Class Book Copyright Is 10 . CQEOUGHT DEPOSIT. THE VICTORY LIFE THE VICTORY LIFE BY JOHN T. FARIS, D.D. AUTHOR OF THE BOOK OF ANSWERED PRAYER, THE BOOK OF JOY, THE CHRISTIAN ACCORDING TO PAUL, ETC. THIS BOOK WAS AWARDED THE SECOND PRIZE IN THE GEORGE WOOD PREMIUM COMPETITION AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY PARK AVENUE AND FORTIETH STREET NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY °^ >5 191$ ©CI.A530P50 To C. C. F. WHOSE LIFE ALWAYS SPEAKS PEACE FOREWORD A RECENT book of biography gives a telling contrast between one who "sought under the clouds for the last voiceless inspiration," and another who "looked oftener at the brown earth than at the blue sky." Always the peaceful face of the one who looked aloft was an inspiration to those who knew him, but few cared to stay long in the company of the other, whose spirits were ever in hearty accord with his drooping shoulders. The writer has endeavored to present a plain record of some of those who have learned how easy it is to forget the brown earth while they look at the blue sky; who, by the simple means at the command of every one, not only win victory for themselves but bring brightness into the lives of others; who are proving daily that man is able to walk with head erect, eyes facing the light, and heart turned toward God. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the authors and publishers of books named in the Bibliography for inspiration and quotations. CONTENTS IN THE MIDST OF TURMOIL I. Peace Amid Confusion 17 II. The Fruitage of Unrest 21 III. Calm for the Troubled Mind 24 IV. With Jesus on Life's Sea 26 V. Our Unseen Defenders 28 VI. Real Manhood 31 THROUGH CONFLICT TO VICTORY VII. Victory through Temptations 35 VIII. "Thy Will Be Done" 37 IX. As Usual 41 X. Making Way for Peace 43 XI. Unrest and Victory 45 XII. Victory through Acquiescence 47 THE VICTORY OF CONTENTMENT XIII. Transfigured Lives 53 XIV. When Circumstances are Peculiar 55 XV. Why Pray? 57 XVI. Away with Sadness! 59 XVII. In a Corner 63 THE WAY OF LIVING FOR OTHERS XVIII. Finding Life's True Center 69 XIX. Duty under Difficulties 72 XX. The First Thing 74 XXI. Doing One's Best ; 77 XXII. Giving Satisfaction to Another 80 XXIII. The One Thing Lacking 83 XXIV. Burden-bearing with Christ 87 THE WAY OF SERVICE XXV. A Wonderful Partnership 93 XXVI. He Ironed out the Wrinkles 96 XXVII. Victory through Unselfishness 99 XXVIII. Victory through Testimony 103 XXIX. The Unfailing Cure 106 XXX. Like Him 108 11 12 CONTENTS THE WAY OF FORGIVENESS XXXI. An Acid Test H3 XXXII. The Beauty of Forgiveness 116 XXXIII. "As Ye Forgive" Il8 XXXIV. Peace through Forgiveness 120 XXXV. Knowing the Love of God 123 XXXVI. Andrew Jackson's Road to Victory. . . 125 XXXVII. The Victory of Love 130 GOING TO THE SOURCE XXXVIII. The Road to God i 35 XXXIX. Studying the Message 138 XL. A Soldier's Victory 141 XLI. The Road to Victory 144 XLII. How Could He Do It? 147 XLIII. When God Leads 149 XLIV. "Take My Hand!" 151 XLV. Purity and Victory 154 LOOKING THROUGH GOD'S EYES XLVI. A Change of Ambition 159 XLVII. The Heroism of Three 161 XLVIII. Doing One's Best 164 XLIX. His Road to God 168 L. The Point of View 171 LI. Ambition Was not Enough 174 GUIDED IN THE WAY LII. The Giver of Victory 179 LIII. "Was it Worth While?" 186 LIV. Victory in Weakness 190 LV. Victory through Unselfish Service 194 LVI. "To Learn, to Teach, to Serve" 199 LOOKING BACK ON LIFE LVII. Victory through Remembrance 205 LVIII. Into the Light 207 LIX. Fear Conquered 210 LX. Crossing the River 213 LXI. A Poet's Road to Victory 216 "Of wounds and sore defeat I made my battle stay. Winged sandals for my feet I wove of my delay. "Of weariness and fear I made a shouting spear. Of loss and doubt and dread And swift oncoming doom I made a helmet for my head, And a waving plume. "From the shutting mists of death, From the failure of the breath, I made a battle horn, to blow Across the vales of overthrow." IN THE MIDST OF TURMOIL PER ARDUA AD ASTRA Lift me, God, above myself, Above my highest spheres, Above the thralling things of sense To clearer atmospheres. Lift me above the little things — My poor sufficiencies, My perverse will, my lack of zeal, My inefficiencies — Above the earth-born need that gropes, With foolish hankerings, About earth's cumbered lower slopes For earthly garnerings. Lift me, God, above myself. That, in Thy time and day, I somewhat grace Thy fosterings And climb Thy loftier Way. John Oxenham, in "The Fiery Cross' 3 The Victory J^ife i PEACE AMID CONFUSION SOME have the idea that peace is the absence of turmoil. Yet when the dictionary makers say that peace is "a state of quiet or tranquillity," they are careful to add that this tranquillity comes not merely through exemption from agitating passions, but as a result of the subjection of these pas- sions. In other words, it is possible to be quiet and undisturbed in the midst of the things that seem most unsettling and distressing. The artist whose alle- gorical picture of peace represented a mother bird on the nest within a few feet of the thundering water- fall had a truer conception than his fellow artist who pictured for the same purpose the glassy surface of a lake at sunset. Ruskin was gloriously right when he said, "People are always expecting peace in heaven, but you know that whatever peace they get there will be ready-made." What is perhaps the most striking picture of peace amid turmoil is to be read in the forty-sixth Psalm. This Psalm not only tells of the possibility of peace and of the secret of peace, but it gives the tremendous measure of that peace: " God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble. Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change, And though the mountains be shaken into the heart of the seas; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, Though the mountains tremble with the swelling thereof" 17 l8 THE VICTORY LIFE From the battlefield in France comes the story of a soldier who was unnerved in the hour before the time appointed for him to go over the parapet of his trench, in the face of the enemy. "The guns rent the air into shreds, and the earth into shards. The world was convulsed with crumbling earth and splintered shell." He was in "a blue funk," to use his own words. Yet, "through the roar as of a world passing away, two or three slept peacefully." How could they sleep? What was their secret? The soldier pondered. Then he found the secret; their peace amid tumult became his. How? Let him tell the story. "I prayed. I tried hard to visualize God. I did not ask for safety or for my life, for that struck me as unfair. One must play the game. When death is in the air, one must not pray for oneself in that way. But I prayed for what I needed most. I prayed for courage. I looked at the men, for it gripped my soul that I might fail them. I had only one word rising in the stillness of the soul, 'Courage, Lord, give me courage/ "And a wonderful thing happened," the soldier continued. "I felt all at once a sense of an Unseen Power, in whose hand I was. There rang in my ears words which I once knew, but had forgotten: 'My grace is sufficient for thee/ Like the snapping of a string that opens a door I was set free — as a bird from the snare of the fowler. Suddenly the guns ceased; there was a silence as of death, and we went over the parapet. But it wasn't the man of an hour ago, but a new and different man that went over the parapet in my person." This soldier told of another experience on a day when turmoil was at its height. Fearing that he might be overpowered by his surroundings, he forced IN THE MIDST OF TURMOIL 19 . himself to smile. He says: "And in that act there arose within me an unconscious appeal to the Highest . . . that the Power over all should back me up in the effort that made the lips smile. Instantly something happened. Shells still burst all around, with smoke and an incredible roar everywhere. The crack, crack of machine guns, until the air was full of bullets; the earth blasted and thrown high into the air; the moan of the stricken — that's what girt me round. But these things were no longer real. As a dreamer awakes from a ghastly nightmare, and, while the horror is still upon him, is suddenly comforted by the knowledge that it was only a dream, so, all at once, the danger and the horror of that trench became unreal. I was the reality. I could not be destroyed. I was filled with a great comfort — I was raised above destruction." The writer of these lines was penning this incident when a missionary from Tarsus told him of a woman who had a like experience. From villages all about her she had heard tidings of families broken up, of men killed, and women and children torn from their homes and sent into exile by the cruel Turks. Her own husband was taken from her. She wondered how she was to bear her trials. The day came when she was summoned from her little home. Placing her children on her donkey, she trudged away from desolation to what must certainly be worse. But first she prayed to Him who was her refuge and strength, and as she went she sang the songs she had been taught at the mission. There came then to her face a look of wondrous peace that made her rough guards marvel. It was the peace that God alone can give. Prayer — there is the way to victory. Prayer leads us to the secret place of the Most High where is heard 20 THE VICTORY LIFE the majestic word, "Be still, and know that I am God/' Prayer makes God so real that there comes to be new meaning in the assurance, " Jehovah of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge." Prayer enables men and women to keep their hold on Christ in times of bewilderment and tumult. Prayer is the appointed means of communication with Him who laid the foundations of the earth, who stretched out the heavens like a curtain; it gives the calm assurance that the Hebrew poet had when he sang of God's handiwork and of God Himself: " They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; Tea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; As a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed; But Thou art the same, And Thy years shall have no end" Therefore pray — in time of trouble that peace may come; in time of quiet that peace may continue; in time of temptation that victory may be given; at all times that God may be real and that compan- ionship with Him may take away fear of the terror by night, of the arrow that flieth by day, of the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and of the destruction that wasteth at noonday. Pray — for God will keep in perfect peace that one whose mind is stayed on Him. Pray — for the eternal God is the refuge of His people, and underneath are the Everlasting Arms. II THE FRUITAGE OF UNREST EVERY ONE knows days, perhaps months, and even years, when peace and quiet seem abso- lutely out of the question; when those who tell of the possibility of enjoying these blessings seem to speak in riddles, and w 7 hen the assurance that some day the life will be rich and noble because of what is so destructive of serenity sounds like a jest. Yet countless thousands testify that these things are so. As a young man Charles Kingsley had a bitter experience of unrest. "The conflict between faith and unbelief and between hope and fear was so fierce and bitter that he . . . nearly gave up all for lost," Mrs. Kingsley wrote, in her story of her gifted husband's life. "But through all God kept him for a work he little dreamed of." His difficulties came by reason of his attempts to explain to himself the riddle of life and this world. At last he found that "no explanation was so complete as that which one had learnt at one's mother's knee." So he came to feel that the only possible rest for his troubled soul was to become a preacher of purity and holiness. Trials were not all put behind Kim when he became a Christian. The parents of Fanny Grenfell opposed his marriage to her. But he had learned to trust God, so he w T as not cast down. "I can understand people's losing by trusting too little to God," he wrote, "but I cannot understand any 21 22 THE VICTORY LIFE one's losing by trusting too much to Him." Then, most unexpectedly, the barriers were removed. "From that moment a river of blessings heaped one on the other, as if the merciful God were turned prodigal in His undeserved love," was his own statement of the fact. "Therefore take heart, my friend," he pleaded, "only humble yourself utterly; be still, and say, 'My Father, thy will be done/ And why shouldn't it be with you as it was with me?" Years later he wrote of this period of testing: "What an awful weapon prayer is! Mark n: 24 saved me from madness in my twelve months' sorrows, and it is so simple and so wide — wide as eternity, simple as light, true as God Himself." A present-day author has told of an experience that taught him the same lesson. In the midst of a busy year a serious illness came to him, and one result was that he walked on crutches for six months. He wondered how anything good could come out of those trying weeks; but the memory of the lesson learned years before from a godly father and mother saved him. He not only found peace for himself, but sought to turn his lesson to advantage for some- body else. "I got to thinking how much more sad the lot of a lame boy must be when he had not yet formed a philosophy of life and was at a period when life and its activities are mostly legs," was his state- ment of the problem he tried to solve. One result of his thinking was the preparation of the story of a lame boy which attracted wide atten- tion very soon after it was published. The book told of a boy whose early life was saddened by the thought of his lameness; of a mother who could enter fully into the thoughts of her handicapped son; of a father who encouraged the boy to fight IN THE MIDST OF TURMOIL 23 his own battles, and so supplemented the mother's tenderness; of brothers who did not mean to hurt the feelings of the lame lad by calling him "Limpy"; and who, when they stopped to think, would not use the nickname; of the rare acquaintances who were tactful enough to treat him as if he were not different from other boys. But there came a day when he learned something better than ignoring his handicap. He turned a liability into an asset when, after years of shrinking from his nickname, he realized that a nickname is a help to good fellowship. The boy took another step when his self-pity gave place to pity for one who was less fortunate than himself. When Limpy met an old soldier with a peg-leg his affection went out to the man, and from that moment he had a stouter heart. He marveled to hear the unfortunate man laugh. He was amazed that Jonas belittled his infirmity. "You can have just as much fun 'with one leg as with two, and you're even better off, for if you break your wooden leg it doesn't hurt." The author succeeded in his purpose of cheering the afflicted even better than he had hoped, for the book was soon put in raised type for those most afflicted people, the blind, and he began to receive from some of his new readers the most wonderfully cheerful and philosophic letters. Is there ever a plausible reason for being cast down; for while "all chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet after- ward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby," and the "Victory that overcomes the world" is found in misfortune and difficulty when the eye is turned to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Ill CALM FOR THE TROUBLED MIND AGAIN and again the question has been asked by anxious Christians, "How shall we defend Christ against the attacks of His enemies ?" A sensible answer was given by one who said that he had found that the bare narrative of the life of Christ was a mightier weapon of defense than any book written about Him. He called special atten- tion to a feature of His life often passed by in the succession of surprises accompanying His sayings and works from first to last. One of these instances was when Christ was with His disciples, asleep in a boat on the sea of Galilee. Suddenly one of the fierce storms so common in Galilee swept down upon the frail boat. Terrified, the disciples all turned to the sleeper, "Save, Lord; we perish!" Christ's response was immediate. Pausing only to chide the disciples for their little faith, He rebuked the winds and sea. Instantly there was a great calm. The Lord had spoken. Nature obeyed Him. And the men marveled, asking one another in wonder: "What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?" A traveler who had learned victory over worry once wrote: "It is a pitiable thing to see vigorous men and women who have inherited godlike qualities and bear the impress of divinity, wearing anxious faces and filled with all sorts of fear and uncertainty; worrying about yesterday, to-day, to-morrow — everything imaginable. In entering New York by 24 IN THE MIDST OF TURMOIL 2$ train every morning, I notice business men with hard, tense faces, leaning forward when the train approaches the station, as if they could hasten its progress and save time. Anxiety is in every move- ment, a hurried nervousness in their manner; and their hard, drawn countenances — all these are indications of an abnormal life." And yet Christ is just as able to calm the troubled mind as He was so long ago to quiet the waves of the sea. There is magic in the soothing voice of Christ. Care vanishes in thin air as they who lean on Him hear that voice in loving invitation, "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." IV WITH JESUS ON LIFE'S SEA SOMETIMES troubles crowd so thick and fast that the calmest become unnerved and act as if the foundations of life and faith had been removed. A time like this came to the disciples during a night when Jesus remained on the shore in prayer while they attempted to cross the Galilean lake. Soon Jesus realized that the disciples were in trouble; they were in the midst of the sea and, the wind being contrary, the waves were dashing against the boat. Perhaps Jesus could see the boat, for it was the time of full moon, and there were probably breaks in the clouds. But even if He could not see the danger, He would know of it, for He always knows, and instantly, every anxiety, every fear, every heart-throb of His people. Perhaps at that very moment the men were thinking, "If only Jesus were here, as He was that other time when the waves were boisterous!" But Jesus was there. In the early morning hours He came to them, walking on the water. The disciples were afraid at first, for they thought they saw a ghost; but Jesus reassured them. In- stantly Peter, recognizing Him, asked and obtained leave to go to Him on the water. He stepped from the boat, and so long as he kept his eyes on Jesus all was well, but when he began to observe swelling waves and howling wind, he began to sink. In answer to his cry, Jesus reached out His hand 26 IN THE MIDST OF TURMOIL 27 and helped him. Then He gently rebuked His timorous disciple. Why could Peter not believe that He who had told him to walk on the water was able to keep him from danger? After such proofs, the disciples could not but worship Him as the Son of God. Sometimes one is led -to think, as he reads this record, what a splendid thing it would be to be able to walk with Christ on the water as Peter did. This power is not given to-day because it is not needed. God does not waste His gifts. He gives his people the power they need for their everyday life. Moody taught this truth to an inquirer, who asked him: "Have you grace enough to be burned at the stake? Do you not wish that you had?" "No, sir, for I do not need it. What I need just now is grace to live in Milwaukee three days and hold a convention." Because power to walk with God on this prosaic earth is needed, the power is given. "We may have God's presence in our shops and offices as well as in the church," one has put it. "As we walk the streets we may hear the noiseless steps of the Unseen Guide in the doing of daily work; even in our times of recreation God may be with us, and we may walk with God. I do not mean that daily life is to be an ecstasy. We need not be always conversing with our Friend. We are to do our work, and take our play. But we are always to feel Him near, so that when we have aught to say, we may say it; when we need aught, we may ask for it; when we desire, we may converse with Him." But because men are so slow to take advantage of their opportunity to live thus in companionship with the Lord, there is darkness- and trouble in the world. OUR UNSEEN DEFENDERS YES'M, she's pretty well, Mother is," said the old man, pausing with his foot on the wagon- wheel to answer an inquiry concerning his wife; "pretty well, if only 'twa'nt for worryin' about the children. 'Lizabeth's up to Conway this season, and mother's all the time afraid she'll be took sick away from home. Samuel's got a good place at Tanfield, and he's doin' well, too; but his boardin' place is across the river. Sometimes he goes by skiff, and mother, she can't get over the feelin' that he's likely to be drowned. The two younger ones is home yet, but she says she's anxious about the time John'll be wantin' to strike out for himself, and she's always been afraid we'd never raise Car'line. No'm, there's nothin' special the matter with any of 'em now, and the truck has done fine this year. Mother hain't had a touch of her rheumatism all summer, and she'd be pretty well off if 'twasn't for worryin'. Christian ? Bless you, yes, this forty year! She ain't afraid but what the Lord'll take care of her and all the rest of the world; but seems like she ain't got faith yet to believe He's to be trusted with the children." That was the way a writer put the message of a Bible story in which a man learned how foolish he was to be afraid while God's messengers were guard- ing him. This is the story: The king of Syria was making excursions with his army into the territory of the 28 IN THE MIDST OF TURMOIL 29 king of Israel. Several times he was unsuccessful because, evidently, some one had carried word to the king of Israel about his plans. Of course the king of Syria was very angry. He accused his serv- ants of betraying his plans. The servants told him, however, that the man to blame was God's prophet, Elisha. In a rage the king sent armed men to take the prophet. The force came near the home of Elisha early in the morning. Elisha's servant caught sight of them and was filled with terror. "Alas, my master! how shall we do?" Elisha answered, "Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them." Then Elisha prayed that the young man might understand. The prayer was answered. The servant's eyes were opened, and he saw the mountain full of horses and chariots round about them. No earthly host could break that phalanx! The king of Syria had made his plans with great craft and secrecy, but one omission spoiled all. He left God out of account. He did not realize that no word spoken in his council chamber could be hidden from God. When men work with God they are invincible. But when they work without Him their work deserves to fail. Let it be remembered that God promises to bring those who trust Him safely through the dangers that threaten them. Sometimes the deliverance is given them by warding off the danger entirely; again God permits them to go through the peril, but He sees that they are not harmed by it. He has His own way of delivering, and that way is the best way. Yet always He delivers; that is the point to be remembered. He delivered the king of Israel by sending him a warning. He once delivered a home missionary who was lost in a blizzard by 30 THE VICTORY LIFE showing the missionary's horse how to find the nearest shelter. He has delivered you times without number. Echoing the cry of the prophet's frightened servant, many have asked in terror, "What shall I do?" The answer to the question is very simple. The first thing to do is to tell God our trouble. The second thing is to do what God says. It is certain that there is a heavenly host standing guard over every one of God's children. Does any one feel that he has not seen that host? Then there is need for him to offer a prayer like Elisha's — "Lord, open my eyes that I may see!" By faith he can behold that heavenly host of which Psalm 91: II tells, "For He will give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways." That is not a figure of speech. God does exactly what He says He will do. VI REAL MANHOOD BRITISH soldiers in France wondered at the ability of their commander to be so simple, so gentle, and yet so valorous; so quiet and calm, and at the same time so sturdy and depend- able. But they learned the reason. "At dawn he sat at his tent door, his Bible in his hands. He had no fear; he knew that underneath were the Ever- lasting Arms." And as the men looked on him they realized that — to quote the words of the soldier's biographer — they were seeing "manhood raised to its highest power, and valor transfigured by faith." They were glad that they were guided by one in whom was "a touch of loftiness, a touch of serenity, a touch of the divine," because he "lived in the still air of the peace that passeth understanding." How the touch of serenity can come to a man in the midst of the things that try his soul is seen in the story of James Stewart of Lovedale, the African missionary. No matter what his difficulties, he gained comfort in reading the Bible and in prayer. Once he prayed: \ "Make me patient under calumny, whether it be at home or abroad. Give me patience to labor at details as much as if they were the highest work. I Let me not get disappointed with the opposition; that may be thrown in my way. If it shall prove not to be Thy call to labor here, help me to take the lesson Thou givest for my good. Help me to be content with Thy work in me if not by me, and out 31 32 THE VICTORY LIFE of all vexation and trial it has brought only let my heart be brought nearer Thee/' James Robertson, the Canadian home missionary pioneer, agreed that self-poise comes through keeping in touch with God. Once when he was tempted to leave his chosen work by an offer of a more promi- nent position and larger salary, he said, "The time for self is gone for us. It would be a fearful thing to think of in our future course that we had regarded self and selfish considerations and not our Master's work." It is not easy thus to bid self take a back seat. Yet those whose lives count most heavily, who have the greatest satisfaction in life, learn to do this through their companionship with Him who taught that real peace and rest come through service. Francis Coillard, in writing of William Waddell, the lowly artisan missionary to the Zambesi, said, "We have had missionary helpers of that stamp, but they are rare. It is because it needs a more than ordinary measure of grace cheerfully to occupy this humble place in the mission field, and to glorify God in it." There is just one way to possess the "manhood raised to its highest power" and the "valor trans- figured by faith," as shown in the lives of men like these: the way of prayer, the way of Bible reading, the way of friendship with Christ. THROUGH CONFLICT TO VICTORY 'The clouds hang heavy 'round my way, I cannot see; But through the darkness I believe God leadeth me. 'Tis sweet to keep my hand in his While all is dim; To close my weary, aching eyes, And follow Him. Through many a thorny path He leads My tired feet; Through many a path of tears I go, But it is sweet To know that He is close to me, My God, my Guide. He leadeth me, and so I walk Quite satisfied. To my blind eyes He may reveal No light at all; ut while I lean on His strong arm I cannot fall." VII VICTORY THROUGH TEMPTATIONS WHAT a wonderful thing life would be if there were no temptations/' was the vain expression of a young man's longing. "As it is," he went on, "each day brings with it so many solicitations to evil that I am in hot water every hour. Oh, for one day of freedom!" The time came when the speaker learned that temptation need not be an evil that brings unrest, but rather a stimulus that points the way to serenity. There are just two possible attitudes to be taken before temptation — acquiescence, which has been said to be the only "essence" that Satan likes, and conflict. Acquiescence may bring a sort of delusive peace for the time; it is conflict alone that leads to victory. A character in a recent novel presented the atti- tude of acquiescence toward temptation. He recog- nized the fact of temptation, but he had an easy and terrible philosophy in which he rested. "If I com- mit a sin, Fll not whine about it, and if God says to me at the last day, 'Did you commit this sin or that sin?" Fll answer him to his face, and say, 'Yes, God, I did, and if you had been a man you would have done the same yourself/" As if God had not become man in the person of Christ, and as a man had endured temptation! This blasphemous speech would not be worth quoting were it not that it startles one into a new realization of a wonderful truth: it is only through the attitude of conflict in temptation that serenity can come. God knows all about a man's temptations, 35 36 THE VICTORY LIFE and just how hard it is for him to meet them, for God did become man in the person of Jesus Christ and as a man He was "tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin." For this reason He is "able to succor all that are tempted." So He is the way to victory in the midst of tempta- tions. No one needs to fight temptation by himself. A strong Ally, who has never been defeated, keeps Himself at call. No need, then, to be disturbed because temptations come thick and fast; the more pressing the solicitations to evil, the nearer He is to the tempted one. So let there be absolute con- fidence in facing the temptation, for He is round about His own. There are no gaps in the lines of defense when they are in the hands of the Master. There are no joints in the harness through which the fiery darts of evil can reach those whom He defends. Satan is compelled to own this. When he wanted to tempt Job, he said to God, "Hast thou not made a hedge about him on every side?" Thus he stated a truth that, while disquieting him, brings peace to the beleaguered Christian. But victory through temptations comes only to those who are thoroughly in earnest in their purpose to co-operate with Christ. Long ago Bishop South called attention to the one cure for half-hearted co-operation that is fatal to victorious overcoming: "Let a man be but as much in earnest in praying against the temptation as the Tempter is in pressing it, and he need not proceed by a surer measure." And he will no longer waste time in longing for freedom from temptation; he will be ready to agree with the message from Browning: Why comes temptation, but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his feet. And so be pedestaled in triumph? VIII "THY WILL BE DONE" WHEN Anthony Comstock, whose crusade against vice made him a national figure, was just beginning his work, he made an intense effort to persuade Congress to pass a federal statute under which he could work against the men who were depraving young men and women. In spite of every effort it seemed that his bill was doomed to fail. He prayed for success. He felt that he must have his way. As he explained to Charles G. Trumbull, who has written Mr. Com- stock's life story, he was unwilling to make his prayer in that spirit of submission which would enable him to say from the heart, "Thy will be done." He would not pray for a willing acceptance of God's will if it were to cross his own. Yet he knew he ought to make that prayer. He fought for hours. Then he broke down, and the surrender came. He dropped to his knees, asked God's forgiveness for his sins, and told the Lord Jesus all his troubles. "I prayed that if my bill might not pass, I might go back to New York submissive to God's will, feeling that it was for the best. I asked for forgive- ness and asked that my bill might pass, if possible, but over and above all that the will of God be done. "What peace! What joy! What delight! Oh, how can I describe