with no prospect of a change, there must be many attractions of companion- ship and love of nature to override the tendency to de- pression. It is a favourable commentary on the life of the camp on Johnny's Island that during the last meeting there in the summer of 1902, ten consecutive days of rain were passed and no one deserted the island, or cared to do so. " An island camp suggests recreation, idle hours, relief from many of the uncomfortable features of town or city life in the summer, pleasant companionship and nearness to nature. But if a chronicle of the later camps on Johnny's Island is truly written, into all the pleasant 164 A Life With a Purpose recollections of happy hours there must be woven a strain of seriousness which was a prophecy of a work to come." From the time of Laurie's volunteering in freshman year the camp naturally included each summer a larger number of those whose life interests were the same as his own. But in spite of the more prominent part which the subject of missions played in the Hvesof a majority of these men, their presence never made those of the party who were not planning to go as missionaries feel under the slightest constraint or embarrassment. The island was not a campaigning ground for student volun- teers, nor was it on the other hand a place where the discussion of missions was tabooed. How naturally the deeper themes of Christian worship and sacrifice blended with the happy, unrestrained life of the camp, is very apparent from the following sketches by several of the campers : " During the year I had been invited to spend a week at the camp on Johnny's Island and accepted. The naturalness of religion was never better illustrated than in that camp. The week was full of the ordinary de- lights of fishing, bathing, sitting around the camp-fire every night telling stories, singing or listening to * Enotch.' It seemed no more out of place to have him sing, ' I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord,' than * Bright College Years,' and the other college songs which we sang together. I shall never forget the impression made upon me the first night. A B arrived just before supper and was greeted in a boisterous manner by the crowd, especially by the other members of the The Island Camp 165 Band who had not seen him for a year. There was a laugh over some reminiscences and we were called to supper by the camp call. After we were seated there was a hush and Lawrence requested A B to ask the blessing. In an instant we were conscious of the presence of an unseen guest, and to me at least there was given a glimpse of what friendships could mean that were blessed by the Master Friend." " The days succeeded each other quickly on the island. Every morning we tumbled out of bed and splashed into the lake for a short swim. On Sundays this was called by courtesy a bath, but there was no appreciable differ- ence in the process. Then quiet settled down on the camp, while those who so desired went off alone for a time of Bible study and reflection. In the early hours of the day this peaceful interval with Nature and the God of Nature was perhaps one of the best of the camp life. " Undoubtedly the most enjoyable time of the entire camp were the hours after the evening meal had been cleared away. Brewer and Dana Eddy with Enoch Bell and A. B. Williams or Hi Bingham made a well balanced quartette, and while one gently paddled the canoe the old familiar college songs and plantation melodies rang out across the dark water in the white moonlight. To those about the blazing camp-fire the music and the peaceful silence were each delightful, and to those in the canoe the flickering blaze among the whispering pine trees made a setting of rare beauty, with the tiny waves lap- ping the shores of the island. " And then sometimes we fell into talk of an evening — talk of our respective futures and how we should shape them. As long as I had known Larry, he had main- tained that it was best for the American Board to send i66 A Life With a Purpose him to North China. We others had many of us our own futures to work out and the talk sometimes waxed big with the theories of the rights and duties of man — college boy theories, — if you will, and not tested by ex- perience — but none the less of absorbing interest to our- selves. But again the talk dwindled to foolish but deli- cious jokes or even to doggerel verse and nonsense until it was time to turn in. Then the camp-fire was extin- guished and the lantern put out leaving the great moon to watch alone on the island." It was in 1901 that a suggestion emanating from these talks about the camp-fire led to what was the distinctive feature of the last two camps on the island, and what was afterwards known to the participants as the " Johnny's Island Summer School of Theology and Missions." A good proportion of the campers were engaged in theo- logical studies, but a majority of these were still unde- cided in mind regarding many points in the Christian faith. It was agreed that all who so desired should gather about the camp-fire and that each student of theology should support his own personal views or, if he had none, those taught at his particular seminary. The rest of the campers who had not had special theological training were to criticise the theories propounded from the standpoint of practical religion. The first session in 190 1 was largely informal and the participants did not arrive at any very tangible results ; but the discussions had proved so helpful and stimulating that for 1902 a definite series of questions was prepared covering with remarkable thoroughness the problems of theology and life. So complete is the list that it may be of interest if recorded here. The Island Camp 167 Outline of Summer School of Theology and Missions, Whitinsville, Mass., 1902 1. The proper method of formulating and verifying our theological beliefs. Is it authority, faith, reason, or what is it ? What is revelation ? 2. The nature and significance of religion. What is religion? What is the significance of the existence and character of the various ethnic rehg- ions ? Just wherein does Christianity differ from the other religions of the world ? What should be the attitude of Christianity towards them ? 3. The Bible, What is the Bible? What is its actual value to theology? What is its value to the practical relig- ious life ? As what shall we offer it to Chinaman, Japanese, and Hindu ? 4. God. What is the exact content of the conception of God ? What are our grounds for such a behef ? What is its place in practical religion ? 5. Sin and salvation. Just what is sin? What is man's responsibility in it? What place has it in God's universe ? How is it to be overcome ? Just what is salvation ? How is it obtained ? 6. Jesus Christ. Just how much do we actually know about the his- toric personage ? That is, the reliability of the doc- uments. How shall we estimate His personality, morally and otherwise ? Wherein has He any final- ity ? What speculative opinions about Him shall we hold, e.g.y Son of God, preexistence, present status? i68 A Life With a Purpose What did He do for rehgion and mankind ? That is, His work as a revealer of God, as making an atonement for sin, as an intercessor, etc. 7. The Holy Spirit. What is it that is designated by that term ? What is the work of the Holy Spirit ? 8. The Trinity. Just what is this doctrine ? What grounds are there for it ? What is its value for theology and for prac- tical, religious Hfe ? 9. The Holy Life. What is the difference between a moral and religious life ? What more is necessary for a holy Christian life ? How is it promoted ? 10. Prayer. Just what is it ? What does it accomplish, subjec- tively and objectively ? How does it accomplish this? 1 1 . The future state. What grounds have we for belief in it ? How are we to conceive of it ? What will be the condition in it of the good and the bad and of deceased infants, of pre-Christian, non-Christian, and Christian people ? 12. Missions. What are the grounds of obligation for conducting missionary work ? Just what is the aim of mission- ary work ? How is it to be accomplished ? 13. Miscellanea. Creeds, sacraments, etc. In the little group of disputants were men representing Auburn, Hartford, Union and Yale Theological Semi- naries. One of the number was still a medical student at The Island Camp 169 Johns Hopkins ; a second was fresh from a year's study at Oxford ; and a third had just received his doctor's de- gree in philosophy at Yale. Two had had practical con- tact with modern missions abroad, in India and in Turkey respectively ; and two had served as secretaries in practi- cal Christian work at home, one for the Student Volun- teer Movement, the other in a local Y. M. C. A. The results of this final conference were much more permanent than those of the year before, and it was in these informal discussions that Laurie's friends saw him at his best intellectually. In the freedom of these even- ing talks the full man was unconsciously revealed. " All the men who used to sit around that camp-fire on the Island in Whitinsville," writes one of the campers, " will agree that in the discussion of our intellectual problems his mind was one of rare grasp and clearness. It was evidenced that he thought more profoundly and broadly than he himself claimed. His position was one of real breadth and he often surprised us by his willingness to see truth in the positions of men that might have been supposed to be out of all harmony with him." The re- sults of the sessions, which were later written out for pres- ervation in permanent form by the participants, owed much to Lawrence's insistence on the validity as data of many facts that could not be fully explained, and to his apparent instinct for the essential kernel in a mass of de- tails. Precious, indeed, to Lawrence were the memories of Johnny's Isle. The restful hours of upHfting relaxation, the stimulating search after truth with his college friends, the tender revelations of their deeper friendship to him as evinced in the sharing of secret confidences, were experi- ences which he could never forget. But there was yet lyo A Life With a Purpose another reason why to him the island camp was ever as- sociated with all that was most sacred in life. It was here in the summer of 1900 that he first became ac- quainted with his future wife. At the Ecumenical Conference of Foreign Missions in New York City, in March, 1900, Lawrence had been casually introduced to Miss Matilda Calder of Hartford, a graduate of Mt. Holyoke College and a Student Volun- teer. A year before he had preached in her home church when the Yale Band held its meetings in Hartford, but the