the burden which rolled off? The summer's day was never more peaceful than my heart was when Jesus said, * Peace, be still/ 37 38 THE VICTORY LIFE and sent his peace. I felt then it was for the best, and I was content to have it just as God willed/' Mr. Trumbull in telling the story said, "He had won a greater victory now than that of forcing a bill through the United States Congress." He had learned the lesson of submission that Jesus taught by his own experience the night of his be- trayal by Judas. After a farewell talk to His disciples, He went to the Garden of Gethsemane. It was His supreme hour; and He wished to be alone with the Father for communion and prayer. He took Peter and James and John with Him, and asked them to watch and pray. He must have looked back on the three years of His ministry, recalling their pain and sorrow and suffering. He would realize that all this was but a very small thing to what was now before Him. He had been looking forward to His death, glorying in the thought of it, sustained through years of hardship by the love He bore to mankind, but now, as the time for the completion of His sacrifice drew near, He began to be sorrowful and sore troubled. His love had found expression; but Israel had laughed at His love. Disciples he had received, men who professed their love for Him; but they were sleeping, instead of watching and praying with Him as He had asked. And that very night one of the three, Peter, who had been loudest in his pro- testations of love, would deny Him with an oath. He was to be alone in his sorrow. The Father's presence would be withdrawn. This was the great bitterness of His suffering — the Father would turn away from Him, for the sins of the world were to rest on Jesus. Already He was in the shadow of the Cross where He was to bear in His body the sins of mankind. CONFLICT TO VICTORY 39 It was because of this that God would turn away — the wrath of God was due to man for his sins. Who should bear the sins? Man himself? Then God's face would be turned away from man forever. Or would Christ bear them? From Him God would hide His face for but a little while; Christ would suffer this that man might look forever into the face of God. It was the sinlessness of Christ which enabled Him to carry the sins of others, and it was this sin- lessness which caused Him such agony in bearing sin. His nature loathed sin, abhorred it, yet He was to bear the weight alone. Is it strange that His soul was exceeding sorrowful ? Is it strange that in His agony He cried out, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me"? He was not faltering, not regretting the sacrifice He was to make. His prayer was simply this: "All things are possible with Thee, Father. If it is possible that there is another way for the salvation of men, let this cup pass from Me." But at the very time of the petition He did not insist upon His request, but submitted the question for decision to the Father, "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt." The answer came. The Father helped Him as He returned to prayer. The agony was not over, but the petition was forgotten in the knowledge that the cup must be taken. "My Father, if this cannot pass away, except I drink it, Thy will be done." It was only a little while until Jesus resolutely turned away from the garden, without the slightest sign of shrinking or fear, to yield Himself to the malignant priests. He had endured the agony of Gethsemane and was ready to put to His lips the 40 THE VICTORY LIFE cup of bitter anguish. This agony is the scorn of those who mock at Jesus, because, they say, He faltered in His sacrifice; but it is the glory of those who love their Saviour and are learning to under- stand Him. And so, at Christ's feet we learn the glad lesson of the joy of submitting our will to God's will — the lesson that D. L. Moody showed he had learned, when he said, "People are afraid of the will of God. I would rather have God's will done than my own. Why? I can't see an hour into the future. I don't know what is ahead of me. God knows all. The past, present and future are all alike to Him. He loves me more than I love myself, and He wills my highest and eternal interest." Since God knows if it is best to give us what we ask for, let us make known our wishes to him, and then leave the matter with Him, content to let Him give us what He wishes. It is always safe to make Christ's prayer, "Thy will be done." IX AS USUAL ONE who had been accustomed to trade at a certain store thought with regret that he would be compelled to go elsewhere for a time, because the street before this store was torn up and because the builders were erecting a new front for the store. He thought, "There will be so much confusion that the clerks cannot be expected to do their work/' But, to his surprise, he saw a sign on the scaffolding before the building, " Business going on as usual." After the great Chicago fire a merchant whose wholesale business had been burned out set up a dry goods box on the same site with a large placard above — "Business going on as usual at the old stand." "Business going as as usual" is a good slogan for the merchant. Why not for the Christian as well? Shall the children of this world be permitted to be wiser than the children of light? Why should a Christian say, in time of unusual stress, "I am all upset; surely it cannot be expected of me that I shall continue my service as usual!" Or why should it be said, "How can that man go ahead exactly as if he had not been so bereaved? Isn't he afraid that he will be thought callous?" A famous musician left his home in England to spend a week cheering the soldiers in France by song. One day he paused to visit the grave of his own soldier son, his only son. A friend, who wrote of the trip, said, "He knelt down on the grave and clutched it while his body shook with grief. On 41 42 ' THE VICTORY LIFE the way down the hill I suggested gently that the throes of such an hour made further song that day impossible. But, turning to me with a flash in his eye, he said, 'I must be brave; my boy is watching, and all the other boys are waiting. I will sing to them this afternoon, though my heart break.'" Robert E. Speer has told, in "The Stuff of Man- hood," of an English schoolboy who was the best athlete in the school. His presence in a critical game was felt to be absolutely essential. But when he was called home by the death of his blind father, the boy's companions felt that on his return he would not feel like entering the game; they knew how like chums father and son had been. "The day before the game was to be played the boy came back to school, and, to the amazement of all, let it be known that he intended to play. The next day he took his place and played as he had never played in his life before. When at last the game was over and the school had won its triumph, one of the masters came to the boy and expressed to him the delighted surprise of the school at what he had done and their amazement both that he had played at all and at the way he had played. 'Why,' said the boy, 'didn't you understand? I wouldn't have missed it for anything. That was the first game my father ever saw me play.'" "Business as usual" is a necessary slogan for the merchant, although everything seems to combine to make business impossible; and "Trust as usual" is a necessary motto for the Christian, in the days when darkness seeks to settle over the soul, for, in the words of the hymn, " When all around my soul gives way. He then is all my hope and stay" X MAKING WAY FOR PEACE DOUBT and peace cannot dwell together. Doubt always displaces peace, and the conquest of doubt is the sure signal for the coming of peace into the life. So long as a man questions God's love and refuses to believe His assurances, there will be unrest and confusion in that life; but just as soon as the promises of God are received at their face value the path to peace becomes straight and plain. Some one has written of a man who struggled with anxiety and care. He had been told that Christ could satisfy his anxious heart, but he could not believe what he had been told. He wished to have Christ as his Companion and Friend, but when- ever he tried to get in touch with Him the feeling that the Master was unreal took possession of him. He was in despair until the hour when, while he was thinking of the invitation of Christ, he seemed to hear the words, "Act as if I were, and you shall know that I am/' He did just that, and of course doubt took its departure. When he took Christ at his word, that instant peace came to him. To one who believed in taking Christ at His word there came a time of sore distress. With it also came a moment of doubt; but when he thought of the words of Christ, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; let not your heart be troubled," he forgot his fears and lifted up his heart in thanksgiving for the peace that he knew would come in that moment. And it did come. 43 44 THE VICTORY LIFE Ruskin tells how a period was put to his unrest. "One day last week I began thinking over my past life, and what fruit I have had, and the joy of it which has passed away, and of the hard work of it, and I felt nothing but discomfort, for I saw that I had been always working for myself in one way or another. Then I thought of my investigations of the Bible, and found no comfort in that, either. This was about two o'clock in the morning. So I considered that I had neither pleasure in looking to my past life, nor any hope, such as would be my comfort on a sick bed, of a future one. So, after thinking, I resolved that at any rate I would act as if the Bible were true — that if it were not I would be, at all events, no worse off than I was before — that I should believe in Christ and take him for my Master in whatever I did; that to disbelieve the Bible was quite as difficult as to believe it; and when I had done this I fell asleep. When I rose in the morning, though I was still unwell, I felt a peace and spirit in me that I had never known before." Faith has been defined as " trusting God's reason where my reason cannot reach." The Christian who trusts God's reason makes an end to the doubt that displaces peace. XI UNREST AND VICTORY WHAT is it all about, anyhow, this life of ours? Certainly to be forever weary and worried, to be endlessly soiled with thank- less labor and to grow old before our time soured and disappointed, is not the whole destiny of man." This was the question of a man who had known much of what the world calls success. But he was not satisfied. "Is this life worth living?" he asked at one time. Again he spoke of "the inexorable trend of things" and of the "futility of the life and the pains of the average man and woman of both city and country." He owned that nature was beautiful for all men. "But how much of consola- tion does the worn and weary find in the beauty of cloud and tree or in the splendor of the sunset? Grace of flower does not feed or clothe the body, and when the toiler is badly clothed and badly fed, bird-song and leaf-shine cannot bring content." Fortunately, the world is full of people whose views are quite different. Some of those who seem the most unfortunate are among the bravest in their attitude to life. Through misfortune they have groped their way to lasting satisfaction, not through fatalistic philosophy and blind submission, but through a consciousness of the loving presence of Him who came to bring His own peace. The story of Clarence Hawkes, the author of "Hitting the Dark Trail," tells of such a character. The sub-title of this volume, "Starlight through Thirty Years of Night," gives a true picture of the optimism of the blind author who lost his sight by 45 46 THE VICTORY LIFE a hunting accident when he was a boy of fourteen. He asks the reader not to think of him as crippled and groping, but to regard him as a brother and a friend, who would not be considered different if he were met on the street. His conquest did not come in a moment. Once he told briefly this story of the victory: "Even the little waves that wildly dance Against the cliffy will crumble it to sand; And so with ceaseless toil the slightest hand May wear away the walls of circumstance" "If in the rubbing process the walls of circum- stance have worn me somewhat, yet I have worn my way through them to light and happiness," he said once, in explanation of the quatrain. At first his only thought was to get something out of his darkness for himself. Later, however, he began to think of others. What could he add to the stock of human happiness? It was then that the meaning of his blindness was made plain to him. "If I had always retained my sight," he wrote, "I would have gone on for the rest of my life seeing things, learning of nature from reading her great book, without even stopping to think what the things I saw meant." So he began to write his nature books, which have brought joy to tens of thousands. Thank God for those who have conquered un- toward circumstances and so have taught a lesson of patience, courage and hope; whose lives are filled with gladness because they are on familiar terms with Him who not only would not "break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax," but who would crown with beauty and glory the lives of the afflicted. XII VICTORY THROUGH ACQUIESCENCE WHAT manner of man this was that, sick unto death over forty years ago, could wield from a little laboratory in the wilder- ness an influence which is materialized in nearly five hundred sanitariums in the western hemisphere for the treatment of consumption by fresh air, rest and a proper philosophy; what manner of personality was that which from the prostrate depths of an invalid's chair could revolutionize the sanitation of business offices, where gold seemed life's only worth- while, and of homes where ignorance shrank from oure air and sunshine — this can be explained only )y an intimate personal revelation of the remarkable luman being that was Edward Livingston Trudeau." Two books tell the wonderful story of Dr. Trudeau — "The Beloved Physician/' by his friend, Stephen Chalmers, from which the opening paragraph of this chapter is quoted, and "An Autobiography," the simply told story which Dr. Trudeau completed just before the illness which ended his life. There was need for strength of spirit, for Dr. Trudeau had just begun to practice when tuber- culosis developed. At first physicians did not recognize the symptoms, and they were rather careless as to the treatment. But the day came when all felt that the young physician must die before long. "I felt stunned," he wrote in his autobiography, "It seemed to me that the world had suddenly 47 48 THE VICTORY LIFE grown dark. The sun was shining, it is true, and the street was filled with the rush and noise of traffic, but to me the world had lost every vestige of brightness. I had consumption, that most fatal of diseases! ... It meant death, and I had never thought of death before ! Was I ready to die ? . . . And my rose-colored dreams of achievement and professional success in New York! They were all shattered now, and in their place only exile and the inevitable end remained!" The world knows how he fought depression and out of his own tribulation brought new hope to others. In the face of the advice of those who were looked on as experts, he went to the Adirondacks in the winter, when the thermometer was far below zero, not because he had any idea that the climate would be beneficial in any way, but influenced only by his love for the great forest and the wild life. "If I had but a short time to live," he said, "I yearned for the surroundings that appealed to me, and it seemed to meet a longing I had for rest and the peace of the great wilderness." "He might as well go," one physician thought; "he can't last long anywhere." So thought the men in the Adiron- dack wilderness when he reached Paul Surette's, "weighin* no more'n a lambkin," in the words of the guide who carried him to his room. But the life in the open, which was shared by his faithful wife, proved the tonic he needed. He was never strong; all his life his lungs were weak. Yet he lived longer than any of the strong people who welcomed him pityingly to the Adirondacks. Then he began to think of other sufferers from consumption to whom the Adirondack air would give life. So he built a little cottage for the treat- ment of two poor girls from the city. Slowly but CONFLICT TO VICTORY 49 steadily he developed a vast sanitarium in which thousands have been treated, and a research labora- tory which has enabled physicians elsewhere to pass on to victims of the disease knowledge acquired by Dr. Trudeau. The buildings and endowment of the sanitarium represent an investment of a million dollars — most of it gathered by Dr. Trudeau him- self, or by friends whom he inspired. He was a marvel of grit and persistence. When he was unable to remain out of bed, he directed his work from his couch, "with one poor portion of a single lung laboring for breath. " "There's little sport in an easy game," expressed his way of looking at life and its duties and privileges. He was a thoroughgoing optimist. "As I look back on my medical life," he once said, "the one thing that stands out as having been most helpful to me, and which has enabled me more than anything else to accomplish whatever I have been able to do, seems to me to have been that I was ever possessed of a fund of optimism; indeed, at times optimism was absolutely the only resource I had left." He de- lighted to give to his patients the advice, "Open the window, go to bed, and keep your nerve." "O ye of little faith," was a favorite text with him, for his optimism was grounded on the rock of earnest trust in God. He was a man of faith — faith in himself, in his friends, in God. It was faith that enabled him to make acquiescence a keynote of his life. Mr. Chalmers says, "The word ( acquiescence ' was taken from a sentence which he had once written to me, 'The conquest of Fate came not by rebellious struggle, but by acquiescence/" He knew how to bear sorrow, and the knowledge enabled him to help others. When his own daughter was seized 50 THE VICTORY LIFE with quick consumption he redoubled his efforts for others who could be helped, and so he found peace. When a wealthy patient let him know how full of sorrow her life was, he taught her how to serve, and through helpfulness she found the way to victory and peace. Success came to him because he had "an un- limited fund of enthusiasm and perseverance." He had learned the possibility of the "victory of the spirit over the body; the victories that demand acquiescence in worldly failure; the victory of the Nazarene, which ever speaks its first message to the ages." Familiar with struggle which had taught him "that the Spirit of God may dwell in man," he came to the days when he was able to say, "I have indeed had a full life, full of the joy of play and the struggle and zest of work, and overwhelmingly full of human love — a wealth of love which has endured, and is still making life precious to me every hour; full of the aspiration and ceaseless stirrings of the spirit for expression in worship, ever groping to know God, and ever sustained through long periods of gloom by glimpses of the Heavenly Vision. Cer- tainly all this is to live, and I have had a full life." THE VICTORY OF CONTENTMENT BE QUIET Soul, dost thou fear For to-day or to-morrow? 'Tis the part of a fool To go seeking sorrow. Of thine own doing Thou canst not contrive them, *Tis He that shall give them; Thou may' st not outlive them. So why cloud to-day With fear of the sorrow That may or may not Come to-morrow? — John Oxenham, in "All's Well." XIII TRANSFIGURED LIVES A PHILADELPHIA business man, on his return from a trip to Kentucky, told an incident about an English fellow-traveler and made his comment on it: "My English friend was very tired. He had slept little the night before. The heat had been intense, sapping strength. So when the train swiftly moving brought coolness, he fixed himself comfortably in his seat and went to sleep. In a little while the conductor, passing through and collecting tickets, aroused him. He woke, and as he woke, he looked up at the conductor with a rare smile. A friend and myself, watching the scene, said, 'What a test of our friend's character! He must have a sunny soul, when, tired and worn out, rudely aroused, to waken with a smile/ "Our friend was a Christian beyond the ordinary. The test he met was a subtle one, but he stood it well. It was the result of gracious living, of control of temper oft repeated, of struggles to be patient and cheerful under little annoyances which many cannot meet cheerfully, of desire persisted in to be like the Master. Blessings on the tired one who can wake with a smile and show the spirit triumphing over the body." The explanation of such lives is to be found in the fact that they are servants of Christ, who was Himself transfigured on the mountain-top by the presence of God within Him, and who gives to all S3 54 THE VICTORY LIFE who yield their lives to Him the power of living a transfigured life. The secret of a transfigured life is the same for men to-day as it was for Jesus, the God-man. They must know how to retire to a mountain-top for prayer when they are perplexed and need strength and guidance for the duties before them. They can find their mountain-top in an instant's time, if they will only pour out their hearts to God with earnest desire for his blessing. And what blessed days are those when the mountain-top blessing comes! And what dreary days, when men grope along the ground in the valleys — when they have no mountain-top experiences with God ! XIV WHEN CIRCUMSTANCES ARE PECULIAR HER hands were calloused and toil-worn, her face was lined and her clothes were shabby, but her cheeks were ruddy, her blue eyes were bright, and her step was still firm," wrote one who responded to the request of an editor to tell of people who were content in spite of untoward cir- cumstances. "She was working in a factory; but she had no fault to find. One day the foreman missed her. 'Have you been ill?' he asked, when she returned to work. 'Oh, no!' she said, 'but Peter was home. I was left a widow when my children were very young. I have worked for them. Peter is the last. He is at Yale. He is doing what he can to help me. But education takes a lot of money. That is why I have gone to work without his knowledge. When he comes home for a few days I stay there until he returns. That is the way I fool him/ It was pointed out to her that he would probably marry and she would be lonely. 'I want him to marry/ she said. 'If he turns out to be a good man, I shall be content. I don't need much, anyway, and God is good/" A second contributor told of her happy summer vacation in the mountains. She was poor, and she could not go far afield. So she decided to take her supper every evening during the summer on top of 55 56 THE VICTORY LIFE Mount Spenlow, near her home. On a flat stone she ate a meal prepared in a big fireplace. "I spent almost no money," she says. "I did not travel beyond the boundaries of my home town, but at the end of the summer I had made many new and interesting friends, I had seen more wonderful pictures than I could have found in foreign museums, I had got a new outlook on life." The third contributor told of an invalid who knew she could never hope to rise from her bed. She resolved to have adventures in contentment. To her the rug became the ground in a pine grove; the tinted walls seemed like far-away hills at dusk; the pictured scenery on the walls was her border country where she spent countless hours. "Some- times she rested in the woods, sometimes she followed the stream down to a certain inlet where a boat was hidden. Then she would drift or row across the river and explore the country on the farther side. She said she liked best to follow the zigzag paths and the straighter roads and find adventures along the way." What would you do if you were laid aside? What would you do if you were to be deprived of many of the privileges which now seem to you essential to your happiness? Rather, what are you doing to make darkness bright and hard things easy for yourself and for your friends ? Are you tempted to shrug your shoulders and say it is impossible to be happy and to make other people happy under your peculiar circumstances? Yes, if you try alone. But always remember that you do not have to try alone. This is one of the things that with man is impossible, but with God is gloriously possible. XV WHY PRAY? THE Christian's reason for praying is that God invites prayer; that He promises to give to His children who talk to Him just what they need for every day. Those who pray in belief in His power to help, and in readiness to do what God wants them to do, will receive just what they need and at the very time known to God as the moment of greatest need. Yet if the thoughts of too many Christians were put into words, they would carry a meaning something like the query by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney: Among so many, can He care? Can special love be anywhere? A myriad homes — a myriad ways — And God's eye over every place? Try Him and see! It is possible to learn a lesson from the old Yorkshire farmer who, when the maker of a wordy, so-called prayer closed with the words, "And now, O Lord, what more shall we say unto Thee?" felt impelled to interrupt, "Call him Feyther, mon, and ax for summat!" Mrs. Whitney gives the same advice. The second stanza of her little poem reads: . . . My soul bethought of this: In just that very place of His Where He hath put and keepeth you, God hath no other thing to do! Gilchrist, in his "Life of William Blake," the English etcher and poet, has told of an artist friend 57 58 THE VICTORY LIFE who sought Mr. Blake's advice in difficulty. "What do you do when invention flags ? " he asked. Turn- ing to Mrs. Blake, the poet asked, "What do we do then, Kate?" "We kneel down and pray," was the reply. Is it any wonder that the lives of both Mr. and Mrs. Blake were so full of strength and love and peace ? Dr. Samuel McComb, in "The New Life," quotes from a private letter written by a physician to his nephew, which breathes the same belief in the reasonableness of prayer and tells of like results: "I stand here in my front yard and talk with God, when I feel like it, or when I am on the road any- where, silently or audibly. ... I can't see Him, but I can feel His presence just as I feel yours, or your Dad's, or dear Tante Mary's, or your mother's presence; and the thought and feeling I have of God • . . is one of peace and grace and faith, of beauty, of love and of confidence. . . . Cultivate the habit of prayer. Pray to the Great Spirit every time you start out to do anything that you know will test your powers. Pray at any time and everywhere. I say to the Great Spirit, for that is the name I like best for God, whenever I feel I am up against it and weakening, or likely to prove not my best self in some trying situation: 'Help me out, Great Spirit, will you? I am a poor fellow; I have not cultivated my gifts as I should have done; I lack strength of character in many ways; help me out.' And just in proportion as I am in earnest and have faith my prayer is answered — sometimes not at all and sometimes so fully that I feel a flood of light and beauty, of love and devotion, pouring in upon me." The deepest need of the heart is God, who gives Himself to those that seek Him. XVI AWAY WITH SADNESS! WHEN Oliver Wendell Holmes was asked to express in five words his idea of happiness, he said, "Four feet on a fender." That delightful picture needs no explanation; what greater happiness could there be than for two people, who are all in all to each other, to sit before the evening fire and commune about the deep things of life ? Dr. Edward Leigh Pell has taken the words of Dr. Holmes' reply as the title for a book that tells of the peace worth while and how to secure it. The author sits at the fireside with his reader and talks of the things that make for victory and con- tentment in the midst of confusion and unrest. Among the secrets of victory mentioned is one that would not readily occur to one reader in fifty — burden-bearing. There is crying need for those who will forget self in thought for others, yet how many people there are whose watchword is "self," instead of "sacrifice"; who are so possessed of the idea that the world owes them a living that it never occurs to them to think that perhaps they owe something to the world. What such people need is a sense of kinship with God and humanity that will make absolutely impossible the feeling that one is a unit, complete in himself. Those who have no sense of kinship pursue their own way in the world as if deaf and blind. Such people never find their place in life. One of the author's friends learned a second secret of victory. " She was one of those women whose 59 6o THE VICTORY LIFE lot in life is to bear many burdens with little aid from the inspiration which is born in human friend- ship, yet her face was the most perfect picture of peace and contentment I have ever known/' Dr. Pell says. "It used to make me feel that she had just been talking with the angels. I would go over to see her every day and I knew her ways. Every morning, when the rush of household cares was over, she would take her Bible into the quiet parlor and lock the door. I often wondered what she did, for not a sound would come from the room for half an hour. Then I would hear the click of the lock, and the door would open; and though 1 was but a little child I must have seen the glimmer of a new light in her face, for I felt that something had hap- pened. I did not understand it then, but it was something like — four feet on a fender. 5 ' There was not only Bible-reading in that room; there were prayer of the vital sort and real com- munion with God as with an intimate friend. Those who will be His companions at the fender have the best possible equipment for life, an equipment that needs to be renewed every day. And those make the most out of prayer who lose sight of the "idea that prayer is a harvest machine/' who never use it but for ingathering. But those who learn the secret of prayer "use prayer largely as an outlet." "They have almost ceased to go to God to ask for things; they go to pour out their gratitude for what He has already given them. It is not until prayer becomes largely praise that it becomes a de- light." "Gratitude is the magic wand that transforms a crust into a cake, a threadbare garment into a silken robe, a monotonous existence into a life of song. It is like a good appetite; as to a hungry man the VICTORY OF CONTENTMENT 6 1 plainest food makes the richest feast, so to a heart full of thankfulness the simplest life is the sweetest. To an unthankful spirit all life is a desert; to a thankful spirit every desert is a rose garden. " Then let there be more thankfulness, that the world may be made up of rose gardens. "Man is a great counter, but he is so apt to spend his time counting to no purpose. Some of us are always counting our chickens before they are hatched. If we would oftener count the chickens God has already given us, I am sure those to come would hatch out the better." We need to be like Alice Freeman Palmer, who said once: "I don't know w T hat will happen if life keeps on growing so much better and brighter each year. How does your cup happen to hold so much? Mine is running over, and I keep getting larger cups, but I can't contain all my blessings and gladness." And it would be helpful to follow the example of that creation of Irving Batcheller, who said, in a time of gloom: "Away with sadness! She often raps at my door, and while I try not to be rude, I always pretend to be very busy. Just a light word o' recognition by way o' common politeness! Then laugh, if ye can do it quickly, lad, an' she will pass on." There is one relief that is always open to those who would fight off depression — the way taken by a stone-mason at work in the Highlands of Scotland who was accustomed to spend his evenings on the shores of Loch Awe, "drinking in the beauty of God's world, so that I can think of it when I bend over the stanes to-morrow," he explained. Of course it is not possible for any one to escape trouble, but it is possible to be superior to trouble. "God's promise," in the words of Dr. Pell, "is not 62 THE VICTORY LIFE that his people shall be without trouble, but that their hearts shall not break under the burden." And what right has the author to give a message like this? "He must be one of those who have never known sorrow or trouble or anguish," one is tempted to say. No! he has every right to speak, for the volume referred to was written while Dr. Pell was passing through a prolonged season of testing, an ordeal that is best described by the phrase, "a baptism of fire." But his heart did not break under the burden, for he had learned the victory that comes through burden-bearing, and through Bible-reading and prayer; through grati- tude, and appreciation of the beauty of God's world and trust in Him who will not let fall one of those who depend on Him. XVII IN A CORNER WHY do you bury yourself in this small place? Your talents are not appreciated here. Why don't you get out into the open and dazzle the world? You can do it. Why waste yourself in a corner?" That message has a familiar sound to many an earnest man. Probably he has heard it from some well-meaning friend. Almost certainly he has heard it in his own heart in some hour of special discourage- ment. Times without number he may have silenced the clamor of unworthy ambition, because of the assurance that he is in the exact corner where God wants him. But a temptation like that is apt to repeat itself, and with force. To most people there comes a day when the cry of ugly discontent and selfish ambition refuses to be silenced. What then? Joseph B. Dunn, in "In the Service of the King," has told of a Christian's experiences at a time like this. He was in the depths. Why was he buried where there was no outlook, no hope? In his time of blackest gloom he dropped wearily into a chair in his study. Listlessly he picked up a volume which, days before, he had left, open, on his desk. "Wholly by accident, if you will, his eyes caught the caption of the chapter yet unread. It was 'The Galilean Ministry/ He stared at the words printed there till their meaning seemed to burn itself into his brain. Then, speaking aloud and calling himself by name, he said, 'You con- 63 64 THE VICTORY LIFE temptible little puppy !' . With vision cleared by the flashlight of those words he had read, he sat down to think. "The Galilean Ministry! The King spending his life and doing his work in Galilee among the rude peasants whose quaint rusticisms made the dwellers in the capital city smile! The King making his home in Nazareth, and for all but a few months of his matchless life left to hold a little post up in the hills away from the high-road ! The King in Galilee, and the green young subaltern whining because he had been sent for a little while to guard the outer line of the city itself! The King in Galilee, separated by days of weary foot travel from the city of his love, and the young subaltern whimpering like a lost child because two hours of comfortable travel on train stood between him and the center of the cleanest and sweetest resultant of that civilization He gave to the world !" The discontented Christian had been given the message he needed. "It was as if the King himself had spoken to him. Utterly ashamed and humbled, as if he had read in the King's face sad rebuke of his disloyalty, the man set himself to face the facts. He had volunteered to serve and he had failed, not because the task was too hard, but because of his own foolish conceit and desire to do his work before the eyes of men." From that hour the restless fretting was gone from his life. "When the prizes of life are given and none comes his way; when the names of those honored in action are printed in the gazette and his name does not appear; though the momentary sense of emptiness may come as aforetime, it does not linger; and with head erect he goes back to his task, whispering, 'I have seen the King/ 5 VICTORY OF CONTENTMENT 65 There is this one great need of the Christian who feels that he is buried in a corner; let him meet the King and see things through the King's eyes, and he will be ready still to serve in his corner if that is the corner of God's choosing. And his new touch with Heaven will enable him to make that corner bright and glorious for his Lord. THE WAY OF LIVING FOR OTHERS We thank Thee, Lord, — For that great silence where Thou dwell'st alone — Father, Spirit, Son, in One, Keeping watch above Thine own. — Deep unto deep, within us sound sweet chords Of praise beyond the reach of human words; In our souls' silence, feeling only Thee, — We thank Thee, thank Thee, Thank Thee, Lord. — John Oxenham, in "All's Well )> XVIII FINDING LIFE'S TRUE CENTER EVERY man man has his ideaL Consciously or unconsciously his thoughts are influenced, his will is moved, his entire life is regulated, by this ideal. If his ideal is low, his life never reaches a high level. If, on the contrary, his ideal is high, his whole life will be an effort to realize it, to clothe a skeleton with flesh and blood and make it a living reality. If he begins life with the idea that he is to secure as much from the world as possible at all costs to others who may be in his path, his ideal is self, and if he should state his creed, he could honestly do no more than say, "For me to live is self." In attempting to live such a life he is showing every moment his unfitness for life. The world was not prepared as a pleasure ground for self-seek- ers. It is only when men see how ugly is the self- centered life, and get a vision of the beauty and satis- faction of the life lived with Christ, that they really begin to live. It is only when they restate all their ideals about Christ as the center that life takes on beauty and symmetry and poise. A biography of General Fremont tells an incident in the life of the soldier that shows what a difference the self-forgetful spirit can make. " When he was the popular idol of the North, and had struggled ineffectually for months to keep his place as leader in the army, he was at last driven, 69 70 THE VICTORY LIFE by injustice as he believed, to give up the struggle. He resigned his command in Virginia and came home direct to New York, arriving at midnight, to the horror and despair of his friends and party. Right or wrong, it was the crisis of his life, and he had lost. There was at his house that night a most insignificant visitor, a young girl from the country. She had neither beauty nor wealth nor any power to help in this imminent moment. But she was a stranger, she had never seen New York, and she was his guest. He gave the next day to making a careful map of the city and of the jaunts to country and seaside, that she might 'understand it all/ It was not courtesy nor duty. His mind was wholly in it for the moment." It is told of Gladstone that while he was in the zenith of his glory, an old man who used to sweep the street crossings for gratuitous pennies, near the Houses of Parliament, was .one day absent. Mr. Gladstone, observing his absence, asked about him and discovered that he was ill. Learning where he lived, the Great Commoner left his busy place in the Houses of Parliament, where practically the whole British Empire rested upon his efforts. He found his way down a lonely alley until he came to the place where the humble street-sweeper lay. Entering the door, he sat down on a stool by the bedside and, taking from his pocket a Testament, read concerning Jesus and then knelt and offered a prayer. A few days after that a missionary called on the old man. "You must be very lonely in this place, with none to comfort you," the missionary said. "Oh, no! I have had a royal visitor," was the un- expected reply. Then he told of the coming of Gladstone, and of how the great man had left be- WAY OF LIVING FOR OTHERS Jl hind him Jesus the Saviour, on whom the crossing- sweeper was resting. So one who lived the Christ-centered life was able to show a comrade how to center his life in Christ and find victory. XIX DUTY UNDER DIFFICULTIES THERE are just two kinds of people — those who shrink from every difficulty, every hard- ship, and those who accept a difficulty that comes in the way of duty as a challenge to put forth their strength. The difference is seen in the school- room, where one pupil turns from a Latin lesson because it looks hard, while another takes it up with avidity for the very same reason; it is seen when two boys go to the woodpile, for one chooses nothing but the straight-grained sticks, while the other perspires over the knotty logs as he comes to them; it is seen all through life, in the home, in business, in the church. From which class of peo- ple do the world's workers come? Christ makes His appeal to the heroic, the spirit that dares when daring is necessary, that endures when endurance is duty, that suffers when His name is to be magnified by suffering. He asks for followers who will make it their supreme business to do His will, permitting nothing to distract their attention or fritter away their strength; not seeking difficulty for difficulty's sake — that would be foolhardy — but resolutely facing every hard thing for duty's sake. For this service, undaunted by obstacles, we have the example of Christ Himself, who permitted nothing to come in the way of His purpose to redeem men from sin. Those who grow discouraged in service will do well to pause a moment and " remember Jesus Christ." As they think of 72 WAY OF LIVING FOR OTHERS 73 what He bore for them, how can they shrink in the face of any difficulty He asks them to encounter for Him? Sometimes the example of Christ seems so far beyond human strength that one is discouraged as he thinks of it. Then it will be profitable to turn one's thoughts to a weak man who, by leaning on Christ, learned how to endure hardness of all kinds and face difficulties innumerable — Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles. Here was the man who once shrank from pain, but who soon learned to endure it as he dwelt in close touch with Him who suffered untold anguish as He bore in His own body the sins of the world. Christ will help men to-day to bear, to endure, to conquer, as surely as He helped Paul. The question was once asked of a Christian worker, " Isn't your work hard?" "Well, what if it is?" was the answer. "It's my work, and woe to me if I don't do it!" That was the spirit of the man from the day he began his self-sacrificing efforts for others. At first he feared the difficulties that con- fronted him. He trembled when men opposed him. But the experience of the wonderful way Christ has of fulfilling His promises to assist His workers opened this man's eyes and made him so like ada- mant that difficulties made no mark on him. "If it's duty, it's duty, that's all there is about it," said another Christian, speaking in a courageous woman's way her conviction. "But life is so hard when one looks at it in this way!" the complaint is heard. Then don't look at it in that way. Follow Christ's example, and look to the end. What if things are hard now? A time is coming when they will be pleasant. "If we die with Him, we shall also live with Him." XX THE FIRST THING FOR so many people the coming of real satis- faction into life is seriously hindered by the feeling that, since they cannot do great things for others, they will not attempt small things. Yet no real satisfaction is possible unless one is making the most of what he has. "What would you do if you had a million dollars ?" was the question discussed by a company of young people. Naturally, many of the suggestions were wild and impracticable; the wise apportionment of an amount that is, fortunately, far beyond the ex- perience of most people, is a matter of extreme diffi- culty. But the question, "What would you do with one hundred dollars?" is far more practical, and the answers given to it would be more nearly a true revelation of character. The writer of a magazine story has told of a young man who wanted something so intensely that it was continually in his mind. One day he held in his hand an unexpected legacy for one hundred dollars. Now he could have what he wanted! "He needed it, needed it more than any one else could, and it was his. His sensitive mouth quivered and his eyes looked hunted; he drew the money through his long fingers as eagerly as a miser might." The money was still burning a hole in his pocket when his older brother told in his hearing of the vain longing to go to Chicago, where he was sure 74 WAY OF LIVING FOR OTHERS 75 he could secure a far better position than he had. Then he remarked sadly that there was no chance; the trip would cost too much. Then one of the two sisters of the possessor of one hundred dollars told of her desire. If only she could have forty dollars for additional voice lessons, she would be able to teach others so well that her services would be in demand. But what was the use of wishing for the forty dollars ? That evening the second sister, a stenographer, fainted. The physician said she must have a week in the country. "Always somewhere to put money, the money we haven't got," said the overworked mother. Later in the evening the man tramped the streets for hours, trying to answer an insistent question. "Was he responsible for his sisters and his brother? Should his hundred dollars go to them? Why?" The next morning he startled his brother by say- ing, "IVe got a hundred dollars, and it's got to do the work of about five." Then he explained his purpose. It was to send the sick sister to the country, paying her week's salary to his mother; to send his brother to Chicago and keep him there while he hunted a position. As soon as he got a job, the brother was to send the money back, that it might be used to pay for music lessons. When the music class was in good running order the teacher would be able to repay the loan, and the greater part of the original sum would again be in the hands of the legatee. The program was carried out. Four people were made happy; but the lender was the happiest of all. Perhaps some who read of him think, "If I had one hundred dollars I could make as good use of it as he did." Good! But isn't it more to the point for 76 THE VICTORY LIFE one to ask himself what use he is making of the money he already has at his command? The best way to prove purpose and ability to administer aright larger possessions is to make good use of the smaller. Jesus said, "Thou hast been faithful over a few things; I will make thee ruler over many things/' XXI DOING ONE'S BEST USUALLY the trolley conductor was cheerful and smiling, yet one bright spring morning he smiled with an effort. It was evident that something was troubling him. A passenger longed for the chance to speak to him, but the car was crowded and the opportunity did not come. But next morning he was as bright as ever. He radiated cheerfulness to such an extent that the whole earful of passengers was infected. To the passenger who had observed him the day before, he offered a newspaper clipping. "Read that," he said. "Yesterday I was feeling blue because my job seemed so small, but that bit of verse fixed me up." What if the verse he offered for inspection was crude? It told the story of a little country church, hidden far from centers of population, and pictured the good that had been done by inconspicuous service. "Tru all right now," the conductor said, as the clipping was returned to him. "Tin going to make the most of my job." That very day the morning paper printed a startling bit of biography that impressed the teach- ing of the conductor's clipping. The epic message was given under the head "Obituary." It read: "Mary, or ' Little Mary/ as she was lovingly called in the family she served for many years, came to this country from Ireland when she was a young 77 78 THE VICTORY LIFE girl. For more than fifty years she lived with the Fassitt family, sharing their joys and sorrows, giving of her best for their comfort and happiness, knowing only them and loving them and loved by them. Mary had few advantages in the way of learning. She could not read, though the family often tried to teach her. But her heart was true, and she made up in natural intelligence what she lacked in education. "Mary was full of wit. It was a pleasure to talk to her, for she was quick in repartee and ready to accept pleasantries of speech in the spirit in which they were spoken. Her kindness and sympathy with all who were in any trouble and her desire to help can never be forgotten. But it was her long service in one family, her dignified honoring of her work, and her devoted loyalty to all the members of the family that made her more than a servant. She was a friend. "In these days when so few continue in household routine and life, and when * service 9 is called ' drudg- ery/ it is refreshing to have known so true and faithful a helper. And it is a privilege to lay this little wreath of appreciation and affection upon the grave of one who has set an example of simple Christianity, of loyalty, of love. A quiet, faithful soul, known only to a few, has ended her course, having lived her life well, and has gone to her re- ward. Of such is the kingdom of heaven." Is another message needed after that? Then here it is, for good measure. George Clark Peck, in "Men Who Missed the Trail," tells the story of a minister who spoke a word of pity to a cobbler upon the lowliness of his task. But the cobbler, with the pride of an archangel in his eyes, flung back the preacher's pity into his face, "If I peg WAY OF LIVING FOR OTHERS 79 shoes as conscientiously as you prepare sermons, I'll be just as acceptable to God." Then Mr. Peck goes on to say, "What of preachers, anyhow, except for plain shoemakers, plain arti- sans, and all sorts of humble folks to practice the preaching? . . . No real service can ever be mean. The humblest task that God lays at any man's hand is worthy of being invested with celestial dig- nity." XXII GIVING SATISFACTION TO ANOTHER SOON after Alice Freeman Palmer, in later years the president of Wellesley College, went from the University of Michigan to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where she did her first school teaching, she wrote to a friend this statement of her life purpose: "You ask me how I work among the girls to gain influence. Let me talk to you a little about this. As I lived among these young people day after day I felt a want of something; not intellectual or even religious culture; not a lack of physical training or that acquaintance with social life which can be so charming in a true woman, but a something I must call heart culture in lack of a better name. Every one was kind, but cold. There was no in- tentional freezing, but an absence of the sunshine which melts its own way. Looking on and into them, I said, 'I will try to be a friend to them all and put all that is truest and sweetest, sunniest and strongest, that I can gather, into their lives. While I teach them solid knowledge and give them real school drill as faithfully as I may, I will give, too, all that the years have brought to my own soul. God help me to give what He gave myself and make that self worth something to somebody; teach me to love all as He has loved, for the sake of the in- finite possibilities locked up in every human soul/ " Whenever these girls want help or comfort, my door and heart shall be open. Not that I have said 80 WAY OF LIVING FOR OTHERS 8l this. I have just felt it, and I think they feel it, too. We kneel together every evening, and every morning at chapel service their faces look up into mine. Keeping my eyes open for chances, I find the rest takes care of itself — a word, a look even, the touch of a hand, and, by-and-by, when the time comes, something more. Why, what is it to be a Christian, a Christ-follower, unless it is going about doing good? We ought to love everybody and make everybody love us. Then everything else is easy." A delegate to a Young Men's Christian Associa- tion conference has told of a boy delegate who made the prayer: "Help us to keep straight. We know it's hard and that we need all the help we can possibly get. And when weVe been straightened up our- selves, help us to help the other fellows to get the same thing that weVe got. Amen." That boy had the idea of "passing on the blessing." The sooner others get hold of the same idea the better it will be for them and for the world. The world's hunger for the simple little things, that cost the giver nothing, but mean everything to the recipient, was indicated by a mission worker who told of a leper whom children were mocking, but on whose head a missionary put her hand as she asked her to sit down on the grass beside her. The woman fell to sobbing, and cried out, "A human hand has touched me. For seven years no one has touched me." A mere touch was so easy to give, but no one had thought of giving it before. One of the easiest things that can be done is the speaking of the word of encouragement that takes away the sting left by the harshness of another. How sweet to give such encouragement ! Yet words of that kind are few and far between. Those who 82 THE VICTORY LIFE discourage others should be made to feel the enor- mity of their offense. A civilian at Ladysmith during the Boer war was sentenced by court-mar- tial to a year's imprisonment because he had caused despondency by making jeering remarks to the soldiers. When every precaution should have been taken to cheer the soldiers, his jeers were considered a crime. XXIII THE ONE THING LACKING A POPULAR author has told the story of a woman who decided to spend a legacy in making before her house a beautiful garden that would attract the admiration of her neighbors and lead them to look on her as a public benefactor. Hungry for the popularity that had been denied her, she "set about wresting liking from her neighbors as her ancestors had wrested what they wanted from the wilderness. " She pored over the catalogue of the best seeds- men. After selecting her seeds, instructions were given the gardener that none were to be planted too near the fence, lest blooms be plucked by the children. The garden bloomed gloriously. She won the praise she sought. People admired the flowers — from a distance. But she "began vaguely to miss something from their praise." What was wrong? Commencement Day came. From the garden across the way girls in troops gathered blossoms for the important event. But no one came near her. On Memorial Day children flocked to the same un- pretentious garden, and eagerly reached over the fence to pluck the flowers they knew were intended for them. At the time of the funeral of the best loved man in the village the neighbor's garden was again the resort for those who would bury the casket in fragrant blooms. But no one thought of asking the owner of the wonderful garden for so much as one flower. 83 84 THE VICTORY LIFE "They don't like me in the fixed-up place any more than they did in the old," the disappointed woman thought. Again she asked herself, "What can be wrong?" The question found no answer until the wedding day of the village favorite. "Every yard and garden was levied upon for fall flowers for the decora- tions and the bouquets for the sixteen bridesmaids — every one but Eliza's." "That evening Eliza got out the catalogue to order her fall bulbs. But she did not open it* She was too busy realizing what had been wrong. She had planted her garden for herself; she had not given a thought to other people except as she de- sired that they might minister to her glory. "'I'm goin' to plant in with my fall flowers something I left out in the spring. It ain't in the catalogues, but it's more important than the plants on the biggest color plate. It's love.'" A writer of stories for business men has told of a man upon whose life program "success had al- ways been inscribed." He "put high value upon attaining it." At length he realized the necessity of revising his philosophy of efficiency. "If you want to succeed make it your business to succeed," he said, "not seventy-five per cent of your business, nor ninety per cent of your business, but your entire business." He resolved to be "one hundred per cent efficient." He would remove all obstacles from his path, no matter what the cost might be. The first obstacle was an efficient stenographer, one of two orphan sisters, who was supporting a brother at school. The efficient man studied her and discovered how several hours a week might be saved by a sten- ographer who had more adaptability. So he dis- WAY OF LIVING FOR OTHERS 85 charged her, silencing the protest of his conscience. Sentiment could have no place in the program of the efficient man. "Results are all that count/' he said to a friend. "Efficiency is entirely imper- sonal. You can't be efficient if you take your eyes for a moment from the target. It's very pleasant to indulge oneself in loyalty and friendship, but they are to be considered only as they further the selected purpose." And his purpose was to become head of the business. "All those who hold impor- tant positions are rivals. A rival's weakness may turn out to be my strength." "But you are paying a frightful price for success," said his friend. "You are making everybody sacri- fice for you. Your friends miss you. Your wife is unhappy. Your boy does not know his father." The efficient man agreed that he longed for the old companionship with wife and child and with friends. "So it is I who am making the big sacri- fice," he said. "Me crushing my soul? No, no; efficiency may be a stern master, but it can't do that." The day came when his own brother-in-law stood in his way; he saw how he could displace him in the interest of his scheme to advance himself. "My career must be my first and only consideration," he answered his wife when she pleaded for her brother. "Think what you are doing," she said. "Isn't there an atom of kindness in your creed? Think what you are doing! Jimmy will never come to this house again. You will break my heart." "I have one objective, and only one," was Effi- ciency's answer. At last he sat in the president's chair. But the triumph was empty. His wife had found the home unbearable, and she had taken their boy away. 86 THE VICTORY LIFE Friends had forsaken him. Then he communed with himself, and made this sad conclusion: "Efficiency has played me a rough trick. It has stripped me of the affection of wife and child and friends; it emasculated my powers of sharing love. But it didn't kill the desire for love — not for an instant. Here I sit upon my tall, lonely mountain. Torturing fires burn within me. A man ought not to have one absolute, supreme aim, particularly if that aim is material." He was wrong. A man ought to have one su- preme aim. Paul said, "This one thing I do," but in his case the one thing was service of Christ, love of Christ, union with Christ. That is the secret of Paul's success, success that has made his name live while those whom this world called great in his day are forgotten. Dr. Ernest Bourner Allen has told of an Italian woman in one of the settlement houses of Toledo who was asked to embroider some figures on a piece of clothing. She was to receive a specified price, and there were to be a certain number of figures. When the work was completed, beautiful and per- fect, it was found that she had embroidered two extra figures in the pattern. When asked why she did it, without pay, at the cost of time and strength, she replied, "I did it for love's sake." Yet the self-centered business man said, "Effi- ciency is entirely impersonal!" It is love that "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth. ..." But efficiency fails — when it is not transformed, strengthened, glorified by love. XXIV BURDEN-BEARING WITH CHRIST ONCE when Jesus was speaking to the people gathered about him, he gave one of the most ^wonderful invitations and promises ever spoken, "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." But how surprised the people must have been when He went on to say, "Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls." What did Christ mean? What does He mean now as He asks his followers to bear a yoke ? How can there be rest in the hard, grinding toil that bearing a yoke implies ? The question has been answered thus : "Rest is not quitting This busy career; Rest is the fitting Of self to one's sphere. " 9 Tis the brook's motion. Clear, without strife. Fleeting to ocean After this life. " 'Tis loving and serving The highest and best; 'Tis onward, unswerving, And this is true rest." 87 88 THE VICTORY LIFE This is the secret of rest, serving with Christ, who is the yokefellow of every one of his followers. He does not ask them to bear the yoke alone. "In a visit to a glass-works a stranger was very much impressed by something in connection with the manufacture of the great earthen pots in which the glass is melted in the furnace. These pots must be able to stand intense heat for a long period. Many experiments have been tried in their manu- facture, yet there seems to be but one successful way. The carefully selected and prepared clay is moulded by hand. First a large circular layer of clay, for the bottom of the pot, is placed upon the floor of the moulding room. Next day, a ring of clay is put around the edge of it, and left to dry. Each day the wall of the pot is built up a few inches until, at the end of fifteen days, the pot is completed. The clay is soft, and if it should be formed all in one, the weight of the clay would itself destroy the shape. It must be made a little at a time, as it has strength to bear the weight of the new material added. " So Christ deals with his people, leading them on to greater and greater service for him, but never asking of them more than they can per- form. The trouble with so many Christians is that they try to bear more than God asks them to bear. As an Englishman recently said: "A number of men were once talking about the burdens of duty, and one of them declared that these burdens were some- times too heavy to be borne. 'Not/ said another, 'if you carry only your own burden, and don't try to take God's work out of His hands/ Last year I crossed the Atlantic with one of the most skilful and faithful captains of the great liners. We had a terrific storm, during which, for thirty-eight hours, WAY OF LIVING FOR OTHERS 89 he remained on the bridge, striving to save his passengers. When the danger was over I said to him, 'It must be a terrible thought at such a time that you are responsible for the lives of over a thousand human beings.' 