two did not become acquainted at that time, although Miss Calder had already known of Lawrence through his sister Isabel, who was one of her college friends. Later in the spring of 1900 an invitation came to Miss Calder and her sister from Miss Thurston to spend a week in July at the camp on Johnny's Isle. This was accepted, but when Lawrence welcomed the two young ladies on the island, he did not know which of the two sisters he had met before, so slight an impression had the first meeting made on him. To the majority of the campers the week on the island passed very much like any other, and on the next Mon- day the young ladies left camp. Miss Calder going to Boston to buy her outfit for Turkey, to which field she had been appointed some months before. On Tuesday the free outdoor life began for the boys who now had full possession, and to all outward appearances the camp settled back into its normal state. Shortly after this Lawrence went from camp to the College Girls' Conference at Northfield to take charge of the Missionary Institute in the Alumnae Conference. Following the conference came some weeks in Hartford, ostensibly for the purpose of working at the seminary The Island Camp 171 library upon a course of study dealing with home mis- sions — and a good beginning was made along that line — but more truly because he wanted to settle a question of deeper personal importance for himself and one other. Miss Calder was to sail for Turkey some time in Septem- ber. It was then the last of July and the shortness of the time justified expedition in the matter. Late in August Larry announced his engagement. But close upon this new joy which had come into Lawrence's life, there followed a severer and more search- ing test of his devotion to the work to which he had con- secrated himself than any which he had hitherto been called upon to face. Miss Calder was in honour bound to go to Marash, Turkey, to which station she had been previously appointed and where the need of a teacher was most urgent. The test was a hard one but the two met it bravely in the spirit of their common Master. As soon as he realized the situation Lawrence ceased to urge Miss Calder's staying at home, nor did she even suggest to the Board that she be released from her contract. On September 29 she sailed for Turkey. The world may well have thought that there was risk involved in a two years' separation after a two months' acquaintance. But the love that binds those who know the will of God and do it, finds in separation and sacrifice the most convincing proof of its own reality. It is true that this separation cost Lawrence many a struggle, as every true sacrifice must. This, his letters written during the long months of the absence, reveal only too truly ; " And how the loneliness does increase. There's no let up. There's no getting used to it. I just sit and wait, busy because I can't help it, but lonely. I don't 172 A Life With a Purpose say come home a week sooner than is right for you and fair to the work, but I'll be a different man when you are here again." (On the anniversary of their separation.) " Somehow I don't like to think of a year ago to-night. It brings up thoughts of separation and the cost of that separation is clearer now than it was a year ago. I am thankful it was not clear then. " I think very few have yours and my views on the sub- ject of marriage. Love first, call afterwards is the rule with most, with even some of the most consecrated men I know. I am relenting myself now that I realize the power of love, and yet I do not believe I could feel justi- fied in loving you had you not been able to go." But Lawrence came to know in the end the deeper meaning of Jesus' saying that those who renounce for His sake shall receive a hundredfold in this present world. Miss Calder returned from Turkey in time to join the campers in their last gathering on Johnny's Island in 1902, and to participate with her first-hand knowledge of the practical working of Christian missions in the final session of the summer school. " These two years have been separation only in body," Lawrence wrote to her in his last letter before her return. " We have grown wonderfully close in spirit. I believe in some ways we know each other better than we might ever have had they not been. I wonder, without them, when we would have come to understand our love and the other's love as we do now. . . . With an inti- macy which only long separation could have accom- plished we begin our life together." The Island Camp 173 Again he wrote from China, on May I, 1 903: " Any man is to be congratulated who has found the woman who can be the help to him that only a true woman can. I pity the man who has not. I used to think that the life of an engaged couple was good enough for any one. I hardly understood what Professor meant when he told me that the joys of married life far surpassed anything that one knew before. But I tell you I understand now. It is all very well to be able to write and to see one another once in a while and to be able to share one's best with the one person in all the world who understands best. But it is far better to live morning and night with that one and never to have her away from you for any length of time and to be able to share your whole Hfe and all you have with your wife." The poet is not mistaken : *