'No,' he said, solemnly, 'I am not responsible for the life of one man on this ship. My responsibility is to run the ship with all the skill and faithfulness possible to any man. God himself is responsible for all the rest/ " Yet God does expect every one to bear his own burden. Henry Ward Beecher said to a boy who asked him for an easy place: "You cannot be an edi- tor; do not try the law; do not think of the ministry; let alone all ships, shops and merchandise; be not a farmer nor a mechanic; neither be a soldier nor a sailor; don't work; don't study; don't think. None of these are easy. Oh, my son, you have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave." THE WAY OF SERVICE "This is peace: To conquer love of self and lust of life; To tear deep-rooted passion from the breast; To still the inward strife; To lay up lasting treasure Of perfect service rendered, duties done In charity, soft speech and stainless days. These riches shall not fade away in life, Nor any death dispraise." XXV A WONDERFUL PARTNERSHIP SOME years ago, early on a winter morning when the river was full of floating ice, a Jersey City ferryboat crowded with men going to their work collided with a passing vessel. The ferryboat at once listed heavily and would almost certainly have sunk if it had not been for the presence of mind and heroism of a passing tugboat captain. He jumped aboard the vessel, located the gaping hole in the vessel's side, caulked it with mattresses and everything suitable for the purpose which could be discovered; then, when there was nothing else to fill a narrow space through which the water was pouring in, unhesitatingly thrust his arm into the opening. As the water was only trickling in, the ferryboat could be safely taken to its slip. When all was safe, strong men carried the hero to the am- bulance. He was unconscious. The arm which had been exposed to the grinding cakes of ice was torn to the bone. At once, to his surprise, the injured captain found himself a hero. Columns were devoted to the story of his exploit by the newspapers. His praise was in every one's mouth. It was different with Peter and the other Apostles when in the course of the work for Christ in Jeru- salem they healed the sick and acted as God's agents in performing other miracles. The benefited people rejoiced. But the priests were so jealous that they thrust the apostles into prison. "Well, if that's the reward we get, we'll stop try- 93 94 THE VICTORY LIFE ing to help folks," would probably have been the thought of the apostles, but for one thing: they had been commissioned by God to do his work. "What if we are in prison? Can't God take care of us here just as well as in the Temple?" He did take care of them. He sent His angel to open the prison doors, and they were set at liberty. "How convenient it would be to have angels around to help us in time of need!" is the remark of some who read this record of the apostolic days. God has promised that those who trust Him shall have the protecting care of His angels. For the fulfilment of that promise it is not necessary that a visible angel with wings, according to the popular conception of an angel, shall lift his hands in behalf of men. God has many ways of sending His mes- sengers — the word "angel" means messenger — into the world. Parents, friends, business associates, the child on the street, may all be God's angels, His messengers, to help those in need. This truth was illustrated by the story of a young man who was brought home from college with delirium tremens. When at last he came to his senses, he cried out bitterly to the doctor, "I've nobody to help me. They talk about God. I've never seen Him. The angels walked on earth in Bible days. Why can't God send an angel to me if I'm worth saving?" "You are not worth saving," said the doctor, "unless you try to save yourself. As for God's angels, the world is full of them. Your mother was sent as straight from God to you as any angel who ever brought a message to the world." The young man's heart was touched as he said, "You are right. I always took my mother as a matter of course, but I see now. She's His messenger." THE WAY OF SERVICE 95 When the apostles had been delivered, they were told to go to the Temple and preach. Perhaps it seemed to some a foolhardy thing for them to go on doing the very thing for which they had been arrested. Yet God had given them their orders, and it is never foolhardy to obey him; the foolhardy thing is to disobey. The apostles simply knew that they must obey; God would take care of the consequences. Their faith was as well grounded as that of the man to whom a scoffer said, "I sup- pose you would not hesitate if God should tell you to jump through that stone wall?" "No," was the answer, "for I would only have to jump at it; God would take care of the going through." The apostles proceeded to "jump at their stone wall." They began once more to preach, and they were again apprehended. "Didn't we tell you not to teach in the name of Jesus?" the priests demanded of them. The accused men did not quail before the angry words, but answered, "We must obey God rather than men." Those priests must have felt very much as did a manufacturer when he re- ceived the resignation of a Christian young man who had been quite successful in selling machinery for him until the day when new instructions were given which could not be obeyed without breaking God's law. That ringing answer of the apostles, "We must obey God rather than men," would make a superb motto for everyday life. Think how it would solve the problems of the street, the house of business, and the home! What a partnership it is! The best of it is that any one who will may enter the firm, and so multiply his life more than can be told. "One with God is a majority." Then get with God. XXVI HE IRONED OUT THE WRINKLES ONE day in May, 1907, when a party of Sunday- school pilgrims traveling by the Neckar was in mid-ocean, Dr. George W. Bailey was talking to them of the great Rome World's Sunday School Convention to which they were going. Knowing well what a temptation it would be to many to omit some of the convention sessions in order that they might have more time to see the Eternal City, Dr. Bailey urged all to be constant and faith- ful, and so to give to observers an object lesson of Christian singleness of purpose. At once arose a delegate, who challenged, "You do not expect us to attend all the meetings, do you?" It was a disturbing question. There was evi- dence of unrest among the delegates. There was curiosity, too. What would be the answer? And was there not reason to fear that any answer would increase the unrest, rather than diminish it? But Dr. Bailey was equal to the occasion. Look- ing with twinkling eyes intently at the questioner, he answered, quietly, "Not unless you really wish to." There was an involuntary sigh of relief. The situation had been saved by a single sentence. Dr. Bailey's handling of that difficulty was characteristic. He was noted, not only among Sunday-school workers but in business circles, as a man who knew how to pour oil on the troubled waters. "Let us iron out the wrinkles!" was a 96 THE WAY OF SERVICE 97 favorite expression with him. Somehow — and very- soon — the tense situation was "ironed out," and all was serene. Dr. Bailey insisted that for everything worthy in his character he was indebted to his father and mother. Theirs was a home where God was honored. His earliest recollections clustered about the family altar where, no matter what the weather or the pressure of work on the farm, all the "help" was expected to be present. Neither late rising nor the prospect of a busy day was permitted to shorten the time usually devoted to Scripture reading, singing, and prayer. It was the custom for all to read in turn. The father's prayers were earnest and impressive; he knew that he was speaking to One who loved him. The Bailey home was four miles from church. But the question was never raised by a member of the family as to whether or not he should attend service. No excuses were accepted. Those who were well enough to be up for breakfast were ex- pected to be in the carriage at the appointed time. It was Dr. Bailey's ambition to become a physi- cian; but it took years of work upon the farm and of teaching the district school before he could secure the needed education. Through all these years he was "ironing out the wrinkles" of circumstance. When at last his diploma was won, an office rented and arrangements made to begin practice, the young physician could not yet "put out his shingle." He was not a Christian. He felt that he did not dare begin treating the delicate human body until he was divinely guided. For days he wrestled with his problem. Then he gave himself to Christ, and united with the church. How happy he was! Now he could begin his work. He soon had a large prac- 98 THE VICTORY LIFE tice, but after eighteen months 5 experience his health broke down. Then he went into business. As a business man he realized that there could be no real satisfaction in life without earnest service in behalf of his fellows. So he gave liberally of his time and his means to Sunday-school work. Gradu- ally he became a leader by reason of a wonderful combination of industry, insight and suavity. It has been said that during a period of twenty-seven years, when he was chairman of an important group of Christian workers, not one question of moment was decided by a majority vote. Fre- quently differences of opinion were made known, but under his leadership these differences were adjusted. "It is possible for Christian men to agree," was his own explanation of this result. But others were not slow to speak of the quality that produced such results. "The iron and wine are mingled in his make-up," was one associate's explanation. "He has a will and a determination of purpose that would become a general, and a softness of expression and tenderness of heart like that of a mother." Such a combination must inevi- tably make for victory. XXVII VICTORY THROUGH UNSELFISHNESS AT the close of the summer vacation period one friend was asking another what had most impressed him during his weeks of absence seeking recreation. "I am afraid my answer will surprise you," came the response. "I saw the Great Lakes, but I cannot say they stand first in my memories of the summer. I looked on the grandeur of Niagara; I walked down the romantic Watkins Glen, spent weeks in the White Mountains, and watched the Atlantic in storm and calm. But as I look back on my summer, I think more often of a quiet, unassuming woman whose face attracted me because it was the calmest, most peaceful face I have ever seen. Of course I thought the reason was that she had never known trouble. I learned my mistake; her life had been full of trouble. 'Then how could she always be calm and serene?' My question was not answered until I had a wonderful glimpse into her life. "We were guests together in a little hotel in a New York village. The few other guests who were there had been attracted by the quiet, the beautiful scenery, and the half-dozen mineral springs near the hotel. ''The water from these springs is valued by the guests not only for its medicinal properties, but also because glassware, when properly sprayed with it, takes on the most beautiful yellow tints and lights. No such glassware can be purchased as that which, 99 100 THE VICTORY LIFE for years, the guests at the hotel who have learned the secret have been taking to their own homes and the homes of their friends. "For some years previous, it had been possible to hire a woman in the village to spray the pieces brought by the visitors for the purpose. But when the guests arrived this summer, they learned, to their disappointment, that the villager on whom they had depended had moved to a distant farm. Reluctantly they made up their minds to take their glassware home as they had brought it. "Then came the quiet young woman who taught me my lesson. She, too, had glassware to color, but, unlike her neighbors, she determined to see if she could not do the work herself; she had promised a friend at home to take her a sample. So she went to the farmhouse where the spring was, arranged with the housewife to use it, and made ready for setting her first piece under the sprayer. "That evening Mrs. B., another guest, learned of her success in these preparations. 'Oh, how I envy you!' she said. 'I did so want to get some saucedishes colored. If only I had known in time! But I must go home on Saturday/ "The quiet woman spoke up at once. 'Must you go so soon? Well, I think I can arrange to have your work done. It will take only two days, and, as I am to be here a month yet, I have plenty of time/ "On Saturday Mrs. B. went home rejoicing. In the evening the quiet woman was just starting for the spring with the first piece of her own work, when Miss C. met her. 'Mrs. B. showed me her beautiful dishes this morning/ she began. 'She is so fortunate. I wish you would take pity on me, and let me do just one pair of candlesticks. You see, THE WAY OF SERVICE IOI we are to have a church fair this fall, and I have promised them/ "Of course Miss C. was given a turn at the spring. She was fussy, and she spoiled her first candlesticks by leaving them in too long. So two days more were taken in fixing a second pair to her satisfaction. "Then the quiet woman managed to get two pieces finished. They were beautifully done. She was delighted with her success, and planned to put a vase under the sprayer in the morning. "After supper, however, the farmer's wife came to her and said that her pastor was about to move from the village. His wife had always intended to have a dozen or more pieces colored, but she had delayed, and now she was to leave in two weeks. Could she have the privilege of the spring for five days ? "Again the woman consented to yield her rights. The five days became ten. But the minister's wife secured her souvenirs. "Just about this time I heard the quiet woman smilingly remark to a friend (she didn't know I overheard her), 'I have two pieces, anyway, and I am sure I can get two more done before 1^ go away.' "The very next morning she was talking to an old lady who, with her invalid husband, had stopped at the hotel over night. When the springs were mentioned, the quiet woman told of the marvelous coloring properties of the waters, and brought from her room the two pieces she had succeeded in preparing. The old lady was charmed with them. She said she wished she could remain over a few days, that she might secure at least one piece for herself. There was a look of such longing in her eyes that the quiet woman said, 'I'll tell you how we'll fix that. You can get some plain pieces like 102 THE VICTORY LIFE these at the village store — I saw them yesterday. Leave them with me, and take my pieces home with you. I have several weeks yet, and I can get my work done in plenty of time/ "Well, you can guess the rest. The quiet woman saw other opportunities to be kind, and when the day of her own departure came, all she had to show for her season's work were the pieces to replace those traded to the old lady. "And here is the end of the story. I had a note from the quiet woman yesterday. It was in answer to one from me thanking her for kindness received — you see, I was one of the guests for whom she made way at the spring. She told me she had taken her two pieces to the friend for whom she had promised to prepare one. The friend was delighted. And when she was told to choose one she found it so hard to make the selection that she was asked to take both. 'You know, I go there every summer/ my friend wrote me, 'so I can get something for myself another time/ "Now," was the conclusion, "are you surprised that the one thing which made the deepest im- pression on me this summer was neither Niagara nor the ocean, but the peaceful face of my friend? It is a rare accomplishment to know how to put oneself last and do it gracefully; but it fills the life with peace," XXVIII VICTORY THROUGH TESTIMONY FRANK T. BULLEN, whose stories of sea life have captured the hearts of thousands, was trained in a Christian home; but he fell among evil companions. His awakening came when he was in the great pagoda at Rangoon, watching the worship of idols. Near him stood an educated Chinaman. After watching the sailor, the China- man observed, "I suppose you do not believe in this form of worship?" "I stared up at him in amazement," Mr. Bullen said, "and then replied, 'Why, certainly not. You don't either, I should imagine/ I confess I was not prepared to hear him say, 'Oh, yes, this is my religion; but you believe in Jesus Christ, I presume V "Thank God for that question!" was the ex- clamation of Mr. Bullen after many years. "It swept away the mists of unbelief. It gave me an opportunity of stating my position as far as I knew it. Gave me, too, an exalted sense of being able to bear witness to the truth of God in the person of his Son. Even out of the thick darkness of my ignorance this light flooded my soul, and I answered, 'Yes, I believe in Jesus Christ. . . . He lived among men, doing kindness to all, and, at last, misunder- stood, ill treated, and broken-hearted, He was put to death. He died as a sacrifice for our sins. And He waits now to receive all those who have honored Him by believing His words!'" When he became a Christian, Mr. Bullen had 103 104 THE VICTORY LIFE many other opportunities to testify for Christ. Of some he took advantage; others he passed by. With joy he told of blessings that followed his straightforward acknowledgment of his Master; with sorrow he spoke of the shameful effect on his life when he permitted fear of his fellows to lead him to be silent about his best Friend. Once, when he joined a new ship, he said not a word about his profession of Christianity, and ever afterward on that vessel he found Christian testimony impos- sible. "Sailing under false colors is always a risky as well as a dishonest proceeding," he declared; "and in this instance it did me spiritually an immense amount of harm." But he had a different story to tell of his life on another ship, where he was bold enough to let it be known at once that he was a Christian. "I bowed my head over my plate," he said, "and silently thanked God for my food. My colors were not only displayed, but nailed to the mast. If I proved recreant to them, I should not only be self-con- demned, but I should be bitterly despised by even the most godless among my shipmates." It is not strange that this proved a most glorious voyage. His own spiritual life was strengthened and several of the most wicked men in the crew became earnest Christians before port was reached. Sometimes his testimony for Christ by life and by word brought persecution. The men tried to make him miserable. They sent him to Coventry. But he was only driven to prayer and to the Bible for comfort and strength. When he stood at the wheel, or took his turn at the lookout, he thought over the promises of the Father and the words of Christ. And then he had great peace and joy, for a sailor came to him one night and said, "Look THE WAY OF SERVICE IO5 'ere, ole man, I sh'd like ter know sumfin' 'bout this 'ere 'ligion o' yourn. I've heerd lots o' stuff talked by mish'naries an' parsons, but I couldn't never make nothin' out o' it. On'y I b'en watchin' yer fer a long time now, an' it fair licks me how yer ken go on all this time with all hands a-chippin' at yer, an' yet yer don't seem a bit mis'bul." How these experiences of the lonely sailor show what rich blessings come to the Christian who testifies for his Lord, whether by his life or by his words proved by his life! His testimony may not be effectual in winning others to Christ, but it will certainly tell for his own growth toward Christ. When Christ says, "When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren," he is not thinking only of the brethren who need strengthening; he is thinking also of those who should seek to strengthen them. And when He gives the command to go and witness for Him, He promises to be with those who obey. Persecution is hard to bear, but patient endurance of persecution in the strength of the Lord is just another method of bearing witness for Him. And the patient endurance of persecution brings blessing and peace. Christ had this in mind when He gave the promise to those who are persecuted for right- eousness' sake. But perhaps the lesson from Mr. Bullen's experi- ences most needed by the young Christian is the necessity of putting himself in the way of witness- bearing by making it known that he is a Christian, and by making it known at once when he goes among new associates. Delay is dangerous. At the very first opportunity, the Christian should follow the sailor's example, and nail his colors to the masthead. Then rich blessings will follow. XXIX THE UNFAILING CURE DEPRESSION is one of the most deadly mala- dies known to the physician. No one is immune. Until a way is found to throw off its debilitating touch, life is clouded, days are cheerless, and the victim is a weariness to himself and to those who are unfortunate enough to associate with him. The cure is simple — forgetfulness of self, remem- brance of the needs of others, ministering to those who need the help we can give them. A wise army captain in the Philippine Islands knew about this cure. Two soldiers in his com- pany were so homesick that they moped about the camp all day long, pitying themselves and making themselves a nuisance. Punishment had been tried in vain. Then the captain sent them down to the Young Men's Christian Association in Manila. The secretary in charge knew the cure, and he applied it at once. Next day the corporal who had brought the soldiers from the camp was astonished when he hunted up the men. They were working in the hospitals, writing letters for the wounded to the people at home. "I'm ashamed of myself," one of them said to the corporal; "I'm a great big baby. Here these boys are, big and brave, and telling me fine things to put in their letters to cheer up their folks back home. Fm not going to be a fool any more." A young medical student, when almost ready to begin his life work, was compelled to seek health in Colorado. At first he was depressed; but soon 106 THE WAY OF SERVICE IO7 his thoughts turned to the needs of others. He was nominally a Christian, but he rarely attended church, and had never been in Sunday-school. He began to go to church and Sunday-school. He took a class of boys, and worked with them during the week as well as on Sundays. Soon life seemed to be worth while once more. A young teacher who was sent to a sanitarium thought that he might as .well give up. He knew he could not recover. What a hard time he was hav- ing! How difficult it was to abandon every activity when life ought to be all before him! He was one of the most woebegone looking patients in the establishment. But one day he happened to see a man in a wheeled chair into whose eyes the sun was shining. Of course he moved the chair. That was a beginning. In a few days he was so busy wheeling this man about the grounds, or reading to a blind man, or cheering an old lady, or playing with a crippled boy, that he had time for nothing else. Smiles displaced the look of gloom on his face. Depression vanished. Before he knew it, he was well on the road to the recovery of that health which he had thought to be gone forever. "Tell him he is making a mistake," a friend of the patient wrote to one who had an influence over him; "he was not sent to the hospital to tend babies and hang around old people; he was sent to get his health. M Fortunately the appeal was unheeded, for those in charge of the institution knew that there is noth- ing like unselfish regard for others as a cure for depres- sion. They had learned the wisdom of the appeal of Paul, that no one should spend so much time looking to his own things that he has neither time nor strength to look to the things of others. XXX LIKE HIM VICTORY and the peace that follows are not intended to be the possession of a fortunate few. These boons are offered to all. And often they become the possession of most unlikely- candidates for such blessings. Rev. George S. McCune, missionary to Korea, has told of a woman whose poverty seemed to mark her out for a life of unquiet misery; whose pock- marked face, cross eyes, tiny nose, fat body and small head made her a likely candidate for cruel and crushing jeers and insults. But she is the best loved woman in all her neighborhood. Her fame has gone out to the surrounding villages. Wherever she goes she is called "Jesus," because she tries to be like Him. Once a stranger saw her. She was not tempted to laugh at the face that would have been pitiful had it not been transformed by the glory of Christ Himself. "Who is the woman with the radiant face?" she asked. Then she would not be content until she found Hyensi, and from her learned that Jesus gives peace to all those who live with him. When a decision was made by the missionary board in Hyensi's town to send out another native Gospel worker, various candidates were talked of by the people, but no one seemed to think of the quiet Hyensi. The missionaries thought, however, that no one could lead others in ways of quietness and peace so well as Hyensi; yet they wished the 108 THE WAY OF SERVICE IO9 natives to feel that they were choosing the new worker. It was arranged that Pastor Kim should read to the assembled Christians a statement of the qualifications needed by the new worker. He made fifteen points. Among others were the following: "One who is always happy in Jesus. "One who is so full of Jesus that she thinks not of rules or ways and means in leading another to Jesus. "One who makes an effort to make others happy, and does it. "One who is not trying to keep from losing official position already gained. "One who has no anxiety about whether her health will hold out if she does much work." Before the fifteen statements had been read, the native women began to whisper, "Hyensi! Hyensi!" They wondered that they had not thought of her before. When Hyensi was told that she had been chosen, she wondered that any one could have thought of her for the work in which she would take such delight. And as the days pass her face becomes more radiant because to her is given the privilege of going into the homes of her humble neighbors and talking to them of her Friend as she helps in the sewing or in the cooking. To her the work she does is far from humble, for she is in part- nership with her Lord. When George Grenfell of Africa was asked how he could be content to give his life to the natives when honors were waiting for him as an explorer and an engineer, he replied that these things were but incidents in his work; his real work was that of a winner of souls. "The explorer's exultation which thrilled him when the morning sun flashed before his gaze the broad splendors of a previously undis- covered lake, was a faint emotion compared with 110 THE VICTORY LIFE the joy which possessed him when he saw the light of the knowledge of the glory of God transfiguring some dear black face which his ministry had turned toward the face of Christ. ... A poor Congo boy passes away in his presence, radiant with the Christian's victory over death. Grenfell rises from his bedside to bear witness that the sight of such another victory would be sufficient compensation for another fifteen years of toil in Africa." THE WAY OF FORGIVENESS "Thou knowest, not alone as God, all knowing; As man, our mortal weakness Thou hast proved; On earth, with purest sympathies overflowing, O Saviour! Thou hast wept, and Thou hast loved! And Love and Sorrow still to Thee may come, And find a hiding-place, a rest, a home. "Therefore I come, Thy gentle call obeying, And lay my sin and sorrow at Thy feet; On everlasting strength my weakness staying, Clothed in Thy robe of righteousness complete. Then rising and refreshed, I leave Thy throne, And follow on to know as I am known." XXXI AN ACID TEST WHEN the chemist speaks of a "test," he means "a procedure or reaction employed to recognize or distinguish any particular substance or constituent of a compound." Thus there is, for instance, the iodine test for starch, and there is the acid test for gold. This latter phrase, "the acid test," is frequently employed in a figurative sense in connection with character. "Yes, he is all right," the remark may be heard; "the acid test was applied to him, and he came out pure gold." A merchant determined to apply an acid test to one of the young men in his employ. For some time it had been known in the establishment that there was to be a promotion to a position of unusual responsibility. A dozen employes thought long- ingly of the tempting position; half as many felt they had a good chance to win. It was generally agreed, however, that there were but two real possibilities. One of these, Lawton, was a quiet, unassuming young man who had been doing good work for his employer for more than five years. "But I fear he doesn't stand as much of a show as Nelson," an interested bystander said; "he isn't self-assertive enough. He is conscientious, capable and dependable, but he doesn't take pains to im- press himself on the rest of us as he should. Nelson never allows us to forget his presence and his worth. Lawton needs to be more like him. To tell the "3 114 THE VICTORY LIFE truth, though, there isn't much choice between them. I am glad I don't have to make the difficult decision/' The merchant also found the choice difficult. At length lie realized that the two were so evenly- matched that he must have additional light before he could decide between them. He resolved to make a character test. He wondered how he was to do this, until he learned that Lawton and Nelson, who had been good friends, were growing apart. After a time he decided that the fault was Nelson's, for Nelson was saying bitter things about Lawton, and Lawton was saying nothing about Nelson. So far, he thought, Lawton was proving himself the better man. But here was an opportunity for a fur- ther test of both men. One day the merchant went to Nelson. "What do you think of Lawton's fitness for more respon- sible service, Nelson?" he asked. The reply came instantly, "I fear he could not give satisfaction; he is good as far as he goes, but he cannot go very far." Next Lawton was approached, and to him was put the same question as to Nelson. After a mo- ment's hesitation the answer was made: "I think well of him. I feel sure he has ability for many things for which he has not been tested." It is told of President Hayes that he once recom- mended for a position a man who had talked out- rageously about him. "How could you do it?" asked a friend. "Do you know what that man thinks about you?" "Oh, yes," answered Hayes, "but they asked me what I thought of him, not his opinion of me." Of course it is difficult to be fair in expressing our opinion of one who has seemed to fail in fairness to THE WAY OF FORGIVENESS II5 us. Yet a critical world expects just this of a man — that his personal judgment shall be inde- pendent of his personal feeling. Can we demand less of ourselves? And can we expect to know victory and find complete satisfaction in life until the expectation and the demand are satisfied? XXXII THE BEAUTY OF FORGIVENESS HE hates like a cousin/' is a proverb of the Afghans, among whom, as a missionary says, man's nearest relations are often his deadliest enemies. But a change is slowly coming over some of these very Afghans, in consequence of the life and example of Christian men and women. One of the most telling influences is the Conolly Bed in the Bukhara Mission Hospital, founded and main- tained as a memorial to Captain Conolly who, with another British officer, went to Afghanistan in 1841, on a mission of peace from his government. These officers were imprisoned and brutally treated for six months. Then they were placed by the side of their own graves and put to death. Captain Conolly's sister thought she would like to have her revenge; so she founded the bed. The Afghan patients who come to the hospital are told the story, and many of them go away thoughtful because of the revelation that there is something better than hatred and vengeance. Readers of the biography of a man of some fame find themselves warming to him when they read a letter which he sent to a young woman who had sought to injure him: "You have not done me any harm, and have not offended me at all. I never knew anything about the writings; and if I had, I should have been con- cerned merely for you, because you were the one 116 THE WAY OF FORGIVENESS II7 such a thing would injure, not I. The doer of wrong, and not the sufferer, is the one to be laughed at or pitied. I assure you I have never had and never shall have any feelings toward you but those of kindness and good-will." A delightful story of forgiveness has been told by a gifted writer of fiction. A woman took a little girl into her home, to rear as her own. She loved the little girl, but she was grieved because of the feeling that the child, who had a remarkable appre- ciation of the beautiful, thought her plain and commonplace. Madonna pictures, especially, ap- pealed to the little girl; she was always tracing in these resemblances to people she knew — never, however, to the woman who had adopted her. The day came when the child broke the woman's most treasured possession. At once she told what she had done and waited for some terrible punishment. To her amazement, the woman's arms were held out to her. She wondered a moment how any one could be so forgiving. Then she looked into the face bending over her and said, "I know now why none of the artist men have ever painted anybody like you; they just couldn't. You're too beautiful." That was fiction true to life. Forgiveness always beautifies the life of the one* who forgives, as it glorifies the life of the one who receives forgiveness. There was a day when a prophet said of Jesus, " When we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him." That is the judgment of those who refuse to become acquainted with Him. But when they study His life they see that there is no beauty like that of Him who said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." And those who learn to forgive any who have wronged them share in His transfiguring beauty. XXXIII I "AS YE FORGIVE" ONE of the most trying things Christ asks of His followers is to forgive their enemies, laying aside all grudges, and treating them as if nothing wrong had happened. This is the way God forgives. He puts man's sins behind His back. He removes them as far as the East is from the West. He hides them in the depths of the sea. He remembers them no more. These are His own statements concerning the manner of His forgiveness. Jesus taught that there can be no victory to the man who is unwilling to forgive others as God forgives him. This lesson was taught once to Peter, who had associated with Christ for a long time, had heard his words, had learned from Him the model prayer in which is the petition, "And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." Yet, on top of all this, he asked the question, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? until seven times?" He had learned a little — he was ready to forgive, and he was ready to forgive more than once, but he felt that there should be a limit to his patience. His limit was the perfect number, seven; surely this would indicate all that could be asked. Jesus' answer was emphatic. Seven times was not enough; the wronged man must be ready to forgive until seventy times seven, or an infinite number of times. Jesus wished His followers to learn once for all that they are to pay no more heed 118 THE WAY OF FORGIVENESS II9 to the number of times forgiveness becomes necessary than does God Himself. But there are those who try to get the best out of life without being ready to forgive those who have wronged them. To them God makes a tremen- dous statement: "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." There is crying need for men and women to learn the lesson Christ taught. Somehow people who are warm and tender and approachable in all other ways are like adamant when it comes to a question of forgiving an injury. This is one reason for so much unrest. How can there be peace in the heart that is unwilling to be like the forgiving God of peace ? XXXIV PEACE THROUGH FORGIVENESS DR. JACOB CHAMBERLAIN, the veteran missionary to India, has told of seeing an old man near a native shrine. Slowly, with beads in hand, he went about the shrine reciting his prayers and falling prostrate. Asked what he sought by these exercises, he answered, "Oh, sirs, I am seeking to get rid of the burden of sin. All my life I have been seeking it, but each effort that I make is as unsuccessful as the one before. My pilgrimages, penances and tears have been in vain. The Ganges water washed the foul- ness from my skin, not the foulness from my soul. And now my life is almost gone; my hair is thin and white, my eyes are dim, my teeth are gone, my cheeks are sunken, my body is wasted; and yet the burden of sin is just as heavy as when, a young man, I started in pursuit of deliverance. Oh, sirs, does your Veda tell you how I can get rid of this burden of sin and be at peace? Our Veda does not tell us how." Many of the Hindoos have learned to sing: 'Tis not by roaming deserts wild, nor gazing at the sky; 9 Tis not by bathing in the stream nor pilgrimage to shrine; But thine own heart must thou make pure, and then, and then alone, Shalt thou see Him no eye hath kenned, shalt thou behold thy King. 120 THE WAY OF FORGIVENESS 121 Yet they cannot make their own hearts pure, because they have not taken God's way. The consciousness of sin is universal. The burden weighs men down. They may deny this, declaring that their moral lives are irreproachable; but deep down in their hearts they know that this is not true. The consciousness of sin takes the joy out of life. Men want to live true lives, perhaps, but they find they cannot, alone. "The good that I would I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do," is their despairing thought. The first temptation is to keep still about sin, as if it were possible to forget about it or to blind the eyes of our fellow-men and of God himself to its existence. The Psalmist tried this, but in vain. He had to speak. His sins of thought and word and deed compelled him to make confession. His experience has been duplicated in thousands of lives. "No man need ever know about it, if you keep still," said one who had committed a wrong. "I will say nothing," was the answer, "but the story will become known. You will tell it your- self." So it proved; the burdened conscience demanded the relief of confession. Officers of the law count on this trait of human nature; frequently they are able to bring criminals to justice who would never have been discovered but for their own voluntary confession. When the Psalmist turned humbly and frankly to God, confessing his sin and pleading for forgive- ness, what a difference there was! At once he knew that his sin was forgiven, that God had pardoned hi£ iniquity. He had learned by experience that "he that covereth his sins shall not prosper." When, however, it is God that covers the sins, the sinner goes on his way with joy and gladness. 122 THE VICTORY LIFE One thing must be remembered, however, if the confession of sin is to bring peace: all sin must be confessed. Half-measures in dealing with sin can no more succeed than half-measures in dealing with disease. " Forgive all my sins," must be the cry of the man who is to receive God's blessing. Then what? Has the slate been cleaned in order that another score may be run up? Is forgiveness sought in order that fresh sins may be committed, these in their turn to make way for still others? That is not the way to find peace. There must be a new resolve. The "Please forgive me" must be followed by "HI try not to do it again." When the penitent seeks God, the purpose must be not only to get clean, but to keep clean. XXXV KNOWING THE LOVE OF GOD A MISSIONARY has told of a converted Buddhist in India who was reading the third chapter of the first epistle of John with his instructor. Looking at the first verse, reverently he spoke the words, "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be allowed to kiss His feet." His teacher corrected him, but the Hindoo insisted on his own rendering; and thus he gave his reason: "It cannot be ' Behold what manner of love the * Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the children of God'; children it cannot be — that is too much — too high — that had never entered into a broken heart." No, but it is in God's heart to call men His sons. It is not a matter of their first calling themselves so; it is God the Father Himself who has called them His sons, has chosen them for His own. The world needs more of the faith of the little girl who was reading with her mother in the New Testament. This was one of the verses of the chapter: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever be- lieveth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." Stopping for a moment in the reading, the mother asked, "Don't you think it is very wonderful?" The child, looking surprised, replied, "No." The mother, somewhat astonished, repeated the question, to which the little daughter replied, 123 124 THE VICTORY LIFE "Why, no, mamma, it would be wonderful if it were anybody else, but it is just like God." That man is victorious who has learned to believe in God as simply as that child. Instead of this, so many people are actually afraid of Him. They dread to think of Him. They believe that there is a God and that Christ is the Son of God. But their belief is like the belief of which Christ said, "The devils believe — and tremble." Such belief does not lead to keeping His commandments. The faith that saves does not inspire fear; it casts it out. As John says in his first epistle (chapter 4, verse 18), "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear." How do we know that we are sons of God ? how can we know? To answer just such questions John wrote the first letter that bears his name. His purpose is definitely stated in chapter 5, verse 13, thus: "These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God." The words "that ye may know" give John's object in a nutshell. The word "know" is the keynote of the epistle. This word appears thirty- one times in the five short chapters, less than four pages of the Bible. Thus it is the epistle for the man who would know the victory and peace that follow the certainty of God's forgiving love. XXXVI ANDREW JACKSON'S ROAD TO VICTORY FRED A. SMITH, the Young Men's Christian Association worker, was once speaking to a company of men in India. While he was talking he noticed one of his Mohammedan hearers who was much interested. From time to time this man would put his fingers in his ears in order to shut out the sound of words which, according to the teaching of his religion, he should not hear. But his face showed his eagerness; and sometimes he would forget to use his fingers. At the end of the talk he came to the speaker. "I can see yet the look of longing on his face as he began to speak," Mr. Smith has said. "Do you really believe Jesus Christ can forgive sins as you say, and that He can give peace to those borne down by the burden of their sins?" the man asked. "Indeed I do believe it," was the answer; "He can do just what he says." A moment the Mohammedan paused. Then he threw back his shoulders, and said, with an air of conviction, "Then He will conquer the world!" And with a sigh he turned and left the room. James Parton, in his biography of Andrew Jack- son, shows how the knowledge that Jesus Christ forgives sin, and action on that knowledge, changed the life of Jackson. Retiring from office, he had sought happiness and peace amid the quiet surroundings at his country home, The Hermitage, near Nashville. But retire- 125 126 THE VICTORY LIFE ment did not bring to him everything he sought. Long he tried to learn what was lacking. At last he succeeded. How he succeeded should be told in the words of his biographer. Two years after the close of his second term as President, Jackson was attending service at the little Presbyterian church not far from The Hermitage, his home, when Dr. Edgar, the pastor, preached. "The subject of the sermon was the interposition of Providence in the affairs of men, a subject in touch with the habitual tone of General Jackson's mind. The preacher spoke in detail of the perils which beset the life of man, and how often he is preserved from sickness and sudden death. Seeing General Jackson listening with rapt attention to his discourse, the eloquent preacher sketched the career of a man who, in addition to the ordinary dangers of human life, had encountered those of the wilderness, of war, and of keen political conflict; who had escaped the tomahawk of the savage, the attack of his country's enemies, the privations and fatigues of border warfare, and the aim of the assassin. 'How is it/ exclaimed the preacher, 'that a man endowed with reason and gifted with in- telligence can pass through such scenes as these unharmed, and not see the hand of God in his de- liverance?' While enlarging on this theme Dr. Edgar saw that his words were sinking deep into the general's heart, and he spoke with unusual animation and impressiveness. On the way home, General Jackson intercepted Dr. Edgar and begged the clergyman to go home with him. Dr. Edgar had a more urgent call, but he promised to see the general early the next morning. "The anxious man was obliged to be contented with this arrangement, and went home alone. He THE WAY OF FORGIVENESS 127 retired to his apartment. He passed the evening and the greater part of the night in meditation, in reading, in conversation with his beloved daughter, in prayers. He was sorely distressed. Late at night, when his daughter left him, he was still agitated and sorrowful. What thoughts passed through his mind as he paced his room in the silence of the night, of what sins he repented, and what actions of his life he wished he had not done, no one knows, or will ever know. . . . "As the day was breaking, light seemed to dawn upon his troubled soul, and a great peace fell upon him. "To Dr. Edgar, who came to see him soon after sunrise, General Jackson told the joyful history of the night, and expressed a desire to be admitted into the church with his daughter that very morning. The usual questions concerning doctrine and ex- perience were satisfactorily answered by the candi- date. Then there was a pause in the conversation. The clergyman said at length, "' General, there is one more question which it is my duty to ask you. Can you forgive all your enemies ? ' "The question was evidently unexpected, and the candidate was silent for awhile. "'My political enemies/ said he, 'I can freely forgive; but as for those who abused me when I was serving my country in the field, and those who attacked me for serving my country — Doctor, that is a different case/ "The doctor assured him that it was not. No man could be received into a Christian church who did not cast out of his heart every enmity. It was a condition that was fundamental and indispensable. "After a considerable pause the candidate said 128 THE VICTORY LIFE that he thought he could forgive all who had injured him, even those who had assailed him for what he had done for his country in the field. The clergy- man then consented to his sharing in the solemn ceremonial of the morning, and left the room to communicate the glad tidings to Mrs. Jackson. She hastened to the general's apartment. They rushed with tears into each other's arms, and re- mained long in a fond and silent embrace. "The Hermitage church was crowded to the utmost of its small capacity; the very windows were darkened with the eager faces of the servants. After the usual services, the general rose to make the required public declaration of his concurrence with the doctrines, and his resolve to obey the precepts, of the church. He leaned heavily upon his stick with both hands; tears rolled down his cheeks. His daughter, the fair young matron, stood beside him. Amid silence the most profound, the general answered the questions proposed to him. Then he was formally pronounced a member of the church. "From this time to the end of his life General Jackson spent most of his leisure hours in reading the Bible, Bible commentaries, and the hymn- book, which last he always pronounced in the old- fashioned way, hime book. The work known as 'Scott's Bible' was his chief delight; he read it through twice before he died. Nightly he read prayers in the presence of his family and household servants. But there has been published a descrip- tion of the family worship at The Hermitage which represents the general as delivering an extempore prayer. "The Hermitage church, after the death of Mrs. Jackson and the general's removal to Washington, THE WAY OF FORGIVENESS I29 had not been able to maintain itself; but the event which we have just related caused it to be reorgan- ized. At one of the first meetings of the resurrected church, General Jackson was nominated a 'ruling elder/ '"No/ he said, 'the Bible says, "Be not hasty in laying on of hands." I am too young in the church for such an office. My countrymen have given me high honors, but I should esteem the office of ruling elder in the Church of Christ a far higher honor than any I have ever received/" And in quiet, unostentatious service the hero of New Orleans found throughout the remainder of his life the peace he had sought so long. XXXVII THE VICTORY OF LOVE HAWTHORNE has imagined the race of man destroyed in a day. The world remains the same: houses, public buildings, cities, farms, are just as man left them when the summons came to him. A new Adam and Eve are sent to the earth with no knowledge of their predecessors. This knowledge must be gained by observation and conjecture. Fresh from God's hand, and so with no thoughts of anything but his handiwork, they are oppressed except when in the open fields with the blue sky and the warm sun above them. They are con- strained, however, to leave the green fields and the pleasant forests on a tour of investigation. Stores and houses are searched and their wonder is aroused. What a strange race must have been! They press on in their explorations, hesitate for a moment when they reach a grim and gloomy building, then enter in spite of their disgust. The building had been a prison. "The jailer has left his post at the summons of a stronger authority than the sheriff's. The jail, like the whole earth, is now a solitude. But here are the narrow cells. In- scriptions appear on the walls, scribbled with a pencil or scratched with a rusty nail; brief words of agony, perhaps, or guilt's desperate defiance to the world, or merely a record of a date." A gallows stares the explorers in the face; the noose is hanging 130 THE WAY OF FORGIVENESS 131 in its place, and though they know not the purpose of the instrument a shudder as of a chill passes over them. They cannot tell what it is or why it should affect them so; but the truth is that they have for the first time come face to face with sin. The prison was a hospital for the treatment of sin. The patients who were taken there were sick with the same disease as the jailers and judges who attempted to be their physicians. But because the one set of men had concealed the sin in their breasts, while others had suffered it to escape from hiding, the judges were commissioned by the state to imprison the men who could not imprison their sins. "In the course of the world's lifetime every remedy had been tried except the single one — the flower that grew in heaven, and was sovereign to all the miseries of earth. Man never had attempted to cure sin by love. But God — " Even before the day when man first chose to sin it was God's purpose to redeem the world by love. He planned to send His own Son into the world to live and die for their salvation. That day came when the Roman found no consolation in his philosophy, or in his riches; his only hope was in death, which to him meant total annihilation. This was the day when "On that hard pagan world disgust And secret loathing fell; Deep weariness and sated lust Made human life a bell" Pliny the Younger, a Roman author, cried out in his agony, "Give me some fresh comfort, great and strong, such as I have never yet heard or read. Everything that I have read or heard comes back now to my I32 THE VICTORY LIFE V memory, but my sorrow is too great to be reached by it." At last the time came for the carrying out of God's plan. Then all history centered on one day; one little town became the most important spot in the world. The town was Bethlehem, where Jesus was born; the day was the day of his birth. Perhaps Herod, the Roman governor of Palestine, had never visited that town. Had he been there that day; had he seen the Babe in its poverty, he would have scorned the Child. But selfish, scheming Herod, who wished to make for himself a place and a name, is remembered for one thing: it was during his reign that Jesus was born. Caesar, Emperor of Rome, gave himself little concern about Palestine, that far-away corner of his empire; but the events of Caesar's reign which he sought to have dated by his own life have been known in history according to their relation to the birthday of that Babe. It was the day of days, the day toward which all days were pointing, the day from which all days have come. An angel from heaven, with the glory of the Lord shining about him, brought the glad tidings that a Saviour was born. A chorus of angels listened to the words, then burst into song: "Glory to God in the highest. On earth peace, good will to men." The song of the angels has echoed through the years. Happiness is increased by its tones, tears are dried, sorrow is soothed and victory is won. For the message from Bethlehem is the thought of God Himself. "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son!" GOING TO THE SOURCE ROAD-MATES From deepest depths, O Lord, I cry to thee. "My love runs quick to your necessity" I am bereft; my soul is sick with loss. "Dear one, I know. My heart broke on the cross." What most I loved is gone. I walk alone. "My love shall more than fill his place, my own" The burden is too great for me to bear. "Not when Vm here to take an equal share" The road is long, and very wearisome. "Just on in front I see the light of home" The night is black; I fear to go astray. "Hold My hand fast, Vll lead you all the way" My eyes are dim, with weeping all the night. "With one soft kiss I will restore your sight" And Thou wilt do all this for me? — for me? "For this I came — to bear you company " — John Oxenham, in "All's Well/ XXXVIII THE ROAD TO GOD THERE are three roads a man can travel when he's been struck as I've been hit," said a famous man, after receiving the staggering word that his son had died in battle. "There is the road to despair, the road to drink, and the road to God. I've chosen the road to God." That is why the man is able to be as cheerful as ever, smiling on his friends, making their lives glad. He knows that those who keep company with God have a right to count on the fulfillment of Christ's promise to be with His own and to sustain them. The story of this man was told in a camp of Eng- lish soldiers. One of the men, who had tried in vain to satisfy the longings that had made him restless, became thoughtful. Finally he said, "He is right. I tried the road to despair; I tried the road to drink; now I'm on the road to God." And on that road he found what before he had sought in vain. From the battle-front in France came other testimonies of like nature. One told of an American Red Cross nurse. "When she arrived in France, she went to the American hospital. There she saw sights so appalling that they might shake the sanity of the sanest mind. But she knew God. She called to Him and He answered her call. He brought her strength as He had brought strength to so many women of France. She consoled and comforted all wherever she moved. Many a soldier blessed the wound that brought him to her ward, 135 I36 THE VICTORY LIFE and prayed that it might heal slowly. In those wards of carnage, something came into her life which made her more beautiful than she had ever been." The mother of five sons learned that the names of four of them, as well as of her husband, were on the nation's roll of honor; they had died in the trenches. "I thought she would be broken-hearted," said one who visited her at the time, "and I went out to comfort her. She greeted me with a calm face and, in response to my words of sympathy, she said: 'It is well. It is the will of the good God. I had five sons and my one good man. They were good boys. I loved them. I gave four sons and their father to France. It is well. I have the one son left. It is well/" Then came word that the fifth son also was dead. Another friend sought to comfort her. Again came the calm message: "It is the will of the good God. It is well." In "On the Trail of the Immigrant" this incident is related. "Two old, genteel-looking people always stood out from the coarse mass because they kept clean in spite of the odds against them in the steerage, and because they were always together. Up and down the slippery stairs they went, like two lovers. Even seasickness did not separate them, and when the sun shone they were on deck, solemnly smiling back to heaven. They had left their all in America. Their children were sleeping in the strange soil. And now they were going back to the little town in Austria from which they had gone thirty-seven years before. They felt too rich in one another to rail against their fate, and their complaint was as gentle as their pain was deep. They had come to America full, and now they were going home empty; GOING TO THE SOURCE I37 three sons and two daughters they had lost, and childless they were going back. But 'the Lord had given, and the Lord had taken away/ and they blessed the name of the Lord." But why should the calm serenity of these men and women in the midst of their pain, desolation, and disaster excite comment? They had taken the road to God, and He had given them victory. XXXIX STUDYING THE MESSAGE MANY years ago, on the shores of the Sea of Azov, there was a Jewish boy whose curiosity was aroused by a story told of Tolstoi. One day when the great Russian was traveling in the Caucasus, he made a speech through an inter- preter to a Tartar tribe. He spoke of Napoleon and of other famous generals. After he had con- cluded his address a Tartar leader said to him, "But you did not tell of the greatest of all, of a man so great that he forgave the crimes of his enemy. Will you tell us about him? The country he lived in is called America. His name was Lincoln. " Years passed before the Jew heard more of the great American. A writer in The Outlook has quoted his words: "A sailor friend returned from a voyage bringing a wonderful book in English. 'It contains/ he told us, 'things so true and so beautiful that they would bring tears to your eyes if you could read them/ So some pages were translated and hectographed for circulation among these friends. The book — it was Raynal's 'Life, Speeches and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln/ And so I came to your America, to the land of the man whose greatness of soul had reached the Sea of Azov. The speeches? Oh, I learned them long ago." After a time he found employment in a little basement electrical shop. While he worked he took delight in thinking of the great sayings of the man 138 GOING TO THE SOURCE I39 who lifted a people from slavery to freedom, who showed to a nation the way from bitterness to concord. But he wanted to read daily the messages that were already graven on his mind. Yet how was he to find the time when the struggle to make a living kept him occupied from early morning until late at night? He found the way. Many times a day, at the telephone, he had moments of waiting. So he fastened on the wall by the telephone the Gettysburg speech and the second inaugural. "When I wait for a telephone call my eye goes over them," he said to a visitor who noted how grimy and old they looked. "And do you know, I always find some- thing new and something fine — like a man who keeps his telescope turned all the time at one point in the heavens and ends by discovering a new star." We have access to messages as much greater than Lincoln's words as the Author of them is greater than Lincoln. The electrician could repeat the words of two of Lincoln's speeches, yet he felt it worth while to look at them daily, for he always found something new in them. In like manner earnest Christians have sought to saturate them- selves with the Word, in spite of seeming lack of opportunity. A farmer was accustomed to fasten a page of his New Testament to the plough handles, that he might glance at the words when he reached the end of the furrow and so have something to think of while he ploughed the next furrow. A housewife placed a selection of Scripture verses on the wall above the kitchen sink, that she might do likewise while she was washing the dishes. There is no doubt as to the result of such brooding on the Word. The Psalmist tells us, "Great peace have they that love Thy law." And Jesus said to 140 THE VICTORY LIFE His disciples, "These things have I spoken unto you, that in Me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. " It is im- possible to be in Christ, and so be sure of receiving the promised victory, unless we saturate ourselves with His words so that His words abide in us. XL 'A SOLDIER'S VICTORY I AM happy and at peace because I know that He is here, and watches over all His own." These were the words of a soldier of France, who asked to be allowed to fight the battles of his fatherland, although his time to take his place in the ranks was not due for another year. He could not wait to begin the service which he felt that he, as a Christian, was called upon to render. In his letters home — some of which have been published under the title, "For France and the Faith" — he told his belief that, when entering the army, "one must immediately take a positive attitude to show what he is: a Christian." He was true to his purpose, not only by spoken word but by expression and action. Wherever he went he was a source of wonder to his comrades. One of these, a simple peasant, watched him, heard him humming a bit of Beethoven, and learned to whistle what the Christian hummed; and the act gave him courage. Officers as well as enlisted men were moved by his calmness. One night, just before a battle, the major and the soldier prayed together, and the peace of the young man who knew that "our Father who is good certainly can protect His child," became the possession of the officer. Just before leaving for the front, the soldier wrote, "There is also and always that peace which passeth all understanding and which He has given 141 142 THE VICTORY LIFE me." This assurance of his could not be shaken; his expression of it was positive. "I know, with an unchangeable knowledge and invincible confidence, that the basis of my faith — God our Father, Christ risen and living, man subjected to the law of the duty to love — is indestructible, that it is firmly founded upon the rock." Both the measure and the character of his Christian life were made evident in a letter he wrote home one Sunday: "For me the military life has simplified everything. Things have taken on their true values and full significance. Some difficulties which seemed insur- mountable have disappeared. Intellectual sacrifices which I thought I could never accept have taken place almost of themselves, without a pang. And there results a new vitality, a desire for intense action. And then, there is always peace. How- ever, I fear this peace both for myself and for those I love, because too often it is only human. By this I mean that it is weakness and resignation, in place of being the full consciousness of a positive duty and a real force. And I often pray as follows for myself and for those I love: "'Lord, our God, our loving Father, stir up our souls in order that they may not be like stagnant waters. Do not permit us to sleep in a cowardly security, in a lifeless calm, believing that it is peace. On the other hand, give our hearts the power to suffer intensely in communion with all grief, to revolt against all injustice, to be thrilled by the appeal of every noble and holy cause. Lord, our Christ, Thy Son, suffered. He wept over the death of His friend. He wept over Thy rebellious people. He wept over His work which threatened to end with His earthly life. But He lived so intensely and so GOING TO THE SOURCE I43 humanly that He was able to say to us men, "I am the life." Lord, make our hearts alive. Then will Thy peace descend upon them, not as the snow which benumbs and freezes, but as the warmth of the sun which revives the sap in the very veins of the earth. O Lord, may Thy peace be with us; Thy peace and not the peace of men. Amen/" Peace like that persists. It persisted in the case of the soldier. Four days before the attack which ended his service as a soldier on earth, he wrote a message which was later found in his pocket: "Know that at the moment of departure, looking steadfastly within, I believe that I can say without arrogance and also without false shame that 'I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith/ and I would that all my friends, all those who are every moment with me and whose hearts beat with mine, could repeat the words of our hope, 'Because I live, ye shall live also/" And so, in quietness and confidence, he went out to the death that was the gateway to a larger life. XLI THE ROAD TO VICTORY A FEW years ago a young man was taking a bicycle tour through Scotland. It was not always easy to follow the roads. Turns and cross-roads were frequent. Often it was necessary to ask for other guidance than that furnished by the route book. Sometimes the directions given in answer to inquiries were puzzling because of the multiplicity of details. He was told to turn to the right here, to the left there, to take the third road to the south after crossing the second main road beyond him, and so on, till he was so confused that there was danger of forgetting even the first turning. But once a man told him how to proceed for two or three miles, and added: "I sha'n't burden you with any more. That is as much as you can remember. When you reach the point to which I have directed you, ask at the black- smith's shop for further directions." Often the young man has thought of that stranger's words when reading of Christ's dealings with His apostles. He told them many things about Himself and His mission in the world, about themselves and their duties to the world and to Him. As He talked to them He was carefully watching to see how well they understood. When they could receive no more, He stopped short. "I have yet many things to say unto you," He added, "but ye cannot bear them now." Then He promised that these things should be revealed to them in due 144 GOING TO THE SOURCE I45 time. "Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth." Christ pursues the same progressive method of revelation with His children to-day. He does not show us everything at once. He does not cumber our minds with so many details that we are dis- tressed, but He gradually reveals to us what He desires us to know. Truth follows truth, event follows event — not too rapidly, not too slowly, but just as we are able to bear them. Each truth and each event is planned by Him as a stepping- stone, by means of which we are to be prepared for what follows. What an answer to our longing to know what the future has in store for us! A knowledge of our future would overwhelm us; so God is revealing that future day by day, as He sees we are ready for it. We must just ask Him for directions every day and every hour, and await His revelations in the trust which sings: "/ do not ask to see The distant scene — one step enough for me" In His method Christ knew how to warn, how to woo, how to win. He studied his hearers, just as we must study those to whom we go, varying our methods according to their needs. He taught by example, as well as by precept, as, for instance, when he gave the lesson in humility by washing His disciples' feet. How shall we hear the voice of Christ? Shall we follow the example of the office boy, who, in- structed by his employer to listen for a signal from his room, at once began to be so occupied with his own noisy performances that the signal could not be heard? Or shall we follow the example of Mary, I46 THE VICTORY LIFE who delighted to sit at the feet of Jesus ? We can sit at His feet by reading His Word every morning, lifting our hearts in prayer, remembering all the day long the message we have read, and at night telling Him all about the events of the day and asking His judgment upon them. Thus, day by day, will His will become clearer to us. XLII HOW COULD HE DO IT? WHY does full consecration to Christ seem impossible to so many people? They know what things they ought to do for Him, but they say, "I cannot do this, and it is of no use to try/' Yet they admire the man or woman who finds this possible. Thus a traveler admired a missionary who was about to return to Africa when, in reply to the question, "When shall we meet again?" the missionary said, "Never again on earth. My wife is waiting for me at the Cape. When we go in this time it will be never to come out again. I am going back to my people to stay." But the traveler thought, "How can he do it? How can he smile as he speaks of going into the heart of Africa for life?" The answer is simple. Because the missionary was living daily in the spirit of the words written on a fly-leaf in his New Testament: U I cannot do it alone. The waves run fast and high. And the fogs close chill around: The light goes out in the sky. But I know that we two Shall win in the end — Jesus and I. "Coward and wayward and weak I change with the changing sky. To-day so safe and brave, To-morrow too weak to fly. But He never gives in, So we two shall win — Jesus and I" H7 I48 THE VICTORY LIFE The missionary knew that God never asks one of His children to bear a burden that is too great for him; He Himself is ready to bear the heavy end of the load. This was the thought in the mind of an earnest woman who wrote to her suffering mother, "More pain? May it be more support, more grace, more tenderness from the God of all comfort, more and more! May we not expect the mores always to be in due proportion to each other ?" And why not? For this would be only counting on the assurance given by Paul, "My God shall supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus/' and on the promise of God spoken to Asher, "As thy days, so shall thy strength be." A visitor to a battlefield in France told of two men. "One, about twenty-three years of age, lay on his back, his legs tensely doubled, elbows thrust back into the ground and fingers dug into the palms of his hands, eyes staring in terror and mouth wide open. I could not help carrying away with me the picture of fear," said the visitor, "and, I thought to myself, that man died a coward. Just alongside of him, resting on his left side, lay a giant stretched out easily, almost graceful in death. His two hands were laid together, palm to palm, in prayer. Be- tween them was a photograph. The look upon his face was calm and peaceful. The contrast of his figure with his neighbor's struck me. I noticed that a paper protruded from his partly opened blouse, and picked it up and read the heading, 'A Mighty Fortress is Our God.'" XLIII WHEN GOD LEADS AS they journeyed through the wilderness the children of Israel were not permitted to take one step without God's presence. The cloud went before them by day, and the fire went before them by night. When the fire or the cloud rested on the tabernacle, it was a sign that God meant the Israelites to wait. When the fire or the cloud was taken up from the Tabernacle, it was the sign that they were to move forward, following God where He went. Thus everything was ordered by God. At the command of Jehovah they journeyed; at the command of Jehovah they rested. When God said, "Stay/ 5 they were to stay until God said, "Go forward," no matter how long the delay. At even, in the morning, journeying or encamping, in holidays and workdays, they were to keep with God. How simple it all was! One is tempted to say on reading the record, "How I wish God would guide me as clearly." He does — when He is given the opportunity. When He is asked, He tells very plainly what one is to do, where he is to go, what he is to say. The Christian who says he has never experienced this unfailing guidance has reason to doubt, not God's fulfilment of His promise, but his own faithfulness. It is impossible for one to go thus where God leads unless he reads the book of directions He has given for the journey — the Bible. There is an 149 150 T ft E VICTORY I I F E answer there to all questions as to duty. These answers are not usually found by the one who opens the book at random, but by the humble Christian who reads, studies and meditates on the Word. "The opening of Thy words giveth light," is a promise that never fails. Prayer, too, is a necessity to the Christian who would have God lead him — prayer in the closet, prayer at the family altar, prayer of thanksgiving at the table, prayer with and for others, prayer in the midst of the day's business, prayer in God's house, prayer always. There are Christians who are ashamed to be known as those who seek God's guidance. But all should be proud to be found in the company of Lincoln, who, in the darkest hour of the Republic, "wrapped his face in his mantle and went out into the night to ask a man of God to pray with and for him." All should learn a lesson from General "Chinese" Gordon, who was accustomed to put his handkerchief at the opening of his tent when he prayed, and so told the world that he was alone with God and must not be disturbed. . , No one who seeks God's leading in these ways need ever worry. The one sure way to win our victory, to be at peace, is to be the friend of God, walking with Him, talking with Him, doing His work. XLIV "TAKE MY HAND!" A CHILD who was just learning to talk lived in a house by the side of a highway used daily by hundreds of automobiles. She had been told that she must never cross the road except in the company of some one old enough to care for her. She obeyed, literally and always; no one could persuade her to step from the curb until her hand was clasped tight in the hand of a responsible guide. Once her father called to her from the opposite side of the road, and urged her to come to him, but she stood still, holding out her arms, and saying, pleadingly, "Hand! hand!" We all have a difficult road to travel. Dangers are many, and they cannot all be seen. Fortunately we do not need to travel the road alone, at any time, or under any circumstances, for there is One who not only promises to be with us, but pleads with us to take His hand. He says, "I am Jehovah thy God . . . who leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go." Yet we persist in going alone. We say in excuse, perhaps, that the way is perfectly safe and plain; that no harm can come to us here. Or we allow ourselves to feel that we must not trouble God to guide us in our small affairs. As if anything that concerns one of His children could be too small for God's attention! Why should we dishonor Him by thinking He is like the man to whom the child, wishing to cross the road, asked for "Hand! hand!" only to meet with the rebuff, "No, child, I am not 152 THE VICTORY LIFE going your way." God is always going our way, if it is the right way; and if it is the wrong way He will still offer to us His hand, saying, "This is the way, walk ye in it." When Mary Slessor was about to go into the interior of Africa, where no white man or woman would be near her, her friends told her she was going on a forlorn hope, and that no power on earth could subdue the Okoyong among whom she was planning to live, save a consul and a gunboat. But she smiled and went on with her preparations. She knew that her hand was clasped by the hand of her Leader. As she drew near to her destination she began to wonder if her friends had been right, after all. "A feeling of helplessness and fear came over her. What unseen perils might she not meet? . . . Her heart played the coward; she felt a desire to turn and flee. But she remembered that never in her life had God failed her. . . . Still the shrinking was there; she could not even move her lips in prayer; she could only look up and utter inwardly one appealing word, ' Father !'" That call was the appeal "Hand! hand!" and God gave her the reassuring pressure of His hand that enabled her to go to the dreaded people and spend long years among them, facing dangers undreamed of, and coming out victorious in many a conflict. Henry N. Cobb put in words the Christian's cry for the Father's help in daily difficulty, and the Father's gracious answer: " The way is dark, my Father! Cloud on cloud Is gathering thickly o'er my head, and loud The thunders roar above me. See, I stand Like one bewildered! Father, take my hand. GOING TO THE SOURCE 153 And through the gloom Lead safely home Thy child." 1 The way is dark, my child! but leads to light; I would not always have Thee walk by sight. My dealings now thou canst not understand. I meant it so; but I will take thy hand, And through the gloom Lead safely home My child." XLV PURITY AND VICTORY IT is absence from God that causes tumult. Those who see God, who live in constant touch with Him, who rejoice that He is round about them, that He is their close Companion always, have found the road to victory. And it is impossible to enjoy such intimate association with God unless the heart is pure; no one can walk with God, and at the same time be willing to make place in his life for the things that are impure. "Can two walk together except they be agreed ?" is one of the most searching questions ever written. The Book in which it is asked provides material for an answer: "He is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and he cannot look on iniquity." The lesson is impressed by the statement of Jesus, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." The story of Donald Hankey, the soldier-author of "The Student in Arms," is a commentary on both question and answer. His was a life of struggle and tumult until he found God; then he grew in likeness to his Friend until one who knew him well could say, "He is the most beautiful thing that ever happened." He was anything naturally but what he came to be. He spoke of himself as "timid, if not a coward." Once he spoke of an associate who was "a great slacker, and more timid, physically and morally, than even I." Yet there came a time when, in the trenches, he was able to write the chapters of one 154 GOIN r G TO THE SOURCE 1^5 of his books, where, as one of his fellow-officers wrote, "none of us could concentrate sufficiently to write a letter." He had no thought of fear, because he was on intimate terms with God. His intimacy with God was both cause and result of the purity of thought and life for which he was remarkable. Of a fellow-student he once wrote, "He talks about things that I won't even think." When he was in training for his professional career he had, of course, many temptations to an unclean life, but he resisted all allurements. He did not speak of it as resistance; he said, "I could never bring myself to transgress, although I knew that transgression was the road to adventure. . . . However much I wished to be in the swim, my instinct for the moral and religious code of home was too strong for me. It required no self-control to prevent myself from slipping into blasphemy and filth. On the contrary, in order to do so I should have had to violate my strongest instincts, and exercised a will to evil much stronger than any will power that I possessed at that time." In one of his essays he spoke of the secret of such purity: "The only men who are pure are those who are absorbed in some pursuit, or possessed by a great love, be it the love of clean, wholesome life, which is religion, or the love of a noble man, which is hero worship, or the love of a true woman." Later he expressed his views in stronger terms: "To be at our best, we must share God's viewpoint." Frequently he expressed the conviction that the man who keeps company with God need know no persistent turmoil. "It always seems as if peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and purity, went with him wherever he goes," a friend said of him. Thus he was true to his ideals, for he 156 THE VICTORY LIFE declared, "Greatness is founded on inward peace." By peace he did not mean freedom from all cares, anxieties and fears, but a way of escape from them, for "the call of Christ is a call to a life of external turmoil and internal peace. It is a call to take risks, to risk poverty, unpopularity, humiliation, death. It is a call to follow the way of the Cross. But the way of the Cross is also the way of peace, the peace that passeth understanding. . . . The whole teaching of the Gospels is that we have got to find freedom and peace in trusting ourselves implicitly to the care of God. We have got to follow what we think right quite recklessly, and leave the issue to God." The same philosophy of life enabled him to inspire his men as they were about to go "over the top." He told them that if they were wounded they would be sent home, while if they were killed, there was nothing before them but the Resurrection. The outlook on life of this Christian soldier becomes still more plain when one reads of his statement of his reason for unselfishness: "To be the center of one's universe is misery; to have one's universe centered in God is the peace that passeth understanding. The boaster hides, and the egotist trembles. He whose care is for others forgets to be afraid." ^ So this Christian soldier walked with God. His heart was pure, and his life was victorious. LOOKING THROUGH GOD'S EYES 'O God of Calvary, O Lord divine! Hold me and I am held! I cannot slide When pressing closely to thy bleeding side, Though men and devils 'gainst my soul combine! Nor shall I wander far, if in the veil Of Jesus' flesh my anchor has been cast; But I shall hear the welcome plaudit — i Hail, Beloved ! enter into rest ' at last." XLVI A CHANGE OF AMBITION IN 1844 Walter Carter was drawing saw-logs to the mill from the woods on the farm owned by his father in Saratoga County, New York, when he was given a letter from his brother Robert, a publisher in New York City. The letter informed him that he was needed in the New York store as an assistant. Would he come? He went. In the city he was attracted by the evidences of wealth on every hand. His brother was listed among the rich men of the city, and his respect for him was therefore increased. "I entered on my new life buoyant and full of hope/ 5 he wrote later. "I looked around me care- fully to study the secret of success. I found that wealth was the object of worship on the part of the multitude; and I studied the character and qualifica- tions of the successful men. ... I have good health, no bad habits, a good business education, a good social position, I am prudent and economical, and I cannot see why I cannot in due time become a millionaire." He longed to see John Jacob Astor, whom he had heard called the richest man in New York. But the opportunity did not come until one day when he was sent on an errand. That day he saw something that gave him pause. He has told of the experience. "I saw an old, feeble man coming out of a two- and-a-half-story brick house, men supporting him on either side. As he came down the steps to a 159 l60 THE VICTORY LIFE plain carriage, he missed his footing and came near falling, and, as he turned his face to the man on that side, he seemed so angry that I thought the posses- sion of nine millions would not compensate for the evil temper the face betrayed. On my way home- ward I had some solemn thoughts on the great purpose of life." He was still thinking when he returned to the store. There he found everybody busy, packing boxes to go by the Albany boat at six o'clock in the evening. "It was then five," he wrote in his biog- raphy, "and the porter was called to take the boxes down on his hand-cart to the boat. Irish Tom was a good old man, very poor; he was often run into by the drays and his cart broken, and a subscription would be taken up to pay for repairs. When at leisure he was fond of reading his New Testament, which was well thumbed. As I was the last clerk, I was sent to find Tom, who had disap- peared. At last I found him behind a pile of boxes, reading his New Testament. I called, 'Tom, hurry, hurry! Get ready for the boat/ He replied so cheerfully, so happily, 'Oh, Mr. Walter, just one moment; hear this one promise/ and he read one of the sweet promises of God's Word. That night in reviewing the day, I offered the prayer, * Rather, O Father, the position of old Tom than that of Mr. Astor.' I have never forgotten this scene, and have never repented of my choice. After all, Agur's prayer was a grand one: 'Give me neither poverty nor riches/" From that day it was Walter Carter's ruling ambition to be God's man, earning money for Him, spending money and spending himself in his Master's service. For fifty years he was known as a devoted Christian. XLVII THE HEROISM OF THREE WHAT is a hero? Longfellow asks the ques- tion, then owns his inability to answer, by saying, "Why, a hero is as much as one should say — a hero." The dictionary maker is braver; he declares that the characteristics of a hero are courage, bravery, fortitude, unselfishness, and says that a hero is "a prominent or central personage in any remarkable action or event." All will agree that the former part of the defini- tion is good. But how about the latter part? Must the hero be prominent? How shall the definition be revised after thinking of the following three men of whom the papers or books have told recently? The first of these was a young Scotch Presbyterian. When the Great War broke out his relatives dis- couraged him from going to the front; they thought he was not strong enough. But he thought, "A time comes in every man's life when he is asked if he will go forward, if he will make a venture, at the cost of a great change in his outward life." He de- cided that the time had come for him. That the decision was made at cost of severe struggle appeared when he wrote a few months later: "There was a time when I clung fondly to my personal existence, the petty me. But that stage is past. Nothing more shocked me than some one saying that my joining the army was a waste, a throwing myself away. That remark showed an utter blindness to the issues at stake." The last sketchy entry in 161 l62 THE VICTORY LIFE his diary told still more: "O glorious life! Cut off from books, the precious little Book. Never so free of care. Naturally a coward. The thing so huge. The little self." Only a little while after this was written he was killed while making an at- tack on a trench. The comrade who found his body said, "He just lay very peacefully, with a smile on his face." The second hero was a young business man who, after a deed of signal bravery on the field of battle, received the Cross of the Legion of Honor. He insisted that many of his comrades deserved the decoration more than he. Then he told of his purpose to "carry a sword across the barriers clean and bright." "The passion of self-sacrifice, the passion of Paul, of Christ" — so one who knew him said — "mastered him to the day of his trium- phant death on the field." Unlike these two men, David Yonan, a Persian nobleman who came to America to be educated for missionary work among his own people, lived and died in peaceful surroundings. At Davidson College, North Carolina, he was known as an un- selfish Christian, and everybody honored him. Just as he was ready to begin his life-work, a friend, swimming in the river, called for help. "I must save Fred's life," he shouted, then dashed into the water, from which he did not come out alive. His work was done. "Many of Yonan's friends and fellow-students are to-day leading lives that are higher and nobler because of his heroism and self- sacrifice," one who has written of his career has said. These three men were heroes before they died; they were Christian heroes. Because they lived like heroes they were ready to die like heroes. But THROUGH GOD'S EYES 163 it is not necessary to die in order to be a hero, nor is the soldier the only hero. Every community is full of heroes who are daily sacrificing self for others in entire unconsciousness that there is anything remarkable in their lives. They are not famous. Perhaps no one has ever stopped to think of them as heroes. But there is One who knows all about them, and there will come their recognition day, when He shall say to them, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me." XLVIII DOING ONE'S BEST JESUS had the knack of saying things that hit the nail on the head; and His words were just as appropriate for the day in which we live as for the day when they were first spoken. This is not to be wondered at, for He knew the heart of man, and He knew the needs of the world, things that are the same in all ages. The familiar parable of the talents is a case in point. Jesus was telling the people how to make the most of themselves and their opportunities, the reward that waits for those who bend every effort to this end, and the scorn of the world for those who neglect their talents and fritter away their opportunities. The story is simple. A busi- ness man was going on a journey. On leaving home he called to him three employes. Having sized up the first as a shrewd financier and a faithful ser- vant, he said to him, "Here are five thousand dol- lars." (He said talents, not dollars, but if this business man had lived to-day and in America he would have said dollars.) He knew that while the second man was just as faithful, his ability was not so great, so he gave to him only two thousand dollars. To the third man, of whom he was just a little doubtful, he gave only one thousand dollars. To all he said, "I want you to make the best use you can of these sums. Report to me when I re- turn home." What a splendid opportunity these men had to 164 THROUGH GOD'S EYES 165 show what was in them! They were handicapped by no instructions; they could use the money as they saw fit. But they must use it in the interests of the man for whom they were working. The first man saw a good business chance, and he took it. When the employer returned he was able to report that the money in his charge had been doubled. The man with two thousand dollars did as well in his venture. But the third man didn't even make an effort. "What's the use?" he thought. "My employer is a hard man. What right has he to expect that I'm going to run risks and work hard for his gain? I'll keep his money for him, of course. But catch me troubling myself for a rich man who has grown fat on what would be divided among us poor people if we had our rights. I krtow what I'll do: I'll just bury the money in the earth. It will be perfectly safe there, and the boss will have exactly what's coming to him and not one cent more." Then Jesus told of the return of the rich employer. The first and second employes proudly made re- port and received deserved praise for their faithful- ness and a promise that they should have the best that he could afford them. But the third man could only say, defiantly, in effect, "Here's your money. I've kept it safe in the earth for you. What are you going to do about it?" He found out. His employer not only left in the hands of those who had proved their ability and faithfulness the sums so well used, but he told them to go on increasing them and enjoying the power that came from their possession. Moreover, he acted as wise men continually act — he took away what the incompetent man had and gave it to the competent man. "For unto every one that hath l66 THE VICTORY LIFE shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away." Jesus was not teaching that it is necessary to be sharp in the use of money. This idea was well contradicted by ex-Governor Hughes, of New York, when he said: "Don't follow the man who thinks it is American to be slick. The old way, the steady way, is the right way: put a little more in the measure than you need to give a good basketful of fruit, and don't simply have a little display on top of superficial attention and industry." The lesson Jesus designed to teach in the parable is that men are put in the world to make the most of themselves for his glory and for the benefit of their fellow-men. Sometimes this can be done by money-making, if the man of money knows how to use his money as a gift from God. Always it can be done by the use for others of the best we have. Our best may be very sim- ple, but if this is given freely, God will bless it. The papers told of the discharge of a cripple from a hospital. He had no money; one would think he had no talents. But he had a smile that endured in spite of his pain. As "Smiling Joe" he became known, and that perennial smile did a world of good to those who saw it. One writer, telling of this, said, "A happy smile keeps life so sweet." So many people make themselves miserable by thinking of the thing they can't do, to the utter ignoring of the thing they can do. But God does not ask us to do the things we can't do; he only asks that we do our best. And those who do their best find the victory that is promised to the burden- bearer who works with God. THROUGH GOD'S EYES 167 There is often another startling result of doing our best, even when the thing we do is not the thing we wish to do: before we know it we are doing the very thing we longed for. A case in point is that of a missionary who died in Japan in 191 5. When he graduated from the seminary he longed to go as a missionary. But he was not accepted by the Board of Foreign Missions be- cause of his weak heart. So he went to Japan as a teacher for the Government. He spent his spare time in doing missionary and evangelistic work, and was so successful that the missionaries at the station nearest him asked for his appointment by the Board. In 1905 the request was granted. For ten years he worked effectively. At the time of his death he was engaged in what has been called "the most complete and courageous scheme of city evangelization to be found in Japan." His three years as a Government teacher had equipped him for missionary work as nothing else could have done. Other men who work with singleness of heart in an unsought field may take courage. The tedious task of to-day should be the fruitful preparation for the glorious chosen service of to-morrow. XLIX HIS ROAD TO GOD BAYNARD RUSH HALL was one of the thousands of Easterners whom the hard times that followed the War of 1812 led to emigrate to the New Purchase, the territory in Indiana obtained by treaty with the Indians in 1818. The intensely interesting story of Mr. Hall's ex- periences on the journey and during the seven years in the Indiana wilderness has been told in "The New Purchase/' He showed himself "a young man who had eyes to see, with a cultured background, with a power to discriminate and to distinguish the significant, and, above all, he had the virtue of interest and industry ... to write down what he saw and understood, to preserve it for us, for poster- ity and for history." Mr. Hall proved that true culture, far from mak- ing a man unfit for mingling on even terms with people of all sorts and conditions, prepares him for the most helpful life in whatever circumstances he is placed. He "entered with spirit and sympathy into all the life of the backwoods. He became a skilled marksman with the rifle; he enjoyed the shooting matches; he learned the art of rolling logs; he became a skilled and practised hand at the wood-choppings; he learned the manners of the quilting parties; ... he clerked in a country store and ground bark in a tannery." There is nothing like a season of doing without conveniences that have seemed a matter of course, 168 THROUGH GOD'S EYES 169 to make one fully appreciative of them. Thus Mr. Hall learned from his pioneer experiences to enjoy the " plain, everyday conveniences at home, once undervalued and perhaps despised, but which belong to the tenor of life"; and to "bear with good humor a thousand petty disquietudes of civilized life." He learned that pioneer life could cure one "of a very common and dreadful malady, called 1 the fidgets/" Another lesson that Mr. Hall learned for himself and then taught to others is that when one is dis- turbed or anxious or worn out, there is nothing like a day with Nature to soothe and calm and give rest, and that when one is content and joyful one of the best ways to continue so is to go out of doors and drink in the beauty of God's world. So "amid the mire and the briers of the field, the wallows and mudholes in the road, amid the paw-paws, the sassafras and the sycamores, he saw not only the homely side of life but he had an eye and a heart for the grandeur and beauty of his primeval sur- roundings — the warbling birds, the bounding deer, the racing squirrels, the giant trees, the everlast- ing shade, the gleaming sunlight by day, the clear blue sky at night over the camp-meeting tent, like a dome radiant with golden stars." Thus his biographer speaks of him. He himself, in the chapter of his journal where he told of floating down the Ohio River on a raft, wrote thus: "But the sunsets, and the twilight! The witchery then entranced the very soul! All of poetry, and of shadowy forms, and of sinless elysium, all of magic in musings and dreams, all was embodied there! The ethereal floated on the river's bosom, while its now unruffled waters floated our rude vessels. It dwelt in the dark mirror, I70 THE VICTORY LIFE where shadows of cliff and forest pointed to a depth down, down, away, far beyond the sounding-line. It was melting in the blazing river, where farewell rays were reflected as the sun hid behind some tall and precipitous headland." o Mr. Hall was able to enjoy Nature to the full because he had learned to enjoy the God of Nature. Wherever he went he knew that God was near. This knowledge gave him courage at one of the tense moments of his journey. Of this experience he said: "We stood now on the pinnacle of the great Cove Mountain, and were gazing at the mingled grandeur and beauty of the scene. Few are un- moved by the view from that top; as for myself, I was ravished. Was I not on the dividing ridge between two worlds — the worn and fading East, the new and magic West? And yet I now felt, and painfully felt, that we were bidding adieu to home and entering on the untried; still, hope was superior to fear, and I was eager to pass those other peaks/' Thus the thought of God was with him every day of the long journey. So the reader is ready for the concluding words of Mr. Hall's journal: "True, perfect, uninter- rupted happiness is neither in the far East nor in the far West; it is in God, in Heaven." THE POINT OF VIEW SO much of the unrest that vexes and irritates us is due to our inability or unwillingness to see events clearly and to interpret them truly. For weeks after a schoolboy's promotion he dis- tressed his father by disparaging remarks about his new teacher. Every evening he had some new fault to find. "She is unpleasant, unreasonable, unfair, and unsympathetic/ 5 he insisted. Not once did he have a good word to say for her. Naturally he was losing all interest in school, and he was always irritable when school was mentioned. At last his father said, "I have been listening to what you have said about your teacher. I want you to do something for me to-morrow. Be on the watch all day long for a good point in her work; then tell me about it in the evening." The son said it was useless to try; but when his father insisted, he promised to make the attempt. Next evening, to his astonishment, he was able to give a satisfactory report. He felt sure, however, that he would never find anything else. Yet his father urged him to try again the next day. The second report also was favorable. For many days the same program was followed. Before long the son was volunteering kindly comments, and within a month he was thoroughly loyal to the teacher. Once more he became the cheerful, dependable boy he had been before his promotion. 171 172 THE VICTORY LIFE A man who was compelled to walk on crutches for a time was at first tempted to feel that he had a hard road to travel. Everything seemed against him. Sensitiveness to what he thought was the attitude of others toward a lame man threatened for a time to make life a burden. Then came the day when he decided to keep his eye open for kindly treatment. In "The Outlook" he gave the result of his observations: "I have become convinced of the truth of the fact that, no matter what appears on the surface, the American of every class has indeed kindliness of heart, which is the root of good manners. No more for me is the ' Step lively, please/ of the sub- way guard or the street car conductor. In its place is 'Take your time, don't hurry/ as I get on or off. It is not too much to say that on no single day for many months have I failed to receive some evidence of thoughtful consideration from a complete stranger. Sometimes it is only the courteous fellow-traveler who moves up to give me a seat by the door, some- times it is a kindly old gentleman who insists on seeing me across a street which I have crossed a hundred times by myself; it has even been a cab- man who has offered to carry me across a street gratis. But always there is something which shows the innate kindliness of the 'man in the street' and sends me home with a glow about my heart. 53 Luke in his Gospel tells how a new point of view helped the disciples to gain poise. On a day when there was discord among Jesus' disciples because two of them wished to be greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, John, one of the two, complained be- cause he had seen some one who was doing Jesus' work, but not in Jesus' name. "We forbade him," John said. But Jesus said unto him, "Forbid him THROUGH GOD'S EYES I73 not: for he that is not against us is for us." John had never before thought of the matter in that light; the loving rebuke of the Master marked another stage of progress in the disciple's inner life. There are usually at least two ways of looking at anything: the acute and the right angle. Some individuals have learned to look at everything from the happiest point of view. To change the point of view is, for many of us, one of life's serious prob- lems. LI AMBITION WAS NOT ENOUGH A GIFTED young woman had written a book, which had been accepted for publication. She could hardly wait to see the first copy. At last she held it in her hands. That night she wrote in her journal: "What do I care for rest, pleasure, anything, compared with ambition? There is only one thing in this world that can make me happy: I want to be a great writer some day. There is not room in my heart for any other feeling. Ambition is the ruling passion of my life. Nothing else could satisfy me." But as the months passed the young woman discovered that she was not at rest. "Somehow her successes did not bring to her the measure of satisfaction which she had anticipated/' J. R. Miller wrote, in his book called "The Story of a Busy Life: Recollections of Mrs. George A. Paull." She was hungry for something else, and she did not know what it was. "I am a restless, dissatisfied sort of creature," she wrote; "I thought I would be perfectly happy when my novel came out. But somehow I find myself still longing for something else — I don't know exactly what — and when I have time to think, I am quite restless. What is it that I yet want in order to be quite content?" She did not realize that the lack in her life was owing to her attitude toward the world. "I don't 174 THROUGH GODS EYES 175 care about doing good," she said. "I am willing to make people happier. There isn't any use in going through the world looking grum and cross; but as to doing good, I leave that to ministers." There came a day, however, when she began to wish that Christianity did mean something, and that she could count on the comforting assurance that God really loved her. "I fancied that it would be so restful to believe that God's love brooded over me as tenderly as a mother's love and care," she said. Then she began to wonder if she was not to be satisfied by ambition, after all; if she must have a real loving, living belief in God before peace could come to her heart. She tried to fill her life with deeds of helpful- ness, but this did not satisfy her. "Underneath all that I say and do is an unrest which will not be quieted," she confided to her journal. "I ask myself what I would give to purchase peace. It seems to me as if it would be a very easy thing to sacrifice my ambition, myself." The day came when she realized that God did not ask her to sacrifice anything, but merely to welcome Him to her heart and make Him the Lord of her life. Then she was able to say: "It is with a heart overflowing with love and gratitude to my heavenly Father that I record his great mercy to me ... I do not think I shall ever forget those moments. Peace flowed into my soul and diffused itself through all my being. I knelt down and gave myself to God with a glad consecration of every faculty and power. It was a delight to kneel there with the sweet assurance of acceptance. I never imagined as possible to me anything so restful and satisfying as this peace, which passeth all understanding." She had found I76 THE VICTORY LIFE what she wanted, and she devoted her life to show- ing others the way to Him who said, "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid/' GUIDED IN THE WAY 'We ask thy peace, Lord, Through storm and fear and strife, To light and guide us on Through a long, struggling life; While no succor or gain Shall cheer the desperate fight, Or nerve what the world calls our wasted might: Yet pressing through the darkness to the light." LII THE GIVER OF VICTORY THERE are people who profess to smile in a superior way at what they call the credulity of those who believe that God interests Himself in the affairs of those who trust Him, but His children know that God has His hand on their lives, and are not disturbed by such smiles of deri- sion. J. Hudson Taylor, of the China Inland Mission, was an insistent believer in this truth. On one of his visits in America he was in St. Louis, where he conducted a series of meetings and was the guest of Dr. J. H. Brookes. From St. Louis he was under appointment to go to a small town in Illinois, where he was to give an address at eight o'clock in the evening. In order to reach this town he was to leave St. Louis by an early train on Monday morn- ing. The story of the trip has been told by Dr. Mary H. McLean: "The hour arrived, but the coachman did not. As there seemed still abundance of time his arrival was awaited with little concern. But at last Dr. Brookes became much concerned, and they started to try to catch a street car. It was in the days before telephones were much in use. On the way to the car they met the coachman with the carriage, entered it, and bade the coachman drive as quickly as possible. "Dr. Brookes watched the time, and was much concerned about missing the train. But Mr. Taylor 179 l8o THE VICTORY LIFE was quite at ease, and said quietly, 'My Father runs the trains, and I am on His business/ "Upon reaching the station they found that the train had gone, and were told that no other train would leave for the town mentioned before evening. Dr. Brookes expressed great regret and concern, but again Mr. Taylor reminded him, 'My Father runs the trains.' "Just as they turned from the ticket office a man rushed up to Mr. Taylor, saying, 'I was so afraid that I had missed you. I want to tell you how God has used you to bring blessing to me/ As he turned away he slipped an envelope into Mr. Taylor's hands, which was found to contain seventy-five dollars, marked, 'For your personal use/ "Mr. Taylor said to Dr. Brookes, 'You see, my Father has just sent me my railway fare/ Dr. Brookes was amazed, and asked, 'Did you not have your railway fare, and if not, why did you not let me know?' He replied, 'I told my Father/ and he added, 'I never use money except such as is marked for personal use/ "Then Mr Taylor walked leisurely to a man standing among outgoing trains and asked if he knew of any way by which he might reach the town in Illinois that evening. The man replied that a train would be leaving soon which passed through Springfield, Illinois, and that a train from Chicago passed through Springfield en route to the town mentioned. But he said that the Chicago train would pass through Springfield an hour before the train from St. Louis was due in that place. Mr. Taylor said with great assurance that the St. Louis train would reach Springfield first that day. "So he bought his ticket and boarded the train, bidding Dr. Brookes be comforted, as his Father GUIDED IN THE WAY l8l certainly did run the trains. For the first time in months the Chicago train was an hour late; Mr. Taylor stepped from one train to the other, reached his destination in good time and wired to Dr. Brookes, 'My Father runs the trains/" Dr. J. J. Lucas, who had served forty-five years as a missionary in India, has said: "The most real thing in my life is the sense of God's presence and guidance. In 1870 I was under appointment to go to India. Word was sent me by the Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions to be sure to reach New York in time to sail on the steamer Cambria on October 8, with ten other missionaries. My mother decided to accompany me, in spite of the fact that my sister was seriously ill, for she wished to see me on board the ship. "While we were on the way to New York, Dr. William Adams, pastor of Madison Avenue Pres- byterian Church, had said at a meeting of the Board of Foreign Missions, of which he was presi- dent, that it was a pity such a company of missiona- ries should leave for their fields of labor just before the Sabbath, when, by waiting several days longer, there could be held for them a great farewell service. "It was pointed out to him that there were difficulties in the way of a change of plans. Passage had been engaged, and the missionaries would come to the city with the thought of early departure in mind. "But his pleas prevailed. The steamship com- pany consented to make the change, and word to this effect was sent to the missionaries under ap- pointment. "In spite of my disappointment and that of others, we had a glorious meeting on Sunday evening, and we sailed on October 12, according to the revised plan. 182 THE VICTORY LIFE «i 'Now note this fact. The Cambria did not reach port. She sank during the voyage from New York, and all on board were lost save one, who when picked up was demented. This was the first news that reached the missionaries when they arrived safely at Liverpool. "In Allahabad thirty years later, we had a girls' school which we wished to develop into a college, but the Missionary Board had no funds for us. We did not know what to do. But God knew. "In 1902 an American business man was traveling in Europe. He had planned to return to America without going farther, but when he was in Naples he decided to go to India. When he reached India he was talking to an acquaintance in Calcutta about his itinerary, which he had completed. 'But you are leaving out Allahabad/ the acquaintance ob- jected. 'Surely you are not going home without seeing your friends there!' 'But I have no time for Allahabad/ the traveler replied. 'You must go there/ the answer came. 'Let me show you how you can make the journey/ "The new arrangement suggested was accepted and the business man went to Allahabad. After spending twenty-four hours with the missionaries he was about to say good-by, when he asked them, 'Is there anything I can do for you?' "Thus encouraged the missionaries told of their desire to remove the girls' school from the com- pound, secure other ground, and erect a building for a college. "The plan as outlined pleased the busi- ness man. He made further inquiries, and offered to give twelve thousand dollars to purchase the land needed and fifty thousand dollars for buildings. "During the years since he has made further gifts to the building fund and has supported two profes- GUIDED IN THE WAY 183 sors in the school, which was long known as Alla- habad Christian College, though now it is called Ewing Christian College in loving memory of its first president, Dr. A. H. Ewing." Incidents even more striking were told by a writer in the "Christian Endeavor World." They show President Lincoln's reliance on the guidance of His heavenly Father, his belief in prayer, and the fact that God in his providence is always watch- ing over His workers. "It seems that in the terrible days preceding the announcement that the President had signed a proclamation giving freedom to the slaves, days which to the people of the North were the blackest of any days during that awful four years, Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, that grand old patriot, called one of the members of his staff to him as he sat in his office, and said, 'I want you to go to Washington and see President Lincoln. 5 "'Very well/ said the aide; 'what message shall I take to the President from you?' "'Oh/ replied the governor, 'I haven't any par- ticular message for the President. Just tell him that he will never end the war until he frees the slaves/ "'Why/ said the aide, 'I can't go to the White House with any such message as that. What would Mr. Lincoln think of me if I should travel from Boston to Washington just to repeat those words to him?' '"Very well, if you look at the matter that way, then I order you to go, and as your superior shall insist upon obedience.' "His aide started the next day in a not especially cheerful mood. At Springfield he happened to meet a prominent politician, who inquired where I84 THE VICTORY LIFE he was going. When he learned that Washington was his destination, he inquired whether he expected to see the President, and, when an affirmative answer was returned, he said, 'When you see President Lin- coln, you tell him from me that he will never end the war until he frees the slaves/ "The aide was startled at the coincidence. Then, in New York City, he met another politician, a man known from one end of the country to the other, who repeated the same words, 'If you see President Lincoln, tell him from me that he will never end the war until he frees the slaves/ "The governor's aide, upon leaving New York, entered into conversation on the train with another well-known patriot, and again the same message was given to him, 'When you see President Lincoln, tell him that he will never end the war until he frees the slaves/ "By that time there was no question in the mind of the man from the Bay State that the message which had been intrusted to him was of paramount importance. At Washington he secured an early interview with the President. "When the great, ungainly hand had clasped his, the man from Mas- sachusetts rapidly and in the simplest language possible told the remarkable story of his journey to Washington. Slowly the tears stole down the rugged face of the President, and he stepped to a desk and took out a paper. It was the proclamation of the emancipation to the slaves. "As he showed the document to his visitor, he said, 'I have been praying and praying that God would send me a message telling me that this should be given to the people. Now the slaves shall be free/ Shortly after, the proclamation was issued, and the rest is history/' GUIDED IN THE WAY 185 These encouragements to faith help us in days of doubt and darkness and uncertainty to look into God's face and hold His hand with unfaltering con- fidence, knowing that the giver of victory will never forsake His people. LIII "WAS IT WORTH WHILE ?" TWENTY-FIVE years ago, when Theodore Storrs Lee was a student at Williston Semi- nary, Massachusetts, he persuaded some of his friends that they owed it to the institution to set out vines around South Hall. On the day when the work was to be done, rain fell without intermission, and most of the men wished to put off the vine-planting. But young Lee did not see why plans should be changed. With one companion, he went out in the rain and set out forty Japanese ivy vines. " There was eloquence in this beginning," says one who has written of him. " Later, others were persuaded to adorn the other three halls in like fashion, and in various ways to beautify the campus." The incident was significant not only for Williston Seminary, but for that section of India to which Mr. Lee devoted the eight years of life on earth left to him after his graduation from Amherst in 1900. He never was strong. His studies were inter- rupted more than once by a breakdown that threat- ened to end his life. During his service as a mis- sionary he suffered from still more serious collapses. But always he kept at his work with the earnest pur- pose to make the most of the brief time he felt he was to have for service. This indication of his zeal is given by another missionary: "His Indian fellow-workers still shake their heads and draw in their breath at the memory of the pace he set them. When on a tour among the villages, 186 GUIDED IN THE WAY 187 often he would start at five in the morning, walk to a village, gather the people, hold a service and talk to individuals, walk to another village, and then another, there, perhaps, adding the inspection of a school. Taking what rest he could get under some tree at noon, he would continue the process until evening, doing effective work of a peculiarly- trying nature in six or more villages in the course of a day. One preacher tells with awe of how they started out one morning and were caught by a heavy rain in the midst of villages the only con- necting links of which were thick, sticky clay roads. Theodore would not turn back, but com- pleted the day's program. Another time, after a day's round of seven villages, when this preacher was completely exhausted, Theodore took the eighteen-mile bicycle ride to Wai and back, because something imperative called him there." The secret of his ability to work so earnestly is seen in his practice of spending a half-hour each morning in Bible-reading and prayer. This habit was formed long before he went to the mission field. A classmate has said: ! "If it was right for him to give careful attention to his body and resolute attention to his mental development by faithfully preparing his college work, it was also essential, he believed, to feed his spirit each day under the leadership of the Master Teacher. His Bible always was upon his desk, and again and again I have found him poring over the Book. The strength and beauty of spirit that such food always develops one could see in his face." His influence for good on his associates was marvelous, simply because he proved by his life the reality of his Christian profession. It was said 188 THE VICTORY LIFE of him by a friend that "no deadlier enemy of vice ever entered Amherst College," while another friend wrote: "When his tall, rigid form moved through a company, whether in the fraternity house or on the campus, we all felt instinctively that here was one who could be relied upon for truest, stanchest friend- ship and unbending integrity. Like ozone, he unconsciously purified the atmosphere wherever he went." It would be a mistake, however, to think that he was not a welcome companion. He knew how to tell a good, clean story, and he could appreciate a story told by another. Twelve years afterwards a classmate spoke of a story told by him: "It was ridiculously absurd, but was related with all the imaginative details and dry humor that character- ize a good story teller," the man said. He was consumed by a passion for helping people. Once he was on his way to a convention, in company with fellow-students. As he stepped from the train, his quick eye saw a need he could supply. Excusing himself, he went to "a poor old woman who was trying to carry a burden all too heavy for her, swung it upon his shoulders and carried it to the place she was going." While at the theological seminary, he was walking with a friend when he saw an intoxicated man asleep on a heap of rubbish. The two carried the man to the seminary, cared for him there for thirty-six hours, and sent him back to his family. Ten years later, when the man heard of his benefactor's death, he insisted upon returning to Mr. Lee's father the ten dollars which the student had given him. In India a company of high-caste young men began to come to him, ostensibly on a mission of GUIDED IN THE WAY ' 189 inquiry, but really to improve their English. He saw through their scheme, but devoted valuable hours to them, for he was resolved to neglect no chance to influence others. A number of these young men in later years became leaders in their communities, and the lessons they had learned bore rich fruit for the Kingdom of Heaven. When traveling by train with a native worker, he would ride in the car set apart for the poor natives, rather than go alone to the comfortable quarters provided for foreigners. One night, when there was but one cot in the room which he and his native companion were to occupy, he went to bed first, rolling himself in his blanket on the floor, and refused to listen to entreaties that he take the cot. The children of the mission schools looked for- ward to his visits, for he was their companion; he played marbles with them and taught them calis- thenics. The native teachers delighted in him. One teacher he helped in sickness in his own pecu- liarly tender manner. Later he "took the young worker off into the fields for an intimate talk and putting his arm around him, expressed apprecia- tion of his work and prayed with him in such a loving way that that afternoon forms one of the memorable events in the young Christian's life." Mr. Lee accomplished wonders in eight years. It was a marvelously efficient work of preparing the soil and sowing the seed throughout a large and populous district. "Was It Worth While ?" is the title given to the volume which tells of the life of Mr. Lee. And in the closing chapter, Fred B. Smith says, "The ordinary man of the street would call him a fool." But if Theodore Storrs Lee was a fool, who is the wise man? LIV VICTORY IN WEAKNESS THROUGH and through — thought and act — body and soul — I hate it!" This was Clara Barton's vigorous state- ment of her attitude to war, as told by Percy H. Epler, her biographer. And she had a right to use vigorous language. She knew war. Yet she was not attracted to the scene of strife by love of ex- citement; she went in response to the bitter cry of anguish; she was "the angel of the battlefield." If the peace she ardently longed for could not be the possession of her countrymen, she deter- mined to do what she could to bring peace to them as individuals, in the midst of their trials. And in so doing she took the nearest way to win for herself the deepest satisfaction. No one would have picked out Clara Barton for the part she played. She was weak, slight, timid — everything seemed against her. But one of the very things that was responsible for some of these handicaps pointed the way to her life-work. When she was but eleven she began to care for her invalid brother, David. "For two years I only left his bed- side for one half-day," she said later. "I almost for- got that there was an outside to the house." Her growth was arrested by the strain and the con- finement. After sixteen years as a school teacher, physical weakness manifested itself in a complete break- down. At the close of the Civil War she was at 190 GUIDED IN THE WAY I9I the breaking point, but the call came to a work that no one else could do, and she rose to the emergency. In 1868, when she was delivering a lecture in the interest of her work, her voice left her. All that winter she lay helpless. " Three years of un- sheltered days and nights, the sun and storms, the dews and damps, had done their work." In 1870, when she was urged to bear the Red Cross to the Prussian firing line, she felt she must decline be- cause she was an invalid; yet the call to service could not be resisted. In 1876 she went to a sani- tarium, and remained in the hospital and vicinity for nearly ten years; yet during those years she rallied whenever there was the call to do something she felt she alone could do. And, in spite of these repeated breakdowns, she retained her youthful appearance. When she was eighty-five years old a reporter spoke of her as "a middle-aged woman." Another serious handicap was her excessive timid- ity and fear. "In the early years of my life I re- member nothing but fear," she confessed in 1907. In 1836 her mother, wondering what such a timid child could do, asked the counsel of a phrenologist concerning her. "The sensitive nature will always remain," he said. "She will never assert herself for herself; she will suffer wrong first. But for others she will be perfectly fearless." His prophecy was fulfilled. On the field, later, when a soldier in agony begged her to extract a bullet with her pen- knife, she did as he wished. "The courage that she attained," her biographer says, "was due not to the absence of fear but to the fact that she over- came it." One reason this frail woman could overcome obstacles was that her heart was in everything she did. She did not work for money. As a teacher 192 THE VICTORY LIFE in Burlington, New Jersey, she gave up her salary that she might teach a free school. At the out- break of the war she was a Government clerk. Because the Government was in dire need of money, she begged to do the work of two clerks, without salary. She had saved a little money in time of peace, and she was resolved to devote her savings and herself to the service of humanity. "If war must be, she neither expected nor desired to come out of it with a dollar," a friend said. "What is money without a country?" Miss Barton asked. After the war she spent eight thousand dollars in the effort to identify the burial-places of soldiers, though later this sum was returned to her by act of Congress. She arranged to deliver three hundred lectures and to devote the receipts to her work. In 1893 she was paying the rent of the headquarters of the Red Cross in Washington. Another remarkable characteristic was her utter indifference to the opinions of others, if she felt she was in the right. She paid no heed to those who declared that she was unwomanly because she worked in a Government department. In 1861 she amazed Washington churchgoers by leading through the streets a procession of negro porters who were carrying supplies to the sick and wounded. Of the call that came to go to the front, she wrote: "I struggled long and hard with my sense of pro- priety, with the appalling fact that I was only a woman whispering in one ear, and thundering in the other the groans of suffering men dying like dogs." Her father's encouragement helped her. "Go, if it is your duty to go," he said. "I know soldiers; they will respect you and your errand." Wherever she went she won deference and love. In her first school, taught when she was fifteen, GUIDED IN THE WAY I93 "instead of being locked out, as the previous teacher had been, she Mocked' herself 'in' the heart of every boy and girl." On the battlefield surgeons looked askance at her, for a time — but the deference they paid her later "was almost painful/' to use her own expression. Miss Barton was remarkable both for her initia- tive and for her persistence. She suggested improve- ments in the way of handling the wounded that were adopted at once. Her scheme to identify the dead was adopted after the close of the war. She would not listen to those who said the work was impossible, but began it and pursued it to a successful issue. In like manner when she made up her mind that the United States should enter the company of nations which signed the Red Cross Treaty, she began a fight for recognition which lasted for eleven years. She had her reward in abundant recognition. Between 1870 and 1900 twenty-four decorations were conferred on her; but she found more pleasure in the knowledge that she had been of use than in all of these. And after her death — at the age of ninety-one — these words were written of her : "She was perhaps the most perfect incarnation of mercy the modern world has ever known, the embodiment of one vital principle of all religion — love for humanity/' LV VICTORY THROUGH UNSELFISH SERVICE MANY could not see her greatness for what they called her eccentricities, forgetting, or perhaps being unaware of, what she had passed through; experiences such as no other woman had undergone, and which explained much that seemed unusual in her conduct. But when her life is viewed as a whole, and in the light of what she achieved, all these angles and oddities fall away, and she stands out, a woman of unique and inspiring personality, and one of the most heroic figures of the age." In these words W. P. Livingstone comments on the wonderful story of a missionary in equatorial Africa whose life has been said to rival in many par- ticulars the thrilling story of the heroism and de- votion of David Livingstone. Yet while her life may, in a way, be compared to that of Livingstone, it stands alone in the annals of heroic women. It is well worth while, entirely apart from its mis- sionary interest. Mary Slessor was the product of a home in Scot- land, where she had the discipline of poverty. At an early age she had to go to work in a factory. There she was busy from six in the morning until six at night. Her wages were needed at home, so she could not indulge her taste for an education. That she would have delighted in study is shown by the fact that on the evening when she was in- troduced to "Sartor Resartus" she was oblivious 194 GUIDED IN THE WAY I95 to everything until the factory whistle told her that it was morning, and that she must hurry to her work if she wished to avoid a fine. She was twenty-eight when she heard the call of Africa. The need at home was still great, but she decided that most of her meager salary could be paid over to her mother. It was not in vain that she had been in the school of hardship while in the home land. Her sympathy for the suffering was made very keen, and she was ready to become the fierce champion of little chil- dren in opposition to brutal superstition. Thus she became the friend of the mothers. "Her womanly sympathy and tenderness were never better exhibited than in her relations with her dark sisters. She entered into their lives as few have been able to do. She treated them as human beings, saw the romance and tragedy in their patient lives, wept over their trials, and rejoiced in their joys." She knew that Calabar was one of the most un- healthy spots in the world and that the natives were considered the most degraded in Africa ; yet, in 1878, she offered herself for service among them. In later years, when suffering and hardship proved greater than she had ever dreamed they would be, she did not draw back. She declared, "My life was laid on the altar for that people many years ago, and I would not take one jot or tittle of it back." When she was forty years old, after spending some years near the coast, she wrote: "I am going to a new tribe up-country, a fierce, cruel people, and everyone tells me that they will kill me. But I don't fear any hurt — only to combat their savage customs will require courage and firmness on my part." Even in old age she persisted in her deter- I96 THE VICTORY LIFE initiation to go still further into the wilds. "I know that I can do work which new folk cannot do," she said; "and my days of service are closing in." She proved that sympathetic love can accom- plish what force cannot do. When she proposed to go to a tribe which was infamous because of its custom of slaughtering twins, who were considered a disgrace, and the wives and slaves of a dead chief, that they might go with him to the spirit land, her friends told her that soldiers backed by gunboats had never been able to do anything with these men; how could she expect to succeed in this, and in the defence of those accused of witchcraft? Her first^step, when she went to the homes of the people, was to ask that the mission chapel she would build should be made a sanctuary for those accused of witchcraft, for twins and for other un- fortunates. Then she secured a similar privilege for her house. Having won these concessions, she proceeded to locate the two houses more than a mile apart! This would cause inconvenience to her; but of what account was this when two places at a distance one from the other were provided for the people's distress? When she learned that a man, a woman or a child was in danger, she hurried to succor that one and forbade the chief or others in power to take life. Frequently there was a combat of wills, but always she was victor. "I understand that the mother is determined in her way. What can I do but submit ? " a chief said to her on one occasion. She lived en- tirely alone, far from other white folks, but she ruled as a veritable white chief. She was utterly fearless. There were no locks on her doors. She went everywhere, and only once was a hand lifted against her; then an apology followed speedily. GUIDED IN THE WAY I97 The day came when the chief agreed that twins should be permitted to live; that trial by poison should cease; that slaves and wives should no more be slain after the death of one of the tribe's great men. Wonder was expressed by her friends that such things should have been accomplished by a weak woman, with no backing. "You have evi- dently forgotten to take into account the woman's God," she said. One of the ignorant negro women realized the truth better, for she exclaimed one day: "Ma, you white people are God Almighty. No other power could have done this." It would be a mistake to conclude that this heroine must have been a virago, an Amazon. Her biog- rapher says that "it is impossible to give an ade- quate picture of her complex nature, so full of contrasts and opposites. She was a woman of affairs, with a wide and catholic outlook upon humanity, and yet she was a shy solitary, walking alone in Puritan simplicity and childlike faith. Few have possessed such moral and physical courage or exercised such imperious power over savage peo- ples, yet on trivial occasions she was abjectly timid and afraid. A sufferer from chronic malarial affec- tion and a martyr to pain, her days were filled with unremitting toil. Overflowing with love and tender feeling, she could be' stern and exacting. Shrewd, practical and matter-of-fact, she believed that sen- timent was a gift of God, and frankly indulged in it. Living always in the midst of spiritual darkness, and often depressed and worried, she maintained unimpaired a sense of humor and laughter. Strong and tenacious of will, she admitted the right of others to oppose her." Honors came to her. Great Britain made her head of the court of chiefs, but she refused a salary. I98 THE VICTORY LIFE She was decorated, but the order was kept only as a curiosity, and she felt that she was not worthy. The one reward she sought was the transformation of the negroes. "It is a dark and difficult land, and I am old and weak — but happy," she wrote, not long before her death, which came in 191 5 when she was in the midst of her work. One who saw her among her people has told of her startling dress, her bare feet, her roughened hands, the skin of the palms gone and the nails down to the quick/ But the observer realized that she was in the presence of one of the noblest women who ever lifted up her hands in behalf of her fellows. LVI "TO LEARN, TO TEACH, TO SERVE." WHAT is the ideal aim of life?" The ques- tion was asked of Julia Ward Howe by one of her daughters. "To learn, to teach, to serve, to enjoy," was the thoughtful response. Those who knew the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic/' and who read the story of her life by Laura E. Richards and Maude Howe Elliott, will agree not only that she made a good reply, but that the words describe her own long life of remarkable usefulness. As a girl Julia Ward gave such free rein to her taste for study that she felt this was the one thing worth while in life. One day her Uncle John, com- menting on her first literary publication, said, "This is my little girl who knows about books, and writes an article and has it printed, but I wish she knew more about housekeeping." When Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the Director of Perkins Institution for the Blind, came into her life, she had a new vision. "His true devotion has won me from the world and from myself," she wrote to her brother. "The past is already fading from my sight; already I begin to live with him in the future, which shall be as calmly bright as true love can make it. I am perfectly satisfied to sacrifice to one so noble and earnest the day dream of my youth." Years with her husband did not lead her to change her views, for when her daughter Laura was about to be married, she wrote to her, "To be 199 200 THE VICTORY LIFE i happily married seems to me to be the best thing for a woman/' When bereavement came, and, later, when her daughters were married, she resolved to fill the empty spaces. "The need of serving humanity actively, hand and foot, pen and voice, was now urgent/' Her reason for service she once stated thus: "Ourselves we have always with us; our fellows flit from our company, or pass away, and we must help them when and while we can/' And she did not make the mistake of looking so hard at spec- tacular forms of service that she overlooked trifling opportunities. Everywhere she went, in America or in Europe, she was at the call of reforms that needed her, but at home she never overlooked the humble hackmen who had a stand near her Boston house. "They must have something hot," she would say in severe weather, and then she would send tea or coffee to them. She did not desert her home for the larger service to which she gave herself. She was always a home lover. Literary work, club work, or reform work gave new zest to household activities. Many times her diaries show how rapidly she could turn from one form of service to the other. She could do this easily because she knew how to use her time to the best advantage. "Hard at work," "Determined to do more literary work than I have been doing lately, " "Very busy all day, " "Working hard as usual," were characteristic entries in her journal. When she was eighty-two years old, she wrote, "I made my bed, turning the mattress, and put my room generally to rights." Strenuous efforts in the cause of peace were a natu- ral result of her woman's club work. "Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere?" she asked, GUIDED IN THE WAY 201 i during the Franco-German War of 1870. So she sent an "Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World" to arise and declare that "blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession." It is not strange that her love for literary Germany- had a rude awakening when "she came in contact with this new Junker Germany, this harsh, manda- tory, unlovely country where Bismarck was the ruling spirit and Von Moltke the idol of the hour." During the Boer War she "had a sudden thought of the Christ Babe standing between the two armies, Boers and Britons, on Christmas Day." She had a vision of the day of peace, when "all of evil was gone from the earth, misery was blotted out, man- kind was emancipated and ready to march forward in a new era of human understanding, all-encompass- ing sympathy and ever-present help, the era of perpetual love, of peace passing understanding." There was nothing more characteristic than her words written at the close or at the beginning of a year. "Here ends a year of service, of more than my usual health, of power to speak and write," she said when she was eighty-two. Four years after she prayed that she might not wilfully waste one of the year's precious days. "God help me to use faithfully my little remnant of life." This prayer was answered. She kept her powers of mind and body to the last. She was ninety-one when she was asked to go to the State House in Boston to speak on the question of pure milk. Her address saved the day for reform. When, in 1910, her eyes saw the glory of the coming of the Lord, those who thought of the more than half a century she had given to the service of humanity realized that God had called to Himself one of the most efficient workers of the century. LOOKING BACK ON LIFE "Give to the winds thy fears, Hope, and be undismayed, God hears thy sighs, and counts thy tears God shall lift up thy head. Through wave and cloud and storm He gently clears the way; Wait, then, his time; the darkest night Shall end in brightest day." LVII VICTORY THROUGH REMEMBRANCE GO back to the place where you lost the trail," an experienced forester said to a friend. "Stay there until, forgetting nervousness, you can begin once more to pick up the trail." The advice is good for those who become panic stricken over difficulties and obstacles of any kind. Do the problems of life seem to increase in per- plexity until all is confusion and unrest? Let the thoughts turn back until they find a resting-place in some event whose issue was peace, until it becomes possible to renew the struggle in the calm confidence that leads to victory. A successful man has said that for years he was "nervous, depressed, afflicted with hours of the blackest despondency." But there came a day when he had a battle royal with despondency and was victorious. Later, when the blues threatened his peace, he would think of that day when he found his place in the world after a year of bitter struggle and doubt. Another milestone was passed when he was given strength to stick to his purpose to be a dependable man. Thereafter, in his moments of confusion, he had two points in the past on which he could fix his thought and so gain poise for new conflict. A third time of crisis came because others were making more rapid progress than he; but he fixed his thoughts on the previous red-letter days in his life, and then he was able to think more clearly. 205 206 THE VICTORY L I F E Strength for a fourth great crisis, when for a time there was great danger that his life would tumble in ruins, was gained by taking time to fix his mind on the three great turning-points in his career. Thereafter, at the beginning of every year, when a new calendar was before him, that successful man would turn over the leaves and mark the anniver- saries of the four days that had meant so much to him. He knew that during the year he would have many moments of unrest and temptation, when he would need to think back to his crisis experiences and from them gain new strength and poise. Thus he was repeating the advice of the man of the forests, "Go back to the place where you lost the trail/' Every one has such corner-stone days. Perhaps the record will read something like this : On January 25 the temptation to take a low view of duty was faced and conquered, in God's strength. On March 14 everything seemed to conspire to wreck peace of mind, but God showed the way out and there was victory instead of disaster. On September 19 it seemed as if reputation was ruined, but the issue was glorious. On December 1 a friend died without whom it was feared a life at its best would be im- possible, yet that very day God opened the way to richer life. Let us mark days like these and look back to them not only at times when all is well, but also in mo- ments of turmoil. This is what the Psalmist did. In time of trouble he thought of the days when God had helped him. He said, "I remember the days of old, I meditate on all Thy doings, I muse on the works of Thy hands." LVIII INTO THE LIGHT ONE of the best loved men in one of our great cities was for many years a workman in a steel mill. Becoming interested in the stars, he made himself familiar with many of the wonders of the universe. Before long he was making optical instruments that were marvels of their kind. In this work he was always helped by his wife. As they studied the heavens together they came very near to Him who "laid the foundations of the earth, who stretched forth the heavens like a cur- tain." And when the wife died the husband caused the following words to be engraved above her tomb: " We have loved the stars too fondly To be fearful of the night." Not long ago the astronomer, who was then seventy-five years old, told in an interview some of the things he had learned about his friends, the stars, the nearest of which, Alpha Centauri, is so far away that if one could ride to it on a train going at the rate of a mile a minute, he would not reach his destination for forty-eight million years. A spider's thread from a cocoon reaching to Alpha Centauri would weigh five hundred tons. He speaks of the fact that the sun is one million three hundred thousand times as big as the earth, but he reminds us that perhaps a majority of the millions of stars that stud the heavens are larger than the sun. 207 208 THE VICTORY LIFE He tells other wonderful things about the sun. Its heat is so great that if we could build a column of ice fifteen miles in diameter from the earth to the moon, two hundred and thirty-eight thousand miles away, and then turn the sun's terrific heat on it, it would take just one second to convert all that ice to steam. The world, he says, seems to us like a pretty big place, but if we should toss in Lake Erie a cube one seven-thousandth of an inch in diameter, it would occupy the same relative space in that great inland sea that our earth occupies in the universe, terminat- ing with the nearest star and extending a similar distance from the sea in all directions. Such a universe is only an infinitesimal dot in the actual universe. Moreover, our earth in its revolutions on its own axis and its trip around the sun and outward into space makes a journey of nine hundred and eighty- four million miles a year; but the old clock never varies; there is never a jar nor a tremor, and we are back again on the hundredth of a second. Finally the astronomer reminds us that we do not have to go roving through space to find wonder- ful things. The lover of the beautiful, he says, finds in the colors of the rose the same light waves that stream from the stars. He calculates that during a single exposure of the camera lasting a tenth of a second, from forty to eighty million light waves hammer against the negative. Is it strange that the man whose eyes were open to these wonders does not fear the night? For he knows that He who made the universe and guides the stars in their courses gives as much attention to the guidance of the most humble of His children. He knows that He who makes the heavens radiant LOOKING BACK ON LIFE 209 with the light of sun and moon and stars is waiting to lighten the darkness for every one so completely that there will be no hesitation in following Him into what some call eternal night, but others who have learned His ways know that it is eternal light. For in that day "there shall be night no more; and they need no light of lamp, neither light of sun; for the Lord God shall give them light." LIX FEAR CONQUERED WHAT is it that causes greatest dread to most people? What is their chief terror? What is their most unreasoning yet most persistent fear? Has it to do with life, or with what comes after the close of life as we know it? There is a fascinating little book by Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett, "The White People/' that dis- cusses this subject in a new way, that is, in story- form. The story is of a Scotch girl who lived much with books and with her thoughts. She had the reputa- tion of being one who saw. Some thought her peculiar because she saw things that were hidden from the eyes of others. But she was not peculiar. She lived close to nature, and she knew that "na- ture's a grand, rich, endless scroll with writings that seem new on it. They're not new. They were always written there. But they were not unrolled. Never a law broken, never a new law, only laws read with stronger eyes." One of the characters in the book asks, "How do we know that there does not lie in each of us a wholly natural but, so far, dormant power of sight — a power to see what has been called the Unseen through all the Ages whose sightlessness has called them Dark? Who knows when the shadows around us may begin to clear? Oh, we are a dull lot — we human beings — with a queer, obstinate conceit of our- selves." To the Scotch girl the knowledge she had gained 210 LOOKING BACK ON LIFE 211 was simple and commonplace. She was surprised that all did not share it; she longed to pass it on. "I have heard other people say things," she said, " which made me feel that if they knew what I know it would seem to them as though some awe- some, heavy load they had always dragged about with them had fallen from their shoulders. To most people everything is so uncertain that if they could only see or hear and know something clear, they would drop upon their knees and give thanks." There are people who talk with bated breath of what they call the Fear — "that mysterious horror most people feel at the thought of passing out of the world they know into the one they don't know at all." They have the dread for themselves, and they have it for those whom they love. "If one had heard or seen one little thing, if one's mortal being could catch one gleam of light in the dark, the Fear would be gone forever," said one who feared. "If once we could be sure! There would be no Fear — there would be none!" By why can't we be sure? We have been told that death has been conquered. "0 grave, where is thy victory?" was the joyful cry of one who heard the message of the conquering Christ. Then why do so many act "as if death filled all the world — as if, when it happens, there is no life anywhere?" Why do so many of those, from whose side loved ones have been called away, become so absorbed in their anguish that they have no desire to think of those who are left behind? Mrs. Burnett's heroine would not, could not believe in death, at least as a sorrowful, impassable barrier that separates us from those we love and ushers them into fearful blackness and darkness. She had known what is called Death. But to her 212 THE VICTORY LIFE it seemed a joyful thing. She had been told of her mother's going, when she was yet a babe. There was peace in the mother's face, she was told; there was joy. And always the daughter thought of peace and joy and her mother together — they could not be separated. In her lonely hours on the moor she seemed to see the men of ages gone by who had died in a righteous fight for their homes. But always she saw them with glad joy on their faces. Early one morning she saw on the moor a piper who was known for his dour ways. But he was "stepping proudly through the heather with his step like a stag on the hills/' His head was held high, and he looked at her with a glad, triumphant smile. An hour later she learned that the piper had died in the night. But she had seen the dour man glad. Is it any wonder she always thought of him^as glad? Later her lover died, and as she thought of him she seemed to see him. "And he stood — and smiled." Imaginary, do we say? Why do we say so? To her these things were more real than anything she had ever felt. And she was happy, for there was no Fear in her life. Death had no terrors for her, for death was only the gateway to joy. Those who know that death brings not sorrow, but joy, "drop the load of the ages — the black burden" that untold thousands persist in carrying. They do not need to carry it. It is an imaginary burden. For those who will enter the gate of Death hand in hand with the Conqueror of Death there is nothing but joy and life in store. And those who linger a little longer need only the keen sight that the Conqueror will give to them to be able to see and share the joy of those who have passed the Fear and found it the gateway to peace. LX CROSSING THE RIVER WHEN Bunyan wrote the "Pilgrim's Prog- ress " he pictured the death of the Christian as only the crossing of a river which sepa- rates this world from the Celestial City. Quaintly he said: "Betwixt them and the gate was a river; but there was no bridge to go over; the river was very deep. At the sight, therefore, of this river the pilgrims were much stunned; but the men that went with them said, 'You must go through or you cannot come at the gate/ "The pilgrims then began to inquire if there was no other way to the gate, to which they an- swered, 'Yes, but there have not any, save two, to wit, Enoch and Elijah, been permitted to tread that path since the foundation of the world, nor shall until the last trumpet shall sound/ The pilgrims then, especially Christian, began to despond in their minds, and they looked this way and that; no way could be found by them by which they might escape the river. Then they asked the men if the waters were all of a depth. They said, 'no/ yet they could not help them in that case; for, said they, 'you shall find it deeper or shallower as you believe in the King of the place/" The two pilgrims entered the river. One of them cried out that he was sinking, but his companions urged him to remember God's promises of help, and he would be able to keep afloat. When, at 213 214 THE VICTORY LIFE length, Christian, the man whose faith was weak, fixed his thoughts on God and His promises to help His people in the hour of death, all was well, and he crossed safely to the other shore. Christians have no fear when they remember the promise of God to be with them in life or in death. His word is, "When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee." "Neither shall the flames kindle upon thee, for I am Jehovah thy God." Belief in such promises as this and in Him who stands back of them makes men like General Gordon. During the Crimean War there was a sortie, and the Russians actually reached the English trench. Gordon stood on the parapet in great danger of his life, with nothing but his stick in his hand, en- couraging the soldiers to drive out the Russians. "Gordon," they cried, "come down! you'll be killed!" But he took no notice, and a soldier who was near said, "It's all right; 'e don't mind being killed, Vs one of those blessed Christians." Lord Roscommon, of England, in the moment of death, uttered with an energy of voice that expressed the most fervent devotion, the prayer: "My God, my Father and my Friend, Do not forsake me in the end/ 9 And his prayer was answered. He died in perfect peace. Biographers of Joseph Addison, the great English essayist, have told how, when he was dying, he sent for his stepson, Lord Warwick, pressed his hand and said, "See in what peace a Christian can die." Not only men and women but even children have LOOKING BACK ON LIFE 215 such triumphant faith in God. Of one little girl, friends who saw her at the last said, "All day a heavenly radiance seemed to grow over her face. Occasionally she would reach out her hand to the bedside and say, 'Mamma, are you there?' and when assured of it, she would lapse into silence again. At the last moment all physical weakness seemed to leave her. She sat up, raised both hands, and with her face beaming with divine light, exclaimed, 'Oh! mamma, God is here, and everything is so beautiful here!'" LXI A POET'S ROAD TO VICTORY THAT man may be fortunate who has never known distress and conflict, although this is a question. Infinitely more fortunate is the man who has struggled through the doubt and despair into the calm, untroubled sea of unchanging peace. There is no better illustration of this than the experience of Alfred Tennyson. As a young man he knew the meaning of serenity. His faith in God was firm, but it had never been tested. And just because he had never felt a tremor on the quiet sea of his mental and spiritual life he was able to write, in one of his earlier poems : Why should we weep for those who die? They fall — their dust returns to dust; Their souls shall live eternally Within the mansions of the just. They die to live — they sink to rise y They leave this wretched mortal shore; But brighter suns and bluer skies Shall smile on them for evermore. During the days of college life his soul was knit to the soul of Arthur Hallam. He felt that he could not live without his friend; all his future seemed bound up in him. Then came the day 216 LOOKING BACK ON LIFE 217 when Hallam died suddenly. Black despair and gloomy uncertainty laid hold on the poet. For the first time the questionings of that uncertain period in England's intellectual life laid hold of him. The ground was slipping from beneath his feet. He did not know what to do, what to think, what to plan. Life seemed done when it was just begun. "I was utterly miserable, a burden to my friends and to myself," were his words. Again and again he asked, "Is life worth living?" until he was ready to say: 9 Twer e best at once to sink to peace, Like birds the charming serpent draws. To drop headforemost in the jaws Of vacant darkness and to cease. For more than fifty years he struggled with the doubt that threatened his peace. His poems re- vealed the changes in his thinking. Sometimes they were a ringing expression of faith; again they told of the storms that made him restless, that threatened to undo him. But always he held to his faith in God, and year by year he came nearer to the day when his peace was to be like a river, flowing calmly and serenely on. This fluctuation of hope and doubt is a large element in the helpfulness of his experience, for in much the same way we to-day are struggling through eclipsing doubt to faith. Sometimes all seems gloriously plain, and the stars are bright above. Again struggle seems useless, hopeless; the skies become like imprisoning brass. Glimpses of the poet's struggle for enduring peace are to be seen throughout his works. Always they show him striving to lay hold on God, or endeavoring to persuade himself of the truth of immortality. 2l8 THE VICTORY LIFE His longing to rest in the assurance of immortality once led him to say: How sweet to have a common faith! To hold a common scorn of death! And at a burial to hear The creaking cords which wound and eat Into my human heart, whene'er Earth goes to earth, with grief, not fear, With hopeful grief, were passing sweet. Again he owned : / often grow Tired of so much within our little life, Or of so little in our little life — Poor little life that toddles half an hour Crowned with a flower or two, and then an end. Once, in the poem "Despair," unrest was given expression thus: And the suns of the limitless universe sparkled and shone in the sky, Flashing with fires as of God, but we know that their light was a lie — Bright as with deathless hope — but, however they sparkled and shone, The dark little worlds running round them were worlds of woe like our own — No soul in the heaven above them, no soul on the earth below, A fiery scroll written over with lamentation arid woe. But the day arrived when he could say: Doubt no longer that the Highest is the wisest and the best, Let not all that saddens Nature blight thy hope or break thy rest, LOOKING BACK ON LIFE 219 Quail not at the fiery mountain, at the shipwreck, or the rolling Thunder, or the rending earthquake, or the famine, or the pest. In the poem inspired by the death of his friend, "In Memoriam," he wrote:] We may lift from out of dust A voice as unto Him that hears, A cry above the conquered years To One that with us works, and trust, With faith that comes of self-control, The truths that never can be proved Until we close with all we loved, And all we flow from, soul on soul. And this was the cry he made: Strong Son of God, immortal love, Whom we, that have not seen Thy face, By faith, and faith alone, embrace, Believing where we cannot prove. Once he reassured himself thus : Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, And spirit with spirit can meet', Closer is He than breathing, and Nearer than hands and feet. More than thirty years after the death of his friend, which marked the beginning of his groping, he wrote of immortality, which on this occasion he called "the leading light of man": Gone forever! Ever? No — for since our dying race began, Ever, ever, and forever was the leading light of man. 220 THE VICTORY LIFE Follow Light, and do the Right. — for man can half" control his doom — Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb. Twenty years were yet to pass before he wrote what was the supreme expression of the peace that came to him through tumult, the matchless poem, "Crossing the Bar/' of which his son said to him, "That is the crown of your life-work/' And the poet agreed, for later on he said to the son, "Mind you put 'Crossing the Bar' at the end of my poems." This, then, is the farewell message of the man who, after struggling for more than half a century to know the victory of peace, at length came to know repose through confident trust in his Pilot, Jesus Christ: Sunset and evening star. And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar When I put out to sea. Twilight and evening bell,] And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell When I embark; For, though from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar. Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: Oct. 2005 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 017 052 342 8 #